Intensive Handgun Skills with Greg Hamilton
This past weekend I attended Intensive Handgun Skills with Insights Training Center. This was my second time through, the first time being in the fall of 2010 with John Holschen (AAR here: https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=67623). This time the primary instructor was Greg Hamilton and although the basic material was much the same there were some differences in focus.
Unlike many Insights Courses, Greg said, this is not a tactics class, but one focused more purely on the mechanics of shooting --though it definitely does *not* ignore tactics. It is intended to provide shooters the “tools to improve on your own”. In fact Greg believes these tools are sufficient to “put you in the top 200 shooters in the world”. He doesn’t mean you will be at that level, but you will have the techniques and knowledge to get there through diligent practice and “guided self-discovery”, a phrase he used often. He went on to explain that at the end of the three day class each student would probably be the best he ever have been , but unless that is followed by extensive practice on your own it won’t be permanent.
Class was originally supposed to occur at a new, open bay at West Coast Armory, but as the construction is not yet completed, it had to be moved to the Issaquah, Wa police station. The facilities were completely adequate and it was actually a bit closer to my home, so no complaints there. There were probably 15-16 students, most of whom were civilians with a few active and retired military.
We spent about four hours of the first day in lecture but most of the rest of the three days were spent shooting. Greg did intersperse occasional lecture time, but it was fairly short. Usually, we would discuss the nuances of one aspect of shooting (grip, trigger control, the draw, etc) then shot increasingly complex drills that focused primarily on that area. As we progressed over the few days, Greg started to layer the techniques on top of eachother building more complex drills. The result was truly a sense of know exactly what you should be doing. The only difficulty for anyone (including myself) was execution.
I will say Greg could probably snag a job as a comedian if he wanted. He is one of the most approachable and personable instructors with whom I’ve ever had the good fortune to spend time. He drew on his own extensive operational experience, interspersing his own real world experiences, including no less than three experiences that he admits probably should have gotten him killed. Two were jumps with the rangers where he had parachute malfunctions. In the first he doesn’t even remember (and is not sure) he ever deployed his secondary chute or “I just gave up”. He said he spent years beating up on himself for this and that such self-recrimination actually holds us back from reaching our full potential.
Greg told another story about a jump gone wrong. He was actually running jumpmaster school, teaching others to be jumpmasters. He said he looked up and thought he chute looked a little small. But he knew he would be mercilessly taunted if he deployed his secondary chute (he also said he thought this was a completely detrimental behavior in the military) and it proved unnecessary. He said this is common, an internal debate between two voices: one worried about ego/hierarchy/status and the other just telling you what you need to do. Luckily, he decided he didn’t care and deployed his secondary. As it turned out, there had been a malfunction in his chute and he would have died had he not deployed the secondary.
While Greg did use examples from his time as a Ranger and in Special Forces to talk about mental aspects of shooting he felt those experiences have almost nothing to do with shooting itself. All it means he said is that “if I parachute in with 600 of my friends I can probably kick your ass.” He said most of what he knows of shooting came outside of his military experience through teaching at various schools. He worked at a number of schools, most of which he feels don’t really teach you how to shoot. Insights, he explains, differs in that the classes are built in reverse to get you to an endpoint if you did all of them. They are not a collection of techniques, but a system. Many schools, he continued, teach you to cheat and cut corners. But until you are good enough to know when to cheat, that will bite you. His analogy was “If you cheat at poker, you better be ****ing good first.”
A Brief History of Shooting
Greg started the first day with a history of shooting. He said he provides this because he hates to see people going backward. Frequently, a “new technique” is brought up in shooting circles to which he says his response is usually “We were doing that 20 years ago and it sucks.” His belief is that most of what makes a great shooter was figured out by the 1990’s and not much new has been introduced in the last ten years.
How do we know we are shooting as well as possible? Well, we know there are limits to the speed at which a person can perceive and act, but how fast is that? We term this the “Limits of Human Ability” (LOHA) and the best way we can do this is to look at standardized drills that have been run and recorded over the past 20-30 years. The El Presidente is one example. If you can do the El Presidente in 10s with clean targets (all A-zone hits) you are competent self-defense shooter. The best possible score is 3.5s. 50-100 people have done this and this time was first recorded many years ago, but no one has done it faster. What has occurred with the evolution of technique is that people are now achieving the 3.5s more consistently. Is this then the LOHA? Probably. If you look at the shooters who can achieve such a time, “all of them are basically doing the same things”.
