Ensure the pistol is unloaded and remove all ammunition from the training area before beginning.
Shooting a pistol is much more difficult than any other weapon, including a shotgun. This is due to several factors to include pistol design, human anatomy, human psychology and not insignificantly- Hollywood. I grew up watching TV shows and movies that had absolutely terrible weapons handling scenes but of course didn’t realize it at the time. All those “training scars” would have to be fixed with lots of training.
It took me several years to get to a point where I felt confident with a pistol and I am fortunate enough to have trained with some excellent instructors. I am most heavily influenced by the folks at TigerSwan as their strong emphasis on accuracy requires that your fundamental techniques be sound. They teach a modified Isosceles and I have found that it works very well for me. I would recommend their classes without hesitation, the prices seem steep compared to other well known instructors but the difference is you may go to another class and have 2 instructors for a class of 24, at TigerSwan you are more likely to have 3 instructors for a class of 12.
The Stance:
Feet shoulder width apart- Firing Side (FS) foot slightly behind Support Side (SS) foot. The toes of your FS foot should be even with the instep of your SS foot.
Weight should be on the balls of your feet, heels slightly off the ground.
“Enough to slide a dime underneath your heels”- Tony Copper
Knees slightly bent with your hips squared up to the target.
Shoulders should be squared up with your hips and leaning slightly forward so that your upper body is above the balls of your feet.
Head may dip chin slightly but your eyes stay up and pistol will be brought up in to your line of sight rather than presenting the pistol and bringing your head down to the sights.
Your arms will extend all the way out, once you have acquired your sight picture and sight alignment relax just a little bit so that your elbows aren’t locked out.
Your stance sets you up for your Natural Point of Aim (NPA) which is the natural position that your body and pistol are indexed for as you present the pistol. Try closing your eyes and pushing the pistol out to its normal firing position before opening your eyes to locate the sights. That is your NPA- you want the NPA to be in line with your sights and target.
This requires perfect practice.
“Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent, perfect practice makes perfect.”- Pat Rogers
Your NPA is significant because if it is off then your body will have to compensate for that by turning your upper body toward the target; this introduces unnecessary tension and torque in to your shooting platform.
The Grip:
Start by getting a good firing grip on your pistol with just your firing hand and presenting it out to the target. More than likely your knuckles will be slightly under the trigger guard and your middle finger to your pinky will be wrapped around to the side of the pistol. The web of your hand will feel like it is seated in to the back strap of the pistol and the meat of your thumb will be slightly to the left of the frame (assuming a right handed shooter), this feels comfortable and secure. Your thumb will feel snug to the frame and your trigger finger will have a gap between the frame.
The problem with this grip is that it allows the natural mechanics of your body to work against your shooting. With the 3 fingers wrapped around the side of the pistol this can introduce torque if they have a sympathetic muscle response to you squeezing the trigger, so every time your index finger squeezes the trigger your other 3 fingers squeeze the gun. It also places your trigger finger much deeper in to the trigger guard so that you increase the likely hood that you are “pushing” the gun every time you squeeze the trigger. By having the meat of your thumb against the rear of the frame you are actually placing the pistol on the edge of the web of your hand rather than the deepest pocket of webbing.
Try holding the pistol again but now rotate your grip slightly so that your knuckles are along the right forward edge of the grip frame. Your lower 3 fingers should be pressed against the front of the frame and the meat of your thumb will be farther out to the left of the rear of the frame. Your trigger finger should feel much more snug to the frame. Lock your FS wrist- this will prevent problems associated with limp-wristing. It will feel awkward initially until you can train out of it.
This grip “fixes” several issues with the previous grip, by having the 3 fingers more in line with the front of the frame any sympathetic squeezing will be on front/rear axis rather than a left/right axis. By having your trigger finger less deep in to the trigger guard it allows the first pad of the finger to be more consistent on the trigger itself. With your thumb farther out it places the rear back strap deeper in to the web of your hand.
Your support hand will do most of the “gripping” since your firing hand’s job is to squeeze the trigger. The mix should be about 70/30 with the majority always going to the support hand. It can be as much as 90/10 or as little as 60/40 but understand that your support hand will be gripping much more than the firing hand. Start by extending your support hand out toward the target and pointing at it with your index finger. There should be a straight line from your shoulder to your fingertip to the target. Now rotate your hand down 45 degrees so that your thumb takes the place of your index finger. The imaginary straight line now goes from your shoulder to your thumb to the target.
