stance question/critique request

[skargoh]

I have watched a bunch of short vids on youtube, by guys like Todd Jarrett, Max Michel, and Saul Kirsch. I find these helpful, but I am still having trouble determining what I am doing and if I should change. If you have a minute, I'd appreciate a critique or some recomendations.

First, I had thought that a more relaxed posture (especially with upper body, shoulders and neck/head) would yield less stress and more accuracy. I usually tried to accomplish this by bringing the gun up to my eyes rather than rolling up my shoulders and/or sinking my head and chin. For my lower body, I usually have a slight bend in my knees, and a shoulder width stance with my sttong side leg very slightly behind my support side. I have noticed, however, during fast strings of shots, that my weight is sometimes distributed more to my heels and I feel like I am rocked backward a bit with each subsequent shot.

Below is a picture of this stance that I have been using for about 5 years or so.

(Oops. I need to post a followup in the next post. My phone did not copy the link. I fear if I try to get back to the link I will lose the above text entry. This would be difficult on my phone, so I will call this post part one, and submit it now, and be back in a few to post pics and follow up questions. Sorry for the inconvenience).

[skargoh]

This is the stance I ha e been shooting for a few years.

Below is a modification I tried based on some advice:

Flex knees more

Wider stance

Bend forward more

Tuck chin

Being that this was "new" (to me), it felt very foreign, forced, and unnatural. Mainly in the neck and shoulers and a bit in the legs and lower back. The leg bend, while not appearing severe on camera, seemed in my head, to be "drastic". The weight on the balls of my feet did feel a bit better, but if not careful, felt a bit too much at times.

I could get used to these adjustments, with practice, but I would like to know if I should make these adjustments or if I am on the wrong track. So far, I have only attempted this modification in dryfire a few times.

Thank you for your consideration and help.

[skargoh]

A vid of plates(not best angle):

[skargoh]

A vid of my take on the dot drill (note rocking backward during multiple shots):

A subsequent dot drill, trying to follow through more (thanks to advice here):

[The_Vigilante]

Your left foot should be a little forward of your right foot-would do a lot to firm up your stance so you wouldn't feel like you are falling backwards with the recoil.

[Poppa Bear]

There really is no 100% correct stance because we are all different. What I try to teach to new or not very experienced shooters is to find their balance. Stand with your body balanced over your feet. Modify your foot position and put enough flex and relaxation into your body position that if I give you a push from the front you can easily maintain your balance. If I push you from behind, you can maintain your balance. If I push you from either side you maintain your balance.

If I place a series of targets from almost 90 degrees to your left, to 90 degrees to your right, you can flex your lower body and pivot your upper body enough that you can engage all of them without moving your feet and still maintain your balance.

The second thing I teach is right out of Brian's book. Close your eyes and bring your arms up as if you are holding a gun. Keep your body and arms as centered as possible. This means do not try to force your your body into any type of position, but rather a nice relaxed stance. Where is the imaginary gun pointed? Move your feet until your arms are now pointed at your target. Close your eyes, bring your arms back down and then keeping your eyes shut bring your arms back up. Open your eyes. Are you indexed on the target? If not reposition your feet until you start to naturally point at the target. The part about having your eyes shut is important because you will not get any feedback from your eyes trying to force your body into an unnatural position, rather you will have a position that your body finds naturally relaxed.

Get a feel for how that stance feels and try to duplicate it every time you shoot. After a while you will naturally position your body so the it is indexed on the intended target and you will not feel any stress or muscle strain because you are not trying to position your body where it does not want to be.

[theycallmeingot]

There really is no 100% correct stance because we are all different. What I try to teach to new or not very experienced shooters is to find their balance. Stand with your body balanced over your feet. Modify your foot position and put enough flex and relaxation into your body position that if I give you a push from the front you can easily maintain your balance. If I push you from behind, you can maintain your balance. If I push you from either side you maintain your balance.

If I place a series of targets from almost 90 degrees to your left, to 90 degrees to your right, you can flex your lower body and pivot your upper body enough that you can engage all of them without moving your feet and still maintain your balance.

The second thing I teach is right out of Brian's book. Close your eyes and bring your arms up as if you are holding a gun. Keep your body and arms as centered as possible. This means do not try to force your your body into any type of position, but rather a nice relaxed stance. Where is the imaginary gun pointed? Move your feet until your arms are now pointed at your target. Close your eyes, bring your arms back down and then keeping your eyes shut bring your arms back up. Open your eyes. Are you indexed on the target? If not reposition your feet until you start to naturally point at the target. The part about having your eyes shut is important because you will not get any feedback from your eyes trying to force your body into an unnatural position, rather you will have a position that your body finds naturally relaxed.

Get a feel for how that stance feels and try to duplicate it every time you shoot. After a while you will naturally position your body so the it is indexed on the intended target and you will not feel any stress or muscle strain because you are not trying to position your body where it does not want to be.

i followed that part in brian's book, as well. it really helped me check off "stance" as an issue to work on. now, less than 6 months later, it doesn't really matter where my feet are, or how i'm leaning. as long as your index remains the same above the waist, where and how your feet are contortioned become a non-issue.

