All righty. I've been getting a lot of requests of how do I get rid of the hunch that's in my shoulder and I've been pushing it back to the perfect moment, but perfect moment's not going to come. I just need to knock it out. So here we go. It's not going to be a whole lot of fancy editing tricks or anything like that. We're just going to get right to the facts. And this video is just kind of structured to where you could follow along with it so that way you can get your gun, you can make sure you have your gear, make sure you got a good 10 minutes, and we're going to work through the hitch that people have in their draw the shoulder shrug as I call it. So first off, lemme clear the gun. Here I have a PX four storm. Yes, it does have a barrel block installed, but I'm still going to clear it. I see it clear and I feel it clear that's that decock and holster.
Fantastic. Also, you may notice that I have a little piece of tape here. That tape is really just there to make it blatantly obvious when I'm hunching my shoulder. But even though I've been getting a lot of requests about it, I still need to tell you guys, Hey, why is that a big deal? Why does it matter that I have a shoulder hunch? Doesn't it make me faster on the draw? So typically when I see people with a bad shoulder hunch, what happens is every little bit of motion that they have to come this way, once the gun is out, they got to come back in order for them to line up their sights and get a good grip. And so all that rocking back and forth, as tension builds up, as the tension builds up, it ends up being accentuated. So you're doing a whole lot of rush, try, hurry, and that ends up adding more movement and more attention.
In the short term, all that extra motion isn't really paying any dividends. Your draw isn't getting any faster. In some cases am might even slow it down because there's so much excess movement. So that's in the short term and the long term, it's going to cause injuries. I know guys that have had multiple surgeries in their shoulder and their neck, they had nerves, nerve damage. I don't want that to happen to y'all. I want you to be able to go into your fifties and sixties and still be just as bright as you're wearing in your thirties. That's what I want for you. So that's just a little reason why it's important. And how are we going to do this is we're just going to go by the basics. Now, if you have a mirror or if you can record yourself and you can see yourself like I am now in your phone, that's fantastic because now you can put a piece of tape like this, or you could just use some of the features in your background to see if your shoulder is moving.
You're going to have to be blatantly honest with yourself about whether or not there's any shoulder motion, and sometimes it requires a little bit of adjustment for you to make sure that you're in the right position and that's fine. That's going to be worth it in the end. The second thing is we have to actually pay attention to what our body is doing. And what I'm alluding to is the claw method. Most of the time when we see the shoulder shrug, it's because people are taught that when they draw, they need to get all the grip they're going to get, including the thumb. And so what happens is they try to drive their thumb deep into behind the gun, and you notice what's happening to my shoulder. S shrugging up right here. So when you drive that, if you try to get your thumb back behind that gun and you try to do that without your shoulder shrugging, it's going to cause strain on your wrist.
And that almost kind of forces your elbow to wing forward and it causes your shoulder to shrug like this, and all of that sucks. So instead, what I want us to do is instead of trying to jam your thumb back behind the gun and try to get what's called a full firing grip, instead what I want you to try is just get your hand on the back of the gun. For most tracker fire guns, what that may mean is your thumbs are going to get up on the rear sites. Whereas as hammer fire guys, what that means is you're just thumbing the hammer back in the holster. And so what that means in the long term is instead of having to draw the gun like that, which it's going to eat up extra time, instead, I can just get my hand right here and I could just bring the gun up to my eyes and you could tell that I didn't have to do a whole lot of motion with my shoulder.
So that allows me to last longer in classes last longer in matches last longer in range sessions. I don't have to sit here and put ice on my shoulder after every range session. I don't have to risk injury to my shoulder or to my muscles or to my nerves. And most importantly, it raises the ceiling for how fast my jaw can be. I no longer have to rush, try, hurry. I just need to be more efficient. If I can cultivate more efficiency of motion, then that's going to allow me more dividends as I iron out my technique. So how do we do this? How do we get here? Well, first off, do not only just getting the claw. So when I get my hand to the gun, what happens is my thumb just falls onto the back of it just like this. And then once I draw, that's when my thumb rotates over to the side.
So in the holster it looks like this, but then when I bring it up to my support hand, my thumb has come over to the side now and now I can marry up my grip and I can do whatever I need to do. When I holster, I do the same thing. Once I holster, what I do is I thumb the holster. Well, I thumb the hammer. If I have a Glock, then I have a striker control device, but my thumb is back here anyway. Even if you don't have a striker control device, getting your thumb back here is still cool because it allows you to better control the gun so that you can get right back into the holster. All set. But let's talk a little bit more about how we can lay the bones for a draw that allows our shoulders to relax more.
So first things first, let's go through this. So first off, we need to know where our hand is, where it needs to be, and then also how to get our hand there without having to throw our shoulder out. So first off, let's start off with our clear gun. With a perfect grip, I want an ideal grip and I want to be facing the target and indexed on the target sites. On the target. Now, what is a perfect grip? A perfect grip is where it is a grip that allows me to press the trigger without disturbing the sights. I see a little bit of sight motion. I'm going to adjust, maybe give it some more pinky pressure and then give it some more back pressure. That is a nice grip. That feels like a good grip. Okay. Very minimal movement that I'm seeing from my sights.
