Hitting the Road

The average person will spend a lot of time in a seated position. The three most common activities are commuting in a vehicle, eating meals and working at a desk. For many, the commute takes up more and more time in the day. Here in my hometown of Austin the commute time per year is 47 hours at a crawl. Austin is currently 13th in the nation when it comes to rush hour traffic. Even off peak traffic can still be a drag and keep you in a seated position longer than you want. Given the frequency and duration of this scenario there is a chance you may have to draw from within your vehicle. Car jacking, aggressive pan handling and other types of violent criminal activities can test your ability to clear your cover garment inside your vehicle. The biggest obstacle for drawing from within a vehicle is the seat belt. What you don’t want to do is weaken the effectiveness of the seat belt’s ability to work in a crash. The seat belt should be low across your lap, right at the hip joint. This is the best position to arrest movement and minimize injury. Not the best position for drawing a gun. If your state has an open carry law you can clear the cover garment in advance minimizing the obstacle. In addition. you can place the shoulder restraint behind the butt of the gun.

Cleaning up the Table

If you take lunch at your desk, you probably eat in a seated position. If you venture out for the group lunch or even a working lunch you probably still eat in a seated position. The challenges you face are not just the drawstroke, but sitting arrangement. Are you in a booth or a chair. If you are in a booth, ideally you would be on the outside. Sitting in a chair is more mobile, making it easier if and when you have to go to guns. Better than than a vantage point of the entrance is a vantage point of the largest avenue of approach. If you can see the suspect approaching you will have time to respond. Versus seeing them at the entrance, but loosing them once they walk into the establishment. The last obstacle to overcome is friendlies in your field of fire. If you have people sitting extremely close or directly across, cleaning up your field of fire is priority number one. If you haven’t practiced strong hand only, consider how you will probably use your weak hand to move or hold someone out of your way.

American Workaholics

Sitting at your desk is probably the easiest of the activities described. You start out by having the advantage of owning the space. You know the layout, where the exists are and who does and doesn’t belong. When you add some force protection measures such as controlled access, close circuit monitors and ballistic resistant material it gives you a distinct advantage. There are still plenty of challenges, how you have to de-conflict and clear up your field of fire. At the very least, design and implement an active shooter plan. What to do if you are at your desk and what to do when you are away. The last point to consider is no matter the activity holstering in a seated position is dangerous and should only be performed in extreme circumstances. Otherwise, stand and safely holster as per SOP.

We spend more time seated than you might think and accessing your gun is one thing. You need to manage the friendlies nearby along with the unknowns and threats while being sure of your backstop.

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Being honest about your skills

There are core skills a shooter needs to be well rounded, resilient enough to handle as many different situations and conditions as they can face. The hard part is developing proficiency and then maintaining the skill. At some point you  prioritize what is important as well as an honest of your skills. I find during various core skills assessment strong hand only seems to have the lowest scores. It does not surprise me since most folks focus on what they are good at and stay clear of what they suck at to avoid tarnishing their ego. Not necessarily the best approach for life saving skills.

10% at best

In our classes I often take an informal poll of students asking them if they were giving 100 rounds of ammunition how much would be allocated to strong hand only. The average is about 10% or 10 rounds. I know this number seems  low, but to be honest I feel it is accurate. It is easy to find excuses not to practice skills we perform poorly, but these areas need the most attention. Taking the time to correctly learn the skill, then consistent practice is the best way to ensure a deficiency is improved. Plus, there is a sense of satisfaction accomplishing a goal and seeing the improvements over time.

Please stop the insanity

In class we start off by addressing one of my biggest issues, if you do this then find a flat surface to bang your head against. Why do we teach people to tighten their weak arm and bring it close to their chest? Stop to think about this and remember you are a by product of your training. If you train to bring your weak hand to your chest when injured then why would you not expect to do the same thing in the real world. Why wouldn’t you train yourself to regain your two hand grip, to fight to get your weak hand back on the gun? I hear a few comment how in a gunfight they would behave differently; I scratch my head at that one. You are saying despite your training, you are going to do something different under stress. If this were the case, what else might you do differently.

Stick to the basics

We try to keep it simple. You need to recognize strong hand only gets little attention so rather than come up with a specialized technique (which all suck by the way) keep things as familiar as possible. If your weak hand cannot move to the gun then let it lie where it is and don’t change anything. For peak performance what I do encourage is to drop the strong side elbow and thumb. Dropping the elbow will help bring the recoil back into the center line. Also avoid excessive bending of the elbow, you want it straighten more than when shooting with two hands.

