Consistency between SHO and freestyle

[CCT125US]

Do you treat your freestyle / two hand grip as adding your support hand to your ideal strong hand only grip? Or do you adjust your strong hand when the support hand joins? Which one and why?

[GJM]

My grips differ.

Freestyle, I try to lockout my support arm, and provide proportionately more clamp with support hand, while keeping my strong hand more relaxed to optimize trigger control and speed.

Shooting one hand, the one side needs to provide support while allowing trigger control, so I extend that one arm more aggressively and grip harder than freestyle.

[voodoo_man]

My grips differ.

Freestyle, I try to lockout my support arm, and provide proportionately more clamp with support hand, while keeping my strong hand more relaxed to optimize trigger control and speed.

Shooting one hand, the one side needs to provide support while allowing trigger control, so I extend that one arm more aggressively and grip harder than freestyle.

What do you mean by "lock out" ?

[GJM]

I extend my support arm more aggressively than my dominant arm, and clamp harder with my support arm.

[StraitR]

I do change. Aside from increased grip pressure brought up by GJM, I curl my thumb down when shooting SHO. Change is a result of an injury (severed two tendons, an artery, a vein, and nerves) to my trigger finger five years ago and in the course of recovery/PT, I lost a good deal of hand strength that's not coming back. It also effects my ability to get a clean trigger pull (can't bend trigger finger at furthest joint from my knuckle) which is magnified by the reduced grip strength and I've found the curled thumb helps. To keep things consistent, I've chosen to do the same thing WHO.

[voodoo_man]

I extend my support arm more aggressively than my dominant arm, and clamp harder with my support arm.

Do you "lock out" your elbows?

[baddean]

Do you treat your freestyle / two hand grip as adding your support hand to your ideal strong hand only grip? Or do you adjust your strong hand when the support hand joins? Which one and why?

My strong hand grip is the same whether I'm shooting one or two handed. Once I grip the gun and draw from the holster the grip never changes.
I am simply adding the support hand to the grip. I do use a slightly stronger grip tension with my support hand when shooting two handed. Elbows locked and slightly rocked inward to exert some pressure on the grip.
I do this for consistency of draw stroke and grip tension so the strong hand is always doing the same thing.

[GJM]

Do you "lock out" your elbows?

Nope. Just shy of locked with support arm, tad more bend in strong arm.

[Mr_White]

Do you treat your freestyle / two hand grip as adding your support hand to your ideal strong hand only grip?

Yes, this one.

It's this way for me because one of the most important roots of my strong hand position, whether actually gripping with one or two hands, is the geometry between the frame, trigger, and my hand, that allows me a pretty straight-back press. If it's better two handed, I think it's still better one handed.

Also, there are times the support hand may be leaving and joining the grip party - manipulating doors/windows/whatever, and this also comes up for me sometimes during movement with the gun in hand. I don't think I'd like needing to make an additional adjustment to the my strong hand grip every time the support hand gets on or off.

[Peally]

Yep, I guess I do, although I cant the gun a bit. I do tend to grip harder when shooting one handed just for the sake of recoil control though, with a freestyle grip my support hand is doing most of the gripping work.

[Mr_White]

Oh yes, I forgot about canting the gun. I do tend to do that a bit one-handed. The placement of the grip in my hand is the same one-handed as two-handed though.

[BillSWPA]

I change very little. If I am shooting a 1911, I ride the safety with my thumb when shooting with 2 hands but not with 1 hand. With 2 hands, I am that much more likely to bump the safety up if I do not ride it.

I prefer a reasonably firm grip for good trigger control regardless.

[dgg9]

I'm cross eye-hand dominant, like perhaps 10% of the population I'm guessing. SHO is kind of a chore as I have to bring the right hand held gun way over to get under the left eye. It's kind of contorted, frankly. Shooting WHO is actually easier. I suppose in theory, I could close my left dominant eye and force the shot to be taken with right eye, but I can't get that to work. So I work on SHO, but it's never smooth.

I'm curious if other eye-hand cross dominant shooters find it easy.

[CCT125US]

Yes, this one.