[Sin-ster]

It appears from both photos that your center of gravity is too far rearward, regardless of which stance you adopt. Even as you try to go aggressive, most of your weight seems to be centered over your heels. No matter how you stand, this will indeed rock you back with recoil-- even from the humble 9mm.

Body styles are so different that suggesting x-amount of flex, y-amount of bend at the waist, and z-width of your stance is pretty hard to do from an outside perspective. What is universal is that you should orient yourself so that you're fully "behind the gun"-- using your body as a meat stop and something of a buffer against the recoil. To do that, your weight really needs to be centered more on the balls of your feet. Folks talk about 70/30, 80/20-- again, it's going to be relative to your build and physiology.

I'm tall, skinny and relatively long-limbed; at times, it feels like I'm almost 100% on the balls of my feet with my weight, with the heels just barely stabilizing me against the ground. In fact, I've had a couple of instances recently where diving into a position and trying to accomplish that lean has seen me tipping over and having to catch myself-- both instances because my toes were curled on a fault line, and I was squatting low to shoot through a port. You may not have to be nearly that aggressive, but it appears as if you're rocked back pretty far in both of the photos you posted.

Another thing to consider if you're shooting USPSA or anything else that requires movement is that the wider your stance, the harder it will be to get going to full speed right away. Again to compensate for my less-than-ideal build, I had a very wide stance that gave me rock-solid mass behind the pistol-- until I took a class with Manny Bragg, who wondered if I really needed all of that to manage the recoil. Sure enough, I tightened up my feet a bit, made a few more adjustments to compensate, and not only was I just as effective at keeping the gun under control, my movement improved astronomically.

One last note-- keep in mind that we don't always have the option of building a perfect stance when we shoot a stage. Other than Speed Shoots, Standards and Classifiers, you will almost certainly be working out of odd positions that throw your optimal posture right out of the window-- even if it's just shooting targets at very steep angles, like Poppa Bear describes in his 90 degree example. That doesn't mean that you should abandon the quest for an optimal stance-- it simply indicates that it ought to be as natural as possible, so that even when you "corrupt"/modify it for the situation, it still works relatively well.

When I'm dealing with a new shooter, I typically ask if they have any background in athletics. I get them to take their stance for that sport, and then tweak it a bit to suit the new purpose. With very few exceptions, they are able to replicate this stance from that point on with minimum effort, simply because it's so close to what they already know.

[Acespeedy]

I teach mainly Leo/Mil shooter, and to establish a good shooting platform I ask them to pretend they are going to punch someone. Once they establish a good fighting stance I just tell them that instead of hitting them with a fist, you hit em with some lead, should the situation warrant it of course.

For a right hand shooter, feet almost shoulder with apart, right foot slightly back, rt toe almost in line with left heel, knees slightly bent, shoulders square to threat, weight on balls of feet (about to hit someone or take off running) and bring gun up to eyes.

Everybody is different, and a shooters stance should be pretty fluid and able to adapt. Hope it helps.

JG

[carlosa]

Don't worry to much about stance

In practical shooting we shoot on the move and out of balance most of the time

Just develop a solid grip..

Your grip is the most important part of getting the gun to come back to the same place every time.

Rock and roll dood

[Flexmoney]

I like to get a medicine ball with a little bit of weight to it and pass it back and forth with a shooter. Catching and throwing the medicine ball is kinda like the gun's recoil cycle (sorta). Your body will sort out where it needs to be.

If you want to do the same thing while actually shooting, do the Burkett Timing Drills and add in an aspect where you vary your stance.

[Poppa Bear]

In USPSA we learn to shoot without having "Perfect" balance. We learn to adapt out stance so that we are "balanced" going into that position, and "balanced" coming out. The legs spread wide to keep the center of gravity low as we push off in another direction. The leg held up in the air as we lean around the wall, followed by a quick dropping of that leg as we move the support leg to the outside in preparation of pushing off the other way. The dropping of our support arm and usually even the gun arm as we use our extremities to keep our upper body balanced and our center of gravity as low and stable as possible as we move. It is all about keeping the upper body balanced over our lower extremities because we cannot afford to drop the gun in our hands.

[Sin-ster]

In USPSA we learn to shoot without having "Perfect" balance. We learn to adapt out stance so that we are "balanced" going into that position, and "balanced" coming out. The legs spread wide to keep the center of gravity low as we push off in another direction. The leg held up in the air as we lean around the wall, followed by a quick dropping of that leg as we move the support leg to the outside in preparation of pushing off the other way. The dropping of our support arm and usually even the gun arm as we use our extremities to keep our upper body balanced and our center of gravity as low and stable as possible as we move. It is all about keeping the upper body balanced over our lower extremities because we cannot afford to drop the gun in our hands.

That's a very good consideration to keep in mind when building a stance.