One-handed shooting is where your pistol’s grip, your grip, trigger work, and recoil control all come together. Your pistol’s grip needs to fit you well if you are going to do the best trigger work, but it also needs to help you control recoil. With two hands on the gun, you have a fairly forgiving setup, but with only one hand on the gun, there is less room for error.
A Gen 5 Glock with no backstraps fits me well enough for trigger control as well as two handed recoil control. I can make it work with one hand, but the gun is really too big to be ideal. An HK P30L with a small backstrap and small side panels fits me better when only one hand is on it, so I can control recoil better with that gun. A 5″ Match PDP just showed up, and though I have not shot it yet, it seems to fit me even a hair better than the HK. I have high hopes for it.
When looking at fit, especially for one hand, I like to see as much of the rear of the pistol’s grip covered by my hand as possible. On the Glock, the lower left portion of the backstrap is exposed, as you can see in the pictures below.
On the HK, less is exposed, and maybe a hair less still on the PDP.
This allows more of my mass to be behind the gun in recoil, which helps control the gun in recoil better. It will still move to the support side in recoil since there is no hand there to stop it, but by curling my thumb down on the grip panel, rather than leaving it up as I do when shooting two-handed, I can mitigate that to some extent. If I further improve the situation by getting my body mass behind the gun and keeping my elbow down and behind the gun, rather than letting it drift out to the side, I can keep the gun tracking pretty straight up and down.
This not only improves my recoil control but with a red dot on the gun, allows me to return the dot to the target much more consistently. It is relatively easy to get fast confirmed hits (reactive), and it is really the only way of shooting one-handed that I have found that allows me to shoot predictively. Any deviation from straight up and down makes that more difficult.
The hand gripping the gun needs to grip harder than it would with two hands on the gun. This not only allows for a more stable platform but acts as a hedge against bad trigger work or anticipation. If you have not tried this, give it a shot. There is more to shooting well one-handed than this, but what I have laid out will go a long way to helping you make the hits.
SLG, good info! Thanks. I’m going to try the thumb down way. It does seem more solid dry.
Let me know what you think.
I learned to grip strong hand first on the firearm and then to wrap my support hand over top, so I have always had my strong hand thumb positioned low, with my support thumb over top, and being old we didn’t know you were supposed to shoot with two hands until the 80’s lol
I hear you! Most of us today like to shoot with the thumbs up off the grip and pointed down the barrel, more or less. Works great with two hands, but curling the thumb down definitely works better for some when shooting with one hand.
Good stuff, sir, and I’ll second your recommendation for moving the thumb down towards the middle finger. My epiphany cams years ago @ Rogers Shooting School. One of his tests on moving steel targets involves support hand only shooting. It vexed me until I had a surgeon at the class explain to me that moving the thumb down helped with stern and trigger work. Tried it-voila!
Been working on it since with some success.
I’ve also over the past couple of years gotten away from canting the pistol inboard. Someone said that if one is used to seeing the sight vertical( or dot housing), trying to replicate that is helpful. It’s helped me on quals. Bullseye shooters generally don’t can’t, so maybe something there.
One handed, either hand, helps with two hands.
Keep up the good work!
Good stuff Chris. I too keep my pistol vertical and find it especially helpful with one handed RDS stuff.
Today I practiced the one handed stage of the IDPA 5×5 using your recommendations. Not keeping my thumb up will take more practice, but keeping the gun vertical was immediately beneficial. Thanks for the advice.
Great to hear! The thumb is helpful for some, not so helpful for others, so give it a shot but don’t worry if you prefer your old grip.
SLG, wanted to give you an update. Thumb down and gun straight made a real difference in my one handed shooting. Tremors are still there but seem less pronounced. They seem to track up and down more as well. Trigger press seems more straight back as well. Anyhow, thanks for the tips and they were helpful. Maybe useful for some other older folks. As an aside, I tried the Glock performance trigger and it really worked for me. I have trouble even with a good 1911 trigger, but the constant increase with no wall on the Glock is great. FWIW, DVC
That’s great to hear, thanks for letting me know! It will only improve with more practice.