It's this way for me because one of the most important roots of my strong hand position, whether actually gripping with one or two hands, is the geometry between the frame, trigger, and my hand, that allows me a pretty straight-back press. If it's better two handed, I think it's still better one handed.

Also, there are times the support hand may be leaving and joining the grip party - manipulating doors/windows/whatever, and this also comes up for me sometimes during movement with the gun in hand. I don't think I'd like needing to make an additional adjustment to the my strong hand grip every time the support hand gets on or off.

Thanks. Just the sort of confirmation bias I was looking for:) When I get good / bad results, I try to stop and analyze different aspects of my style and see what changed or can change. I have not thought of it like this before, and is something I have been evaluating over recent sessions. I had a brief 50 round session yesterday and was able to burn some good reps in with consistent results.

[BillSWPA]

I'm cross eye-hand dominant, like perhaps 10% of the population I'm guessing. SHO is kind of a chore as I have to bring the right hand held gun way over to get under the left eye. It's kind of contorted, frankly. Shooting WHO is actually easier. I suppose in theory, I could close my left dominant eye and force the shot to be taken with right eye, but I can't get that to work. So I work on SHO, but it's never smooth.

I'm curious if other eye-hand cross dominant shooters find it easy.

This is probably worthy of a thread of its own, as there are very qualified people on both sides of the issue of whether a cross dominant person should focus on strong hand or weak hand. I use my non-dominant eye when I shoot left hand only, and do not find this to be much of an issue. I tend to favor strong hand focus, particularly if focusing not only on shooting but also on applying empty hand fighting techniques in environments where weapons are present.

From a pure shooting standpoint, I suspect what works best may vary from person to person.

[StraitR]

From a pure shooting standpoint, I suspect what works best may vary from person to person.

We can now turn the internet off. :p


For those of us that are not cross eye dominant, we experience the same shooting WHO, and I personally don't even notice it. I would imagine most people naturally shift the pistol over a little bit and possibly turn their head slightly as well. The head turning seems more apparent in CED people shooting two handed. LAV comes to mind.

[HCM]

We can now turn the internet off. :p


For those of us that are not cross eye dominant, we experience the same shooting WHO, and I personally don't even notice it. I would imagine most people naturally shift the pistol over a little bit and possibly turn their head slightly as well. The head turning seems more apparent in CED people shooting two handed. LAV comes to mind.

One of my co-workers / fellow FI's shoots strong hand normal / vertical and support hand canted for just this reason. It works well for him.

[Peally]

I'm cross eye-hand dominant, like perhaps 10% of the population I'm guessing. SHO is kind of a chore as I have to bring the right hand held gun way over to get under the left eye. It's kind of contorted, frankly. Shooting WHO is actually easier. I suppose in theory, I could close my left dominant eye and force the shot to be taken with right eye, but I can't get that to work. So I work on SHO, but it's never smooth.

I'm curious if other eye-hand cross dominant shooters find it easy.

I've never had an issue with cross dominance on a pistol that I can remember, ever ;)

Rifles are different, I need to close or heavily squint my left eye to see irons or through magnified optics. Pistols my head just naturally cants where it needs to; I just checked and I do automatically angle my head maybe an inch or two to the right when shooting SHO so the sights are in line with my left eye, which is interesting.

[StraitR]

One of my co-workers / fellow FI's shoots strong hand normal / vertical and support hand canted for just this reason. It works well for him.


The more I shoot across my body (decreasingly acute angle), the more I cant the gun. As soon as that angle breaks 90 degrees and becomes obtuse, the pistol is vertical. I noticed this a couple years ago in a class where we were shooting multiple targets from the drivers seat of a truck (not allowed to get out). The last target was behind us, 15 yards out from the rear wheel which forced a SHO shot, and mine was pretty canted.

I tend to open my shoulders up (while drawing in non-firing hand to chest and fully extend out the gun) when shooting SHO/WHO, which keeps gun vertical. I track the sights much better when the gun is vertical. For those that haven't experimented with it, sit in a chair and move the pistol SHO/WHO around the axis of of your body without moving your upper body. As soon as my arm breaks <90 degrees, it feels awkward to keep the gun vertical. Maybe I'm just captain obvious here.