Defensive Shooting

How Hard Should I Grip the Gun?

In this segment I’m going to talk about another commonly misunderstood aspect of shooting quickly, grip tension. This won’t be specific to grip mechanics, such as hand positioning, but rather just how hard you should grip the gun while shooting.

Let me start by pointing out that this isn’t directed at a new shooter, but it isn’t bad for a new shooter to hear. What I mean by that is having a brand new shooter who is first learning to fire a handgun, and is most likely using something like a .22LR target pistol, grip tension will not be a significant issue. I’ll get into more detail about this later.

I will also point out that a good grip, and good grip tension, is absolutely not necessary to make an accurate shot with a handgun. As I tell all my students in beginner classes, all you have to do to hit where you want is align the sights correctly and press the trigger without moving the sights. That can be done with a terrible grip. What can’t be done with any consistency is maintaining accuracy in rapid multi-shot strings with a poor grip and/or poor grip tension.

So what is proper tension?

I advocate a very firm grip. When I say “very firm” I mean you should hold onto the gun hard. While this will be relative to the shooter (not everyone has the same hand strength) the best way I can describe it is to use as much tension as you can comfortably maintain while shooting. When I shoot a pistol in a course of fire and then holster afterward if I look at my hand I can literally see every single bump, crease, and groove from the grip imprinted onto my hand. An important note here is that much of the tension that creates this is from my support hand, even though you see it on my firing hand. Many shooters dramatically undergrip with their support hand.



To put a number to it I picked up a gauge on Amazon that allows you to measure grip strength in your hand. My firing hand (right hand) consistently measures around 150lbs of grip. I don’t use all of that when gripping my pistol, I’d be shaky and couldn’t maintain it for long, but I attempted to mimic a one handed firing grip on the gauge and I’m generally between 90lbs and 110lbs of grip pressure with my firing hand, so about two thirds or 67% of my maximum grip pressure. When using a polymer framed gun I can often feel the grip flexing a bit of I’m doing dry fire without a magazine.

How does this help?

Simply put, the tighter you hold the gun the less it can move. The less it moves the less time it takes for the sights to reset, the less distance your eyes have to track the sights, and the less you have to force the gun back onto the target. Everything is more efficient. In my How Can I Shoot Faster? segment nine days ago I talked about training for speed shooting. One of the things I found during my Bill Drill training was that the harder I held the gun the faster I could shoot that drill. A big part of bringing down my times was learning to simply hold the gun tighter.

Why do instructors tell students to loosen their grip?

Remember when I said this isn’t exactly directed toward new shooters? Well, that is true to a degree. In fact, when I’m trying to teach someone the most basic fundamentals of shooting I will sometimes have them loosen their grip a bit, in their firing hand, if they are struggling with a very specific issue. By gripping less tightly with the firing hand it is sometimes possible to mitigate the sympathetic response between fingers of the firing hand. When an untrained trigger finger presses the trigger, it is common for the other fingers of the same hand to increase tension as well. We call this “milking the grip” and it tends to push shots to the shooter’s support side (right handed shooters will push to the left).

Having a student loosen up their firing hand while tightening their support hand can reduce this drift but it is only part of the solution, it just helps until they gain proficiency with other skills including isolating the movement of their trigger finger. The trouble is, many instructors don’t have students increase grip with their support hand and/or never mention later that increasing grip with the firing hand to a degree is better when it can be done without negative effects on accuracy. I have heard instructors repeatedly tell students to relax their grip over the years with no other explanation or details given. The worst example was an instructor that told a student to hold his pistol like he was holding his child’s hand. This was a police trainee in his 20s firing his duty pistol, by the way, not a brand new shooter with a .22 target pistol.

Give increasing grip pressure a try. You should find that the gun itself is more controllable. With some practice you’ll find shooting quickly while maintaining accuracy easier to accomplish.

About the Author:

Aaron coaches the Purdue University Pistol Team, is a former officer of the Lafayette Police Department, and holds an Indiana Law Enforcement Academy certification as a firearms instructor. Aaron is the General Manager at Applied Ballistics and competes in multiple shooting disciplines including USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, Rimfire Falling Steel, Indiana Multigun, and NRL22. Aaron is a USPSA Grand Master, a Steel Challenge Grand Master, and an IDPA Master class shooter. He has a National Championship title in Rimfire Falling Steel as well as several State Championship titles in IDPA and Steel Challenge. Aaron is the Match Director for USPSA at Applied Ballistics and for Steel Challenge and Rimfire Falling Steel at Wildcat Valley Rifle & Pistol Club.