Greg said it was unlikely anyone in class could ever achieve a 3.5s El Presidente. Even amongst those who practice tirelessly, those at the top have a genetic edge. Plenty of people can practice basketball, many can even go professional. But there is only one Michael Jordan. “But if I can be half as good as Michael Jordan, I’m pretty good”. We also have to be careful in what we take from competitive shooters. Most Olympic gold medal winners can’t coach others to win gold medals. Similarly, most coaches can’t win a gold medal. Most of the top IPSC shooters first learned to shoot fast THEN learned to hit. That’s not okay for self-defense. Still we should spend 10-20% of our time shooting faster than we can hit to push our boundaries. If we always shoot at a comfortable speed, we will establish a cyclic rate that will hard to be break and thus never shoot any faster.
The first formalized training for handguns was probably the NYPD. They used 6 shot revolvers. This is where things like hammers or double-taps became popular because of training tended to do three two-round repetitions. Later the OSS started developing other techniques during WWII. These included things such as using the muzzle flash to identify targets and had all of four hours of handguns training.
Greg mentioned that most of what the great shooters did was to ‘figure out a way to get their ammo paid for’. This was what led Jeff Cooper to establish a shooting league. They had competitions of shooting balloons. Because of what had developed with the OSS and influence of Cowboy movies from the 20s and 30s, everyone had forgotten to aim. They all shot from the hip, because everyone knew that “That was what was fastest”. Jack Weaver was one of those who competed and noticed “It seems to be taking a lot of hits to get the balloons.” He spent an entire winter practicing with both hands on the gun. He came back the next year…and did horribly. Plus he got made fun of for having both hands on his gun and “shooting like a girl”. But he persevered and starting thinking “What if I aimed?” With both hands on the gun and using his sights, he “started to kick everyone’s ass”.
If you actually look at pictures from this time of how Weaver shot, it is remarkably similar to what we now call modern isosceles. The “Weaver Stance” was actually created by Jeff Cooper. “Like any good Marine , he added 90 degree angles to everything”. Weaver did sometimes have his arms slightly bent, but that was because he learned something it took others until the Steel Challenge of the 80s to learn, namely that you can shoot things you’re close to before you reach full extension. In fact, the first time Weaver heard about isometric tension was when he read about it in a magazine. He had to go out and try it to see if he actually did apply it and his answer was “I guess there could be”. Massad Ayoob made this error even worse by increasing the prescribed tension to 45lbs.
The next evolution in shooting occurred because of Second Chance Body Armor. The owner started to do demonstrations of himself being shot while wearing the armor then shooting bowling pins to prove someone wearing the armor would still be capable of fighting after being shot. He also took out an ad offering a free gun to anyone who was shot while wearing his armor and who managed to kill his assailant afterward. The Federal government did not think offering guns for killing people was okay so this offer was rescinded and he was left with a bunch of guns. He decided to start a competition and offer the guns as prizes. Until this point, most shooting competition had no awards. This was a game changer because people really started to be motivated to win. After all, a competitor could enter several classes of the competition and come away with multiple guns…which he could then trade for more ammo.
Suddenly, people were designing guns just to win this pin competition. They moved the gas port and created guns with a non-reciprocating sight. This led to the evolution of the isosceles stance because people could watch their front sight.
Jeff Cooper was watching what was going on and started to make up derogatory terms for the pin guns and say that a shooter could get away with an isosceles stance rather than Weaver, only because they were shooting ‘girly guns’. Cooper created the terminology around shooters, referring to the people who competed as ‘gamesman’ and the real shooters who used Weaver-stance and a .45 ACP as the “martial artists”. The only problem was that by the late 1980’s the “martial artists” started to get upset that they were getting the asses kicked at every competition. At this point, IPSC created the Limited class to try and allow the ‘martial artists’ a chance, whereas the Unlimited class was open to everyone. The only problem was the first winner of the Limited class, Jerry Burkhardt, also won the Unlimited class. This was “proof” to the martial artists that IPSC was “rotten to the core” and they founded IDPA. The first year Rob Laetham won. Coincidentally, he also won the IPSC competition that year. So, IDPA started asking the IPSC winners not to come to their competitions.