Next, wrap your support hand around the front of the pistol while consciously thinking about covering up as much of the exposed frame of the pistol as possible with your support hand’s palm. Your SS thumb should be pressed against the frame and parallel to the bore. Your FS thumb will be resting over the back of your SS thumb. Both arms should be locked out at this point so take a deep breath and as you exhale relax your elbows enough to take away the tension. Your sights should be on target and your grip should be firm but not tense. You may feel your FS fingernails digging in to your SS palm when gripping the pistol.
My friend Shannon showed me this grip (he got it from Todd Jarrett as far back as 2000) and it has made a huge improvement in my gun handling.
The Sights:
Most often broken down to sight picture and sight alignment there is quite a bit of detail to both upon closer examination.
Sight alignment is whether your sights are aligned with the bore of your gun, generally speaking they are always mechanically aligned- what changes is your perception of that sight alignment.
You have parallel deviation and angular deviation. An example of parallel deviation would be if you placed the pistol in a vise with the sights perfectly lined up on a target, if you move your head slightly left or right it would appear that the sights are no longer on target when if fact they still are. It is your position relative to the sights that has changed. An example of angular deviation exists would be if you took that vise and moved it slightly offline but your head stayed in the same location. So the sights are now “off” but nothing else has changed.
This is significant because the key to marksmanship is to be able to press the trigger without disturbing the sights. By understanding that concept you can now self-correct when you shoot on your own.
Sight Picture is the relationship between your eyes/brain and the sights themselves. For years I was taught and practiced to hard focus on the front sight. At close ranges it was common to take a “flash sight picture” and let the bullets fly. By itself it is a valid technique but the flaw in that was there was no adjustment once the ranges increased. By hard focusing on the front sight and leaving the target and rear sights blurry it allows the introduction of the angular deviation. You are focusing on the pivot point so if there is an angular deviation you won’t be able to distinguish it, that is to say of the 3 components of your sight picture you are focusing on only 1of them.
In order to minimize the angular deviation you can adjust the focus of your eyes so that the front and rear sights are crisp, this still leaves the target blurry but you now have 2 out of 3 components of your sight picture in focus. This has an even more significant effect at longer ranges. As you focus on the sights themselves to ensure that you have equidistant light between the edges of the front sight within the pocket of the rear sight notch you should also ensure that the top edge of the front sight and top edges of the rear sight are even. By focusing on those 3 edges you have now made an even finer focus point to further minimize your angular deviation.
One key point about sight picture is to follow through after squeezing the trigger, what commonly happens is we have a natural desire to see where the bullet went thereby pulling the gun down prematurely. After squeezing the shot off bring the gun back on target and re-acquire a second sight picture before bringing the gun off the target.
Trigger Control:
A fine motor skill that is difficult, but not impossible to master. It is also the most perishable motor skill when it comes to pistol shooting. Pretend you have an invisible gun in your firing hand, grip it the way you normally would and then “squeeze” the trigger. For most people the other fingers of their hand will also move. To only contract one finger is an unnatural motion that must be trained. Practice doing that until you can isolate just your index finger to squeeze while the rest of your hand remains motionless.
Then attempt to do the same while dry firing an unloaded pistol. Place the first pad of your index finger on the trigger and attempt to squeeze the trigger straight to the rear without disturbing the sights. I normally will think press, press, press, press until the trigger breaks. This should be a surprise break without me anticipating when the shot will go off. Once you squeeze the trigger to the rear relax your trigger finger enough to ease to reset without coming off the trigger.
Common problems for trigger squeeze include having the finger in too deep thereby “pushing” the gun, anticipating the shot and therefore “jerking” the trigger, trying to force the shot by “mashing” the trigger so that the gun dips down when you fire, or you can “slap” the trigger by coming off of it and reengaging the trigger after every shot.
Miscellaneous:
Some other things to think about are visualization and breathing. By visualizing what you are doing before you do it you’ve already created the mental road map of what is supposed to happen which makes it easier for your body to simply do it.
Breathing is important to shooting because the more oxygenated your blood is the more efficiently your body can function. That oxygenation affects everything from your ability to see to the physical tasks of actually holding and firing the pistol to your brain recognizing various stimuli and reacting to them.
Conclusion:
This doesn’t cover everything that it would take to learn to shoot but it is a solid foundation to build upon. These are all things that you can practice at home without live ammunition so it doesn’t cost you anything other than time.
