7 Firearm Fundamentals: STANCE & GRIP

JR, DY, Trav, and Connolls

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April 15, 2025, 4:05PM

In this episode, we dive into the core fundamentals of firearm training, focusing on stance, grip, and techniques to improve recoil control. Whether you’re a first-time gun owner or an experienced shooter, these insights from Wilco Tactical Training can help you refine your shooting skills.

Key Takeaways:

• Proper stance is crucial for recoil management and fast follow-up shots.

• The thumbs-forward grip is recommended for better recoil control and faster target acquisition.

• Flexibility in stance and grip is encouraged for beginners to help them feel comfortable.

Marshall Collins started transcription

Marshall Collins 0:05 Alright, there we go. Looks like we are live. Get this out of here and thankful for everyone to be able to hop on for discussion #2. Discussion number one is up on Spotify. If you haven't seen that episode, please give it a listen. Let us know what you think down in the comments if you've got the time for that.

We are joined today by one of our senior instructors, Nathan Connolly. Happy to have him and his perspective here with us today. We left off with the last discussion as we were talking about the frequently asked question that Wilco received, “Should a first-time gun owner / first-time shooter enroll in Wilco tactical training?” The answer is absolutely yes. We have something for those participants as well as the intermediate and professional participants. Again, we left that discussion wanting to get into what are these standards, the Wilco standards that we harped on in the first discussion.

To get into those standards, it is necessary for us to dive into the seven firearm fundamentals.

Connolls 1:33 Yes.

Marshall Collins 1:37 We need to label or list the seven firearm fundamentals and then give our two cents about each one of the seven firearm fundamentals around the room. So in the interest of keeping the discussion to a 15-20 minute maximum, we're gonna break it up and we will start today only highlighting one and two of the seven firearm fundamentals: STANCE and GRIP. So stance and grip will be the topic of discussion today. Whenever we're firing the firearm, we have to maximize all seven of these firearm fundamentals with each trigger press. So let's go ahead and talk about the first firearm fundamental: STANCE. And the first question will go out to DY.

DY 3:10 Yeah, going from Wilco, it's basically a fighting stance or the universal defensive posture, but I'll describe what that means in a minute because I want to highlight an additional topic for first-time shooters.

We recommend first-time shooters to use what we like to teach… our standards, but if there are variations to make them more comfortable so they can focus on the other firearm fundamentals and help them get more comfortable with a firearm, we also allow deviations from our instruction, especially for first-timers.

Marshall Collins 3:48 Certainly.

DY 3:48But the universal defensive posture is basically like a fighting stance. Imagine an orthodox or a southpaw fighting stance, depending on what hand and eye dominance you have. And make it comfortable, make it loose and mobile.

Marshall Collins 4:08Right. Definitely making sure that the participant is comfortable and able to get the rounds out of the firearm. And the deviation from that universal fighting position is 100% approved, and then we'll start tightening up the stance. However, it needs to be tightened up from there. Travis, speaking of deviation, when was the last time that you fired? In this case, your pistol where you weren't even standing up? Can you shed a little light on that stance that you got familiar with?

Travis Greiner 4:58 Yeah. You know, last time we shot the DoD qualifier, right? You shoot one, one of the iterations is from the prone, right? So laying on the ground and kind of like, up on your elbows and kind of figuring out what that kind of looks like on the ground, which still plays a massive factor in the stance fundamentals. Right, because, whether we're on our feet or since our elbows become our feet (in the prone), so that stability that we have to create with our forearms and our wrist to like kind of feel that all throughout your entire body is still there.

Just because you're in the prone, it doesn't go away. Because you're not on Lucy and Ricky down there on your feet.

Marshall Collins 5:53 Right. Yeah. And that was firing the pistol unsupported from the prone for that DoD qualifier. Had you ever done something like that before out on the firing line in some of your other qualification or firearms training?

Travis Greiner 6:12 Like yes and no, right? So there's like, yes, I've done it, but there's no it was like a kind of, “hey, lay down in the prone and figure it out.”

And, you know, that doesn't always yield the best results if you kind of don’t know how to establish yourself on the ground prone unsupported.

Marshall Collins 6:21 Yeah.

Travis Greiner 6:26 Know how to establish yourself on the ground.

Marshall Collins 6:30 Right.

Travis Greiner 6:30 So it was like, yes, I've done it, but did I do it correctly? Absolutely not. Because, you know, there was no instruction on how to best support yourself. Whether you're like, you know, supportive, supported or prone unsupported, there's still like, you know, tips and tricks that you can use to maximize your effectiveness.

Marshall Collins 6:50 Did you get that from Wilco instructors whenever you got to do the DoD qualifier through Wilco?

Travis Greiner 6:57 Oh for sure. Yeah, I think.

Marshall Collins 6:59 Yeah.

Travis Greiner 6:59 You know, I'm 6’4”. I got these long, gangly arms. So the fact that the initial time through the Wilco standard and you know getting the Wilco instructor with me going through the DoD qual to help me in that, in that sense was massive.

Marshall Collins 7:20 Certainly, yeah. And that's kinda… Connolls you're up next, brother. The unorthodox positions where you may find yourself having to engage and having to shoot from it may not always be from a standing position, so stance could almost be renamed to shooting platform or what is your platform that you're gonna be engaging from with regard to your body? Connolls, you know, you've been in some of the more recent times out to the range with special entities and whatnot. What are some of the unique spots that you found yourself engaging from? Where stance was not bipedal or it was not on traditional two feet?

