Clearing the cover garment

[NickA]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

Tom Givens teaches a two handed Hackathorn Rip. Seems to work well.