Originally Posted by
26 Inf
We always advocated transitioning to the left hand for corners where you are turning right and when shooting around the left side of cover.
I'm a firm believer in this. That being said, unless you are willing to put in the dry time to smooth your transition out and then devote sufficient reps to ensure it is second nature, you may be better off focusing on rolling the pistol to the left in your strong hand grip.
The reason I say this is because in viewing officers under stress in force on force training it became clear to me that our program did not give officer enough reps to make transitioning second nature.
If you want to learn to transition:
Hold your pistol in your normal shooting grip on target. Take a moment and actually think about where the web of your hand hits the back strap, how the grip feels/touches your trigger finger, where your strong hand fingers wrap around the grip, where your thumb goes, etc. Do the same thing with your support hand, where is the heel of your support hand contacting the grip and the heel of the strong hand, how are your fingers interlaced onto your strong fingers, where is your support side thumb, etc.
This sounds rudimentary, but you'd be surprised how many shooters have never taken the time to look and then take a moment with their eyes closed and focus on what their grip FEELS and LOOKS like. This is important because our goal is to create a mirror/negative image of that grip when we transition.
Now, transitioning quick and dirty - go slow, accentuating each step:
1) Take your support hand completely away from the weapon - wave to the crowd with your support hand (this is important in learning a sure, fluid, transition - the support hand completely releases from the weapon);
2) Relax your strong grip on the weapon enough to let the muzzle depress - this creates a gap between the beavertail of the backstrap and your strong hand;
3) Slide your support hand over your strong hand and release the strong hand's grip on the weapon, establish the master grip with your support hand as you wave to the crowd with the strong hand (once again, this is important in learning a sure, fluid, transition - the strong hand completely releases from the weapon;
4) Quite waving with the strong hand and grip the pistol - the strong hand is now the support hand;
5) Take a moment and check your grip - does it look and feel like a mirror image of your strong side grip - it should.
6) Slowly take the same steps as you transition back.
The wave to the crowd thing is designed to get chuckles and in doing so reinforce that the hands have to come completely away from the grip during the transition. Play along with the silliness until you are familiar with the technique, then begin keeping your hands closer to the pistol as you do this.
As you gain proficiency it will seem that you are tossing the pistol from one hand to the other, but you aren't - if you practice, as I've instructed, you will find that both hands, in sequence, completely release from the pistol, and at no point is the pistol not gripped with at least one hand.
I think and even more critical skill is being able to use your support hand only. This includes practicing picking the pistol up and achieving a shooting grip from the ground. In our imagined scenarios we always somehow end up with the pistol in our support hand. If you take a round through your wrist or up your forearm (Edwin Mirales - FBI Shootout in Miami) you will likely drop the gun.
Rogers Shooting School tests are about 50% one hand, a good percentage of those tests are support hand only.
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