Cool. So now this is the important part. This is important. We need to get back into the holster without moving around any of these fingers or sliding the palm around. Typically what I see is when people go back into the holster, they slide the gun around between different hands and positions and stuff like that. That's just kind of weird. All of that data that you gathered is lost now. So we need to get back to our perfect grip. Make sure this grip is a grip that allows us to press the trigger without disturbing the sight. That looks like a really good grip. Good. Now, without disturbing any of these fingers or my thumb or anything else, I need to go back into the holster nice and easy, slowly. If you need to thumb the hammer or you need to hold down a strayer control device or something, that's fine too. But once we get into the holster, we need to make a mind body connection around where this grip is right here. Okay? How far do the fingers have to come back around? How much of this palm is touching the back strapp of the grip, how much of the crack of my palm is on the back, strapp of the gun, all of that. I need to know all of that.
So once we know all that, I want you to test it. So with the hand right here where it is, what I need you to do is I need you to try to get back on target the same way I did before. Okay, cool. And now back into the holster. Tried a couple of times. Okay, that grip feels good. If you have to make any adjustments, be hyper aware of what adjustments you have to make. Okay, that was a good grip. So I have just confirmed that this right here is the position my hand needs to be in order for me to get that perfect grip that I want. So now here's the part where we start working on cementing that into our memory. Let's let go of the gun and then try to get that grip back. Let go and then try to get it back.
Let go. Try to get it back. Let go. Try to get it back. Let go. Try to get it back. Now let's test it. Let's test to make sure that we still have that perfect grip. So we're going to pull the gun out of the holster. That's still a good grip. Do I have to make any adjustments with my shooting hand? No, that's still a perfect grip. All right. I think at this point I have enough tactile feedback for me to decide, okay, this right here is the perfect grip that I want this right here. If my hand falls here, then this is where I want. Now this is the tricky part. Feel your shoulder with your support hand and relax it. Go ahead, relax it. What I want you to do is I want you to keep this hand on the gun. Keep this hand on the gun in the same orientation, but relax the shoulder.
No, seriously relax it. No, I'm not kidding. Relax. No, seriously relax. And I have to tell you that. And also I have to tell myself that because just telling myself that one time doesn't allow me to relax. I have to tell myself multiple times, okay, relax. No, seriously relax. Okay, so now I know that the shoulder's relaxed. If my hand is still on the gun, still in the perfect position, what that proves to me is two things. Number one, that it's possible for my hand to get here without my shoulder being involved at all. I don't need my shoulder in order for my hand to get here. Number two, it teaches me what it feels like to relax that shoulder. A lot of us have been using the shoulder shrug for 20, 30 years, and it's just hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It's just hard. So what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to practice relaxing that shoulder. So now that we have the shoulder relaxed, what I want you to do is draw the gun from the holster with that shoulder relaxed. And now try it on the target. Just the sights. You don't even need the trigger, just sights. Okay, everything still looks good. And now back into the holster.
Keep the hand on the gun and we'll try it again. No shoulder. Excellent. And then relax. Holster. Now what muscles are being recruited? Mostly bicep. You're going to pull the gun out of the holster using your bicep. There's a little bit of forearm here. Okay, that's fine. But you really don't want a whole lot of shoulder involved, so let's try it again. Excellent. And holster. Cool. Shoulder. Okay, and holster. Cool. Let's try it one more time and pay attention to the tape shoulder. Good. And holster. Cool. And now we're going to go the next further step, which is we're letting go of the hand. Letting the hand go of the gun, getting it back, letting go, getting it back. And we're going to do this for like 30 seconds, just letting go of the hand and then getting it back on here. Letting go get it back, let it go. Get it back, let it go. Get it back. What you want to do is you want to do this without any kind of shoulder motion. If it helps you, if you're still having trouble, shrugging the shoulder. Get your support hand and put it up here. And you want to feel the muscles in your shoulder. W you the sand right here to see if there's activation of those shoulders. It's okay if you've missed a grip a couple of times, that's fine. We're not looking for perfection. Don't let Perfect. Get in the way of good.
Alright, cool. So now let's test it one more time. Make sure we have that good hand position. And let's get the gun out of the holster. And then good. And shoulder. Good. And holster Good. Shoulder. Good. And holster. Cool. Now let's try the entire draw. It seems like we've done a lot of micro drills. One micro drill we did was just hand to the gun. The other micro drill we did was holster to the support hand. And you can even work on going from support hand to target, and that's fine. But all of that as we prove you really don't need your shoulder for any of that. So now we could draw the entire draw. And I want you to go at the speed of assessment. So just nice and easy.
There we go. That was good. And holster. Alrighty, let's try it again. Shoulder good and holster. All right, shoulder good. And holster. I've been forgetting to decock because I haven't been pressing the trigger. I got to work that into my process. All right, so let's try it a couple more times. So good and holster. Cool. Try one more time. Shoulder good, and holster. Cool. So from now you can go forward with whatever draw that you prefer. If you like using a shot timer or just going at what I would call, just do it speed, which is really just testing my unconscious competence. How fast can I go without having to think about the individual steps? So for instance, you could try different positions. You could try the fence position.
That was cool. You could try the fried chicken ready. That was cool. But one thing that really helps is having a mirror or having your phone or some kind of way that you can look at yourself and having some kind of tape or some other kind of visual mark. You could do it in front of a bookcase. You could do it in front of a shelf. You could do it in front of your TV stand, whatever you got, just something behind you that lets you know if you're shrugging in your shoulder. So let me know down in the comments. If you have any questions, let me know if you got any feedback. Let me know if this help you, and I'll see you guys soon. Welcome to Memphis. I.
Credit: Memphis Beech