Front Sight Focus vs Target Focus vs Instinctive Shooting

When I first learned to shoot handguns I was taught to focus hard on my front sight. Every beginner class will drive this point home in an attempt to assist new shooters with the concept of how sights, and sight focus, affects the shooter’s ability to hit precisely. Later, when I became an Officer, I was told to shoot instinctively and not use the sights because I wouldn’t bother to see them in a gunfight. Ironically, I was then qualified on a course that dictated “instinctive fire” for some strings but gave enough time to shoot sighted without any concern over time pressure. I was always told not to focus on the target when using my sights, only during instinctive fire, though it was never really explained to me why that was the case.

It wasn’t until I began shooting competitively that I began to learn how to use my sights effectively in a broad range of rapidly changing circumstances. This blog is about what I’ve found that works for me.

Front Sight Focus

If you want the tightest group shot as precisely as possible you need to focus hard on the front sight and allow the target to be a bit blurry. What I found worked best for me was something I didn’t hear anyone else talking about. I would focus on the target and then bring the sights in line. I would then shift my focus to the front sight and align the front sight with the rear sight. I would shift my focus back to the target to ensure it looked like it was supposed to and then back to the front sight before starting a slow, deliberate trigger press to fire that perfect shot. That’s quite a bit more complex than “focus on the front sight” but it is also hard to explain to a new shooter that is fighting all kinds of issues, not just sight focus issues. It also takes time, lots of time, so it is not effective in action shooting sports or defensive shooting.

Target Focus

I was told, repeatedly, that I should never focus on the target when using my sights. I actually had an instructor tell me “if you focus on the target the last thing you’ll see is him killing you.” In the training I was receiving at the time none of the qualification courses or drills I was shooting had time constraints that challenged that concept. I had enough time to make slow deliberate shots when accuracy was evaluated. Targets didn’t move, I didn’t move, and there was ample time to shoot while focusing on the front sight.

Instinctive Shooting

While being told never to target focus while using the sights I was told to shoot instinctively and ignore the sights while focusing on the target at close range. Interestingly enough the training where this was done didn’t really score or evaluate anything, we simply shot at targets this way occasionally and called it good so I never really got a sense for how effective (or ineffective) this was. As I mentioned above, there were strings in our qualification course that were called instinctive fire but I never shot them that way because we were given plenty of time to use the sights. Since they were scored, and I had time, I used my sights.

My Epiphany

For years I went along thinking this was the way things were supposed to be done. Then I had a friend invite me to try out competition shooting. Many of our readers will know this person, it was my Team Applied Ballistics Teammate Drew Heath. I believe this was in 2009. He had just started shooting IDPA about 6 months before and told me I should try it. I went with him to my first match and promptly discovered just how much I didn’t know.

For starters I learned that I was slow. My accuracy was ok. Not great, mind you, but ok. But man I was slow. There I was, a professional cop, and these hobbyists were completely destroying me. These folks didn’t carry a gun for a living, they didn’t receive training from their respective employers (the fastest guy there was an accountant), and they were far less likely to need to use a gun for anything but recreation and yet they were far better than I was. At the time this was surprising to me. I have since learned that very few high level shooters are law enforcement and the ones that are didn’t get that way from training at their departments.

I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but one of the major things holding me back was not knowing how to properly use my sights. It turns out there was quite a bit I didn’t know, but for this blog we’ll focus (pardon the pun) on how to use the sights. This experience led me to seek training outside of my department and to embark on a journey through competitive shooting that I’m still traveling to this day.

Over years of seeking outside training and shooting competitively I’ve worked my way through several variations of sight use and here’s what I’ve learned: It is less about sight focus than it is about sight attention.

Sight Attention vs Sight Focus

For plain old target shooting, where maximum accuracy is the goal, you can use a hard front sight focus and obtain good results. As I stated earlier, I have had the best results shifting focus back and forth but firing when I’m strongly focused on the front sight. This, by nature of the process, requires extreme sight attention. It is, after all, your main focal point when you fire the gun. The trouble is that most handgun shooters aren’t looking for maximum slow fire accuracy. Whether you shoot competition or are interested in defensive shooting that type of sighting isn’t well suited to the task at hand.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t use sights when shooting quickly. Quite the contrary, actually. You just use them differently.

One of the things that has changed for me over time is my shift toward target focused shooting. Most of my shooting these days is done with an iron sighted handgun while under time pressure. It is much easier to get hits quickly, and transition from one target to another quickly, when your focus is on the target. This is, of course, exactly what I was told repeatedly never to do.

When I’m shooting at an unobstructed full size silhouette (of practically any kind) and speed matters I will be shooting target focused at all but extreme handgun ranges. What I mean by that is my eyes will be focused on the actual target and the sights will be somewhat blurry to me. This doesn’t afford quite the same level of precision that a front sight focus will allow but at normal handgun distances it is plenty good enough to get A zone hits on a USPSA target or -0 hits on an IDPA target (or full score hits on practically any police qualification target, the scoring zones on qual targets are huge).

