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NickA
07-21-2011, 09:36 PM
Quick question- when clearing a closed front cover garment, seems there's two ways to use your strong hand:
-Curl your fingers under the edge and pull up
or
-hand goes flat against your leg/hip, extend your thumb up and slide it under the shirt,lift.
Or maybe some other way I'm not aware of. Anyway, how do you do this? Any clear advantage of one over the other?
Seems the second way might be faster (hand is already in the right orientation to establish the grip), but catching the edge of your shirt with the thumb coming up might be less of a sure thing.
While we're at it, do you use both hands to clear cover? Strong or weak hand only? Practice both ways? Has anyone measured a time difference among these?

Prdator
07-21-2011, 09:46 PM
Quick question- when clearing a closed front cover garment, seems there's two ways to use your strong hand:
-Curl your fingers under the edge and pull up
or
-hand goes flat against your leg/hip, extend your thumb up and slide it under the shirt,lift.
Or maybe some other way I'm not aware of. Anyway, how do you do this? Any clear advantage of one over the other?
Seems the second way might be faster (hand is already in the right orientation to establish the grip), but catching the edge of your shirt with the thumb coming up might be less of a sure thing.
While we're at it, do you use both hands to clear cover? Strong or weak hand only? Practice both ways? Has anyone measured a time difference among these?



Depends if your carrying IWB at 3-4 O'clock or if you run AIWB, For IWB on the strong side hip I always used the strong hand thumb to clear my closed front garment. I would turn my hand point my thumb at my upper thigh, jab it against my thigh and drag it up under the garment and go strait to the gun. If I could I'd start hands at my side and my strong thumb under the garment to begin with.. pretty fast this way.
FWIW I never liked using my support hand or any other way to clear a closed front garment for IWB carry.
For AIWB I use my support hand and curl / grab the garment and lift it strait up, then Ill meet there with both hands.

seabiscuit
07-21-2011, 10:30 PM
I carry IWB at 4 o'clock, and find using weak hand to clear the garment much faster. I grab my shirt with my left, establish a grip with my right, and bring both hands to center with the pistol.

dookie1481
07-22-2011, 12:39 AM
My techniques (please tell me if you feel they are lacking or sub-optimal):

AIWB - curl fingers under shirt and hook up

Strong-side IWB (with closed front concealment) - with weak hand, crush-grab garment on gun side, yank garment as high as possible

NickA
07-22-2011, 05:57 AM
Should have specified strong side carry, but I'm interested to hear about AIWB as well since I'll be trying that soon. I had been using both hands, but am working more on using the strong hand only.

rsa-otc
07-22-2011, 07:03 AM
For those who carry 4 o'clock and use your weak/support-hand to clear your cover garment, I would only suggest that you practice some using your strong hand. Your weak/support hand may be otherwise occupied doing what ever and not available to clear you garment.

Of course you may already be doing that, in which case I'll shut up and sit down.

MDS
07-22-2011, 11:07 AM
My draw is certainly a work in progress, but FWIW it's both slower and less consistent for me to use my weak hand to clear the garment. I go faster and fumble less if I use the thumb-up for closed-front garments or the grab-sweep for open-front. Unless I'm tucked in, as I often am, in which case what seems to work is clearing the garment with both hands - it's slower than doing it one-handed with either hand, but far, far more consistent. I carry mostly IWB at 3:30 or 4:00.

Nice thread, too! I just started getting some time for dry-firing again, and the more I work on my draw, the more I realize I need to keep experimenting with a wide array of carry methods, holsters, and wardrobe choices. I'm starting to feel like this aspect of CCW gets less "serious" attention than it deserves...

JohnN
07-22-2011, 11:11 AM
In my experience you should use the offhand to clear the closed front garment when carrying appendix if at all possible. It is easy to get the gun tangled up in the garment (lighter weight fabrics tangle easier) if you don't get enough clearance with your strong hand.

I do think it is important to practice using your strong hand only in the event your offhand may be injured or otherwise occupied.

seabiscuit
07-22-2011, 02:06 PM
In my experience you should use the offhand to clear the closed front garment when carrying appendix if at all possible. It is easy to get the gun tangled up in the garment (lighter weight fabrics tangle easier) if you don't get enough clearance with your strong hand.

