Weak hand shooting

[Mello2u]

As many have said, it is not about being weak; as in lacking strength. I refer to the non-dominant hand as the off hand (although I shoot using both hands when I can). Most of us have sufficient strength in the non-dominant hand to shoot if we only had the coordination needed.

What we lack mostly is coordination with the hand that we never or rarely shoot with. It may also be weaker.

We gain coordination by practicing that skill which we want to increase. It is sometimes referred to as muscle recruitment, or building neural pathways.

If you usually practice for an hour, perhaps try splitting your practice time 50-50 between your hands. Remember that you are training your "off-hand" at a lower level of skill compared to your dominant hand. Practice basics until you are competent with that "off-hand". Proper stance, grip, finger position, sight alignment, breath control, trigger squeeze and follow through.

For defensive shooting, it may be assumed that you should practice shooting the "off-hand" with out any support from the other hand or arm. It may be assumed that you are shooting "off-hand" because the dominant hand has been incapacitated.

 

[Gerry]

I figured I never had to shoot weak hand again after our black badge IPSC course, so never practiced it much. Then on one particular match about 8 months after the course, we had two entire stages that had to be shot weak handed. A bunch of us just looked at each other, rolling our eyes, during the walk-through. I swear, half my squad scored zero on that stage. Many of the targets were 3/4 covered with no-shoots at 20 yards. They ran out of white patches and an RO had to go back to the club house to get more

Now I practice weak hand shooting at least a little bit on every range trip, and that includes twisting around barricades or barrels to throw off your shooting index. I also dry practice transfers and weak hand shooting a few times a week. That includes reloads with mags positioned on the table too, inserting them with my strong hand. There was one stage earlier this year where we could place the mags on barrels anyway we liked, but the stipulations were that we shot everything weak handed and no mags in our mag pouches.

 

[MLeake]

You know, it's entirely possible that a life-or-death fight might disable your dominant hand.

But really, it's much more likely that more normal activities might disable your dominant hand, prior to a life-or-death encounter.

The most common injuries in skiing, snowboarding, skating, rollerblading... are hand and wrist injuries. People tend to break falls with their hands, yet hands and wrists are made of lots of small, relatively weak bones and joints. They are very easily disabled.

Yet another reason why it's a good idea to be proficient with either hand. Don't wait until your dominant hand is in a cast, or dominant arm in a sling, to figure out how to use the weak hand.

I try to put 20-25% of my training time into weak-hand shooting. I'm almost as accurate with my left hand as I am with my right, but I am somewhat slower.