Close your grip

When you have two hands on the gun your strong side thumb should rest on your weak hand thumb to create an “in line” grip. When your weak hand thumb is absent you still want to drop your strong hand thumb. By doing so you create a more powerful grip, you are in a basically making a fist. You can get away with poor technique more easily with two hand technique, but one hand shooting is far less forgiving. Everything else remains the same, don’t make things any harder than they already are and definitely don’t deviate from what you know. An example is if you look for your sights in at a certain plane and orientation then keep it the same when shooting one handed.

Shooting strong hand only is far more important than most people acknowledge. It is well worth your time, haul around a small human and you figure that out real quick.

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Somethings don’t change

Over the recent holidays there might have been an “incident” resulting in me dislocating my strong hand thumb. Aside from it being painful, it was a great reminder of the importance to a crush grip. My ability to close my grip, much less apply pressure was severely retarded. Luckily my grip strength is coming back and having dislocated this joint in the past it is more a process than anything. However, during the process I was keenly aware of the inferiority of my crush grip.

Firm handshake

To go back a little bit. The crush grip is not simply squeezing the pistol firmly. It is about squeezing with a hulk like grip in the right places. As part of the crush grip brief I go to each student and shake their hands. Then I demonstrate the proper grip, after which I ask them to demonstrate it back to me. I am surprised by how many, like the vast majority of student who grip incorrectly. When I say incorrectly I mean, yes you are gripping the gun so it does not fall out of your hand, but how improved is your combat marksmanship. Ideally we want the sights to remain as close to the strike point during firing as possible. While there are other parts to the overall technique a major one is your crush grip.

Suck at everything, but the grip

You may have a shitty stance, shitty mount, but you cannot afford to have a shitty grip. It must be perfected and practiced from all conditions. Conditions such as two hand, strong hand and even weak hand only. You really learn about your own anatomy when you take it to these extremes. Shooting strong hand only is one of the best ways to learn about your crush grip as well as an opportunity to practice. Since the gun will discharge, physical forces are being imparted on both the gun and the shooter. Most shooters apply the majority of grip pressure right under the trigger guard and this is incorrect.

The laws of physics

It is incorrect in the sense you are working against physics at this point. No matter how hard you squeeze in this position it will always be weaker, inferior or wrong compared to applying more grip pressure towards the bottom of the pistol grip. If you think of the trigger guard as the fulcrum the further way from the fulcrum, the more leverage you can apply. While many of the students showed powerful grips, it was with the top two digits and therefore when applied to the gun it was inferior. The moment they transferred power away from the fulcrum you could see the improvement in their recoil management and combat marksmanship. Again, this is a part of the overall system, but what I consider to be a huge fundamental part.

Lessons learned

What I noticed recently is while I understand and can apply a correct crush grip, when I was unable I was amazed as to how my performance suffered. Aside from it being painful to go through the recoil impulse, I realized how “open” my grip was when I could not close my grip by dropping my thumb down. By applying downward pressure, almost as if I was trying to make a fist around the gun. Even though I was gripping the crap out of the gun with the bottom two digits, without my thumb to close the grip it was not as effective. I have witnessed this before when we see students go “thumbs up”, but I had not personally experienced it until my injury.

Don’t get wrapped around the axle with how hard to grip. Apply pressure with the bottom two digits and drop your thumb; then crush the shit out of it for effect.

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A core skill to practice

Here are some things to consider if you are going to put training time into developing your weak side technique. As mentioned in previous blogs you want to be a versatile shooter, one that is balanced and capable of responding to a variety of situations. Shooting off your weak side is one of the Core Skills for a pistol shooting we encourage you to develop. You will want to practice these skills dry first, then gradually work up to live fire and it is a great idea to have an inert training pistol to work with in the beginning to ensure safety.

The basics, stance

Start by assuming a weak side stance, it is a mirrored stance to your strong side. Meaning to have a good athletic stance one that is mobile and capable of managing the recoil you will want an off-set stance with your weak leg leading. How much lead depends on you and your comfort. Keep your weight on your toes or the balls of your feet, your knees flexed and your hips square to the target. If it helps, remember to point your belt buckle to the target.

Getting it to our weak hand

From there, you will want to acquire a good firing grip. Let’s start with transferring the pistol from strong side to weak side. To do so, point in a safe direction then “open” your strong hand grip to allow your weak hand to gain a purchase on the pistol. Place your weak side trigger finger on the trigger index and complete the transfer by passing the pistol wholly to your weak side. Here is the first place you can run into problems and that is eye dominance. If your strong side using your right eye as the dominant eye then on the left side it can confuse the brain. For training purposes and as part of your progression I recommend you start by closing your right eye completely. You will have a lot of “newness” to the technique and this will ease the transition. Eventually you will want both eyes open and if your dominant eye is really powerful then point your chin at your left elbow and this will shift your right eye behind the sights.

