Percent of practice time with one hand shooting

[AxisT23]

I'm still a beginner but what percent of time should I spend with strong hand only shooting and offhand only shooting?

I know I've heard the response practice what you are weak at but thats everything as a beginner.

thank you for any guidance.

Edited February 12, 2022 by AxisT23

[Amra86]

In a major match you might see 1 out of 10 stages with strong or week hand only. I will shot 10 or 20 rounds each hand when I practice. I will usually shot between 300 and 400 rounds total on a practice day.

[CClassForLife]

Zero. At your level, it's a gimmick and not worth optimizing. It's the same advice I would give a person asking about how to shoot a Texas Star.

 

Pay enough attention, aim small, and treat it as a no miss situation. No point in buying a Texas Star just to practice it.

 

In general, your SHO can go faster than you think. Your WHO is more accurate than you think, but the accuracy fall off is immense when pushing the speed.

[Rnlinebacker]

Work on it for 5-10 minutes in your dry fire. Confirm in live fire

[X5SigChris]

I’m newish myself. Shot matches a long time ago so this is all kind of new again. In the year-ish that I shot, I had exactly two stages that involved SHO/WHO shooting. Both weren’t even in USPSA matches but a local fun match. With that being said, I practice about 5-10 minutes near the 2/3rd mark of my dry fire a few times a week. Gives me a little break from whatever I’m training. Then go back to my drill and try to finish off on a good note. Live fire, maybe a mag each hand and not every live fire session. I don’t stress it much but try to stay fair in it. 

[Sinister4]

10 years or so of shooting bullseye matches and you are good to go .........................lol  

[StefVanHauwe]

Every dry fire session 25 reps SHO and 25 reps WHO.  Every live fire training we shoot at least 1 full open mag on S/WHO. Most L1's also have at least 1 S or WHO stage in it.

[Smitty79]

You need to practice one hand shooting enough to keep from "cratering" a stage.    As a newbie, being able to transfer the gun safely to your weak hand and being able to shoot all As weak hand, with no time limit at 10yds, and 15 yards strong hand, with no time limit, is just fine.

 

Your division is also a factor.    If you are shooting open or carry optics, you should probable do more one hand dry fire until you can reliably see your dot come on target, without having to look for it.   

 

Personally, I was terrible at weak hand.    I put a little time into it and now I look forward to it.

[X5SigChris]

1 hour ago, Smitty79 said:

You need to practice one hand shooting enough to keep from "cratering" a stage.    As a newbie, being able to transfer the gun safely to your weak hand and being able to shoot all As weak hand, with no time limit at 10yds, and 15 yards strong hand, with no time limit, is just fine.

 

Your division is also a factor.    If you are shooting open or carry optics, you should probable do more one hand dry fire until you can reliably see your dot come on target, without having to look for it.   

 

Personally, I was terrible at weak hand.    I put a little time into it and now I look forward to it.

Very valid point. The transition from draw to weak hand or strong hand to weak hand is more difficult under pressure than some think. I know the first time I did it on a buzzer (in dry fire) it was terrible. Even just passing back and forth and getting a sight picture can be helpful. 

[DFIVE3]

On 2/13/2022 at 1:15 PM, StefVanHauwe said:

Every dry fire session 25 reps SHO and 25 reps WHO.  Every live fire training we shoot at least 1 full open mag on S/WHO. Most L1's also have at least 1 S or WHO stage in it.

 

On 2/14/2022 at 8:19 AM, Smitty79 said:

You need to practice one hand shooting enough to keep from "cratering" a stage.    As a newbie, being able to transfer the gun safely to your weak hand and being able to shoot all As weak hand, with no time limit at 10yds, and 15 yards strong hand, with no time limit, is just fine.

 

Your division is also a factor.    If you are shooting open or carry optics, you should probable do more one hand dry fire until you can reliably see your dot come on target, without having to look for it.   

 

Personally, I was terrible at weak hand.    I put a little time into it and now I look forward to it.

 

 I would agree with both of these statements. I practiced it very little when I shot Prod and Limited. Shooting CO now and there is more hunt for the dot if I am not indexing properly. I would say I toss in about 20 reps or so of (Surrender Draw to SHO, reload to WHO) and (Surrender Draw, grabbing gun with SH and moving over to WO). I honestly have not seen much outside of classifiers at local matches. But it's still good to work on. Dryfire and confirm with live fire on range days.

[Nobody909]

I would say around 15%-25% of your effort should be put into shooting Strong hand only and weak hand only.

I firmly believe that being able to shoot one handed helps you shoot with two better.

[ColoradoNick]

12 hours ago, Nobody909 said:

I would say around 15%-25% of your effort should be put into shooting Strong hand only and weak hand only.

I firmly believe that being able to shoot one handed helps you shoot with two better.

 

I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this. Grip building is completely different IMO, as is recoil management. Local matches here the only time you see any one handed shooting is in a classifier. The biggest issue I see is people not being able to find the dot. Figure out a system to find the dot 100% of the time- look down the top of the slide, find the front sight post if you have one, align the planes on the optic with each other, etc. I'll generally reconfirm I can do this in dry fire before the match, or if I don't know what the classifier is until I show up I'll confirm I can find the dot while under make ready. The next biggest issue I see is people canting the gun left or right. For example if you cant the gun to the left as a right handed shooter and you transition to the right you're fighting recoil on your transitions so keep the gun vertical. 

[99mpower]

approx 10-15% of the time. Normally work at least one/two full mags of SHO/WHO, normally trying to work doubles, and waiting to see sights on target

[Racinready300ex]

I do a little at every dryfire session. But overall I spend little time on it.

