# Stance and Grip: The Foundation That Decides Every Shot After It

> By Ron, Founder of Tactical Fitness Austin
>  Last updated: June 2026

## TL;DR

Every shooting problem people try to fix downstream, slow follow-ups, low-left misses, the gun climbing off target, usually traces back to two things almost nobody trains seriously: stance and grip. Get them right and the gun moves minimally and the sights come back on their own. Get them wrong and you’re fighting the gun on every shot. Here’s what actually matters, and why.

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## Stance: your base for everything

Your stance is the base for any shooting you do. Its whole job is to let you absorb recoil, stay stable, and move in and out of positions quickly.

The fundamentals are simple, and most people get them slightly wrong:

- Non-dominant foot forward: righties lead with the left foot, lefties with the right
- Feet a little wider than your shoulders
- All ten toes, your hips, and your knees pointed forward, squared up to the target
- Weight leaning onto the balls of your feet
- Knees soft, not locked

That last one matters more than people think. A rigid, locked, leaning-back stance is a car with no shocks. Recoil has nowhere to go but back through your whole body, and you get pushed around shot after shot.

![Two-handed shooting grip and stance on the range at Tactical Fitness Austin](https://tacticalfitnessaustin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/tfa-stance-grip-platform-scaled.jpg)

A squared-up stance and a locked-in two-handed grip, the platform that lets the sights return on their own.

## Grip: the entire point is recoil

Here’s the thing nobody says plainly: the whole purpose of stance and grip is to mitigate recoil. That’s it. You can shoot a pistol very accurately with a sloppy grip, slowly, one shot at a time. You cannot shoot it fast and repeatedly that way. A good grip is what lets the gun move minimally so the sights return to the same place.

**Strong hand.** Grab as high on the backstrap as possible, with no gap between the top of the grip and the web of your hand. Wrap three fingers around, trigger finger straight. How hard? A firm handshake, the grip you’d use to shake someone’s hand and assert a little dominance, right up to (but not past) the point where your hand starts to shake.

**Support hand.** This is where most accuracy quietly dies. The support hand isn’t along for the ride. It does most of the work. Close the gap the strong hand leaves completely: no air, no space. Index it the same way every time so your grip is repeatable, then pull into the gun while the strong hand presses forward. Two hands working against each other is what locks the platform down.

**Elbows.** Don’t lock them. Rigid, locked arms send recoil straight back through your body and push you off target. Soften the elbows and bring them slightly out. That adds tension into the grip and brings the gun up to your eyes. (If you read our piece on recoil management, this is the same principle: structure, not muscle.)

## Why this is the foundation, and where the reps come in

None of this is advanced. It’s the base. But “simple” isn’t “easy,” and you can’t see your own grip and stance breaking down under speed. That takes a coach watching, shot by shot, catching the gap creeping into your support hand or the lock creeping into your elbows before it becomes a habit.

![Ex-special-forces instructor coaching a student's stance at Tactical Fitness Austin](https://tacticalfitnessaustin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/tfa-private-coaching-scaled.jpg)

The corrections you can’t make on yourself, caught and fixed in real time, one rep at a time.

That’s exactly what we build, rep by rep, in Urban Handgun and private training at Tactical Fitness Austin: the full progression from a static, fundamentally sound platform to running it fast under pressure. The principles are above. The reps, the corrections, and the drills that wire them in are the work.

If your accuracy has plateaued or your follow-ups are slow, don’t chase a new trigger or a new optic. Go back to the base.

Watch: The Combat Stance | Tactical Fitness Austin

[Book a private lesson at Tactical Fitness Austin →](https://tacticalfitnessaustin.com/training/firearm-training/)

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the proper shooting stance?

Non-dominant foot forward, feet a little wider than your shoulders, toes, hips, and knees squared to the target, weight on the balls of your feet, and knees soft, not locked. The stance's whole job is to absorb recoil, keep you stable, and let you move in and out of positions quickly.

### Why does grip matter so much in shooting?

Because the entire purpose of stance and grip is to mitigate recoil. A high, firm, gap-free two-hand grip lets the gun move minimally and return to the same spot, so you can shoot fast and accurately. A sloppy grip means re-aiming after every shot.

### Should your elbows be locked when shooting?

No. Locked, rigid arms send recoil straight back through your body and push you off target, like a car with no shocks. Soften the elbows and bring them slightly out; that adds tension to the grip and brings the gun up to your eyes.

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Source: https://tacticalfitnessaustin.com/proper-pistol-stance-and-grip-austin/
Last updated: 2026-07-21