I do think it is important to practice using your strong hand only in the event your offhand may be injured or otherwise occupied.

+ 1

The first paragraph applies to strong side as well.

Al T.
07-22-2011, 02:53 PM
Tom Givens teaches a two handed Hackathorn Rip. Seems to work well.

ubervic
07-22-2011, 04:33 PM
For those who carry 4 o'clock and use your weak/support-hand to clear your cover garment, I would only suggest that you practice some using your strong hand. Your weak/support hand may be otherwise occupied doing what ever and not available to clear you garment

I carry 4 o'clock and used to clear the garment only using the weak-hand. About a month ago I read (and agreed) that using the strong-hand to clear is useful in the event that the weak-hand is otherwise preoccupied. Good news is that my draw is noticeably quicker/smoother now that I have practiced clearing using my strong-hand only. Much less time wasted twisting/torquing my torso, and much quicker hand to the grip.

I believe that clearing with the weak-hand is more practical, if not essential, when carrying AIWB.

gringop
07-22-2011, 09:24 PM
I started out using the strong hand to clear the garment by cupping the fingers under the hem, pulling up to clear the gun and flagging the thumb against the body to prevent the garment from dropping and fouling the grip.

Practiced the hell out of it and got pretty fast with it. 99% of the time it worked great. 1% of the time it was a clusterf**k.

I now use the support hand to help ala Hackathorn Rip. Works 100%. I still revert back when doing SHO drills.

Gringop

NickA
07-22-2011, 11:25 PM
Thanks for the input, keep it coming.
You guys are pretty much reinforcing what I was thinking- using both hands is less prone to getting fouled up, SHO may be a little faster/smoother, catching the garment with your thumb instead of cupping the fingers seems to be preferred. I haven't experimented much with using the WH only to clear. I've always used both but as mentioned that may not be an option in a fight. Also twisting enough to get the WH over there gets my upper body moving too much, though that can probably be fixed somewhat with more practice. Think I'll concentrate on SHO for a while and hopefully get a timer on the different methods soon.

GJM
06-08-2012, 12:48 AM
Bump.

So I was dry firing tonight, specifically working on clearing cover -- open soft shell vest with a G17 in a Gideon OWB holster. My objective was to figure out how I can get a fast but consistent presentation, without fumbling with the clearing of the cover garment, when wearing realistic outdoors cover garments with a 3 o'clock holster. While I AIWB a lot, I still OWB at 3 o'clock in an outdoors setting and as a risk management tool in courses and other high round count/presentation settings.

By chance, on one presentation, I turned my torso right towards the pistol, and got a very fast presentation. I started studying this, and realized that the turn right started the garment in the direction to clearing the garment. After a bunch of reps, I feel like it makes a measurable difference, although I wasn't using a timer.

Am I imagining something or is there an advantage here?

JMS
06-08-2012, 03:11 PM
There could be, but until you do a comparison with a timer, it's just not quantifiable. It's almost impossible to judge pure speed without, but if you're fumbling/gigging the movement less as a result, it's not outside the realm of possibility that you're correct because you've perhaps made the process more effecient.

So many folks downplay raw physiology (or mostly just don't think of it in these terms...), how different it can be from person to person, and how much it creates variables in position/movement that one individual can't presume to account for in another individual...

Slightly related...if I hitch to a given direction, I hitch either forward and leftward, because I got used to doing that IOT clear armor (and pouches It turns out I never really needed) when overt. I also have an old right shoulder/neck injury that keeps that side of my body pretty tight, and I benefit from the extra range of motion that a fwd/left hitch provides for my right arm. I CAN draw from strong-side concealment without doing it, and without any real problem, but I'm smoother/faster when I hitch despite the fact that it almost certainly looks like wasted motion; timers don't lie. Plus, hitching forward as I do gets my weight forward where it belongs, so it's not really extra motion so much as I end up using it for more than one purpose.

I can absolutely attest that hitching to my strong side just wouldn't work for me, so I hope the above rambling's of help....though I understand if it ends up just being story-telling that has nothing to do with what you're doing.