FUNDAMENTALS OF SHOOTING
STANCE

Stance is one of the critical variables in shooting accurately.  Most of the time shooters who sit and bench-rest their guns are far more accurate than when they attempt to shoot from a standing position. 

When first attempting to shoot at targets, begin from the sitting position to eliminate the standing variable.

Perfect Bench-Rest Position

Sit erect and raise the gun to align with your eye line-of-sight. Don’t bend over to align your sights on the target, and don’t raise the gun too high that you need to bend your head back to align the sights on the target. 

By combining the sitting position with proper grip, breath control, and aiming, you can perfect those variables before you rise up to a standing position. You will have increased confidence when you add the standing position.

Once you have developed accuracy bench-resting your gun, you can assume a standing position. There are really two proper standing positions for civilian shooters, Isosceles and Weaver.

Isosceles comes from the Isosceles triangle you learned about in school. It is a triangle without any right-angles, but two equal sides. If you were to look down upon a shooter with an Isosceles stance it would appear to be a triangle as shown below.

Isosceles Stance

Forming a triangle from shoulders to grip.

In the Isosceles stance the arms are locked out in front of you.  One thing you need to remember is that a two-pound gun in your outstretched arms weighs nearly five pounds at that distance. Like baseball players who swing weighted bats before coming to bat to make the bat feel lighter, you might train with a five-pound hand barbell sitting home watching TV!  It will build up your arm muscles so that when you get to the range your muscle tremors will be less holding your gun!

Using the Isosceles stance obviously puts the gun sights further away from your eye. Depending upon your eyesight, this could be either good or not so good. (We’ll discuss more of this in the section on aiming.)

The other recommended stance is called “Weaver” after the name of the man who invented it, Jack Weaver. It is a much more mobile stance allowing greater freedom of movement. You have undoubtedly seen it on TV, especially in “24”!

Weaver Stance

Keifer Sutherland in “24” above with the perfect Weaver stance! He is completely mobile keeping his gun close to his body. This eliminates, for the most part, any attempt by an adversary to grab the gun away. Imagine going through a doorway using the Isosceles stance with your gun about two feet in front of you? (Also notice that he has both eyes open. We’ll discuss this more in the section on aiming.)

Other presentations of both stances are shown below.

Full Isosceles Triangle Stance with support foot

in front of the firing foot.

Frontal view of Isosceles Stance



Isosceles Stance Grip

(From Burn Notice), frontal view of Weaver Stance

But, not correct grip with support hand!

Another view of the Weaver Stance





Frontal Weaver Stance



Perfect Weaver Stance with support foot

in front of the firing foot


Really bad stance!

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