taco101 Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Yesterday I shot a special classifier that had a bunch of weak hand only. I dropped a bunch of points and and at 25yds lots of mikes. Other than the obvious(shoot more weak hand only....) what can I do to improve my southpaw game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Santiago Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Other than the obvious(shoot more weak hand only....) what can I do to improve my southpaw game? Live fire pretty much covers it. Dryfire will help to a point with trigger control and sight picture, the same as it will for your strong hand. One piece for me is mental. I don't consider it strong/weak hand, but right/left hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tzygä Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Other than the obvious(shoot more weak hand only....) what can I do to improve my southpaw game? Live fire pretty much covers it. Dryfire will help to a point with trigger control and sight picture, the same as it will for your strong hand. One piece for me is mental. I don't consider it strong/weak hand, but right/left hand. For every practice just shoot 10% of your rounds with your weak hand. It will be your new strong asset soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sperman Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Yesterday I shot a special classifier that had a bunch of weak hand only. I dropped a bunch of points and and at 25yds lots of mikes. Other than the obvious(shoot more weak hand only....) what can I do to improve my southpaw game? I was listening to one of Burkett's radio shows where he was talking with Saul Kirsch. They talked about what a blessing it is to have such a weakness. (It was a real eye opener to me.) You have an area of your game which can show great rewards with a minimal amount of effort. For example, what would it take to improve your freestyle shooting 20%? What would it take to improve your weak hand shooting 20%? If you're that bad at weak hand, a little bit of work should show great improvements. After listening to that show, my next practice session at the range was spent on nothing but weak hand. (They didn't specifically point out weak hand shooting, but I too am terrible at it.) It was probably my least favorite time spent at the range, but I could see marked improvement by the end of the day. If spending a few practice sessions this way helps me improve my scores, its worth it in the long run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris iliff Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 I know that you specifically asked for anything other than "shoot more southpaw", unfortunately there is no other thing. Strap that pig iron on and draw and transfer that gun and find the sight. Get your method of draw and xfer down and practice, practice, practice. It really helped me to dryfire my weak hand and then live fire it immediately. I may not be the greatest, but now on those types of classifiers I am not as "hosed" as I use to be. My confidence matches my skill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dleat Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 We tend to practice to our strength`s way too much and not to practice our weaknesses enough. We get more immediate satisfaction from doing well. You have to develope a practice routine which works on where you are weak as well as your strengths. You will gain a great deal of pleasure from seeing weak areas improve, it just doesn`t come as quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-ManBart Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Yep, practicing is the only true fix, but don't neglect dry fire. If you can get smoother and faster with the draw, transfer and finding the front sight/dot you'll give yourself more time to shoot. The worst thing is when you have a botched transfer, get a poor grip and feel like you need to rush to make up the lost time...just a killer. Dry fire will help prevent that. Obviously a lot of work is going to be single target stuff....draw, transfer, shoot one A etc. Once you have that grooved move to two shots. Then work on draw, transfer, one shot on one target, one shot on a second target. Then do that but do two shots per target. Some classifiers have only one shot per target and some have two so you need to be able to do both. Try shooting the targets both left to right and right to left. For shooting with your left hand most folks are going to be faster working left to right because the gun recoils away from your hand and towards the next target to the right. The opposite is also true. I see lots of folks doing that backwards because they're used to shooting in one direction or the other. Don't overlook your stance. Most folks will be better served by adjusting their stance so that the foot on the gun side is forward slightly. Shooting left handed, move the left foot forward slightly and get your shoulder more behind the gun. Again, the opposite is also true. Experiment with canting the gun slightly inwards and see how it changes the gun movement. The cant strengthens the position of your arm, but alters how the gun moves. Some folks prefer to keep the gun upright and bend their elbow more while also tucking the elbow in towards their body. I guess you could say the elbow is lower and closer to the body and the gun is closer to your face (if that makes sense)...this feels a little akward, but it is a very viable option used by some great shooters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boz1911 Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Lots of dryfire. I press the trigger dozens of times every day weakhand. Also I used to practice a lot of live fire with a 22. Now my weakhand seems to be better than my stronghand at times. Yesterday we shot Merles standards, the weakhand string was my best, 5a1c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SouthpawG26 Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 The two things that have made the biggest improvement to my WHO shooting are: -Leaning forward aggresively, -Being aware of moving the trigger straight back into the body on every shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taco101 Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 Off to the range! Thanks yall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steel1212 Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Off to the range! Thanks yall. Got a plate rack? Shoot it weak hand only? Better yet, got some free floating plates? Put them at different distance and hight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 (edited) Other than the obvious of practice, practice, practice the things that really helped improve my one handed only shooting are listed below. (1) Always bring your non-shooting hand up against your chest. I like to bring my non-shooting hand up in a fist and press my thumb into the center of my chest as I shoot. This keeps your non-shooting hand from swinging around as you shoot. (2) Bias the shoulder of the hand you are shooting from slightly