One hand/weak hand shooting tips?

[secondstoryguy]

I'm trying to improve my one handed/weak handed shooting. Does anyone have any "light-bulb" moments when learning how to shoot one handed/weak handed? Some of the things I'm playing with are bent elbow vs non-bent elbow and gun vertically oriented vs canted, and how tight to grip the gun. What's worked for you guys?

[GJM]

Use a lightweight .22 revolver for zillions of rounds of practice. Once you can steer the sights pressing a long trigger on a lightweight revolver, everything else is cake. Plus, with the .22 there is no recoil to mask what you are doing with the trigger press.

[okie john]

I shot a lot of bullseye when I was younger. It forces you to focus on fundamentals.

Also, bullseye shooters use an upright, severely bladed stance, which I never see practical shooters use. Practical shooters all use the same stance as they do with two hands, they just drop one hand or put it across their chest. I feel like the bullseye stance is much more relaxed, which probably makes it easier for me to get hits. Now that you've asked this question, I need to go spend some time comparing the two and get back to you with my observations.


Okie John

[dbateman]

I'm not sure exactly what type of shooting you're doing. If you're doing bullseye or something I don't know much about that.

The one thing that really helped me is, grip twice as hard as you think you can.

[secondstoryguy]

I'm doing practical/defensive pistol work and my main issue is recoil control in multi-shot strings. Slow fire I'm ok but when I speed up or shoot doubles I start throwing my shots.

[JCS]

I'm a noob so take this for what it's worth but I've always been horrible at one handed shooting. I used to tilt the gun at an angle and all sorts of weird stuff. It finally clicked when I did two things,

1) rotate the elbow in and down
2) take your thumb and bend it down, towards the magazine release




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[GJM]

When you are shooting freestyle, at speed, you have a support hand to provide recoil control, and your strong hand for trigger control. That allows you to clamp like crazy with your support hand and have a more relaxed trigger finger.

The issue with shooting one hand, is the same arm and hand have to control recoil and work the trigger. More clamp is good for recoil but bad for fine trigger control. Something I do shooting one hand is to try to lock out my arm, which effectively increases my lock up mechanically without increasing clamping force. I find this especially helpful shooting a Glock, because it helps get the grip angle right, since I don't have a support hand to cam the pistol over into its final position.

Shooting one hand, I really work at keeping the trigger moving, so the shot breaks as the pistol comes down in recoil, to avoid jerking it "right now," which often leads to bad results.

[dbateman]

GJM is right gripping the gun tighter does increase your tendency to pull your shots down and in, but you overcome that with practice. The biggest benefit I found with gripping harder are recoil control, but I don't think there is much you can do to make the gun come back straight who/sho (anyone know any different ? )
The other big improvement for me was a steadier sight picture.

There are lots of different ways and not all of them will work for you, you've just got to try it and see.

[LittleLebowski]

I'm sure I'll catch hell over it but I always aim a bit to the side that I'm shooting from (shooting right handed, aim a bit right and so on) in order to compensate for my shitty skills. It works for me.

[GuanoLoco]

I have to do a modest amount of SHO/WHO (Strong Hand Only / Weak Hand Only) shooting in USPSA and occasionally IDPA. Accuracy on the clock is tough but doable. I was working on this yesterday, 10-20 yards.

I completely agree with conflicts between grip and recoil control and trigger. A strong grip helps but then trigger manipulation gets worse.

It is easy to rush the sight picture then snatch the trigger, either of which can throw the shot, then recoil is far slower and the gun tracks oddly - particularly when the gun is canted. Trying to shoot SHO much less freestyle (2 hand) speeds like this is a mess, unpredictable at best.

I like the suggestion for bringing the elbow in and down. I'm guessing that would help quite a bit with recoil management and sight tracking but need to test it for speed/accuracy.

You might also try some 6-shot Bill Drills varying the distance. There is much to be learned about all of the above, and I think it is helpful to train/retrain WHO like you are a raw new shooter. I also was running the 300 drill (10 @ 25 yards on a B8) WHO - this is a great confidence builder. I was able to keep most of the shots in the black.

