natural point of aim: how best to accomodate it?

[Glock A Roo]

For a long time my shots averaged a little left of center (but never low) on an IPSC target.  Being righthanded I figured the problem was trigger control or milking the grip.  Through studious dryfire, group shooting, and analysis I eliminated these possibilities.

By staying aware of what I saw during the shooting, I noticed that a lot of times my sights actually were aimed a little left of center, like between the letter "A" and the left edge of the A zone.

I realized that when I square my shoulders to the target and grip the gun "naturally", the muzzle is pointed a little left.  I can shift my arms to recenter the aim, but when shooting at full speed my body relaxes to its natural POA and the muzzle is once again slightly pointed left.  By shifting my right foot back a bit more than usual and slightly blading my shoulders (left shoulder a bit more forward), I close my eyes, aim, and the muzzle is centered dead-on.  This centering holds up during fast shooting.  My grip has both thumbs off the frame but pointed at the target.  The left thumb's muscle is driving into the grip panel and the left wrist is cocked at a 45 degree angle.  The left arm is just a bit short of being locked out.  This seems to minimize muzzle flip for me.

Thus my question: is it heretical of me to violate the "stay squared to the target" element of the modern iso?  Is there some benefit of staying squared that I lose with my minor Weaver-esque stance adjustment?

[kaiserb]

I have this same situation.  When I natural aim I hit along the left side line of the A zone.  I just thought my grip was off etc.  I can also shift my feet and have a correct stance.  I have tried regripping with my support hand with some success, I grip a little further to the back with my L hand which pushes the gun a little to the Right.

[DogmaDog]

No.

I place my right foot about 3 or 4 inches behind my left, because that's where my natural point of aim dictates.  

Possibly you could adjust your grip such that your feet and shoulders would be exactly square, but I don't see any good reason to believe that this would necessarily lead to an improvement in your shooting.  

And those guys that started kicking butt using the isosceles were being heretical when they adopted that stance.  The lesson isn't that isosceles is the best, it's that dogma doesn't always work.

Semper Fi,

DogmaDog

[Flexmoney]

Glock a Roo,

Are you feet square to the target also?  Mine are like Dog's...strong-side foot is back more.

I figure you have read Matt burkett's tips on stance:

http://www.mattburkett.com/1.html

And the various section in Brian's book.  Including where he hands his hands out in front of him without the gun...not quite letting the hands come together.

DogmaDog's advise about going with what works is spot on.  But, that doesn't mean you iso. stance doesn't need some tuning (mine constantly does).  Don't give up on it too early.

Keep us informed about what you figure out.

[Glock A Roo]

followup report:

Note that in my post I mentioned that my weak (left) arm was just short of being locked out.  More than once I have been advised by high level mod-iso shooters to bend my left arm more.  But when I did, I sensed more muzzle flip so I kept it out there just short of locked.

Well, I recently took an Andy Stanford class and he gave me the same advice: "bend your left arm more to get it more symmetric with the right arm".  I also started picking up nicely his teaching on utilizing trigger prep and reset.  I shoot Glocks so taking advantage of reset helps a lot.

I noticed this: when my left arm was bent more, there was some more muzzle flip, BUT I also realized 2 very important things:

1) there was more flip, but the gun returned EXACTLY to its orginal position after the shot broke.  Combined with quick trigger reset, this made the followup shot very easy to break accurately and quickly.  Not nearly as much effort was required to "see what I needed to see" for the next shot.

2) the more-bent left arm shifted my natural POA so that when I squared my shoulders to the target, my sights line up DEAD-ON centered in the A zone.  Woo-hoo!  I can square to the target, close my eyes, present the weapon, and when I open my eyes my sights are perfectly centered on the target.  This eliminates the struggle (and therefore tension, inconsistency, etc.) of fighting my own stance to get the gun centered on target.  This improvement has enhanced not only my fast-mode IPSC/IDPA shooting but also makes it much easier to hit those steel targets at 50 yards.

In retrospect, I see that the almost-straight left arm was good for "brute-forcing" the muzzle flip, but it caused my sights to return INCONSISTENTLY.  This variable degree of sight shift forced me to do a lot more work to set up the followup shot, and invited poor trigger control in the rush to make that next shot.

Funny thing is that you can (and I have) read this same info 1000 times in Brian's book, but it's hard to grasp until you experience it.  Ironically, Brian's book is helping me more _after_ I improve than beforehand.  It explains why the improvements help.  Reading his work confirms my experience and improves my confidence since in some ways I am treading a path already worn by a master.  Gotta love it.