forward. You shouldn't have to change your stance to achieve this. You don't want to go too extreme with the bias as that will hinder your ability to move from target to target or physically move from one shooting position to another. (3) Do not shoot the pistol with the sights straight up and down. Cant the sights at a 45 deg angle toward the center of your body. This amazingly helps a LOT with controlling the recoil and keeps the gun recoiling in an up and down motion instead of an up and to the side motion. (4) Always use your thumb as a primary point of gripping force. For example, with a 1911 type of pistol, your thumb should be up on the safety and pushing down and in with quite a bit of force. Then your fingers should be gripping only front to back. Just make sure that you don't have a "Snow Cone" type of grip on the gun with your thumb pointing down. If your thumb isn't high up on the gun and pushing down it will be a lot harder to control the recoil. (5) Most guns like to recoil Up and Right when shooting one handed. Use that motion to your advantage when shooting strings of targets. Whenever I have to shoot weak handed I try to engage the targets from left to right as the guns natural recoil will promote the movement over to the next target. Strong handed it does not seem to make much of a difference if I got left to right or right to left. But I can feel an advantage in going left to right when shooting weak handed. The shooting seems to flow better that direction without having to fight the gun. (6) Do not lock out your elbow. You lose a lot of recoil management and target transition control when your elbow is locked out. Plus when your elbow is bent it serves as a shock absorber soaking up the recoil as your shoot. Other than that, all you can do is incorporate a good amount of one handed shooting into your practice schedule and before you know it you will look forward to leveraging one handed shooting to tackle a stage better or faster than everyone else. You will see that it is rare that a shooter transitions from a free style grip to a one handed grip during a stage, but when it does happen its usually rewarded with a bunch of time saved. I know that I have been able to save seconds on a stage by engaging targets one handed because it puts my body in an optimal position to get in and out of a shooting position. Where as other shooters get all pretzeled up trying to squeeze into a shooting position and engage the target with a two handed grip. Edited February 2, 2009 by CHA-LEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjb45 Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 As with learning a new shooting technique, there are always multiple ways to improve. The concept I try to remember is the shooting with the left hand, start with the leftmost target and vise versa for the right hand. As Taran explains it, think of what is a stronger punch, a round house (hook) of a back hand? For him, it is the hook. So if he is shooting with his left hand, his left foot is slightly forward and he shoots from left to right. For right handed shooting, he shoots from right to left with his right foot slightly forward. He also notes that when shooting with the left hand, the shoots tend to go right. So he lines up on the left edge of the A zone. For the right hand, he lines up on the right side of the A zone. I have many friends that cant their guns and line their sights up on the lower corner of the C zone because their shots would otherwise be low and off to the side. This technique works for them. For me, I keep the sights straight up and down and line up on the outside edge of the A zone. This works well for me. I do a lot of weak and strong hand practice with my .22. Usually somewhere in the range in 60 - 100 rounds. 10 rounds minimum on one target but usually 30 rounds. Then 30 rounds on at least three targets. I do isolate my free hand against my chest unless a reload is required, then I drop my hand to the mag. The idea is always keep the free hand/arm from swinging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bulamike Posted April 13, 2009 Share Posted April 13, 2009 I would say get a rig setup for left hand. Left hand holster, mags offset on your strong side. Start drills like you would strong hand working the left hand, and introduce left hand days where everything is left hand or weak hand only. Also, conisously use your left hand when you would typically use your strong or right hand, ie: opening doors, picking things up...consious effort should lead you in the right direction. Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granderojo Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 +1 on canting the gun at about a 45 degree from vertical toward the center. Helps my recoil control and follow up shots as well. Try it with your elbow locked and with it flexed slightly. Also, turning your gun hand side more toward the target helps. How much is a trial and error process for the position that works best for you. Same goes for shooting srtong handed. As has been stated, the more you practice off handed ( live and dry fire), the better you'll get at it. Enjoy, Granderojo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin c Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 All the above, plus: Work on a clean transfer between hands - a lot of time gets lost fumbling the gun from SH to WH. Remember that you only have one hand on the gun. Recoil management is tougher - experiment with your grip strength, but watch for milking the grip/trigger. What helps me is lots of .22 practice for the trigger control, and full PF ammo for recoil mgmt. and transitions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mistral404 Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 I watched a GM who has instructor skills. He did his transfer very quickly and low. As soon as the gun cleared the holster, he was looking down and transitioning the gun to his weak hand around his belly button. It gave him more time to settle the gun in and get on target as he was bringing it up. The WSSSC had a great stage with two strings that required freestyle, reload, strong hand. Then the same with the weak hand. It really separated those who practiced. The one thing I have noticed with a lot of shooters, they tend to try and shoot just as fast weak hand as they do freestyle. Slow down and focus on sight picture with trigger control. If you dont have a plate rack use small paper plates or shoot just head shoots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronhonda Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Without getting to technical here, i found what worked for me was on the signal to grab the gun near the magwell area/base of the grip, and transfer it over to my weak hand shooting in a "gangster/ghetto" angle. I had more area for my weak hand to grab the gun and acquire my grip. And the angle that I used to shoot, let me lean into it and be more in control. Take my .02 cents for what it's worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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