13 June 01

A friend and student just sent this to me. It is duplicated below, along with my response:

"I recently attended a defensive pistol shooting seminar. The instructor advocated and taught the Isosceles Stance exclusively, saying that it has been ‘street proven'. He says that the Weaver Stance is by no means junk. It is just less accurate. After two days, I and my student colleagues agreed, and all were previous devout and experienced ‘Weaverists.'"

My reply:

"I know the Isosceles Stance has made a rebound among competition shooters. When instructors talk about how it has been ‘proven on the street,' they're usually referring to winning pistol matches. Remember the point I made after the NTI: Good results reinforce bad tactics. The fact that an officer has used a particular tactic on his last dozen unresisted arrests, doesn't say much about the tactic, good or bad. ANY tactic will ‘work' against someone who doesn't want to fight!

The weaknesses I point out with regard to the Isosceles Stance are:

>It gets the pistol too far away from the body with too little strength on the grip, making one vulnerable to forceful disarm attempts. I realize that the further away from the head one gets his pistol, the more precise the sight picture, but I think the cure is worse than the disease. Paper targets don't attempt to grab one's gun. For real fighting, the gain in accuracy is insignificant.

>It vectorizes one's attention too much in one direction. As you know, I teach students to decouple their torso from their neck and head, so that they can be constantly be scanning in all directions. Most Isosceles users roll their shoulders into the ears, locking their torso, neck, and head into one ponderous, sluggish unit, the ‘third eye,' as they call it.

>Unless one moves his feet, it makes swiveling at the waist difficult. Too much body weight hangs out over the torso for the shooter to pivot quickly.

The only thing the Isosceles technique offers in return is enhanced accuracy, which is why competitors use it, competitors who know, in advance, where all their targets are.

/John

13 June 01

>From a friend who is a range officer with a large, metro police department. He is also a seasoned martial artist, one of the best I know:

"It is usually Isosceles shooters who need to ‘prove' the superiority of their method. That kind of intellectual fixation on stance reduces the psychological adaptability of the shooter. Convulsive tensing of the body tends to induce a similar condition of the mind, with all the characteristic occlusion that follows. As William James wrote a century ago, ‘We don't so much run away because we are scared, as we are scared because we run away.' Posture influences attitude. A cramped, tensed, and inflexible posture engenders a similar condition in the mind."

Well said!

/John