How to Reload a Pistol – Retired Navy S.E.A.L. Tips
Hey guys, I’m retired Navy SEAL sniper instructor, Chris Sajnog and founder of The New Rules of Marksmanship. In this post, I’m going to teach you how to reload a pistol properly. Let’s go ahead and get started.
Doing a proper magazine reload with your pistol can be crucial, whether it be during a competition or a life-or-death situation that you may find yourself in. Learning how to do it is really easy if you follow these simple steps that I’m going to teach you right now.
Firearm Saftey Rules
When you practice this at home, make sure that your weapon has been cleared and safe. Make sure you are following all firearm safety rules. Just make sure there’s no live ammunition in your weapon or in your magazine. I suggest taking them out of the room that you’re training in.
Recognize The Reload
The first thing that you need to do is realize that there’s a need to reload. When you first start shooting, I’ve seen plenty of shooters out there who simply don’t realize that their gun isn’t going bang when they pull the trigger. They just keep squeezing the trigger.
This can happen too in one of those life-or-death situations or even a competition when you have a lot of stress. Just practicing the fact that you have a magazine that needs to be reloaded is a great thing to do.
So how do you do that?
- First off, you should learn to notice that the slide comes back and it’s going to feel different than normal.
- You should be able to see that your gun is not in line like it normally looks. If you’re staring at these sights properly, you’re going to notice that difference.
- If you need to, you can just cant the gun up just a little bit. Then you can see that the chamber is empty.
Reload As Fast As Possible
The next thing on how to reload a pistol is that you want to do is get this reloaded as fast as possible. The first thing that you need to do is get the empty magazine out of your weapon.
Then you want to bring your gun back into what I call your “workspace”. So your workspace is this area right in front of your body. You want to have your elbow indexed along your body or some part of your gear.
The other thing that you want to do is you are going to keep your muzzle in line with your target because that’s the straightest, most direct line. So it’s going to be the fastest always.
While you are reloading, you will keep your eyes and your muzzle in line with that target. While you do that, you are going to be dropping your magazine. So all you need to do is press on your magazine release right here and it’s going to fall out.
As you do it, you should be reaching for your first magazine. You should have a sweet spot where you always grab your magazine from. This is going to allow you to be able to perfect your magazine reload. If you have extra magazines up on your gear or if you’re in the military and law enforcement, do the same thing. Have a sweet spot. Always use that when possible.
Final Steps
As you are doing that you want to grab the magazine with the palm of your hand. That’s called indexing the magazine. The reason you want to do this is that this finger is going to know and point exactly where you want it to go.
Now one thing that I want you to do is glance down right at the last second right before it goes in. That’s critical because you want to make sure that it goes in you don’t want to miss and keep trying.
As soon as you see it going in, your eyes are back up on your target. Sometimes if you don’t guide it, it’ll get caught sideways in there, and you’re going to be fighting it. So glance down, guide it in, and look back up.
Chunking
What I want you to do is I want you to chunk it into the smallest portions possible. Chunking means breaking down that movement into the smallest parts that make sense.
Your first chunk could be releasing the magazine and getting your hand on your new magazine. So it’s this movement of making sure that every time you need to do a magazine reload, it’s going to happen the same way every single time. That’s what a chunk is.
Then we’re going to build another chunk onto that. So that should be bringing your magazine up to your gun and inserting it.
Alright, so my last chunk then is going to be ready to shoot. That’s it, just keep doing that and it will be a perfect, quick thing. So when you go to do your magazine change, you’re just going to put all those pieces of the puzzle together and you’re going to have a super fast, super smooth magazine change.
So that is it for today. I hope this has helped learn how to reload a pistol and until next time, keep paving your path to perfection.