When that didn’t work, they scheduled them the same weekend to make it impossible for someone to attend both.
What you notice about a top level shooter is what he does differently. It’s easy to think that’s the reason for his success. In fact, it’s more likely that’s the thing to which he has some weird emotional attachment and is what is holding him back from being even better. Look for the sameness of those who win.
Stance
- Stance is a terrible word for what we do, because stance is “a static representation of a dynamic process.”
- Even if you’re in your stance, you should be in “motion”. You’re not literally moving, but every muscle in the body is headed to “kill that guy”.
- If you’re in stasis, the muscles flex differently and the gun goes all over the place.
- You’re not literally moving, but every muscle in the body is headed to “kill that guy”.
- Project forward toward the target so it almost feels that after a shot you would fall forward. You should not literally fall forward with a handgun, though. With a sub gun, maybe.
- It should feel like every part of your anatomy is over the preceding part, even if it’s not literally true
- It should feel as though the knees are over the feet, the belt buckle is over the knees, the chest is over the knees, and so on.
- Your chin should be out and your fact flat toward the target.
- When you drop you head or look aside, you put yourself in an emotionally submissive state.
- Don’t think about leaning forward, focus more on dropping down.
- A ballerina explained it to Greg about an exercise called “touching toes to the wall” when they’re stretching, where they imagine touching their toes to the furthest wall away. When she started going this her group went from quite large to very small. Use this same imaginary. In stance, imagine touching the target with your front sight to help you properly project.
- A “pure shooting stance” has both feet pointed at the target and nearly in line with each other. The more one drops one foot back the more mobile to the rear and to the sides you become, but it will make it a little more difficult to be accurate shot to shot.
- Strive to experience a “pure shooting stance” then “pull back” for defensive purposes.
- Having a very slightly pigeon-toed stance is almost ideal as it provides a focus and intent that doesn’t allow error.
- Have your weight on the balls of your feet, though keep your heels are still on the round.
- Because one hand is in front of the other it’s not possible to have perfect symmetry.
- We need the forces from the gun to propagate equally through both sides of the body, not to make one side of the body a mirror image of the other.
- Ideally, we should achieve a “neutrality of stance” so that when you’re not doing anything your gun will end up pointed at the target. At 10 yards you should be making IPSC A-zone hits using only your stance. It should be neutral and symmetrical.
All of this may make it sound as if you’re tense. That’s not the point. You should only use the muscles that take the gun to the target. Nothing more. For example, your bicep bends your arm. You don’t need it to point your gun to the target. When in doubt, err towards being too relaxed rather than too much tension. Greg mentioned that if you’re tired after the three days of class you are doing it wrong. Think of a skiing. The first time you did it you were probably exhausted after just a few hours. You are using tons of muscles that you don’t actually need. Once you become good, you can ski the entire day without becoming tired. Shooting should be the same.
Another thing Greg noted, was that human beings are “designed to kick ass.” Our eyes face forward . We are predators. Almost everything about shooting is wired into our genetics, the only thing that is not is the need to focus on the front sight rather than the target (A red-dot curse this to some extent because it allows us to focus on the target). As for the rest, use this hard wiring. Square your shoulders and pelvis at the enemy. Don’t think about shooting. Envision having a cinder block and thinking “I’m going to run at you, sit on you, and smash your head in.”
Coordinates and Index
- If the gun comes up to the same coordinates every time, you can coordinate your trigger press on the assumption and experience that the gun will be on target.
- It is difficult to orient yourself in multiple planes simultaneously and end up at the same point every time. So, rather than relying on coordinates, we should use an index
- An index allows repeatability without having to orient in space.
- To reduce the need for coordinates we do things like make sure are arms are straight, our head is always centered and neutral, our hips are aligned, and so on.
- During recoil, try to limit movement to your wrists. If you let your arms move, you will have difficulty coming back to the same place each time.
Grip
Just as symmetry, neutrality, and consistency are important parts of stance, they are also important parts of your grip.
- Create a “neutral and symmetrical platform around the gun”
- Your grip only needs to be strong enough to ensure the gun doesn’t move around in your grip, you don’t need to crush the gun.
- Think about how tightly you would hold a power tool if you’re going to do work for a length of time or a “good” handshake. That’s about how tightly you should be gripping.
- Ensure that the soft tissue of your hand is compressed to help achieve consistency.
