I'm retired Navy SEAL sniper instructor Chris Sajnog founder of the new
rules of marksmanship in this video I'm gonna teach you how to grip your pistol
properly now let's go ahead and get started
the importance of a proper pistol grip cannot be overemphasized what I want you
to think about anytime you're shooting a pistol is making it an extension of your
body don't think about your pistol is just something you're holding on to and
trying to control really make it part of your body and if you use the techniques
that I describe here it's gonna feel that way a proper shooting grip is the
cure for the common recoil one of the things I'm going to talk about in a
little bit is not letting the tail wag the dog okay before I get to that let's
go ahead and show you how to set up a proper pistol grip now the first thing
that I want you to do is always start with your pistol outside of any holster
just start with it in your non-shooting hand put your shooting hand up on the
back of the beaver tail is high up as you can get it and you want to have your
skin tenting up up there don't make it so high that it's going to interfere
with the slide but as high up as you can possibly get it and that's gonna really
help ensure that you are supporting the gun as well as possible because the
energy when this gun fires is going to go straight back now because of the way
these firearms are designed you cannot put your hand directly behind that
energy so we want to get it up as high as possible to have a mechanical
advantage now when we do that you also then want to make sure that your arm is
directly in line with your firearm with the barrel of the firearm so you can see
my arm is in line with that and this is why it's so important to start outside
of the holster because when most people grab a firearm from the holster they'll
grab it like this and they'll pull it out and you can see that I am nowhere
near in line with that so that means the energy is going to be coming straight
back in forcing my elbows to bend in my whole structure to break down okay so
we're not going to do that so grab the gun place it in there ten
up your skin get your arm is straight back as you can behind the gun to
support that energy now you'll see my thumb is forward here if you look at
this space in here you can fit your hand by panting your reaction hand or your
support hand down at a 45 degree angle and placing it right into that space so
what you want to do is you want to take away any spot on the gun that that
energy could go to because energy is always going to go to the path of least
resistance so if I have an open space in here the energy is going to be forced
into them so say for instance I have a little space right here where the energy
could go to and I'm allowing the gun to do that well some of the energy is going
to push back this way and I'm going to be pushing to that side we don't want to
do that so we are going to cover this up as much as we can hand down at a
45-degree angle and you'll see my thumbs are forward and
that is a perfect pistol grip now I talked earlier about not letting the
tail wag the dog now this is one of the biggest misconceptions or pieces of just
bad information that I have heard for over 25 years in teaching firearms and
that is that your finger needs to go a specific place on the face of this
trigger and that could not be further from the truth
the place this came from is that professional shooters with very heavy
guns and very light triggers they didn't need to worry about having a good grip
and they didn't need to worry about manipulating their trigger properly all
they had to do was just touch that trigger and the gun was gonna go bang
but on self-defense pistols like you are shooting that gun to trigger weight
ratio is the difference that makes shooting harder so it's going to be more
important that I can control the gun with a proper grip if I grip it properly
and and I grip it hard I can do pretty much anything I want to that trigger and
it's not gonna move but if you're trying to put your finger somewhere on a
trigger where somebody tells you to like the Hat of the tip of your fingers
something like that it's not gonna work for you all right you need to set up
your grip first and then let your finger land where it may on the face of that
trigger and that's going to be the perfect spot for you remember we're all
different as shooters so with that some things
that you can test to make sure that you are in a good shooting position number
one is point your gun straight up and your thumb of your reaction or support
hand and your trigger finger should be about even if they are like this or like
this that's going to mean that that your grip is canted one side or the other
another thing you can do here is let go of the gun with your bottom fingers and
the gun should stay straight so that means that the top of my gun I'm
supporting it as well now when I teach a pistol grip I teach a 100 and 100
percent grip because if you're in a competition if you are shooting at
somebody who's shooting at you you're gonna be holding your grip with 100 and
100 percent grip strength I guarantee it so why not practice like that it's the
most stable thing to do you don't have to worry about a 60/40 grip or a 4060
grip you don't have to worry about some crazy push pull with your different
hands just grip the gun hard imagine if you put your gun in a vise you could do
anything you want to that trigger and it's gonna go where you want now another
way that you can test to make sure that you have a good grip especially having
your arm behind the gun here is just bring the gun up and look down the
sights and just squeeze the grip as hard as you can and you'll see my gun is
shaking because I'm literally squeezing as hard as I can but if I can't my gun
off to the side so now I'm one of these people who grab their gun like this and
now I squeeze the gun you can see what's happening is the gun is going off to
that side so that's going to happen every time I shoot this gun if I grip
the gun like that now if I were to have it over like this and it's too far off
to this side now when I squeeze the gun is naturally going to be shooting to the
left people all the time are saying oh all my shots are
left and low or whatever all of these things can be diagnosed by yourself and
fixed right at home by using a proper grip a couple of the last ways that you
can check to make sure that you have a proper grip are are you shooting
consistently in the center of your target if you're not one of the first
culprits could be your grip so make sure you check that and you're doing it
properly when you shoot does the gun jump out of your hands and what I mean
by that is I'm shooting and the gun goes bang and you have a big recoil because
you don't have a proper grip and then you find yourself keep having to
readjust your grip if you're always readjusting your grip on the range
you're not starting off with the proper grip so make sure you're doing them a
little piece of bonus advice and that is to work on your grip strength it's super
important the stronger your hands are the more you're going to be able to
control that gun input rounds where you want to so that's it for now until next
time keep paving your path to perfection hey I really hope you enjoyed watching
that video and if you did I put together my top three videos for learning to
shoot at home and I want to give those to you absolutely free now all you have
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your path to perfection guys