At a recent informal steel shoot, i ran the same course if fire a few times.
The runs that i hunched in a little and brought my head down slightly (like an inch) provided better accuracy/followups and much better times.
I dont know if its because my arms are more in line resulting in better recoil control, or if ive just been doing it so long im more consistent right now. Its not enough hunch to cause fatigue after an hour of practice, so its not major.
So my question for the experts (id say A class uspsa or better) is:
Is there enough gain to be had to start forcing myself to keep my head straight up, or if it works for me, just stick with it?
By any chance do you have a side photo showing feet to head?
Extending the neck forward of the shoulders to slightly lower the head while keeping the head erect in relationship to the target is fairly natural if you are semi-focused on keeping your head erect to avoid eye-fatigue - a cheat on the old ‘bring the gun to the eye, dont bring the eye to the gun’ thing.
It also allows you to thrust your shoulders forward a little more comfortably which you seem to be doing.
I’d like to see a side view as well. From the pic it looks like(could be wrong)you’re hips, legs, and feet aren’t quite in the “fighting stance.” As far as your slight hunch; don’t see a huge problem. You just want to make sure that hunch is as little as possible. Don’t want to slowly creep to a bad position. I’ve seen plenty of BTDT’s that could flat out shoot and several had a slight hunch.
No side view at this time. Stance depends on situation.
The steel shoot i mentioned had no movement, and i set my feet to be slightly offset shoulder width apart and rotate hips to aquire each target (major adjustment) and twist at the waist for minor adjustment.
If im moving, i get a much more agressive stance (boxer footing), and for long strings of fire i put more weight in the front foot. I dont seem to have any issue being pushed around by the gun, so i feel comfortable with all that ( but open to ideas/advice).
Thanks for the feedback so far on the slight hunch. Im not looking at my eyebrows so i guess thats a good sign.
Only other angle i have. Ill try to get more this weekend.
In the real world, you won’t have the luxury to get that “just right” posture. Focus on sight alignment, grip and trigger press. Everything else is bullshit.
Well, damn, guess I’ve wasted my time as well as a lot of other folks’ doing drills on mock up stairs, around cars and so on. All bullshit, dayum.
Flavius was full of it, correct? Their exercises are unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises. Translation: Train like you fight and you will fight like you train.
I would say, if it works, it works. I just took a course from an extremely credible instructor that kinda echoed the sentiment from above. Draw, Grip, sight alignment, and trigger control are king. I kinda agree. Does that mean experimenting shooting behind cover/concealment, on stairs, from a vehicle is wrong? No. But if your grip is ****ed up it might not matter.
It is hard to get multiple hits without a good grip, proper sight alignment, trigger control annnnnnd a good stance. You can say some elements may be more important than others, but that isn’t to say all are not important.
You’ll notice that I left draw out of the list required to get multiple hits. Is the draw important? Yes it is, but even the best draw will lose to an already drawn weapon. So more important may actually be being situationally aware so that you draw in advance.
To me equally important to a proper draw stroke is the impulse to move as you draw. That movement may just allow you to defeat the disadvantage of coming from slightly behind. Getting solid hits while moving is largely dependent on how much and how well you’ve practiced twisting and aligning your torso as you move, and how level your footwork allows you to keep the pistol.
Those things come from paying attention to and working on stance.
So I can’t agree that stances is relatively unimportant.
Trigger control is the king daddy of pistol fundamentals, as it’s been taught to me. Footing or stance is going to completely dependent on the situation you find yourself in during a gun fight. Maybe training drills involving proprioception are important, so you intuitively know how to move and gain proper footing.
I have to agree with your opening comment concerning trigger control. Although we train, rapidly acquiring a perfect shooting position and perfect sight alignment under stress is not always possible. You take what you can get, then manipulate the trigger consistently in a controlled fashion.
That being said, I was taught that the shoulders, knees and toes should be in vertical alignment for stability when shooting a handgun from a stationary position. The knees and toes should move parallel to the sight plane when shooting on the move. Both positions may make it appear the shooter is slightly “hunched”, but not hunched to the point that it applies tension to the nerves and arteries running through the neck.
This is about as bad as it gets.
I tend to start more upright, and hunker down during longer strings(gets more hunched as i shoot.)
I think its a subconscious thing i just picked up on, maybe im trying to steady myself?
I first noticed it while running through a texas star.
Anyways, back on topic, if I keep myself more upright, are there performance gains to be had?
*Please ignore grip, trigger press, and sights. I know they are more important, this is not a thread about those.
If you can see what is above, below and to the left and right without moving your head, head position should be acceptable. If you can maintain good sign alignment and manage recoil while both shooting stationary and shooting on the move, body position is acceptable. Body position will vary based on build, mobility and what is comfortable while effectively manipulating a firearm.
Chapman is basically a Weaver Stance with the shooting arm straight and the support arm bent ala Weaver. There is a tendency for some shooters to wing the support elbow out, the elbow should be down.
I think Isosceles is easier for most new shooters to grasp. Plus, there has been an evolution, if you would, in how we grip the auto-pistol. thanks to people way smarter than I.
In what state did you got to academy, if you don’t mind me asking.
I was told that same nonsense as well. Such statements lack articulate facts of prior encounters which would support range instructor pet theories like these. Nothing against the Isosceles stance, I just hate that BS reason.
I believe people ahould use what works for them, tested through rigerous courses of fire over a period of time.
Also, look what pros do, and emulate them. Hence this thread.
Well, maybe if you studied the subject you could find data to support your ‘nonsense’ conjecture.
The ballistic vest and improvements to the EMS/trauma care system are the two main reasons that law enforcement officers killed numbers are as low as they are. Police officers still get dispatched to the same stuff they did decades ago, and if you’ve read the summaries of those incident, they are still making the same tactical errors that they did decades ago.
If you look at the LEOKA stats since vests became a common wear item, you’d probably find that, oh, over a third of the officers killed by shots to the torso while wearing vests were killed by shoots that entered through the armhole or shoulder area of the vest, or between the side panels of the vest. If you want, I could send you the handouts on such trends that I updated each year. Or you could look at the 2017 LEOKA, Table 38 data. https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2017/topic-pages/tables/table-38.xls
Maybe your instructor was just parroting what he had heard, but some of us look at the numbers and try to develop tactics to counter the trends.
Your argument is exactly the reason why I have trouble taking anything a firearms instructor says with more than a grain of salt.
The chart makes zero mention of the positional relationship between the shooter and victim. The importance of this as it pertains to the ‘square up’ argument is huge.
