It’s just that they are not setting themselves up for success. Success in this case being survival of a defensive encounter where you must use your weapon. I’m talking about what I’ll call the “beginner stance”.
We’ve all seen it and may have started shooting using this stance. Feet parallel, back straight, arms nearly full extended and one eye close (with maybe a tongue sticking out in concentration). Is teaching someone to shoot with this stance a bad thing?
If you ask me, yes. It’s uncomfortable, can create bad habits, and makes recoil harder to deal with. There’s really no reason not to learn and start shooting from a combat/defensive stance.
We’ll start from the feet up on a proper stance to train with and build into muscle memory. There are concepts I’ve found in other activities, such as baseball and archery that transfer over and help you to keep things in mind.
The Feet and Legs
Standing up straight with your feet side by side shoulder length apart the first thing we’ll do is step back with our dominant side foot. That foot will also be more than likely naturally point out, which is good.
We start with the back because in a defensive situation you’ll more than likely be wanting to create distance and stepping back. So might as well make sure that triggers the rest of what’s to follow.
Now slightly bend both knees favoring your front one so your rear leg is slightly straighter. This will help control recoil.
Your front foot’s big toe should be pointed at your target. This is something I learned from baseball that I’ve found also helps in quickly getting on target. You want to learn to aim with your entire body and this will start with your front most big toe.
Hips and Torso
We want our hips to be squared with our target along with our torso and shoulders.
Squaring off might seem counterintuitive as you want to minimize the target that is you but there are two trains of thought here. The one I side with goes like this. Yes you can turn to lessen your exposure but if you get hit there you are now more likely to get hit in multiple vital organs from a single shot.
There are things we can do to minimize the exposure of our vitals that we’ll go over.
Shoulders should be forward and raised with a slight curve in your upper back causing you to lean forward slightly.
Arms and Hands
Your dominant hand, the one holding the gun, should be nearly straight with a slight bend at the elbow. The support arm will have a lot more noticeable bend.
Your dominant arm will be pushing, and your support hand will be pulling just enough to counter each other and helping minimize micro-movements in your arms.
Keep your arms up high so that when your head isn’t lowered your sights are near the center of your throat.
Tuck your elbows so they don’t go outside of your torso, but not so much it’s uncomfortable.
When gripping a firearm there are two big tips I would give.
The first is to make sure the palm of your supporting hand fills as much of the gap left by your dominant hand as possible. For me this means raising the thumb on my right (dominant) hand almost straight up to allow my left hand to fit neatly under. You may have to play your thumb placement to see what works best but the idea is to get as much of your hand’s surface on the pistol as possible.
The second is very much like the countering forces we did with our arms except now with our hands. We don’t just want to clasp or grip the gun, we want to create torque and lock in it. We do this by trying to turn our hands towards each other slightly. Pretty much the same motion as if our palms were facing each other but we turned them to face the floor.
The countering forces are going to help keep control of the weapon and get back on target faster.
Head
For the final piece we’ll lower our head and turn it just a little so the dominant eye is behind and we’re looking down the sights with both eyes.
Final Position
In the final position we should very closely resemble a boxer, except with a gun. This is a good way to remember the stance overall.
But to remember the finer points we’ll borrow a page out of the archery book. Is your chin touching your shoulder or bicep? Where are your thumbs overlapping?
By memorizing where certain parts of your body should be when you’re in the proper stance, you won’t have to think about adjusting. These are called anchor points and help keep your shooting extremely consistent.
Circling back to covering our vitals, your pistol should be in front of your face and your arms and elbows should be covering a majority of your upper torso. While your arms aren’t bulletproof, they may be able to stop or deflect a round that could potentially hit your heart or lungs.
And our legs, with the front bent more, are set up to absorb the recoil that is going to be pushing us back and trying to drive most of it down.
Final Thoughts
Like everything else it takes practice to get your stance and grip down. But the effect it can have on your shooting is phenomenal.
Practice these techniques while dry firing to try and get them ingrained somewhat before hitting the range. It’s also hard to remember every aspect when practicing with live ammo so pick one or two things to focus on at times and don’t beat yourself up.
Good luck!
