We are two-handed creatures that aren’t afflicted by the curse of the T-Rex. When it comes to shooting, we want to use as much of our body as possible to aim, stabilize, and control the gun. That’s why we shoot with two hands most of the time. In a perfect world, we’d only ever shoot with two hands, but that’s not our reality. Sometimes, you only get one hand, and we have to make that work.
Today, we are going to discuss how to shoot handguns with one hand, specifically a few tips to make it easier. It’s not all that unlikely that you’ll find yourself shooting with a single hand in the real world. The other hand may be occupied by a child, an obstacle, or even an attacker. We should work to prepare for that reality and be ready to engage with one hand when necessary.
One-handed shooting is not easy—in fact, it’s downright difficult. Many people avoid shooting with a single hand to spare their egos. One universal truth you’ll have to face is that your times will increase, your accuracy will decrease, and your overall performance will take a nose dive.
The only way to turn a nose dive into a dip is to get out there and practice shooting with a single hand. Let’s look at four things you can practice to get a bit better at shooting with one hand.
Secure Your Useless Hand
When shooting with a single hand, you want to do whatever you can to isolate your useless, nonshooting arm and hand. Shooting with one hand puts your body off its natural balance. It’s rare that we use one hand to do anything other than operate a microwave or TV remote.
When shooting, you want to keep your non-firing hand isolated and preferably tight to the body. Optimistically, you want to pull it up and into your chest. In a competition or training environment, that’s easy; in a defensive event where that hand is doing something else, it gets a bit trickier.
If at all possible, do what you can to secure that arm. Keep it from pulling your weight off center in any way. Keep it from swaying and moving, which could accentuate recoil. You’re already dealing with a lot of recoil when shooting with one hand, so preventing any extra can go a long way.
Thumb To The Sky
As you extend your arm outward to shoot with one hand, it will naturally want to cant inward. I prefer to avoid this when possible. A little cant is natural, but we don’t want the hand to continue to cant between shots. This comes down to recoil control and follow-up shots.
When you shoot with two hands, your gun typically recoils backward with muzzle rise guiding it up and often slightly toward your dominant hand. If you allow your hand to cant, you run into two problems. First, the recoil impulse will differ from what you’re used to and trained to.
This means the good habits you’ve built while training with two hands are out the window. Your recoil impulse will be completely different and slow down your ability to land fast follow-up shots.
The second problem is that as your hand continues to cant, your sights will never be in the same place. We want consistency, and we turn to your thumb to get that consistency. What you want to do is stick your thumb upward a bit.
Pushing the thumb slightly upward will help produce cant. Some cant will still occur, and that’s just natural. However, it will be consistent and allow you to find those sights shot after shot. Make sure that when you give your gun the thumbs up not overexaggerate it.
You still want the thumb wrapped mostly around the grip to maximize control. Just push it up a bit to prevent the cant from becoming a problem.
Change Up Your Stance
When you move from shooting with two hands to shooting with one hand, you change your upper body stance quite a bit. Why wouldn’t you change your lower body stance? When shooting with one hand, it doesn’t make sense to shoot with the same lower body stance.
When I shoot with a single hand, my leg follows my hand. If I shoot with just my right hand, I push my right leg forward, and the weight of my stance will reside on that right leg. If I shoot with just my left hand, my left leg moves forward.
Pushing the weight forward gives you a solid stance and helps keep the gun from pushing your upper body around. It feels a little different, but it’s quite comfortable. You’ll see a major difference in control compared to shooting in a more standard position.
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Watch Your Grip
When shooting with a single hand, I see a problem repeated over and over. To be clear, I see this problem with myself, too. It’s the act of releasing the pressure of your grip after you pull the trigger. It’s a sympathetic movement, which creates some compounding problems. Namely, grip is what helps you shoot accurately.
Loosening and tightening your grip repeatedly will result in poor accuracy and terrible overall control. This means your shooting will be extremely poor. You need to focus on keeping that grip as you release the trigger and keeping your pressure as consistent as possible.
One Hand Dominance
Shooting with a single hand is far from easy. Take the tips above and work them into your training, especially for your dry fire. Dry fire is where you have the time to experiment and focus on the basics slowly and consistently. Make a mental checklist and work your way through it.
Remember, the first step to getting better at anything is sucking at it. You’ll suck at one-hand shooting, but your skills will quickly develop and build as you practice and learn.
About Travis Pike
Travis Pike is a former Marine Machine Gunner, a lifelong firearms enthusiast, and now a regular guy who likes to shoot, write, and find ways to combine the two. He holds an NRA certification as a Basic Pistol Instructor and is the world’s Okayest firearm’s instructor.
Friend of mine broke his right wrist and was concerned he wouldn’t be able to protect himself nor his family due to his injury. He bought an airsoft pistol and began practicing with it and when he got better at using his left hand, transitioned to a .22 and progressed up to shooting his .45 ACP. He shoots weak hand all of the time now when practicing.
We used to teach angling the handgun slightly towards the center on your body. In other words if your right handed tilt the sights to the left. It helps with recoil and follow up shots. I’m not sure if that’s still taught anymore.
Hey Travis, any article of yours I come across I read I think that you are a naturally gifted writer plus you always have content that I’m interested in Stay safe and keep up the good work John
Go shoot a couple of bullseye matches. Now called “precision pistol” for some goofy reason. Slow fire at fifty yards, and the gift of sustained fire at 25 yards, all one handed.
Thumb straight up is NOT the way to go. You just surrendered the benefit of opposable thumbs, and lost the power and control that your thumb provides when pressed against the grip just under the slide.
i have been practicing shooting from the hip a lot lately, am getting pretty good at it, i get almost all of my hits at 15 feet, i agree with most of what you said except the thumb straight up, it’s a distraction