- The heel of your dominant hand should “bite” into the gun, otherwise the gun has room to wiggle. There should not be any space between the two.
- Project both thumbs forward, this helps to clam the hands together to create stability.
- The dominant hand (your trigger hand) only applies front to back pressure.
- The non-dominant hand only gives side pressure.
- The non-dominant hand has to work harder because it’s gripping a wider area (it’s wrapped around your dominant hand as well as the gun) and is further outside its natural strength band. All your “mental” effort should be focused on your non-dominant hand.
- Squeeze more with the non-dominant hand. If you squeeze too much with the dominant hand while pulling the trigger you’ll end up low-left.
- Have a continuous line of contact between your two hands. Anything else is not repeatable
- Your middle finger should be jammed up under the trigger guard.
- This provides a “shelf” to counteract a crappy trigger press, if you somehow allow it to occur
- If you’re using a Glock, sand down the center line so this doesn’t not cause discomfort
- You only need two hands for speed. You can be just as accurate with one hand.
- You’ll never learn a good trigger press with two hands, because it masks errors.
Sight Picture and Sight Alignment
The SECRET to shooting is this: have your sights on the target when the bullet leaves the gun. That’s it. Index, stance, and grip just help to achieve this one thing and to do it quickly.
- ALL misses are sighting errors. The question is what caused your sighting error (i.e. a crappy trigger press)
- No matter what your issue, always focus on the light bars on the sides of your front sight and the horizontal alignment of your sights and it will help you fix your problem
- You will rarely have a “perfect” sight picture, but you ALWAYS need an acceptable sight picture.
- What is ‘acceptable’ will vary with the distance at which you are shooting.
- You should focus on the front sight because it is in the middle of the target and the rear sight and still allows you to have a blurry view of the rear sight AND the target
- It’s common for people to use an intermediate focus somewhere between the front sight and the target rather than focusing on the front sight
- This works well at 7 yards. It can work at 10 years if you work REALLY hard
- Greg found this common with those in Special Operations because they did a lot of CQB
- Don’t pick an ‘aiming point’ on your target. In real life, someone will be moving all around and it will be difficult to follow a point. Instead pick a “plumb line” with equal stuff on both sides.
- Picking a plumb line allows you to focus on your front sight rather than the target
- You head should stay in a predatory position: lowered, chin out, and flat to the target
- Raise the gun to your eye, don’t lower your head to the gun
- Don’t cam your head to one side
- Only ever mount a gun on someone you intend to shoot. If you are holding someone at ‘gunpoint’, talk to them from the ready position.
- Ideally, there would be no dots, etc on your sights, because you will end up focusing on the dots rather than the horizontal alignment and light bars.
- For example, a tritium insert will help you do things at night you can’t do with normal sights but it WILL decrease your ability during day shooting
- Having a perfect sight picture before the trigger is prepped is a waste of effort and energy.
- Have a perfect sight picture only while the hammer is falling
- One of the best things you can do is place the front sight up against a plain white wall. The ONLY thing you can look at is the front sight. There is nothing else “downrange” to distract you.
Trigger Press
- Don’t use the pad of your finger, use the joint.
- For anything other than something with a short trigger (i.e. 1911) your finger will start camming as it presses inward
- Using the pad of your finger will also increase the trigger press because it adds side pressure increasing the friction
- When you use the joint, your finger will roll across the trigger. For this to work, you need a flat trigger face.
- If you have a G19, replace the trigger with one from a G17
- Using the pad of your finger also creates a back and forth movement with a distinct starting and stopping point.
- This means you are accelerating and decelerating which is difficult to keep smooth shot to shot
- It will often cause people to slap trigger or compress overtravel
- One great tool for learning trigger press is to have a double action only revolver
- Greg recommends a S&W 617 with a 4” barrel. You may need to have the trigger polished so it’s smooth
- You can focus on your sight picture because there is no reciprocating slide
- You can practice a smooth, circular trigger press
- “Learning to be a great shooter requires mastering a double action trigger”
- "Every trigger has a match trigger at the end of all the bullshit.”
- Recoil and reset should occur during recoil.
- This allows you to use the time you save to purchase speed OR accuracy
The Draw
- The ready position
- Your arms should be slightly under your pectorals
- You should not have the barrel out farther than your face. This is so if you pie corners, etc it does not show.
