During a lesson, I have several items to check off my list to ensure my student’s success. Those include how well the student understands target reading, ability to see and insert into the flight path of the target, does the gun fit them and finally, how is their stance?
In this issue, we look at your feet, your stance and why some stances are better left within their discipline and why they WON’T work for every game.
As a 50-year-old woman, I can still hear my Mom telling me to sit up straight or my posture will suffer later in life. She wasn’t wrong. I do struggle with pain between my shoulders sometimes and often catch myself slouching at the steering wheel.
When it comes to proper stance in the shooter’s box, the shooter should have a relaxed, shoulder width set up for their feet. The farther apart the shooter plants their feet, the more difficulty that shooter will have rotating in the shot. As you spread your legs farther and farther apart, the abdominal wall muscles are shortened. This prevents you from being able to cleanly rotate side to side and all but completely inhibits your ability to reach up high or bend towards shots presented under the shooter’s box when standing on an elevated platform.
The correct posture and stance is to stand with your leading foot (left foot for right hand shooters and right foot for left hand shooters) toeing in the direction of where you want to break the target. Always set up to the break point! If you set up to the hold point, you will hip lock and the rotation with the target will be cut short causing the shoulder to drop and you will miss your shot.
Since the arms are just coat racks, the hips need to be free to rotate cleanly with the target. The hips are what move the gun. To allow for full rotation, bend at the waist and slightly forward as if you are trying to reach the back of a counter or that last item you just can’t seem to grab in the bed of your truck.
The extra benefit of this correct positioning is that your cheek will properly lay on the comb of the stock and put your eye centered and flat on the rib where it belongs. This will give you the correct sight alignment once you insert to the bird.
Standing too upright makes your stance uptight and minimizes your movement.
There are significant differences between the clay games and stance is certainly one of them. Skeet shooters tend to spread their stance a little farther and have the “chicken wing” hold on their gun. Because the clay takes the exact same flight path through every shot and doesn’t change unless the wind blows, this stance works. Just remember to leave it on the skeet field.
Sporting clays offers unlimited styles of presentations at varying heights and distances so the shooter must be able to rotate with them flawlessly and smoothly. A more relaxed, low elbow and slightly forward bend at the hip with feet placed shoulder width apart will serve the sporting clays shooter more successfully.
Trap shooters need minimal rotation due to the very slight angles of their presentations. Standing with a flatter front to the bird is just fine. The “chicken wing” arm is also commonly found on the trap field. Again, everything on skeet and trap fields is more controlled and doesn’t bring in the craziness that we see on a sporting clays field. Which is why I love sporting clays!
No matter what clay game you love to play, take time to perfect your stance, understand your target and be sure to share that time with a friend or family member. Stop by our booth #207 at the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show Aug. 1-3.
We also have a phenomenal dove clinic with VDWR just for the ladies on Aug. 9 and our popular Procrastinator’s Practice Dove Clinic on Aug. 30. All these events are found on our website under EVENTS!
Kate Ahnstrom, owner of Virginia Shooting Sports is a certified, professional instructor of the Paragon School of Sporting, pro staff Syren/Caesar Guerini, resident pro Orapax Hunting Preserve, Artemis ambassador for Virginia and field staff member of the Sisterhood of the Outdoors. Her tireless dedication to her students’ success is obvious in each and every lesson.
