3 PISTOL SHOOTING TIPS

3 PISTOL SHOOTING TIPS

View fullsize

STANCE

Feet are shoulder-width apart. For example,  I'm a right-handed shooter, so my left foot is positioned in front of my right foot. My knees are slightly bent. I'm in an aggressive position. This position is very conducive for when I transition between targets, and if I need to move quickly, it also provides me with a stable platform to help with recoil management. Positions I never want to be in are, I never want to be flatfooted and my feet in line with each other, and I never want my weight in the heels or upright cause when I start shooting I can lose balance.

View fullsize

GRIP

60% strength in your dominant hand, 40% strength in your non-dominant hand. I never want to be death gripping this thing. I don't ever want to be squeezing this thing so hard where I'm white-knuckling and the weapon starts to shake. I want my grip high up on this beaver tail. I don't want to see any space between my hand and the beaver tail.

Non-dominant hand comes underneath the trigger guard. The first touch point is second knuckle of non-dominant hand, underneath the trigger guard. Non-dominant hand then rolls into position on the grip, laying flush up against dominant hand, thumbs are stack on top of each other and pointed down the slide of the barrel. This hand positioning will give you a natural point of aim. I NEVER want to cross my thumbs or have any space between my dominant hand and non-dominant hand on the grip of the pistol, every point needs to be flush and stacked correctly.

TRIGGER CONTROL

If you don’t properly manage the trigger, you miss the target its that simple.

View fullsize

When you use proper sight picture and sight alignment, there shouldn’t be an excuse to miss the target right? WRONG! Although if you do all those things properly but fail to manage the trigger don’t’ expect to hit where you are aiming. Trigger management is simple enough. Press the trigger (do not jerk, slap, pull with entire dominant hand – it needs to be a smooth pull with ONLY thE trigger finger).

Prepping, breaking, and resetting the trigger are so damn IMPORTANT. A good cadence to have is to:

1.       Fire

2.       Let off trigger, allow to reset, then immediately take the slack out again to prepare for next shot.

3.       Fire again with equal amount of pressure and release as the first shot taken.

When you are first starting to develop fundamentals I don’t care how fast you can shoot, I care how accurate you are. Speed will be the bi-product of a solid foundation of the fundamentals. Remember no matter how quickly you fire, your cadence will be determined by how you manage recoil and how quickly you realign your sights back on target.

BE AGGRESSIVE WHEN YOU SHOOT!

All right everyone, I hope you enjoyed those tips. Try those things out every time you go the range, especially if you're a new shooter or if you're advanced, these are all fundamentals that you need to practice every single day.

Please subscribe below. I will be putting out new blog posts monthly.

TEAMS

Carbine Fundamentals: Recoil Management

CARBINE FUNDAMENTALS: RECOIL MANAGEMENT

View fullsize

What's going on, everyone? Travis Kennedy here, owner of Kennedy Defensive Shooting. Today I'm going to talk about carbine fundamentals. Specifically recoil management. Let's do this.

Two points of performance I want to discuss in this blog post and those are: Grip and shouldering the rifle. I teach a specific way to grip the rifle, specifically how to place your fingers along the finger grooves that are designed on the grip. Yeah, you could use those and align your fingers along those grooves, but I align my ring finger above the first groove on the rifle grip. My finger is at the top of the grip knob on the grip of my rifle. This gives me a high seat up on this beaver tail on my rifle grip. Now that I have a nice strong grip on this thing. I got more reach with my trigger finger and have more reach with my thumb to manipulate the safety.

View fullsize

When I shoulder the rifle, there's a couple of things I see that people do wrong. They either ... It's too high or maybe it's just too low. You want the entire butt stock seated within the shoulder. That gives you strength behind that rifle, especially when we start rapid firing. If you're working with body armor kit, it's more of a pain, but it can be done. The buttstock needs to get seated directly into that shoulder pocket and my left pulling that rifle back into my shoulder. I utilize the Magpul finger grip. I have a relaxed grip with my right hand to pull the trigger. When I go to present and I go to fire, after I fire, my left hand is pulling my muzzle back on target that helps with my recoil, get my sites aligned back on target to re-engage.

View fullsize

Another point of performance is stance. Stance a little more exaggerated than when I'm just shooting my pistol. I lean forward with more of an aggressive posture. My left leg is in front a little bit more when I shoot my rifle, because I want to be in more of an aggressive stance, and really lean into this thing.

