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Thread: Stance

  1. #11
    I once had a 30 minute argument with Melody Lauer in the back of a taxi at SHOT whether or not teaching stance to new shooters was important.

    And like many things, the context that we're dealing with is important. When I talk about stance, I'm not just talking about where to put your feet, I'm talking about the overal structure of how your body interacts with the pistol, all the way up to your forearms and head/neck position. I think it's important to teach people how to do that in a way that's optimized around how the human body actual works, and not introduce artificial muscular tension (the Weaver push/pull).

    But, stance falls apart when people get into dynamic shooting environments like USPSA or actual gunfights. When I'm shooting on the move or shooting around a tight fault line, you won't see me using any kind of specific stance, because I'm interacting with the gun in way that's dictated by my environment. However, because I have that fundamental structure trained into me, even if my foot position or torso position is compromised, the rest of me is solid.

    On the third hand, stance becomes extremely important again at the high levels of performance when you're taking specific pistol skills such as Steel Challenge or Bianchi Cup. Scott actually talks about "binding" - where you use your foot position to help control your index on the draw, and when I was shooting a lot of Steel Challenge, I knew a lot of high level dudes that would point their foot at the stop plate on stages like Five to Go. Personally, a slight change in my stance helped me get over one of the humps on my coin run, so I think stance can matter quite a bit.

  2. #12
    BLUF: teach the mechanics of shooting stance through mountain-goating, attempting to push over a structural wall, or keeping an inward-opening door pressed shut.

    Metrics: a shooter's stance allows for a maximally functional shooting grip, readily returns the sights to the eyeline during recoil primarily through passive musculoskeletal return, and should be sufficiently durable as to endure one magazine's worth of fire without postural compromise\correction.

    Long-Form"Whys": MECHANICS - Shooting Stance

    As the foundation of all shooting actions, the stance must be built first and from the ground upwards, from the back of the shoulders forwards into the shooting grip, and to as high as the crown of the head. It must be given the same critical eye for postural elements as an athlete's stance to lift a loaded barbell from (e.g. When performing squats, deadlifts, cleans+jerks) or a wrestler's stance prior to first contact. There are postural cues that can be recognized and corrected by the shooter or an observing coach, prior to any rounds being fired. Barring correction, the absence of desirable cues or the presence of negative indicators can be excellent indicators for future patterns of less optimal shooting.

    The shooter's lowermost bodyparts must be flat to the ground, or as near to flat as allowed for by position and terrain. Bodyweight must be shifted forward, in an aggressive pre-loading as if in readiness to move or to deliver an empty-handed strike. From the standing, this is reflected in having feet flat onto the ground with most weight loaded onto the balls and toes of the same. From the kneeling, this is reflected in one or both knees being grounded onto the surface below, with weight loaded onto the grounded knee or knees.

    The shooter's legs must widen out to greater than a shoulder's-width apart, to broaden the shooter's stance and provide for lateral stability; this, whether the shooter is standing, kneeling, or prone. If negotiating a barricade or similar obstacle that must be shot around but not yet moved past; then the shooter must broaden their stance further on the side furthest from the barricade's edge, in counterbalance to their upper-body as it partially extends past the barricade's edge to allow for seeing and potentially engaging targets otherwise occluded.

    Excepting when driving past a barricade or firing a weapon one-handed: the shooter's firing-side leg must be stepped backwards with a relaxed ankle allowing the foot and toes to angle outwards; the non-firing side leg must be advanced forward. These create longitudinal depth in the firing stance, providing for sufficient depth so as not to be driven backwards and out of posture during an extended sequence of rapid fire or the firing of heavier recoiling ammunition. Additionally, this provides for isometric stability when resting in the shooting stance without firing, and allows for the shooter to bend the lead\non-firing-side knee and drive themselves forward in advance of sustained or heavier recoil. This is congruent whether firing a pistol, a submachine gun set to burst or automatic, a carbine, a shotgun, up to firing a squad automatic weapon from the shoulder. The non-firing side is advanced forward, rather than the firing-side, because the support hand must grasp the firearm further forward of the firing hand; this is expressed more strongly with a longer shoulder-fired weapon, but holds true with pistols as the firing hand grasps from the rear of the backstrap and the support hand clasps the frontstrap.

