Chris Sajnog: Hi, I'm retired Navy Seal, Chris Sajnog, the author
of Navy SEAL shooting, and one of the top 20 most frequently
asked questions I get is How do you hold a pistol? Now start
your timer is I demonstrate five components to holding a pistol,
and today's five and under five FAQ. Joining me now is retired
Navy SEAL sniper Chris Sajnog when it comes to holding a
pistol, all you need to focus on is mechanics. So mechanically,
how are you going to be able to control your firearm with your
body, every gun is different, everybody's hand is different.
So work on components that mechanically are going to work
right for you and the gun. So some things that are universal
to shooting any firearm number one, keeping your arm directly
behind the gun, when you grab the gun, you want to make sure
that your arm is in line, you don't want your arm off to the
side like this right here. And this is pretty common, it's more
common than you might think it looks pretty crazy when I do it
like that. But a lot of people when they draw their pistol,
they have their elbow out and their arm is not behind the gun.
So all of the force when this gun goes, bang is going to go
straight back and there's nothing to support it. So make
sure that when you grip your gun that your arm is behind it, and
that's going to help you support it. Alright, so number two is to
get as high up on the firearm as you can. So if you grip this gun
like this, and you can see that there's still space in there
right there, when this gun goes bang, it has a lot of room to
recoil back and raise that muzzle up, so we want to avoid
that. How do we do that? Well, we are going to raise our hand
up as high as we can here on the beaver tail, your skin should be
tented up back there. And the higher you can get this, the
better that is number two, get as high grip as you can when
you're shooting a pistol. So number three is make sure you're
getting as much use out of this support hand as you can when
you're gripping your pistol. So you have your strong hand, the
hand you fire the gun with take your other hand and you want to
place it down at about a 45 degree angle when you grip the
gun. And that's going to allow you to fill all this space in
here and allow you to control the weapon much better. Alright,
number four is you want to keep your thumbs forward. So when
you're shooting, you can see both of my thumbs are pointed
forward. And that's how you want to shoot the more things you
have pointed at your target, the more likely you are going to be
able to hit it so you don't want your thumbs pointed up. You
don't want them pointed out you don't want them lap on top of
each other because that is just going to cause inconsistencies
in your shooting. So you want a good consistent grip and get
those two thumbs pointed directly at your target.
Alright, number five, last but not least, is to use 100% and
100% grip. Now you may have heard before some people teach a
6040 grip or a 4060 grip, or I don't know what grip, but when
it comes to shooting, the stronger of a grip you have, the
better now you don't want to grip so your hands are shaking
that is beyond 100% of what you can grip the gun. But if you are
in violent encounter, or you're stressed out, you're going to be
gripping the gun hard. So when you practice, practice gripping
the gun hard just 100% 100% And the reason I teach this is
because I actually have done tests where I've tested grip
strength on many people when I was running the sniper course
and we would see okay, grab 60% What is that for you? Maybe it's
120 pounds, okay, now do it again at 60%. And it's something
completely different, it's not even close. So grip is the king
of consistency when it comes to shooting a pistol. So you need
to make sure that your grip is the same. The easiest way to do
that is to grip both of your hands with the same grip
strength and that is going to allow you to support the pistol
better. Alright, so that's it for today's FAQ. Remember to use
those five components to get a solid grip on any pistol. And
please remember to check out my other 19 five and under five FAQ
videos to continue paving your path to perfection. Hey guys, if
you like this video and you want to learn more, I put together 20
videos with the best training advice I've learned over the
past 25 years of training others and I want to give those to you
absolutely free just click on the icard that just popped up or
go to ChrisSajnog.com forward slash free videos. And I'll not
only send you those 20 free videos, I'll also send you a
free PDF copy of my new rules of marksmanship manifesto, which is
the framework for everything I teach. So here's what I want you
to do right now click on the i card or go to ChrisSajnog
forward slash free videos and I'll see you on the other side.