When I say typical handgun distances I mean anything inside 15 yards. An unobstructed silhouette within 15 yards doesn’t require extreme precision to get good hits. Typical silhouette targets either use very generous scoring zones or some version of vital zones. Both are fairly large targets. To be clear, I’m still using my sights when shooting target focused. In fact, I use my sights when shooting very fast at a 5 yard target as well, and those shots will be 0.2 seconds apart or less.

What changes with distance is the amount of alignment I consider good enough to press off the shot, or my sight attention. At 5 yards or less if you see both sights and they are roughly centered on the area you want to hit you’re good. It doesn’t require a great deal of attention to be expended on sight alignment as rough alignment is more than sufficient. This can be done very quickly. At 10-15 yards it will require better alignment and a bit more time, but not a lot of time. I still shoot target focused but I pay more attention to how precisely my sights are aligned with each other and with the target. As we start to stretch beyond 15 yards you are focused farther and farther away from the sights. This makes them harder to align well and makes the margin for error in alignment smaller so even more time and attention must be used to ensure alignment. At some point we will have to transition to focusing on the front sight but it is much farther than you would expect.

As a target gets farther away, or if a target is smaller (for example an obstructed target or a head shot) I need to adjust my level of sight attention. Generally, I am still target focused when shooting for speed unless an exceptionally small target or very long-distance target leaves me no option but to see the target, shift my focus back to the front sight, fire the shot or shots, and then move on. The longest pistol shot I’ve had in a competition was 75 yards. This was on a steel silhouette approximately 12” across. This was during a multi-gun match. On that one, I was using a true front sight focus akin to target shooting. While it took more time, it was still far quicker than many of the other competitors that shot through an entire magazine or more trying to hit it. Again, you have to adjust to the circumstances.

What about instinctive fire? I generally don’t use it for anything unless I have to shoot when the pistol isn’t in line with my eyes and the target. This is practically never. I occasionally do this at very close range targets shot from retention in competition or training. That doesn’t mean instinctive fire can’t be done. In fact, I’m convinced that frequent reps of sighted fire will improve instinctive fire.

Just last week I was shooting a speed drill that required a draw, engaging three targets at 10 yards with two shots each, a reload, and re-engaging each target with two more rounds each. On one run I didn’t have my red dot on when I drew. I still had a draw, a reload, and 12 good hits in under 6 seconds with no sights available.

Even though I didn’t have sights I could still use the top of the gun as a reference point. At 10 yards I could still get good hits but I would never choose unsighted shooting if I had an option. All of my sighted reps after that run were faster. I believe that to be true because I didn’t need to use as much of my attention on a sight I was familiar with compared to using the top of the gun for reference. The more attention I have to use to get and keep the gun aligned, the slower the process becomes.

The big thing is learning to adjust your sight attention based on what your need is at that exact moment. The amount of attention required will change between shooting positions, target arrays, or even on the same target if you find quickly that what you are trying isn’t working. A small steel popper that you miss twice quickly will probably require an adjustment in your approach, for example.

Learning how much attention you have to expend to get good hits on a given target size at a given distance is something that requires lots of trial and error. That’s where training and practice come in. In the end it will always require time spent putting rounds down range.

About the Author:

Aaron coaches the Purdue University Pistol Team, is a former officer of the Lafayette Police Department, and holds an Indiana Law Enforcement Academy certification as a firearms instructor. Aaron is the General Manager at Applied Ballistics and competes in multiple shooting disciplines including USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, Rimfire Falling Steel, Indiana Multigun, and NRL22. Aaron is a USPSA Grand Master, a Steel Challenge Grand Master, and an IDPA Master class shooter. He has a National Championship title in Rimfire Falling Steel as well as several State Championship titles in IDPA and Steel Challenge. Aaron is the Match Director for USPSA at Applied Ballistics and for Steel Challenge and Rimfire Falling Steel at Wildcat Valley Rifle & Pistol Club.

How can I shoot faster?

“How can I shoot faster?” is one of the most common questions I get at matches. As a Master class pistol shooter I am not a slow shooter, nor am I the fastest around (even at our local matches), but I am quite a bit faster than what I would call an average competitor. It is worth mentioning that the average competitor is quite a bit faster than the average shooter, which is a shooter that practices regularly but doesn’t shoot using a timer. This is important, which I will get into later.

Why does fast matter?

While I can put some numbers to it, and I will shortly, in the context of this blog I’m mainly referring to competitive shooting. That being said, being able to shoot quickly (and accurately) is certainly a fantastic skill to have if you find yourself on the two-way range.

In competition speed matters because it directly affects your score. If you can shoot as accurately as the next guy, but you can do it faster, you will score better. Shooting faster while maintaining accuracy increases score regardless of what game you’re playing.

