“combat crouch.” The body is balanced forward, rearward, left and right, its weight forward to both absorb and deliver impact.
There is no good reason for the combat shooter not to stand like this. Indeed, there is every reason for him or her to do it.
A key element of the power stance as we teach it at Lethal Force Institute is the application of the drive leg. In the martial arts, you generate power in a punch by putting your whole body behind it. Whichever leg is to the rear is the drive leg. Beginning with the knee slightly flexed, the practitioner digs either the heel or the ball of the foot into the ground, straightening the leg. This begins a powerful turn of the hips. The hips are the center of body gravity and the point from which body strength can most effectively be generated. The punch and extending arm go forward along with the hip. The forward leg has become the weight-bearing limb; it needs to be more sharply flexed than the rear leg because as force is delivered forward, it will be carrying well over half of the body’s weight.
Lost Secret #2: The High-Hand Grasp
It’s amazing how many people come out of shooting schools and police academies not knowing the most efficient way to hold a handgun. The primary hand’s grasp, which some instructors call “Master Grip,” needs to be able to stand by itself. In a shooting match that calls for a two-handed stage, we know we’ll always be able to achieve the two-fisted grasp. In the swirling, unpredictable movement that occurs in close-range fights, however, we can never be sure that the second hand will be able to get to its destination and reinforce the first. It might be needed to push someone out of the way, to ward off the opponent’s weapon, or simply to keep our balance. That’s why the initial grasp of the handgun with the dominant hand must be suitable for strong control of one-handed as well as two-handed fire.
The hand should be all the way up the backstrap of the grip-frame. With the auto, the web of the hand should be so high that it is not only in contact with the underside of the grip tang, but pressed against it so firmly that it seems to shore up a ripple of flesh. On the revolver, the web of the hand should be at the highest point of the grip-frame’s backstrap. There is only one, easily fixed potential downside to a high hand grip. If the grip tang has sharp edges, as on the older versions of the 1911, this can dig painfully and even lacerate the hand. Sharp-edged slides on very small autos, like the Walther PPK, can do the same. Simply rounding off sharp edges or installing a beavertail grip safety fixes that.
Now let’s count up the many advantages of the high-hand grip. (1) It lowers the bore axis as much as possible, giving the gun less leverage with which to kick its muzzle up when recoil hits. (2) It guarantees that the frame will be held as a rigid abutment for the auto’s slide to work against. With too low a hold, the whipsaw recoil that follows moves the frame as well as the slide, dissipating some of the rearward momentum needed to complete the cycle. The result is often a spent casing caught “stovepiped” in the ejection port, or a slide that does not return fully to battery. (3) On most handguns, this grasp allows a straight-back pull of the trigger. If the gun is grasped too low, a rearward pull on the trigger becomes a downward pull on the gun, jerking its muzzle – and the shot – low. Draw is hastened because (4) the grip tang of the auto is the easiest landmark for the web of the hand to find by feel.
A high-hand grasp on a revolver. Note that the top edge of the gripframe is higher on the “hammerless” S&W Centennial (AirLite version shown), affording the shooter more control than a conventionally styled revolver. Note also the white-nailed “crush grip.”
The crush grip in action on a Kimber .45. Note that the fingernails have turned white from max-force gripping pressure.
Pick up a gun magazine with one or more stories on action shooting championships, and watch how the winners hold their guns. The webs of their hands will be riding high. Now you know why. The champions know what so many other shooters have missed.
Lost Secret #3: The Crush Grip
In target pistol shooting, light holds are in vogue. The bull’s-eye shooter is taught to let her pistol just rest in her fingers with no real grasp at all as she gently eases the trigger back. The IPSC shooter is taught to apply 60 percent strength with the support hand and 40 percent with the firing hand (occasionally the reverse, but 50 percent of available hand strength in any case).
Common sense tells us this will not do for a fight. For one thing, it is dexterity intensive, and dexterity is among the first things we lose in a fight-or-flight state. For another, the genuine fight you are training for always entails the risk of an opponent attempting to snatch your gun away. We know that action beats reaction. If you’re holding your handgun lightly or with only half your strength and it is forcibly grabbed or struck, it will probably be gone from your grasp before you can react. But if you have conditioned your hand to always hold the gun with maximum strength, you have a better chance to resist the attack long enough to react, counter with a retention move, and keep control of your firearm.
A third tremendous advantage of a hard hold, one that world champion Ray Chapman always told his students, is that it’s the ultimate consistency in hold. “40 percent hand strength” is one thing in the relatively calm environment of the training range. It’s something else when you’re at a big match shooting for all the marbles, and it’s something a league beyond that when you’re fighting for your life. One effect of fight or flight response is that as dexterity goes down, strength goes up precipitously. Even in target shooting, marksmanship coaches agree that a consistent hold is a key element of consistent shot placement. There are only two possible grasps that can be guaranteed to stay truly consistent: no pressure at all, or maximum pressure.
The front sight is the key to good hits. In close, even an image like this, well above the rear sight, will put the shot where it needs to go.
A fourth big advantage for the crush grip is that it prevents “milking.” When one finger moves, the other fingers want to move with it. The phenomenon is called “interlimb response.” As the trigger fingers tighten, so do the grasping fingers, as if they were milking a cow’s udder, and this jerks the shot off target, usually down and to one side. But if the fingers on the gripframe (NOT the trigger finger!) are already squeezing as hard as they can, they can’t squeeze any more when the index finger separately pulls the trigger, and milking is thus made impossible.
Finally, the hard hold better controls recoil. If you had me by the throat and were holding me against a wall, and I was struggling, would you relax your grip or hold harder? The harder you hold me against the wall, the less I can move. Similarly, the more firmly you grasp your gun, the less it will move in recoil, in terms of both overall gun movement and the stocks shifting in your hand.
Detractors of the concept call this “gorilla grip,” and warn that it interferes with delicate movement of the trigger finger and can cause small tremors. Those of us who advocate crush grip answer, “So what?” Delicate manipulation of the trigger disappears once the fight is on. The hands are going to tremble under stress anyway, and the shooter might as well get used to it up front in training. If the sights are kept in line, the gun’s muzzle won’t tremble off a target the size of a human heart.
Lost Secret #4: Front