Connolls 8:15 Well, anytime you're talking about shooting around cars, a lot of times. So when you, we've been actually training some, some people, they're calling them basic warrior skills and a lot of these are just your standard jobs, maybe a logistician or finance, but they want to learn basic warfighting fundamentals and we keep it very simple. But to your point, I kind of brought in. You're more than likely not just going to be square to a target standing up like you would on the range to an IPSC target. So yeah, cars could be a concrete block. The whole cover versus concealment is a talk for another day, but some sort of cover. I mean, if someone's not comfortable shooting. And shooting quickly. And engaging fast, engaging as fast as they can. You're gonna find cover just naturally if shooting starts. So yeah, I would say barricades in cars. To your guys point… To you, you brought up a good word, Clark. You said platform, shooting platform, I think. Stance could also be. In another sense, you know your shooting posture. So the good thing that I really like what you guys have started with Wilco is you meet the customer or clients whatever you want to call them, you know, students where they're at and that might be a very rudimentary or non-existent training background which I think is great.

Marshall Collins 9:40 Mm.

Connolls 9:44 A lot of you know with military background shooting or if you want to take guys that are in SWAT emergency response team shooting, you know whatever the case may be, I think the last blog DY mentioned FLETC and having those guys shooting. Understanding why they shoot the way that they do or have a certain stance, and then also understanding, which is a good thing Wilco does. Why people might have some sort of unorthodox stance. You know, we're facing sideways or you got the Weaver stance or you look like an 80s cop and it's lethal weapon now, and you're patiently trying to tell them this is what you might have seen is not the most… it's not the best way that we can do it.

But also understanding, that by solely just explaining to them, “hey, we square up to the target because our plates protect our vital organs”. Well, you might have a teacher that she's a 50-year-old woman. She's like, “I'm not gonna have any plates”. OK. Well, not just the plates, but it also manages recoil.

Marshall Collins 10:43 Yeah.

Connolls 10:46 So that's your posture, right? Whether you’re shooting pistol or shooting rifle, this is the way to manage your recoil for something that is an emotional event and an explosion in your face… controlled of course.

Marshall Collins 10:48 Yeah.

Connolls 10:58 But also yes, you might not have plates, if you're shooting a rifle by squaring up to the target, we can effectively get the stock in that pocket of our shoulder. So giving them things that they know. And reasons why, you know Tier 1 operators all the way down to 82nd Airborne and SWAT guys do it the way or taught the way that they're taught.

I think is a really good thing that Wilco does. And to there's ways to explain different things like DY said, the universal fighting stance. I really like that. But if someone has no idea what fighting is, maybe you say, hey, if you were gonna… did you play softball? And you square up, like you're getting in the batter's box. Your feet were a little wider and shoulder width apart. You braced your core. That's good things that Wilco and the different backgrounds of people. Wilco meets them where they're at.

Marshall Collins 11:47 Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned if somebody has got a different posture that they've been using or a different stance that they've been using, we would never say that something is wrong. We'd never say that. What we would say is, “hey, we've got a lot of past experience between the cadre that are here to demonstrate why this stance may give you more recoil control and may be a little bit more ergonomic with regard to the firearm and controlling that recoil than what you're doing”. For example, The Weaver or the Blade stance or whatever.

Connolls 12:30 Well, and I think to your point with the curriculum and then the I guess…

Connolls 12:38 Course of fire that Wilco offers in the training. You're gonna flesh that out, right? And then you also show videos of. OK, this is a cop from the 80s shooting, and this is a tier 1 operator. “Which fundamentals do you think we teach more closely to?”

They can watch and see, you know.

No one in Wilco is pretending to be a Delta or a Seal Team 6.

Marshall Collins 12:54 Right. NO.

Connolls 13:00 Or a Ranger from Ranger Regiment. But when you see the best to do it and you try to mimic it, and you understand why you're doing it with a curriculum that you're teaching and the course of fire, it'll flush itself out.

Connolls 13:11 So if someone's standing up and they're leaning a little far back, we said, “Hey, aggressive stance” kind of like DY said,

OK. You get the “This is the way I've always done it”. OK. Well, let's do a bunch of rhythm drills… and not just five shots. We're gonna do ten shots now, and now you're starting to lose that recoil control. I think the course of fire that you've established really, really can flesh that out.

Marshall Collins 13:32 Yeah. And that's key because if we do find the participant or the customer or the client say “no, I'm ingrained in doing it this way”. Hey, that's fine. Keep doing it if that's what you would like to do. Let's put it up against the timer. Let's get the shot metrics. Let's get the accuracy data and the time data from this way of doing things versus Wilco way of doing things. And then the numbers speak for themselves. The data speaks for itself, and we've seen that numerous times. We have seen it on the range again and again, not to prove people wrong, but just to demonstrate the numbers speak for themselves.

And when the math of the scenario is surviving, and dominating a deadly force encounter, you are gonna want those numbers to be on your side versus slower and less accurate. You definitely don't want that. You wanna maximize what gives you speed and accuracy during a deadly force encounter. Yeah, I appreciate your perspective. Let's move over to the second firearm fundamental: GRIP. I'm curious to hear about you guys and your initial firearms training with the different agencies or squadrons or departments or wherever that you were at. I, for one, was never taught whenever I got out there to do my first weapon qualification with the pistol. I was never taught grip. And I had seen, like Nate mentioned, the different movies from the 80s and 90s with a teacup grip. I had seen the awkward types of grips and nobody ever told me to mitigate recoil with my grip. I just thought I'm hanging on to the gun, that's all.

Connolls 15:29 No, no one ever told me to watch Heat with Val Kilmer. That's what they never mentioned

Marshall Collins 15:29 So yeah, that's right. Yeah. Nobody ever brought out the TV to watch the famous shootout scene with Val Kilmer highlighting grip.

Conclusion: To summarize, mastering your stance and grip is crucial for maximizing firearm control and accuracy. By focusing on these fundamentals, you can improve your shooting performance and overall confidence with firearms. Ready to take your training to the next level?

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