Remember, we don't want the butt stock high and we don’t want it low. Remember to keep the firing arm elbow down when we shoot. We don't want this elbow flared out. And when I go to bring my rifle up to my eyes to acquire my sights, I bring the gun up and I just dip my head slightly to get that cheek weld to acquire my sights. That's my touch point. Touch point is my cheek. As the rifle comes up, I drop my head, gun is put on fire, finger goes on trigger, I acquire my sights, and I engage. Same thing with high ready, punch out, touch points is my cheek, jam the rifle back into my shoulder then engage.

Try those points of performance out and make sure that butt stock's right in that shoulder. If you guys like this post, please share and comment below. If there is a certain topic you would like me to talk about put it below.

 Let's train hard.

Teams.

-TK

FROGMAN PERSPECTIVE

FROGMAN PERSPECTIVE

Inside look of an operator

I’m going to give you insight as to what I did before stepping off for every operation overseas or when I was conducting training. These Team Guy Tips are things all operators do to keep themselves and their platoons squared away.

Team Guy Tip #1

Touch Check

View fullsize

This is a concept and a habit that is built out of necessity and hard lessons learned. As a former operator I used “touch checks” constantly and I use them in my personal life now. For example, every time before stepping out the door for an operation or training I touch every piece of my critical gear for example: NVG’s, Radios, Pistol, Rifle, Optic, Laser, Light, and any other piece of sensitive equipment I carried on me. This gave me the physical and mental que I needed to reassure myself that I had everything I needed to perform as an operator. While I was overseas, I would constantly conduct touch checks, while on long patrols, especially at night, and after we got into an enemy engagement, it was crucial that I had all my gear in the event we encountered another hostile situation.

How I implement this into my personal life

My tip is to have a place in your house, I don’t care where it is to set all your personal belongings on for whenever you get home or leave for the day. Same place every single time builds good habits. As you get ready place your wallet, keys, phone, knife, pistol, and whatever else you every day carry into the same pockets every time. Physically touch your pocket to verify that it is in there throughout the day, this will give you the constant “warm and fuzzy” feeling reassuring yourself that you have all your gear.

 What I do

When I was in work up training for deployment, I conducted touch checks constantly. It became muscle memory for me because I always needed to reassure myself, I had all my gear. On every patrol overseas I would constantly tap every piece of sensitive equipment I had. It’s what operators do, this equipment is life saving and the guys in the platoon are relying on me to be squared away every second of the day. In my personal life I set all my belonging in the same place every single day, and I place each piece of my everyday carry kit in the same pocket every single day.

---

Team Guy Tip #2

Loading your Primary and Secondary Weapon

Whether I’m on the range conducting training or I’m overseas about to go on an operation I always load my firearms in this order every single time. First, I load my secondary, in this case my pistol first, and I always conduct a press check to verify a round is in the chamber then I holster the weapon. Second, I will load my primary, which is the rifle and like the pistol I will load it and conduct a press check to verify a round is in the chamber. Lastly, I will close the dust cover on the rifle, this gives me the visual reference that I need to reassure myself that I have loaded both weapons systems and I’m ready to fight or train depending on the situation.

TEAM Guy Sense

View fullsize

When you read this, you may think to yourself, yeah this makes a lot of sense to do and that is the feeling I want you to have. Often these little habits are blown off, and if you do that it will come back and bite you in the ass. I’ve personally seen these things blown off by others and gear has been lost, and numerous dead-man guns were witnessed on the range while training or worse you could be in a real life threatening situation and you aren’t prepared. Don’t be that man or woman, develop these good habits now that way it becomes second nature. Trust me, this will translate into your shooting and into your everyday lives in a positive way.

Take Action

I challenge you, every time you head to the range to train or leaving for work, check all of your pockets before stepping out the door, double check that you have all the gear you need to train with, and when you arrive at the range step up to the firing line and load your primary and secondary weapon in the order I have told you.

For the LEO and Military folks. Before you step out the door to go on duty, an operation, or train, do all these things the same way every single time. These habits will instill that confidence subconsciously into you so when it comes time to react to an adverse situation you have no doubt you are prepared.

I will be putting out a series of the Frogman Perspective over the next few weeks. Adding in each week a Team Guy Tip that I think will add value to all of your lives.

Thanks for reading, if you like this article leave a comment, let me know what you think and give me feedback if you want more information.

