How to Hold a Pistol: Five Components of Holding a Pistol
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 to hold a pistol?” Now start your timer as I demonstrate the five components of holding a pistol.
When it comes to holding a pistol, all you need to focus on is mechanics. Mechanically, “How are you going to be able to control your firearm with your body?”
Every gun is different, and everybody’s hands are different. Work on components that mechanically are going to work right for you. Some things that are universal to shooting any firearm.
How to Hold a Pistol
#1 Keep Arm Behind the Gun
Keep 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. That’s the first component when you are learning how to grip a pistol.
#2 Get High Up on the Firearm
Get as high up on the firearm as you can. If you grip this gun and you can see that there’s still space, it has a lot of room to recoil back and raise that muzzle up. To avoid this we are going to raise our hands up as high as we can on the beaver’s tail. Your skin should be tented up back there.
#3 Get Support Hand
The third component of how to hold a pistol is to make sure you’re getting as much use out of this support hand as you can when you’re gripping your pistol. Take your non-strong hand and you want to place it down at about a 45-degree angle when you grip the gun. That’s going to allow you to fill all this space in here and allow you to control the weapon much better.
#4 Keep Thumbs Foward
Alright, number four is you want to keep your thumbs forward. When you’re shooting you always want to have your thumbs pointed forward. You are going to be less likely to hit your target if your thumbs are pointed up.
You don’t want them pointed out and you don’t want them to 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.
#5 Grip On Your Gun
Use 100% and 100% grip. You may have heard before some people teach a 60-40 grip or a 40-60 grip, but when it comes to shooting, the stronger of a grip you have, the better.
You don’t want to grip so your hands are shaking. That is beyond 100% of what you can grip the gun. If you are in a 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.
The reason I teach this is that I actually have done tests where I’ve tested grip strength. We would say “Okay, grab 60%. What is that for you?” Maybe it was 120 pounds. Then they would do it again at 60%, and it’s something completely different.
The 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 on how to hold a pistol on your next shooting training. Please remember to check out my other 19-five and under-five FAQ posts and videos to continue paving your path to perfection.
