Contents
Defensive Handgun Drills & Techniques Collection
In the Ready Position, the weapon’s safety can be on, if the situation dictates. It is normally is off, at the beginning. Your arms and weapon are positioned at a 45° angle to the ground.
The Ready Position
The Ready Position is an alert or standby position. You can observe, assess a situation or await a range command while in this position. Your trigger finger is off the trigger and at home base.
From the Ready Position, the shooter can go to any other gun handling position.
The Grip
During the research for and writing of this book, it became evident to me that a chapter was needed to cover the subject of the grip. I have read whatever articles I could find about the subject and have had numerous pro and con discussions on this subject with many individuals. I have even experimented with and developed my own iteration of the modified Weaver grip system, best suited for defensive and self protection scenarios. Where I have introduced this Aggressive Modified Weaver grip (AMW) to new students, the response and reception to it has been very encouraging and has met with much approval.
Of course, as we’ve mentioned, the Weaver grip owes its existence to Deputy Jack Weaver of the L.A. county sheriff’s dept. and his days at the Lake Arrowhead, California, competitive shoots with Col. Jeff Cooper in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Since then it has undergone a few modifications, not the least of which are mine!
The grip is the manner in which a shooter initially holds his weapon if he or she intends to discharge it. But grip is more important and critical to proper shooting techniques than merely providing a means of holding and firing the weapon. It is the conduit through which the shooter transmits images and actions from his brain to his trigger finger. While this is occurring, the grip must be perfectly in place and ready to respond to additional commands. The selection and mastering of this perfect grip is essential to the achieving of consistent and accurate defensive shooting.
Let’s examine the various grip systems available to today’s shooters. We will go into detail on each and wind up with a detailed discussion of the grip that I espouse, recommend and currently teach.
The Thumb Over Thumb Grip.
The Thumb Over Thumb Grip
The first grip we will examine is the simplest one to learn and use. It is called the Thumb Over Thumb Grip and is considered the basic entry-level grip that I recommend for new students and beginners to pistol shooting. It affords comfort and will allow the student to achieve respectable accuracy and speed. It is a typical two-handed Weaver style grip with fingers on fingers and thumbs on thumbs, wrapped around the grip frame. The firing-side thumb rests along the left side of the weapon and the support-side thumb laps up next to it and lies somewhat over the firing side thumb. Both curl slightly forward toward the muzzle end of the weapon. The firing-side hand exerts forward pressure against the backstrap of the weapon and the support-side hand pulls back on the front strap to complete the isometric pressure feature of the grip. This pressure locks the weapon in the hands of the shooter and assists with recoil management when the weapon is being fired.
The pressure should be in the 50% to 50% range to start. The thumbs should exert no lateral pressure on the pistol, but they will, by virtue of their curled nature, assist with recoil management and limit the vertical rotation of the muzzle.
The Thumbs Forward Grip.
Another view of the Thumbs Forward Grip.
Left side view of the Thumbs Forward Grip.
Bottom view of the Thumbs Forward Grip.
The IPSC/Thumbs Forward Grip
The grip system that is all the rage these days is the IPSC or Thumbs Forward Grip. It involves cradling the weapon in both hands with the thumbs distinctly pointing toward the target and resting along the left side of the gun. By virtue of its name, it is purely a competition grip system, designed by Brian Enos and Rob Leatham in the 1980s and used exclusively by the IPSC and IDPA competitors for many years. Law enforcement and the military have adopted it for certain units with good success.
Recently, Todd Jarrett and Para Ordnance have embarked on a marketing campaign to sell this grip to the general shooting public, en masse, as a one-size-fits-all grip system. I personally feel that school is still out on this issue. The Thumbs Forward grip remains a competition-style grip designed by a competition shooter for competition shooters and is not well-suited for defensive handgun purposes. It is a complex system, very finicky and delicate and hard to master. It has varying pressure points on both axes (X and Y) that the shooter has to learn and engrain in order for the system to be effective for him.
Hours and hours of dry practice are necessary to fully master this grip. Add to that the fact that the isosceles stance normally accompanies the grip and one shoots with both eyes open, so good luck getting a hard focus on the front sight! Not the proper ingredients necessary for good defensive handgun techniques, in my opinion.
One good thing about the Thumbs Forward System is that the support-side index finger does not grip the front edge of the trigger guard. There is really no advantage to one’s shooting accuracy by having the finger there, so this technique has fallen into much disfavor. We took extra efforts to discourage the gripping of the trigger guard in this manner at Front Sight. Very few instructors teach this technique anymore.
The AMW Grip
The third and final grip system is my Aggressive Modified Weaver or AMW, as I refer to it. At Front Sight we called it the Thumbs Stacked or Thumbs High grip.
The AMW Grip is a typical Weaver grip with an aggressive amount of forward and rearward hand pressure applied simultaneously to the frontstrap and backstrap of the gun. This pressure is termed isometric pressure and normally is 40% forward by the firing-side hand and 60% pull or rearward pressure by the support-side hand. The thumbs are stacked along the left side of the weapon and on a 1911A1 style pistol, the firing-side thumb resides on top of the thumb safety. The thumbs exert no lateral pressure on the left side of the pistol.
Note that the tips of the support-side hand are extended into space and make no contact with the back of the firing-side hand. This ensures that there is no lateral pressure from the right on the weapon. Having no lateral pressure from either side simplifies the grip and improves the chances for superior accuracy and shot delivery. The aggressive 40% to 60% front-to-rear pressure locks the weapon into