Most Important Unorthodox Shooting Positions

I wanna talk about the most important unorthodox shooting positions that you should be training in for your defensive use of a handgun. And of course, this might apply to a rifle as well, at least the next two positions would apply to a rifle in a home defense situation. But this first one is really specific to the handgun, and that is the seated position. Now, after you learn how to shoot a natural neutral kind of standing position angles things like that, leaning around cover. What you really need to do is think about how much time you spend in other positions to decide what's reasonable to train and practice. So obviously a lot of people spend time seated. That means they're gonna think about not only sitting on the ground, if you were hiding behind something sitting behind your car maybe you're injured and you can't stand up. Maybe you were giving medical aid to someone you need defend yourself but also very simply sitting in a car or sitting in a chair, sitting on your couch sitting in a restaurant and needing a present your gun from wherever you carry it, and then learn how to shoot. And when important things to remember about the seated position is you may need to lean back in the chair to be able to get the gun out. If you carry appendix, you may need to lean over to the side to get the gun out. If you carry back here behind the hip but when you extend out to shoot you wanna make sure that you get your body weight forward and your shoulders engage. If you don't need to be leaning back for some reason just like when you're standing you should be leaning forward. When you're defending yourself in a seated position leaning forward, whenever you can is really important. Of course, you could also turn the chair. If you wanna simulate the idea that you're in a car and you need to drive out and shoot, this will be one of those situations where the window or the door would prevent you from extending. And that's where you're gonna lean back as much as you can and get that gun into in parallel with your line of sight. Best way to do that, of course, is inside of a car. So seated position, that's the number one unorthodox position. The number two is from down on the ground. So imagine that you get knocked down onto the ground and you're gonna need to drive the gun out either present it from the holster here, or if you're behind the hip, presented from the holster here and drive that gun out. Remember when you're practicing this, you wanna make sure that you're on a range where you're still significantly below the berm. If you get close to the target, you could end up shooting high and going over the berm. So here I've got a target, that's actually pretty far away Remember this is one of the exceptions to our not pointing the muzzle high general guideline we use, we say point the weapon in a generally safe direction, whenever possible. Whereas up over the berm is not a generally safe direction but it's not possible to train from your back realistically without pointing that muzzle up. And that's why we cover this in our advanced type of classes. And of course these are advanced situations that we're talking about not just standing here in front of the target shooting but actually dealing with unorthodox shooting positions and a next unorthodox shooting position I'm gonna talk about is the kneeling position. And particularly if you think about being in like a home defense situation where you're kneeling and you're shooting either over something maybe this could be in the public space over a car or around something. So we're gonna be here in our high compressed, ready, see a threat, drive out. Remember the gun is aligned with my head when I'm leaning. And again, my shoulders are in front of my hips so I get good engagement and I take that shot. Maybe I'm gonna come over to the other side and do the same thing. Lean out, see a target drive out again, take that shot. I come up over, drive out, take that shot. So the unorthodox shooting positions that are important to train start with seated because that's probably the most common position that most people would find themselves in, in the public space drop down on the ground as if you're knocked down and injured and have to fight from the ground. And then of course kneeling particularly if you're kneeling behind cover or concealment don't just train for the most likely situation, train for reasonably plausible situation as well when you're preparing for armed defense.