I am Staff Sergeant Ryan Franks with the United States Army Service Pistol Team. And today we are going to be talking about two of the four fundamentals of bull’s-eye shooting; stance and grip.
When talking about stance we want to focus on natural point of aim. We want to be perpendicular to the target for two reasons. It aids in recoil recovery and in not fighting our position to stay on target.
We’ll start with our feet shoulder width apart, slightly off set. This aids in good balance and keeps us from swaying.
From there you want to be relaxed going up the body. You want to take your non-firing hand and stow it in your pocket, or on your belt, out of the way.
As I bring my firing arm up into position I will close my eyes and look down my arm, trying to be as relaxed as possible in this position. When I open my eyes, I want to be on target with my sights. If I am not, then I can make either a major adjustment with my feet by turning my body, or a micro adjustment just to bring myself on target. And that’s by rotating on my heel and pointing my toes whichever way I need to go.
From here I want to check my position by bringing my arm down and relaxing. Getting back into position with my eyes closed. Opening my eyes and seeing where I am on target.
You want to reassess your natural point of aim throughout your shooting, because your body tends to relax or contract depending on how you're shooting.
From here, we’ll move into grip. We establish our grip by taking the pistol in our non-firing hand and working our firing hand high and tight into the grip. We want to build it around our trigger finger so we don’t manipulate the gun or our sights while we are moving the trigger.
I want equal pressure with these three fingers and a Coke can grip around the gun. I don’t need a fist because I will manipulate the gun too much with my fingers.
I want my thumb relaxed and my trigger finger independent, not incorporated in my grip. Now we are going to test our grip by bringing the pistol up and moving the trigger back and forth making sure that how we squeeze the trigger does not disturb our sights.
These two fundamentals of bullseye shooting can be primarily trained in dry fire, which will give you the muscle memory needed to maximize your time behind the gun at the range.
