Chris Sajnog demonstrates proper shooting technique.

How to Stand When Shooting – Navy SEAL Best Shooting Stance

Hey guys, I’m Chris Sajnog, founder of The New Rules of Marksmanship. In this post, I’m going to teach you how to stand when shooting. Let’s go ahead and get started.  

Best Shooting Stance

Having the best shooting stance is really important when it comes to shooting because it’s literally the base. It’s the foundation of your shooting platform. Everything you do builds on the way up. So I’m going to teach you a few steps that are important for you to take every time you shoot a firearm from a standing position

Natural Point Of Aim

The first thing I want you to learn how to do is to find your natural point of aim. Your natural point of aim is where your body is naturally pointing when you’re pointing your gun. 

The way you adjust this is going to be with your base and with your lower body. Get into your shooting stance the way you normally shoot, close your eyes, and you’re going to breathe and relax. It’s important that you relax your hips. 

That’s normally where the problem is. If your hips are tense it’s going to change the way you can handle the recoil.  If you want to shoot faster or more accurately, you need to perfect your natural point of aim. 

A lot of times in a shooting situation, you may not be in that perfect stance with your natural point of aim. But just keep in mind that you can move your feet at any point. So that’s the first thing, the natural point of aim. It’s super important.

Chris teaching how to find your natural point of aim

Bone Support

Your bones naturally support your weapon. Meaning, you’re not using your muscles to hold your weapon in place. So there’s supporting structure all the way from my feet, all the way through my hips, into my shoulders, into my arms. 

A lot of times when people shoot, they will extend their arms out using their shoulders. By doing this they are now using small muscles in their shoulder to support the weapon system. And you don’t want to do that.

Muscular Relaxation

One of the other critical components to building any shooting platform is that you have muscular relaxation. What that means is the ability to want to grip the gun hard but you don’t want to be shaking

You don’t want anything to be tense when you shoot. You should be relaxed and in the flow of shooting. You want to do that through muscular relaxation.

So those are the three components that I want you to remember, each time you build any shooting platform and when asked how to stand when shooting. In any shooting position, make sure you have a good natural point of aim, you have good bone support, and then you have muscular relaxation

Shooting Platform With A Pistol

Now let’s talk about the shooting platform with the pistol. I teach the modified isosceles shooting position. That means I’m going to use the geometric power of the triangle to build my base of support.

Also then build my upper body position by using the power of the triangle. What I want you to do is start off with your feet about shoulder width apart, maybe a little bit more, and then drop your strong side leg backward. You want to drop that back till it’s just about in line with the heel of Your other foot.

You also want to put a slight bend in your knees, because you don’t want to be locked out and rigid. You always want your shooting platform to be as mobile as possible.

Now the next thing I want you to do is just put your nose over your toes. Now you have power coming all the way from your back leg all the way through your upper body. Keep in mind, that everybody’s going to be a little different. This is just a starting position.

Now bring the gun up to your eyes, and lean forward. This should be your shooting position right here with a pistol.

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Pack Your Shoulders

The last thing I want you to keep in mind is your shoulders. I want you to pack your shoulders in. When some people shoot, they extend their guns out and push their shoulders out. 

What you want to do is use your chest and your back muscles. Those large muscles rather than your deltoid muscles support the gun

Do it by simply going from an extended position and pulling your shoulders back to where you can feel your back muscles beginning to engage. It’s going to be a much more stable position. 

If you do it properly, all the energy will come back into your shoulders, and that will translate all the way down through your body. So that is an effective shooting position with a pistol. 

Same Position

One last thing I want to share with you is the importance of keeping your shooting positions the same regardless of the weapon system. Sometimes you need to transition from one weapon system to the other. The importance here is keeping those the same. 

If you were shooting a pistol and a carbine, your stand and position should not change at all when switching weapons. That’s really important if you want speed between your transitions. So if I’m training with my pistol in a different position, I’m also training with my carbine. Keep those things in mind. 

I hope this answered your question on how to stand when shooting. Until next time, keep paving your path to perfection. 

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