 

There have been entire seasons where I've shot several majors and not once shoot WHO. So far this year I've shot 6 shots WHO in a uspsa match. 

 

Now, if you get good at it when these stages come up they'll be free points on most of the field. Also note, if you shoot IDPA you're way more likely to end up shooting one hand and should probably spend more time on it. 

[Nobody909]

12 hours ago, ColoradoNick said:

 

I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this. Grip building is completely different IMO, as is recoil management. Local matches here the only time you see any one handed shooting is in a classifier. The biggest issue I see is people not being able to find the dot. Figure out a system to find the dot 100% of the time- look down the top of the slide, find the front sight post if you have one, align the planes on the optic with each other, etc. I'll generally reconfirm I can do this in dry fire before the match, or if I don't know what the classifier is until I show up I'll confirm I can find the dot while under make ready. The next biggest issue I see is people canting the gun left or right. For example if you cant the gun to the left as a right handed shooter and you transition to the right you're fighting recoil on your transitions so keep the gun vertical. 

My reasoning is, if I can grip the pistol well with just my strong hand then if I add my support hand my grip should be that much better.

My train of logic is always practice things way harder than you'll ever have to face so you are never worried. An example would be practicing shooting at 50 yards, so when you have to shoot 35 yards in a match it is no problem for you. If you shoot one handed so well than it should be so much better when you use to hand effectively. I also use it as a metric for me to make sure I am gripping the pistol adequately. I try to grip the pistol the same with my strong hand as if I were shooting just strong hand or two handed. 

 

Not finding the dot on presentation with single handed shooting, I believe is due to two reasons: Inconsistent grip placement with your hands and lack of dryfire repetitions. 

 

 I also believe that the cant on the gun when shooting single handed is not a bad thing. If you present the gun and it has a slight cant to it, then cool if its straight vertical than also cool. Which ever way is natural to you. The thought that you are fighting recoil going one way or the other is a moot point, I believe if you don't even have some semblance of recoil control in the first place with only one hand.

[StefVanHauwe]

Every week we try to shoot between 12 and 24 rounds SHO & WHO per training.

[shred]

FWIW CO Nats had two stages (out of 18) with SHO shooting and one of those also had WHO.  One stage had the SHO at ~25 yards which ate a lot of people's lunch.  The other was one of the classifier stages so 15/10yd IIRC.

 

Work on it enough until you can find the sights/dot easily and not wank on the trigger.  The latter is usually the problem.  Being good at SHO will help your trigger pull freestyle.

 

IPSC tends to have more and more interesting single-hand stages because their rules allow for more of it.

[Twilk73]

On 2/12/2022 at 5:38 PM, AxisT23 said:

I'm still a beginner but what percent of time should I spend with strong hand only shooting and offhand only shooting?

I know I've heard the response practice what you are weak at but thats everything as a beginner.

thank you for any guidance.

Practice what you are weakest at. evaluate your match performance and practice your weakest point. You’ll gain the most time working on performing good transitions. As a beginner id work on transitions and accuracy more than anything else. A This is assuming you have a safe draw down. 

[IVC]

One more vote for the "low hanging fruit" approach when you're just starting out. 

 

While you can't just work on one skill until you master it before moving to the next, you should prioritize both the order of the skills and the amount of training spent on each skill. SHO/WHO are one of those where you have to be competent, but you can postpone fine tuning until you have a much deeper understanding of movement, transitions, entering/exiting positions, keeping gun high, shooting sooner vs. faster, etc. As long as you can take shots and are accurate enough with one hand, so what if you lose a few fractions of a second, or even a few seconds in an unlikely stage that has SHO/WHO, when you're likely losing a few seconds on entry into *every* position. 

[Yeti]

Not as much as I should.  SHO much more often than WHO. 

I try to get in WHO practice 15-20 shots every few weeks, but this often ends up being 15-20 shots per month. 

[RangerTrace]

On 2/12/2022 at 4:38 PM, AxisT23 said:

I'm still a beginner but what percent of time should I spend with strong hand only shooting and offhand only shooting?

I know I've heard the response practice what you are weak at but thats everything as a beginner.

thank you for any guidance.

If you are running a dot, it should be often, at least in dry fire.

[RedDotsOnly]

If you're talking more dry fire - Everytime you dry fire practice it.. Even if it's for 2-5 minutes. Just a little

[GunBugBit]

I can’t prove it but I have had better matches when I was dry firing SHO and WHO more than usual.  It could be because I was also dry firing freestyle (both hands) more than usual but I have a specific memory of one week where I did much more WHO dry fire than usual, then had an especially good match, and the match had no WHO in the stages.

 

Anyway, one drill I like is a modified Four Aces where I use SHO or WHO on the second two shots.  The par time if you’re switching to WHO can be the same as a normal Four Aces if you skip the reload.  But it’s useful to include the reload too because some classifiers have you reloading before switching from freestyle to WHO.  For that, add maybe a second to your par time.

 

Another thing I do sometimes is simply a lot of WHO trigger presses for a couple of minutes to build the left-side stabilization and trigger press muscles a little bit.

 

A a few minutes of these types of things every time you dry fire should be plenty.

Edited July 18, 2023 by GunBugBit

[maur]

One mag at the end of each practice session if you want to be good about it, but honestly I do it every once in a while

[andy27al]

I haven’t been doing it much lately so of course, my next upcoming classifier turns out to be Close Quarter Standards..

 

I try to do single and off-hand once a week in dry fire