    (If firing a pistol one-handed, it is desirable for the lead foot to match the firing hand of the moment [when firing left-hand only, advance the left-foot forwards; when firing right-hand only, advance the right-foot forwards]: this provides for additional bone support and isometric stability at full-extension of the weapon when unsupported by the non-firing hand, and reduces abdominal torsion that if present is expressed in an exacerbated and diagonal recoil of the pistol. Building upwards from this matching of lead foot and firing hand, the resulting natural point of aim of the weapon at full extension is able to match the direction of the hips with the associated reduced time returning to target after recoil, and the absence of abodiminal torsion allows for the shooter to better drive their shoulder forward both to better manage recoil and to bring the sights into alignment with the shooting eye without requiring lateral drifting of the pistol and the associated degredation in recoil management. This should resemble the delivery of a lead-hand jab, by whatever hand holds the pistol; with a straight line from the firing-side shoulder, and through the elbow and wrist; with the sight-line either parallel or an extension of this, and intersecting with the target. A slight turn of the chin while keeping the head upright and the neck relaxed, will close the remaining distance between the shooting eye and alignment behind the sights at full extension.)

    ((If negotiating a barricade, then the foot closest to the barricade must be advanced forward with the toes facing the edge of the barricade, with the foot deepest behind cover kicked backwards with the toes naturally facing outwards: this provides sufficient depth for the shooter to lunge deeper past the barricade without shifting their feet, until they are sufficiently driven past the barricade to identify and engage their target, wherever they be beyond the barricade. Additionally, this allows for the shoulders to be driven forward in such a manner as to square with any target identified beyond the barricade, and by that squaring allow for both arms to be fully extended and maximally supporting the firearm both for operating the trigger and receiving recoil. This movement may strongly resemble a skater driving forward and building speed, a long-jab with a blade or stick for practitioners of a weapons based art, or a boxer rimshotting an opponent. The head should remain erect and the neck relaxed, though the shooter may slightly turn the chin if driving past a barricade on the side opposite to their shooting-side eye.))

    As able and when firing from a static position, the hips must be relatively square with the target being immediately engaged; if engaging a series of targets in sequence, the hips must lead the traversal and drive to square with each target after the head\eyes lock onto the following target. For a proximal target engagement, the squaring of the hips allows for the shooter to retract their weapon to a retention position and receive a potential crash, without the shooter being driven out of posture or down to the ground.

    The spine ascending from the hips hould be as neutral as circumstances permit: with the student neither hingeing forward at the hips nor leaning in any direction from the vertical. The body should be upright and without restriction to the diaphragm and breathing.

    Building from the hips being relatively squared with the targets, the shoulders must be deviated from squaring with the target sufficient to allow for both arms to be fully extended and without significant bend to the elbow as they grasp the pistol in a ready-to-fire position with the muzzle-line intersecting with the target. A longer weapon will require a greater deviation from the squaring, as the firing-side arm will not be fully extended and the non-firing-side arm will generally be reaching farther forward to grasp a hand-guard or pump-action (rifle, subgun, shotgun). The shoulders should be no farther back then vertically aligned over the hips, but are more desirably slightly forward of the hips, to provide for greater recoil absorption prior to that force driving the shoulders past the hips and the shooter thus out of posture.

    With a pistol, both arms must be fully extended and with equal loading in both elbows: a slight bend in the elbows may be desirable and required by the shooting grip, but it must not be to excess and it must be equally reflected on both sides with a two-handed shooting stance.

    The neck should be relaxed and oriented to allow the head to be neutrally upright. The eyes should be relatively relaxed in their sockets, with the lenses of eye-protection or prescription lenses vertical between eye and rear sight. The eyes not being relaxed in their sockets adds avoidable fatigue to the musculature that moves each orb, and the greater the orientation from rest reduces the visual acuity of each eye. Whether wearing prescription or non-prescription lenses, any angle except head-on through the thickest portion of the lens will introduce optical diffraction and distortion to the shooting picture: this is most strongly present with prescription lenses, where the shooting eye not observing through the center of the corrective lens will effectively change their prescription due to the increase or decrease of material between their eye and their front sight, and their eye observing through a different section of curvature in the lens.

    (All shooters are situationally cross-dominant eventually, whether they shoot full time with a two-handed firing grip and a dominant eye unmatched to their firing hand, or they shoot with the hand opposite to their dominant eye due to circumstance or training requirements. All shooters must know and practice sufficient modifications to their shooting stance as to maximize their shooting eye's ability to be positioned behind the sight-line while minimizing any compromize to their essential posture. Specifically, they must avoid leaning their head to either side given how it can bow the spine and unstack the shoulders from above the hips, must avoid bending an elbow during two-handed shooting so as to laterally drift the gun to their dominant eye, and must ensure that equal drive and tension is present in both arms when two-handed shooting irrespective of what their dominant eye is. The preferred method is for a slight turn of the chin in the direction away from their dominant eye, bringing that same eye nearer to the center-line, for any shooting wherein the firing hand is opposite the dominant eye. To expand upon the platitude of “bring the gun to the eye, not the eye to the gun;” “bring the gun vertically to the plane of the eyes, and turn the head to bring the eye horizontally behind the gun as needed.”