- The ready position is the highest the gun can be while having a fully established grip.
- It’s common when people are trying to be quick that they establish their grip too far out. The problem with this is that you have less time to fix any grip issues as the gun comes out.
- If you’re using your opposite eye, the gun comes across the body slightly during the mount. DON’T move your head
- Strive to use a “handrail” during the mount. Use the natural binding points of your muscles and joints to help foster consistency.
- Push the gun up until your shoulders come up and your grip has to change, then you can start coming out
- It only works if you don’t let your wrists move, the gun remains parallel to the ground, and the shoulders aren’t allowed to rise.
- Do not extend your elbows completely.
- Having the arms fully extended is a prey behavior. Thing of someone with their hands outstretched begging. It triggers this in your primal mind.
- Having your arms fully extended also causes the recoil to jerk you around more rather than letting your body channel the energy into the ground
- We don’t move at “fear speed”, we move at predator speed. You shouldn’t strive to be quick, strive instead to do the least possible.
- Move at full speed from the ready, then coast into position
- The instant you leave the ready, start prepping the trigger.
- One of the few uses of a laser is to learn to stay on target during the mount
- Roll your elbows slightly out to help neutralize the whipping of your elbows. This moves the joint offline of the recoil forces of the gun.
- Push out with the heal of your hand, not the web. Pushing out from the web of your hand will make the gun dip as it comes to extension.
Mental Aspects
- Most of us operate on what the military terms a ‘go/no go’ mindset. The problem is we set our ‘go’ standard at 100%, so our minimum acceptable standard is perfection
- This means we have no congratulatory phase. Perfection is just not failing, that’s nothing to congratulate ourselves for
- This means you have not set a realistic expectation for success for where you are
- Ignore failure and congratulate success
- The best way to own failure is to laugh at it.
- Being embarrassed will cause you to fail. Ignore what others are doing around you or what they might think of you.
- Even if you’re not happy with your performance, pretend that you are. Don’t let yourself become negative.
- If you get a great shot, literally reach a hand over your shoulder and pat yourself on the back.
- It might make you feel silly or self-conscious, but that will create emotional content helping you to remember what you did.
- Greg comes from the Rangers and SF who use negative reinforcement model . Greg was very successful in this world. For example, he finished a 26 mile march with a 75lb ruck 45 minutes ahead of the next closest person during SF selection. He’s more successful being happy.
- A good book on this is Don’t Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor
- If you make a mistake, replace the error in your mind with what you should be doing to be successful. Negative language does not work.
- Eliminate all ritualistic behavior when you shoot. It may be that you always kick out the brass under your feet, you always take the same lane at the firing range.
- These are behaviors that help put you in the “zone”. The problem is a gun fight can’t wait for your pre-gunfight routine to occur.
- Cultivate psychological discomfort.
- Practice through mistakes, rather than stopping and restarting
Shooting on the move
- We probably didn’t plan on shooting. We started moving and shooting happened along the way.
- Lift your toes as if you’re on uneven terrain and roll on your feet to help keep your upper body stable.
- Always ensure your toes are pointing in the direction you’re moving.
Misc
- The target is merely external confirmation of what was going on at the gone. It does not mean you shot well. Perfect shooting takes place at the front sight.
- Greg has a lot of “fun” guns. But he has 2-3 of every serious gun
- John Farnam says you need a second gun, so you have one while cleaning the first. “You can’t make an appointment for an emergency”
- John Farnam advocates having two different lots of ammunition in your first and second magazine. What if one lot is bad?
- The one time you will need a gun is after you shot someone and the police have confiscated it. That gang-banger you shot? He might have friends. Have a broken in gun in someone else’s safe.
- Practice for speed OR accuracy. Don’t try to do both.
- Shoot at the speed where 90% of your shots are hits, otherwise sloooow down.
- When something feels fast, what your feeling is excess motion. When it feels like you didn’t do anything, that will usually be your fastest time because you’re doing only what is necessary.
- All there is to shooting can be done via some combination of the following:
- Group
- 2-on-1
- 1-on-2
- Ready
- Draw
- Speed reload
- Tactical reload
- Immediate action
- Remedial action
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Intensive Handgun took my shooting skills to a different level, and I'd love to take it again with John sometime in the future to get the best both instructors has to offer.
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