What to Do With Your Feet: Intro

If you can read, you can probably stand, which means you can probably walk, and that is a great start for what we need from our feet in order to become better shooters. The foundation from which we'll develop our movement capabilities will start from our stance, the way we stand while shooting. We need our stance to be stable and allow us to move in any direction with ease.

Feet should be roughly shoulder-width apart as seen in the left image. Your knees should be bent, with your feet slightly staggered as seen in the center image. The red lines indicate your body structure. You need to bend forward at the hips in an aggressive body position, while maintaining an upright head position. You should have a natural bend in the arms bringing the pistol up to your eye line, indicated in green as seen in the right image.

Now that you have an idea of where to put your feet and how to position yourself, we can talk about "Position Exits." Before we can initiate our movement, we need permission from our eyes. We can initiate movement on trigger break, as soon as the gun goes off, or on sight lift, when you see your sights lift off your point of aim. Trigger break will be faster because it is more immediate, but you have to invest the time on the front end to ensure your sights are exactly where you need them when you press the trigger. Sight lift will be slightly slower, but less risky, because you take the time to see your sights lift off the target. I was introduced to this concept at a class with Gateway Defense. Brennan puts out great information. Go check out his stuff.

Typically, it is best to leave a position with your "lead foot." This can be tricky for some folks. I find that it's easier to do this if you shift your body weight onto the lead foot. This way, all you have to do to start moving in that direction is pick your foot up and step. I've made a short video about exits, you can watch it here.

Typically, we are exiting a position so we can enter another one, which sets us up to talk about "Position Entries."

I hope this helps. Have a good one.

Shoot Fast, Don't Miss.