    In brief summary: for best performance in traditional two-handed shooting, a shooter should stand with their feet greater than a shoulder's width apart, non-firing side leading and firing-side trailing; with their hips squared towards their target, trunk upright, and shoulders just forward of being above the hips; with equal tension loadable in both fully extended arms; and the head upright atop a neutral neck orientation.
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  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    You need to be able to shoot from a variety of stances, but if you watch world class shooters shoot classifiers or Steel Challenge, you will see that they are very particular about their stance.
    Every so often I come across info from Dan Brokos.

    https://www.recoilweb.com/zeroed-in-...os-128861.html


    In multiple discussions he refers to their lessons learned about what the calls the "ten round stance".

    For example from the link above: "DB: We’ve had to challenge some of our core fundamentals. Prior to the war, our philosophy was based around the controlled pair — we’ve never believed in the double tap — but everything we did was based on delivering two rounds to an enemy. What we learned was that two shots may not knock somebody down, so now we train around a fighting stance so that we’re able to deal with a worst-case scenario. If I don’t set up in a strong stance and that guy doesn’t fall, then I’m off the trigger and moving onto something else, then have to come back, ambush the trigger and well, that’s going to be a mess. You’ve got to be able to deliver a 10-round string if necessary, and that comes from the ground up."


    Then there is this from another article:

    ". . . Don’t make the mistake that we in the SF community made 16 years ago and hone your stance for a controlled pair — it has to support a 10-round string, should the target not react the way it’s supposed to." . . . "In the case of a pistol, the second most common mistake I see besides lack of a proper stance is lack of power in the support handgrip. Some people say 60 percent of your overall grip strength on the handgun should come from your support hand, but I believe roughly 70 percent is better. But what does that feel like? If you had long fingernails on your support hand, they would cut through your glove, if you were gripping hard enough."

    https://www.recoilweb.com/you-dont-h...de-129270.html


    Attachment 43752Attachment 43752



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  4. #14
    Site Supporter JRV's Avatar
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    I used to teach basic pistol courses lessons on a regular basis.

    My experience was that athletic people (not necessarily "fit," but people with backgrounds in football, soccer, volleyball, boxing, golf, martial arts, tennis, etc.) understood exactly what an "athletic" stance was: feet a little wide, dominant foot a little back, center of gravity in the hips, shoulders over toes, head up.

    They needed no instruction on proper body position, just marksmanship fundamentals and safe handling.

    People without those backgrounds? Hot garbage to teach from the ground up, feet-to-head. However, most people got 90% of the way there if I told them to stand like they were going to throw a punch or start jogging forward.

    Meanwhile, our state LE academy had new recruits shooting from a sumo stance half-squat and a forward body lean for some reason.
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  5. #15
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    Stance

    Quote Originally Posted by HopetonBrown View Post
    You already know how to stand, so just keep doing that while shooting. The importance of stance is overrated.
    I agree with the first part and disagree with the second.

    Natural point of aim is a thing in pistol shooting. When your stance is jacked, accuracy and sight tracking often suffer. Eg. shooting around a barricade.

    However, an “aggressive” tactical turtle stance isn’t needed or helpful either.

    I recommend experimenting with stance and sight tracking to find out what works well for you. I helped a friend recently using high speed video, and there was a quantum improvement in his shooting. Just a bit more “forward intention” helped him bring the sights back more quickly and track more vertically. That’s a low hanging fruit that’s worth grabbing.

    But, you often don’t have the luxury of a “perfect” stance, and it is very important to practice shooting well when your lower body is doing other things, and also when your whole stance is compromised. This takes hard work, and is one of my current training goals this year.
    Last edited by Clusterfrack; 10-18-2019 at 09:02 AM.
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  6. #16
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    After a recent close range shooting class, I've started to rethink stance. It's one thing to engage a single, static 10 yard target on the clock - I tend not to turtle since I was taught that eats time and it does. It's another thing to be in a fight with a pistol with another person inside the wingspan area of the threat.

    It's like sight picture for me and the old Brian Enos mantra: see what you need to see on your sights to make the shot. Stance is about standing how you need to stand within your present environment.

    The problem is that there isn't an answer that addresses all situations. Shooting really is a thinking man's game in that the variables are environmentally situational.

  7. #17
    Site Supporter JRV's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clay1 View Post
    It's like sight picture for me and the old Brian Enos mantra: see what you need to see on your sights to make the shot. Stance is about standing how you need to stand within your present environment.

    The problem is that there isn't an answer that addresses all situations. Shooting really is a thinking man's game in that the variables are environmentally situational.
    But there is an answer -- solid fundamentals need to be learned and reinforced constantly, and an understanding of proper body positioning is a fundamental tenet of shooting.