In defensive situations getting rounds on target first is one of the single most important factors in winning. Never is winning more important than it is during a fight for your life, and speed coupled with accuracy will always work in your favor.

Lastly, and probably the biggest motivating factor for many, is that speed is impressive. Let’s be honest, shooting accurately when time isn’t a factor isn’t very difficult compared to shooting accurately with time pressure. Since most people don’t do it well they are impressed when they see someone who can and they want to be able to do it as well. I believe this is why I get asked about it more than anything else on the range. People aren’t impressed with accuracy, they are impressed by fast accuracy.

So, what is fast?

Fast is relative. It is relative to the task as well as relative to others performing the same task. If we set some parameters it will help us define what we mean. Let’s talk about shooting handguns, at a distance of 7-10 yards, in a competitive setting, at competition silhouette targets, with little or no movement involved. Since we are just talking about shooting it allows us to isolate some variables and measure our results. Measuring results is important because we can’t define fast if we don’t have some metric.

Looking at a basic speed drill, like the Bill Drill, will allow us to define what we consider fast. The Bill drill is simple: from the holster you draw and fire 6 shots at a USPSA silhouette at 7 yards. It is an excellent drill to evaluate and improve raw shooting speed. It has essentially two skills that must be mastered to perform well. You have to draw and fire the first shot quickly and then fire five splits (time between shots on the same target) quickly. I consider a Bill Drill in under 2 seconds with good hits to be reasonably “fast”. What’s funny is that when I tell people this they often adopt the exasperated “that’s impossible” look. Well, if it was easy it wouldn’t be considered fast because everyone could do it. Remember, fast is relative to the task and to others performing the same task. A 2 second Bill Drill is about where a high A class to low Master class USPSA shooter is likely to be. A 2 second Bill Drill typically breaks down to a 1 second draw to first shot and five 0.2 second splits. Currently my fastest clean Bill Drill (all A zone hits) is 1.73. My fastest is a 1.66 with three C zone hits. I normally shoot them in 1.8 to 2.0 seconds.

How do I know this? Simple, I keep track. If you really want to improve your speed you need to keep track. Getting faster doesn’t just happen, it requires directed practice. Three years ago I couldn’t shoot a clean Bill Drill in under 3 seconds regularly. By measuring my performance I had a benchmark and could set goals. I could talk at length about grip, stance, draw, etc (and there are plenty of good blogs and articles about this out there) but if you don’t measure your performance it is impossible to know if you’re improving.

I’ve measured my speed, now what?

I was introduced to the Bill Drill about three years ago by a friend and shooting teammate and I was frustrated by how much faster he could shoot the drill. In order to improve I started off shooting it at a pace I could get good hits. In other words, slow. Once I performed the drill enough at a slow pace my movement became more efficient (smooth) and my time started to come down in small increments (faster, but not fast).

In order to speed up the learning curve, I began shooting faster and faster until the proverbial wheels fell off. I would push speed beyond my capability at the time. I would continue to shoot faster each rep until my accuracy degraded to an unacceptable level. The purpose here is to find your new limit. Often that limit is faster than you think it is. You don’t know how fast you can shoot until you find your limit by going beyond it. If you don’t push yourself past that limit it will take forever to speed up because your normal will still feel fast to you.

Once I found my new limit I would back off and shoot some more. This would feel slow compared to the high speed-poor accuracy repetitions but would be faster than my old normal. After some repetitions I would push speed again. My speed came up incrementally. Over time it came up considerably.

You have to be willing to exceed your skill level and fail if you want to improve your speed. You need to know what fast feels like, and accuracy will suffer during this process, but over time you’ll be able to maintain accuracy and increase speed. You learn to grip the gun hard, track the sights, time your shots, and process all of it at a much faster speed than you did before. You may start out shooting a Bill Drill with good hits in 4 to 5 seconds. You’ll shave time off quickly when you start and once you get down under 3 seconds it will require more work to shave less and less time. Keep at it and before you know it a 3 second Bill Drill will feel slow to you, but look fast to your friends.

About the Author:

Aaron coaches the Purdue University Pistol Team, is a former officer of the Lafayette Police Department, and holds an Indiana Law Enforcement Academy certification as a firearms instructor. Aaron is the General Manager at Applied Ballistics and competes in multiple shooting disciplines including USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, Rimfire Falling Steel, Indiana Multigun, and NRL22. Aaron is a USPSA Grand Master, a Steel Challenge Grand Master, and an IDPA Master class shooter. He has a National Championship title in Rimfire Falling Steel as well as several State Championship titles in IDPA and Steel Challenge. Aaron is the Match Director for USPSA at Applied Ballistics and for Steel Challenge and Rimfire Falling Steel at Wildcat Valley Rifle & Pistol Club.