Training to Shoot with weak Hand

The only way is to practice. Do exactly what you do when you practice strong-hand only but in mirror image.

You might get one of those hand squeezer things and work up your grip strength, but I suspect the issue is more mental than physical for most shooters.

Walker, Last year I went to our state IDPA match. There were 15 stages and many had some requirement for weak hand only shots, I discovered that if I ever have to use only my left paw in a real defensive incident, I am in big big trouble. So I started making it a point to work on it, a lot, each practice session. I'm no Clint Smith or Jeff Cooper, but heres a couple things I have figured out so far. As with anything you do with your weak hand it will feel clumsey. Of course most of us are not as acurate shooting one handed with our strong had either so youve got that working against you too. I can play a guitar using my left hand to quickly change cords and toggle the strings up and down the neck, so I know my left hand works. You are just not used to it, but you can get used to it. The first thing I noticed was that I did not automaticaly get a good firm grip on the gun like I have trained to do with my right hand. So, remind yourself, high, firm grip, finger along the slide. Look at how you hold it with your strong hand and try to mirror that. I also noticed I was holding my head in a very unnatural position trying to get my right eye to line up with the sights. So I canted the pistol to the right a little. Not "gangster style" just enough to line up with my good eye. I also found that shooting right handed, strong side around the left side of a barrier with an RO standing ready to ding me for not using cover well enough, left me twisted like a pretzel and very unbalanced. So I work on shooting two handed, weak side as well. Once again mirror the position of your hands strong side, firm grip, and press. This too has helped improve my accuracy weak side, single handed. And lots of weak hand, dry fire. Keep working on it as will I. I can see a very distinct advantage to be equally skilled using either hand. I was on a bowling leauge once when our best bowler broke his right hand two weeks into the season. He started to bowl with his left hand and two weeks later he was our teams best bowler again. Good luck

I was injured in 1995 and lost the use of my strong hand for six months, and going unarmed just wasn't going to happen.

I practiced like the two previous gents mentioned, and I can tell you it is simply to start from scratch, start slow, treat your weak hand as you would any beginner student.

Get accurate first, fast second, dry fire practice will save you tons of ammo.

Attach a laser to your pistol, and use it to watch the dot on a target at 5 yards as you dry fire practice, keep at it until you can get a clean trigger break where the laser never wanders off target.

I am now happy to say, I am a completely ambidextrous shooter.

I wouldn't recommend the six months in a sling tho

Start writing (not when it counts) with your weak hand, it will teach you control of your smaller muscles, type with only your weak hand.

The most common complaint always seems to be "I can't do that." when I introduce someone to weak hand one handed shooting, and they are right, it is just practice, you can walk with both feet, you can shoot with both hands.

Start with a revolver if possible. The casings can be quite distracting on a semi...

The late Paul Gomez has a couple of good videos in his series on YouTube about opposite hand shooting.
I just found out about him, what a loss.
I recommend all of his videos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Gomez8136

Dave

Once you get it down, you can do this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv0mm81qeig

I shoot that way alot, mostly on focused shots. Using the same technique on my friends glock made me then discover i could make it jam. Made me not like the glock so much, because it felt i could jam it at will.

If you don't shoot a Glock with a locked elbow it will usually stovepipe.

Dry fire, dry fire, dry fire, and dry fire some more. A very fun activity is to get the gear to take an intro class with your weak hand. Shoo the entire class wrong handed, it's actually a lot of fun.

-Jenrick

As the others have said, lots of practice is needed.
Not only firing the weapon but everything related to the activity of shooting ie. drawing, cocking, shooting, mag changes etc. using your weak hand only. There are specific techniques which I am sure you can find online.

I shot IPSC for many years where in many of the stages weak hand only was required so we practiced this.

In recent years my strong hand was injured when one of a number of BG's opened fire.
Still managed to lay down some fire with the wrecked hand but then transfered to weak hand to continue the fight. Fortunately the BG's decided to leave.

With months in a cast, what then followed was intensive forced weak hand only training involving belt cocking, crook of knee mag changes etc. etc.

Good luck with training and hope you never have to use it in real life.

In 2008, I had surgery on both hands(left first, then 3 months later, the right).
Knowing my right hand was going to be incapacitated for about 6 weeks, I started practicing lefty before the left hand surgery. As soon as the left hand was recovered enough, I took up practice again to tune up before the right hand surgery. I won't say I was as good lefty as righty but using a suitable pistol and a good holster, I was definately NOT w/o proper defense. After carrying lefty for 2 months, I was fairly confident in my ability to go with either hand.

I have a couple of gobs of "Power Putty" that I use to help keep the strength up in my weak hand. It is like "Silly Putty" but comes in a larger batch and in different weights, is stainless, can be kept right by my chair in the office or the den and is helping my old hands stay toned for weak hand shooting, though I'll never be as accurate as I am with my good hand.

For you who wear corrective lens, have you ever tried shooting without them? With non corrective safety glasses of course.

I know people who shoot better 'weak handed' because they take a lot more care in what they're doing, whereas they've gotten complacent when shooting strong hand

IDPA match had weak hand shooting yesterday. I hadn't shot weak hand in a long time. Definitely a good skill to train on.

Suppose the fundamentals remain the same. Just practice.

When I started Cowboy action shooting

I figured all cowboys shot with a gun in each hand if they had two. I could never master "Gunfighter" but I got very good shooting with my left hand as well as my right. When I started getting back into modern guns more seriously I started training with both hands. In fact, If I can't buy two of the same gun at once I generally end up with a pair in the future. I prefer 1911's and Glocks and have several of each, so it is not uncommon to see me witha gun in in each hand or switching to the weak hand.

I found shooting with my weak hand improved my shooting with my strong hand. The brain is a pretty interesting device.

One should learn to do everything necessary one handed, with either hand. It added to my confidence.

To shoot weak handed, you need to work on three different areas. Mechanical skill, manual dexterity, and grip strength.

Mechanical skill is the only area that needs to be practiced using the gun. Your brain and your strong hand both know how to grip the gun, control the trigger, and operate the other controls, but your weak hand does not. Like the above poster said, treat it like any other beginning student. Build a consistent grip, then work on trigger control, and finally add in the other aspects of gun handling, working from leather, reloading, clearing jams, etc.

Manual dexterity and grip strength can both be worked on without the gun. Try using your weak hand for everyday activities, like brushing your teeth. Pretty soon, you'll find yourself with a useful hand. For grip strength, I'd suggest one of the grippers with separate buttons for the individual fingers. That will help you avoid a problem I had, which was that although my thumb, index, and middle fingers were decently functional, the ring and pinkie fingers were not. That left me essentially trying to grip the gun with one finger, which works about as well as you'd imagine.

This might seem like a waste of time and effort now, but believe me, it's not. Thanks to cowboy action, I went through all this some time ago, but it's paying dividends now. Just last week, I lost an argument with a machine, and in the process lost the tips of my trigger and middle fingers on my strong hand. Fortunately, I already had a useful left hand.

Oh, one more thought. I would think carefully before deciding to cant the gun, to get it in front of your dominant eye, as some have suggested. It probably won't hurt you much at point blank range, where most defensive type pistol shooting is done, but it will be a serious handicap if you ever find yourself trying to work out in adjustable sight territory, as the sights will suddenly be working n an X pattern, rather than a +. Getting extra elevation would therefore require adjusting both screws. This would also mean you'd need a radically different adjustment for each hand, as well as just being a pain.