    I don't know if you intended your post (a) as meaning stance no longer has relevance to you as a shooter or (b) stance, as a fundamental component of instruction, in overstated in its importance.

    I am erring on the side of caution and assuming (b).

    I bolded your Enos quote because it's absolutely true and also completely inapplicable to the instruction and reinforcement of fundamentals. Unless someone is extremely experienced, comfortable with their equipment, and grounded in their fundamentals, Enos' quote has no value.

    You can't see what you need to see unless: (a) you know what a technically perfect sight picture looks like for a given shot AND (b) you are sufficiently experienced to know how far from that perfection you can deviate on a given shot AND (c) you can execute substantially all of your shots without falling short on some other fundamental, like trigger control.

    Same goes with stance. Until proper static shooting can be executed comfortably and consistently, and until that shooter has sufficient experience shooting from other positions and on the move, that shooter has no idea what components of their body position can be sacrificed without compromising a shot.

    People have to learn proper consistent stance and positions, and they have to reinforce those lessons regularly, so, come application time, they know exactly how much they can deviate while getting their hits.
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  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by JRV View Post
    But there is an answer -- solid fundamentals need to be learned and reinforced constantly, and an understanding of proper body positioning is a fundamental tenet of shooting.

    I don't know if you intended your post (a) as meaning stance no longer has relevance to you as a shooter or (b) stance, as a fundamental component of instruction, in overstated in its importance.

    I am erring on the side of caution and assuming (b).

    I bolded your Enos quote because it's absolutely true and also completely inapplicable to the instruction and reinforcement of fundamentals. Unless someone is extremely experienced, comfortable with their equipment, and grounded in their fundamentals, Enos' quote has no value.

    You can't see what you need to see unless: (a) you know what a technically perfect sight picture looks like for a given shot AND (b) you are sufficiently experienced to know how far from that perfection you can deviate on a given shot AND (c) you can execute substantially all of your shots without falling short on some other fundamental, like trigger control.

    Same goes with stance. Until proper static shooting can be executed comfortably and consistently, and until that shooter has sufficient experience shooting from other positions and on the move, that shooter has no idea what components of their body position can be sacrificed without compromising a shot.

    People have to learn proper consistent stance and positions, and they have to reinforce those lessons regularly, so, come application time, they know exactly how much they can deviate while getting their hits.
    I didn't elaborate much, because I didn't want to be too long winded here. I don't think that I am in A or B. I was trying to make the point that stance is important in all scenarios, but that the stance that you choose is based on your environment. Hence the 10 yard, single target on the clock vs "inside the wingspan" engagement during a fight.

    Note: see what you need to see in an important concept for me and the people that I train with. If it isn't for you, cool it's the US, we all get to choose what works for us.

  9. #19
    Site Supporter JRV's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clay1 View Post
    I didn't elaborate much, because I didn't want to be too long winded here. I don't think that I am in A or B. I was trying to make the point that stance is important in all scenarios, but that the stance that you choose is based on your environment. Hence the 10 yard, single target on the clock vs "inside the wingspan" engagement during a fight.
    I am not disputing this at all. I am only saying that, unless a shooter has sufficient experience and training, and solidly reinforced fundamentals, they won't have enough experience to unconsciously respond to their environment.

    That's why I am arguing that stance is an important component of practical marksmanship. I take the fundamentals for granted all the time, and it bites me in the ass enough to reinforce how important they are.

    Note: see what you need to see in an important concept for me and the people that I train with. If it isn't for you, cool it's the US, we all get to choose what works for us.
    You're possibly misreading my point. If you are an unconsciously competent shooter, you have the ability to know what you can see and still get away with a "good enough" hit. I follow that process as well. It was one of the big takeaways from Enos's book for me.

    However, to reach that point, a shooter needs experience and a strong basis in the fundamentals, including stance. Knowing just how off balance I can be, or just how fast I can move, knowing just how far I can be from a grounded and athletic stance (things that can only be learned by experience), are just as important as knowing just how much light I need on a particular side of my rear sight notch.
    Last edited by JRV; 10-18-2019 at 01:22 PM.
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  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by runcible View Post
    BLUF: teach the mechanics of shooting stance through mountain-goating, attempting to push over a structural wall, or keeping an inward-opening door pressed shut.
    .....

    In brief summary: for best performance in traditional two-handed shooting, a shooter should stand with their feet greater than a shoulder's width apart, non-firing side leading and firing-side trailing; with their hips squared towards their target, trunk upright, and shoulders just forward of being above the hips; with equal tension loadable in both fully extended arms; and the head upright atop a neutral neck orientation.
    May I ask what source that is copied from?

    Apologies (and impressive!) if you wrote it all de novo just now.

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