-        Travis Kennedy

#ThinkingShooter

After Action Report: Glock45 Gun Review

My After-Action Report on The Glock45

Gun Review

View fullsize

This pistol has been released for quite some time now, however I was able to purchase the Glock45 a month ago and I haven’t been more pleased with a pistol in a long time.

Below I’m going to give you my take on the performance and reliability of this pistol, I’m very confident you will not be disappointed with the performance of this sidearm.

Up until I purchased my own Glock45 I only read about it online and through other gun reviews. When I moved back to California, I had the opportunity to shoot the Glock45 and immediately fell In love with it. The performance and the overall feel of the pistol was amazing, I will go into more detail later but after my first experience I had to buy one.

---

G45 Build

View fullsize

9x19, the G45 combines the full size G17 Gen5 frame with a standard G19 slide featuring front serrations. The depth and width of the serrations I felt were spot on and supplied me with more than enough grip to rack the slide back or conduct a proper press check. Another major notable enhancement is the Glock nDLC finish, this is exclusive to Glock. It is an ion-bonded finish that reduces corrosion and scratching and aids the weapons reliability and functionality. All these fine tune upgrades really set this weapon apart from the rest in my opinion.

One of my personal favorites is the flared magwell that makes it easier for all shooters to insert the magazine especially while conducting fast magazine changes, very hard to miss the magweel with this feature.

Like its Gen5 predecessors the fingers grooves have been removed from the G45, which enables me as a shooter to get a better grip on the gun, I really enjoy the feel of this. The G45 comes with a Glock Marksman Barrel, this is a match-grade barrel with tighter chamber specs. And more aggressive rifling for better accuracy. The consistency and accuracy is very noticeable with the G45 compared to other pistols I have used and train with. The final touch is the ambidextrous slide stop lever, which is a nice feature for both the right and left handed shooter or if for any reason you need to switch hands for drills or in a dangerous situation.

View fullsize

Specifications: G45

Caliber: 9x19mm

Capacity: 17+1 rounds

Barrel Length: 4 in.

Overall Length: 7.44 in.

Sights: Polymer U-notch

Weight: 25oz w/empty magazine.

What I Think

View fullsize

Going back to the beginning of this post, the first time I had the privilege to shoot the Glock45 I was immediately hooked on the weapon, and it all boiled down to the grip for me. I’m a huge G19 fan but wasn’t a fan of the grip length but combining the G17 lower with G19 upper this was a smart move by Glock. Another reason that I didn’t end up going wit the 19x was the color, I wanted to get away from the military color and style and lean more towards a sidearm that will be more useful to me as a civilian so I ended up going with the G45 because of the color, flared magwell, and quite simply the overall feel of the weapon in my hand. The feel, weight, and balance are all very important to me when I choose my weapons.

The G45 is an extremely well-designed pistol and are in high demand as a result. Like I stated before it is the most well-balanced pistol I have ever fired. The buyer of this firearm is someone who is looking for reliability, comfort, accuracy, and capacity. The pistol just feels right in the hand, and is easily manipulated, with an excellent capacity at 17+1 rounds. Three magazines are included with purchase of the pistol.

Team Guy Rating

View fullsize

Accuracy:

I haven’t shot a more accurate pistol up until I bought the G45. The grip size combined with the compact G19 slide makes the gun recoil so smooth, allowing the gun to stay on target that much easier.

Reliability:

I had no malfunctions with the pistol yet, one thing that has happened to me a few times is when I go to do a magazine change and I slam the magazine to hard, it will send the slide home without chambering a round, then I would have to proceed to my immediate action drill. This is an issue that doesn’t concern me, do to the fact it’s not an uncommon occurrence with pistols.

The Feel:

This pistol is bad ass and feels even better in your hand. Plenty of room on the grip for even the largest of hands, but still has the compact feel.

Cool factor:

The gun looks simple in nature but is a secret badass in my mind, it’s not flashy looking but it will crush some of the best pistols out there.

Overall:

If you haven’t shot this pistol go out and give it a go and put some lead through it, I promise that you will not be disappointed. And If you don’t like it for whatever reason, then that is ok because it won’t be for everyone. I highly recommend this pistol for anyone, because of the versatility and reliability.

Go out to your local range and rent this pistol and give it a go, and after reading this leave a comment below and let me know if you like the review or you would like me to expound on something specific.

-Travis Kennedy

#ThinkingShooter #Teams