History of pistol shooting techniques

[DocGKR]

Shooting competition is NOT the same as trying to save your life. An individual would have to be incredibly STUPID to not carefully heed the comments made by SeanM, a guy coming from a similar background as Kyle Lamb and Larry Vickers referenced above, and clearly the person in this thread with the most experience using lethal force in a dynamic environment:

"Leaning forward or aggressive forward lean, or whatever you choose to call it, or how you choose to describe it may or may not affect your shooting. If you strictly play games with guns, then no problem. But away from the game, having an aggressive stance, while slightly fatiguing, will pay dividends."

Likewise, someone would have to be very ignorant or insolent to ignore the hard won experience and advice from highly experienced LE officers like Nyeti, Wayne Dobbs, and tpd223.

[Coyotesfan97]

An MP5, which is hardly a viciously recoiling weapon, will easily push an average adult male backwards if his body position isn't correct. Body position is pretty important in terms of keeping someone in control of the gun, especially if they want to shoot multiple shots in a rapid fashion.

+1. I use the same basic stance and footwork to shoot my pistol that I use while running an MP5 or an AR.

[Failure2Stop]

There is a difference between fighting and shooting, and I bias my shooting to support direct physical violence where I believe that it is more advantageous.

Though I am at a bit of a loss as to how this argument has anything to do with the evolution of modern shooting technique and who helped bring them to the forefront.

[John Hearne]

At the risk of bringing this back to the original question, the missing component in our discussions has been Jelly Bryce. Jelly was an incredibly gifted shooter with supernatural vision. He claimed that he saw every bullet he ever fired. Jelly was able to use his superior vision to point shoot very well. His success led other to emulate him. The FBI tried to make everybody shoot like Jelly. They were somewhat successful but Jelly's success with his technique led a lot folks to ignore potentially better ways to shoot.

Two-handed eye level shooting was recognized in the 1920's. In the book "Shooting" (published 1930) the author's platform looks like a modified Weaver. I also suspect that nobody knew how quickly you could teach someone to get quick hits with two-handed eye-level shooting. Drawing and shooting with one hand while protecting the chest with the other stuck around for a long time.

One of the more important later breakthroughs was the ability to quickly teach the draw stroke. Initially folks like Cooper thought it would take years to develop the drawstroke but one of the SWCPL participants understood kinesthetics and was able to shortcut the process.

As already mentioned, the arrival of "practical shooting" was critical as well. Prior to Cooper, everyone who shot, shot bullseye or something inspired by it, like PPC. Practical shooting was an excellent laboratory from which a lot of our contemporary technique arises.

[TCinVA]

More to the topic of the history of pistol shooting, something from the FBI from many moons ago:

Shooting For Survival

From the WWII era Army:

1911 Training

I believe the 1911 video shows some Applegate influence.

[beltjones]

More to the topic of the history of pistol shooting, something from the FBI from many moons ago:

Shooting For Survival

From the WWII era Army:

1911 Training

I believe the 1911 video shows some Applegate influence.

Very interesting stuff.

[ToddG]

John raises two great points that are often glossed over by the "just do it however you want until you get awesome" crowd.

First, blindly following a self-taught phenom doesn't necessarily mean it will work as well for you.

Second, the evolution of good technique has a component of trainability to it. An awesome technique that requires five years of near daily effort is great for the fraction of a percent who can dedicate their time like that. But for most people, effort and retention are issues.

[beltjones]

John raises two great points that are often glossed over by the "just do it however you want until you get awesome" crowd.

First, blindly following a self-taught phenom doesn't necessarily mean it will work as well for you.

Second, the evolution of good technique has a component of trainability to it. An awesome technique that requires five years of near daily effort is great for the fraction of a percent who can dedicate their time like that. But for most people, effort and retention are issues.

I really don't think anyone is saying "just do it however you want until you get awesome." If anything people are saying "If it works for the best in the world, maybe it can work for you, too."

To your first point, I think that was uncalled for and not furthering this thread as a professional discussion.

To your second point, I don't think that is demonstrable with evidence, and in fact I once had a discussion with a shooter who used similar logic, only he was arguing that it's better to teach the average shooter to use a teacup grip because it is easier to remember for people who couldn't practice consistently. His argument was that the teacup requires less effort and is easier to remember.

I say it is better to train using the best known techniques, and let your skill level be determined by your level of commitment and the limits of your God-given natural ability. If you believe it's better to teach people sub-standard technique because it is easier to learn or remember, that's up to you as an instructor. I say one technique is as easy to learn as another when it comes to pistol shooting, and it's better to ingrain the best habits early on to eliminate some of the performance dips plateaus that inevitably occur when switching from one technique to another.

That's just my respectful difference of opinion.

[Ben Stoeger]

Second, the evolution of good technique has a component of trainability to it. An awesome technique that requires five years of near daily effort is great for the fraction of a percent who can dedicate their time like that. But for most people, effort and retention are issues.

I think this is a fair point. I am part of the small faction of a percent and only ever train with other people in that same demographic. I suspect most of the posters here are in the "hardcore" club as well.

[Suvorov]

From the WWII era Army:

1911 Training

I believe the 1911 video shows some Applegate influence.

This film is fascinating and actually dispels many misconceptions I had about combat pistol marksmanship in WWII. I had always thought that the "bullseye" technique was the only one taught and also that the only targets used were "bulleye" style (this I believe I got from Col. Grossman's first book). From the video it seems that they had a pretty good idea on a "forward" leaning stance and were developing a two handed position as well, albeit with the "cup and saucer" grip. The two things that struck me as absent from this training were:
1) Recoil Management
2) Reloading

I am of the understanding the Weaver was the one who pioneered the "modern" grip in an effort to help control recoil and that Cooper and others advanced it. Is this correct and if not, when did the idea of using "as much meat on the grip as possible" come in vogue? Also, when did the rapid reload techniques that we all use today come about?

This thread is proving to be as informative as suspected. I am somewhat embarrassed by my feeble attempt early in the thread considering all the big guns that have followed.