3 PISTOL SHOOTING TIPS

3 PISTOL SHOOTING TIPS

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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.

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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.

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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.

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TEAMS

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

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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.

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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

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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

Fundamentals of Defensive Shooting

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Building Fundamentals

Over all the years that I have been trained in firearms, everything boils down to developing strong fundamentals. In my experience even as a Navy SEAL I have noticed that most, if not all people, I’m guilty of this, are so eager to skip the boring fundamental drills and go straight to the high-speed drills and techniques because it looks cooler and it’s more stimulating. But this is just a temporary emotional fix, jumping into drills and techniques that you aren’t ready for will set you up for failure. I have personally fell into this mindset when I was a young Navy SEAL, I was eager to be high-speed, I thought I was good because I did some basic drills in BUD/s and SQT, at the time in my mind I wanted to skip the boring drill and go straight to the action. Looking back now that was a wrong mindset, I quickly learned that I wasn’t as good as I thought, but that mental switch turned me into the thinking shooter I am today, I’m going to go over the techniques and lessons I have learned over the past 12 years on how to build a strong foundation to make you become a great defensive shooter.

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 Build Your Foundation

Maybe you have never touched a firearm or you have some experience with firearms but just not quite confident or you find yourself doing advance drills you see on the internet that you aren’t ready for, or you could be an advanced shooter with tons of experience but may fall victim of skipping practice of your fundamentals. I don’t care what experience you bring to the table everything boils down to consistent purposeful practice of shooting fundamentals will make you a great shooter. Below are the techniques I’m constantly practicing, thinking of, and teaching whenever I am at the range.

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Shooting Stance

How you stand while you shoot will make a difference on the accuracy and your effectiveness while putting lead down range. What I teach is put your feet should with apart, with your weak leg slightly forward, putting you in an athletic stance, ready to handle recoil management and move fast and affectively if necessary. I keep my left leg slightly forward because I’m right dominant, this feels natural to me, so I recommend do what feels comfortable for you because there isn’t one size fits all, but keeping your legs should width, slightly bent, and in an athletic stance, this will set you up for success that will trickle all the way up your body through the gun all while putting accurate rounds on target.

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Your Grip

Your grip is one of the most important fundamentals of shooting, and this is the most common issue I see in individuals. Whether your right or left handed all these techniques apply, for my example I’m going to describe a right handed shooter. What I teach is 60%/40%, the 60% is for the dominant hand, In my case my right hand. I’m grabbing the pistol high on the grip and apply 60% of my grip strength with my dominant hand on the grip of the pistol. My left hand (non-dominant hand) apply the other 40%. I place my left index finger up under the base of the trigger guard in line with my first knuckle, I wrap my left hand across the grip, making contact with my right hand. My thumbs are stacked on top of each other and facing down the slide of the pistol, creating a clean natural point of aim. My arms are extend out but not fully locked out, I have a slight bend in my elbows to help with recoil management, and I’m flexing my chest and arms in ever so slightly to help me even more with recoil management, enabling me to keep my sites on target effectively.

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Sight Picture and Sight Alignment

The key to aiming and effective shot placement is to properly align your sights, proper sight picture, Front site focus, and be able to keep your sights on target with little to no movement all while pulling the trigger. This is a lot easier said than done and takes hours of practice to be effective. Sight picture and sight alignment are sometimes taught as one and the same, but it is important to know that they are two different and distinct fundamentals.

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Sight alignment

This is the relationship of the front sight and rear sight. Your eyes must be lined up with the front sight and rear sights positioned so that the alignment is correct. Proper sight alignment of the two sights means that the top of the front sight is vertically centered in the NOTCH of the rear sight, so there is equal amount of white space on either side of the front sight post. This also means that the TOP of the front sight is LEVEL horizontally with the TOP of the rear sight. There are many different types of sights, this is just a general guideline that will apply to most types of sights. No matter how the sights are configured, the front sights are designed to be placed on the same axis as the rear sight.

Sight Picture

This is the placement of your aligned sights on the target. Once you have everything in alignment, front sight and rear sight now the question may come to mind “Where do I place my sights now in relation to the target?” It depends, especially on what you are aiming for, typically guns are sighted in for a hold that requires the shooter to place the front sight where it covers up the center of the target (center mass, or head shot). Putting this all together now, we have to focus on sight alignment, sight picture, and front sight focus. However, the human eye can’t focus on 3 objects at the same time at different distances. For the most accurate shot placement my advice would be to focus on the front sight, keeping the rear and target out of focus. When you use an acceptable site picture technique this means that your primary focus in on the front sightt this may be in part of the proximity of your target for quick shots. Regardless of technique each has its place and can be used for certain situations but the foundation to practice on is to train front sight focus this technique will instill good habits to which you can build on.

I hope this post gives you insights on how to properly aim your firearm, giving you a perspective on sight picture, sight alignment, and front sight focus. This is by no means all inclusive as there are many different techniques, but this will give you a good foundation and understanding to basics of firing your weapon and what you need to focus on every time you conduct training.

If this was helpful or you would like me to write about something else or expound on this article, please comment below or email me.

- Travis Kennedy

#THINKINGSHOOTER