I’ve been trying to teach my wife to shoot her 20 GA Remington . In the process we’ve made a few discoveries and observations that I’d like to pass along just on the chance it might be useful.
Now, my wife is small. She only stands 5' 2" with short arms, about 8" shorter than mine. Couple that with her large boobage and we ran into problems with getting the gun mounted smoothly. It didn’t seem to matter if we tried to mount from a low carry or port arms. Inevitably the butt pad would catch on the folds of her shirt at the armpit . Obviously she wasn’t getting the clearance needed as the gun came up, so I had her do the mount slowly so I could see what was going on. After several attempts here’s what I found.
1) She was not getting full extension of her right arm (she’s a lefty) as she threw the gun up, hence the lack of clearance.
2) Her left shoulder was hunched forward, also decreasing clearance.
We started to fix this by having her shift her pumping hand back a bit. With her hand out on the slide it was just too far to get good leverage on the upswing, so I moved it back to just behind the slide. A little bit of weight training will strengthen that arm so that eventually her hand can go back on the forearm where it belongs. The hunching shoulder is gonna take awhile to train out of her but we’re working on it.
Once mounted she lets the gun’s muzzle droop towards the ground. I know she doesn’t have anywhere near my upper body strength but this is ridiculous. The gun only goes about 6 pounds fully loaded but you’d think she was trying to lift a concrete block. Hmmmm. So I had her do the mount slowly again as I watched. Ah-HAH! Flying elbows.
No wonder she was having trouble, a simple lack of leverage. With her pumping arm elbow way out to the side what little strength she has was being wasted. Her other elbow was also out there, flapping in the breeze.
I showed her how to tuck those elbows in, putting the gun over the pumping arm, elbow sucked in towards her body, the other one pulled down to her side, tightening up the weld of the butt to her shoulder. Much better! To get her muscle memory trained up we’ll be using an old ‘03 Springfield stock (which just happens to match the Remington stock’s profile) while the weight training continues.
Other than one minor screw up (arching her back instead of leaning into it) she CAN shoot. Our run out to the farm a few days back proved that. Now all I gotta do is get her form sorted out some and I can turn her into a killing machine just like her old man. Quake in fear, small furry animals, she’ll be comin’ for ya soon.
Now, my wife is small. She only stands 5' 2" with short arms, about 8" shorter than mine. Couple that with her large boobage and we ran into problems with getting the gun mounted smoothly. It didn’t seem to matter if we tried to mount from a low carry or port arms. Inevitably the butt pad would catch on the folds of her shirt at the armpit . Obviously she wasn’t getting the clearance needed as the gun came up, so I had her do the mount slowly so I could see what was going on. After several attempts here’s what I found.
1) She was not getting full extension of her right arm (she’s a lefty) as she threw the gun up, hence the lack of clearance.
2) Her left shoulder was hunched forward, also decreasing clearance.
We started to fix this by having her shift her pumping hand back a bit. With her hand out on the slide it was just too far to get good leverage on the upswing, so I moved it back to just behind the slide. A little bit of weight training will strengthen that arm so that eventually her hand can go back on the forearm where it belongs. The hunching shoulder is gonna take awhile to train out of her but we’re working on it.
Once mounted she lets the gun’s muzzle droop towards the ground. I know she doesn’t have anywhere near my upper body strength but this is ridiculous. The gun only goes about 6 pounds fully loaded but you’d think she was trying to lift a concrete block. Hmmmm. So I had her do the mount slowly again as I watched. Ah-HAH! Flying elbows.
No wonder she was having trouble, a simple lack of leverage. With her pumping arm elbow way out to the side what little strength she has was being wasted. Her other elbow was also out there, flapping in the breeze.
I showed her how to tuck those elbows in, putting the gun over the pumping arm, elbow sucked in towards her body, the other one pulled down to her side, tightening up the weld of the butt to her shoulder. Much better! To get her muscle memory trained up we’ll be using an old ‘03 Springfield stock (which just happens to match the Remington stock’s profile) while the weight training continues.
Other than one minor screw up (arching her back instead of leaning into it) she CAN shoot. Our run out to the farm a few days back proved that. Now all I gotta do is get her form sorted out some and I can turn her into a killing machine just like her old man. Quake in fear, small furry animals, she’ll be comin’ for ya soon.