The details of your trigger finger

Trigger finger location as well as placement will be the same for your left side. Start with more trigger finger than you think is necessary in the beginning. The progression we recommend is to start by transferring the pistol to your weak side, then obtaining a two hand grip. Your two hand grip will give you a better base to managing recoil and eventually lead to weak hand only techniques. Remember to keep things in perspective, you are drawing and engaging weak hand for a reason. You want to get to weak hand only, but it is best to develop your skills by starting with two hands.

That awkward moment after bang

Recoil management will be awkward at first, mainly because it is somewhat “new” on your weak side. The keys for success are the same whether on your right or your left, crush grip and trigger management. Concentrate on your pinkies and really apply pressure, more than you think. In a class, it is rare that a shooter over-grips the gun. It is far more common to under grip so really crush it. You left hand trigger finger is new to press the trigger so take your time and literally walk yourself through the process. Touch the trigger, take out the slack then squeeze the trigger past the point of detonation. You will want to exaggerate everything. Meaning, literally tell yourself “front sight, press” and press the trigger straight to rear allowing the pistol to discharge freely. Work your follow through and get ready for your next shot or task.

This is the easy part, but we need a place to start. Eventually you will need to draw the pistol, possibly work reloads and even malfunctions. That will come in time, next with a base in shooting weak side we are going to tackle the drawstroke.

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The path less traveled

In my experience, the folks who work at improving their weak areas are the minority. I think it’s reasonable to see most spending their training time working on what they like or what they are already good at, avoiding those dark corners that need improvement. As we see it, there are fourteen Core Pistol Skills necessary to create a versatile and disciplined gunfighter. One of them is shooting and running the gun Strong Hand Only (SHO). For the most part it gets scant attention. There are few qualifications that support SHO so if folks are not required to shoot it they are not really motivated to practice. For those who do practice I often ask how much training time do they allocate to SHO, a very generous estimate would be about 20% of their training. So, for every 100 rounds they fire that means 20 are fired SHO. Seems high I know, but let’s run with it for now.

KIS…keep it the same

If you want to get good at SHO then you need to invest the training time and resources. I know that was a huge knowledge bomb, but despite all the advise I might give you if you don’t make an effort to improve then it’s wasted. From there the best advise I can give you is not to change anything. I have had the fortune to work with our wounded warriors and some are forced to shoot SHO. A comment I got years ago was,  “why are you having me do things differently?” It’s a good question and it makes a lot of sense whether you have solid skills or not. More importantly it worked. The benefit of this training philosophy doesn’t just apply to those with only one extremity, we all benefit.

The details

What does it mean to not change anything? It’s simple, mount the pistol as you normally would with a two hand grip. Once you’ve achieved a good mount drop your weak hand. That’s it! All the crap about doing things with your weak hand is just that, it’s crap. If you could move that extremity then you better damn well move it back to the gun. On top of that you will want to drop your strong side thumb as if you’re trying to close the grip, try to touch your middle finger that is wrapped around the pistol. A proper grip should have you applying downward pressure with your thumb to begin with. When the weak hand is missing the thumb sometimes gets forgotten. Next you want to exaggerate pointing your elbow down. Imagine pointing your elbow towards your strong side foot. This will keep your shoulder in a better, stronger position. Doing that and locking down your thumb will will aid in recoil management once incorporated together.

Effective recoil management

Another obvious point of SHO is you will be less effective with recoil management. It’s not as bad as some think and the secret to recoil management is your crush grip. You’ve really got to bear down with your pinky. The mistake folks make is trying to make a fist. While it seems like the right thing to do, the correct thing is to crush it with your pinky and cascade upwards. I know it sounds the same as making a fist, but it is very different. In fact, a lot realize how poorly they were gripping with two hands when shooting SHO.

Diagnostic tools

Now, how does shooting SHO work as a diagnostic tool. For the shooters who have a windage error, we will confirm it is either a grip or trigger finger issue. If the shooter has no windage issue SHO then it is going to be grip related. In other words, they are not crush gripping with their strong hand. If the shooter still has a windage issue, then it is a trigger finger placement issue. The most likely culprit is rubbing your trigger finger against the frame followed by placing your trigger finger on the edge of the trigger as opposed to the face.

Working Strong Hand Only should be a regular part of your training program. The versatility it gives you is huge, along with aiding in fixing errors with your normal grip.

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