[Jay Cunningham]

I find this especially helpful shooting a Glock, because it helps get the grip angle right, since I don't have a support hand to cam the pistol over into its final position.

It also gives the gun something rigid to recoil into, reducing the likelihood of the "limp wrist" malfunction.

[GJM]

The great thing is one hand skills are completely trainable.

Shooting IPSC back in the 90's, I sucked so bad at one hand shooting. My strategy was a combination of hope and bluffing, which consisted mostly of hoping there wasn't one hand stuff. When I first went to Rogers, I still royally sucked.

I decided to fix that. Step one being to admit I had a problem. Step 2 being to relize that if I did less than one percent of my shooting one hand, I would continue to suck. I have worked at it enough, when I see one hand stuff, I think this is great because I am going to do better in match placement than I do freestyle. I actually shoot better with just my support hand than just my dominant hand, because I have spent proportionately more time on support hand. It also helps that my wife is a phenom shooting with one hand, and most often beats all the boys with one hand.

At area one, our Pistol Forum group that attended Rogers together, did great on the standards stage. Gabe has a video of us all shooting that stage, that might be helpful in showing some technique stuff.

[GJM]

PS -- LL you need to fix the underlying issue or issues you have going on while shooting one hand, which is likely sympathetic movement with your non trigger fingers, rather than relying on Kentucky windage!

[Jay Cunningham]

I've had good results expressing the following to students:


The support hand on the gun allows for a very strong (and also hopefully properly built) grip which allows for aggressive trigger manipulation without disturbing the sight picture enough to matter.

For SHO I don't suggest fundamentally changing the firing hand grip in any way, as least as far as the hand placement. As several have already noted, there is an interesting interaction between "not enough" and "too much", which I also talk about.

I say stiff arm the gun and index your chin off your bicep. Yes, you need a *little* more nuance in your trigger, but KEEP IT MOVING. You *do* need a strong grip... basically you're pre-tensioning your hand to minimize movement during the trigger manipulation. However, too hard of a grip makes it difficult sometimes to isolate the trigger finger. I learned a lot of the good on this subject from Bob Vogel, and I learned a lot of detrimental stuff from other trainers.

It's cool most everyone has pointed these different pieces out already! I like to say that two handed shooting is much more about grip and one-handed shooting is more about trigger control.


It seems to work for my students - killers that they are! lol

[RJ]

Good thread.

I did a USPSA classifier (first ever) last month with some one hand shooting. I had a bunch of misses, and it was in part because I had not worked one handed much, at all.

Today at the square range I did two magazines one handed at the end.

Will look at the suggestions in this thread, but if there are any additional thoughts, I'd appreciate it. Also, not just live fire, but for one handed dry practice as well.

[raks]

One fairly recent 'ah-ha' I had with weak hand shooting was to make sure that my dominant eye was seeing the sights. For whatever reason I was finding that I would 'mirror' my vision and try to use my non-dominant eye when shooting weak handed. Now I make sure to turn my head and maybe even close my non dominant eye when I have to shoot weak handed.

This, combined with rotating the elbow in and down and a focus on trigger discipline have helped a lot.

[CommanderCrusty]

1) If you can, make sure you are NOT shooting weak hand only. In other words, work with a grip strengthening tool to make your weak hand stronger, a lot stronger. Maybe as strong as your strong hand. This will also help your two hand shooting, and with isolating your trigger finger.

2) Consider using a thumb down crush grip for weak hand only shooting. Your grip strength is literally greater with the thumb folded down ... for all the reasons shown above.

3) In dry fire, practice immediately releasing and prepping the trigger. Get used to doing at least that much. Release the trigger right away, let it go all the way forward, then quickly take up all the slack and apply some light initial pressure. That way you will give yourself the best chance of having a good weak hand trigger press. Don't pin the trigger back because you feel uncomfortable. If you do, you will want to release the trigger slowly and yank on it as your sights swing across the target. Not good.

4) Try shooting a Dot Torture target with 5 shots per bullseye but ALL WEAK HANDED! Or flip the instructions and shoot your freestyle targets with a two-handed weak-hand grip. (I may try that one!) Post your targets here.

5) Share what is working here. Good luck.