New shooters - 1 hand or 2?

[Hamster]

Our local ISSF league (shooting Std and Sport Pistol) is drawing interest from others at the area rod & gun clubs, who've seen us practising, and want to try it out. Usually they have decent rifle experience but zero handgun. That's because handguns are rare and difficult to get in Canada, To get one, you have to show credibly that you're engaged in an ISSF rimfire discipline, at least at local club level. We have a few spare pistols that the new guys can use at the range. I'm wondering whether it's best to have newbies start shooting 2 handed, to build confidence and get used to pistol handling, or encourage them to go straight to one handed shooting. Any advice from your experience with new ISSF shooters would be welcome. Another possibility is encourage them to start with a proper target air pistol which doesn't require any licence. My personal experience, being a lacklustre shot, without any coaching to speak of, was starting with a S&W Model 41, stock grip, and it took me about 4 months of weekly practice till I could shoot well enough to compete in a match. I started with both hands, then switched to one hand after about a month, adding an adjustable target grip from Champ Choice. Later moved on to a DES 69 then Pardini. I am thinking not of the natural talents, but developing the middle of the pack shooters who sustain the league.

[Gwhite]

The college team I help coach teaches lots of total beginners. Start them on air pistol, and have them shoot one handed. There's no recoil to deal with, and having two hands on the pistol just allows more ways to push the sights out of alignment due to anticipation.

If you start them out with the idea that you can shoot well one handed, they will try to rise to that challenge. Starting them with two hands lowers expectations, and makes them think it's harder than it should be.

I took the Physical Education pistol class when I was a freshman in college. The coach was a past national champion bullseye shooter, and taught pistol as a competitive sport. We started out with one hand at fifty feet. Since then, several of the PE instructors have had NO competitive shooting experience, and come from a police background. They start the students at short range off the bench, and then two handed, and finally one handed. The best of the students generally come out shooting much worse than the ones who were started out at full distance with one hand in the past. If you've seen most police shoot, you can understand why the instructors think it's really hard to hit anything, and the students get that message. It gives them a built in excuse if they don't shoot well. If you tell them it's not that hard to shoot well with one hand, they will work that much harder to get better when they start out and discover it isn't trivial.

Most of the people in my club these days only know what they see on TV, and are mostly taught (briefly) self-defense shooting with two hands. They start out with the expectation that it's impossible to hit ANYTHING more than 15 feet away, much less a small competition target. They would wet their pants if they ever saw a bullseye match with people shooting .45 hardball one handed at 50 yards.

[Rover]

" They would wet their pants if they ever saw a bullseye match with people shooting .45 hardball one handed at 50 yards."

I was at the Desert Midwinter in Phoenix one year. A couple of "spray and pray" guys wandered over to see what was going on.
They were standing behind a USAMU champion for the.45 Slow Fire. When they saw his target, they were jumping up and down
and hugging each other. They had never seen anything even close to his performance.

I laughed.

[Gwhite]

Back when the only handgun competition in the US was 'bullseye", everyone understood that pistol marksmanship one-handed with a .45 at 50 yards was "normal", and therefore achievable. Pistol competition has been fractured into multiple different disciplines and the defense crowd seems to have the largest following. Bullseye matches are getting scarcer, and people have NO idea what is both possible, and at one time, common.

I am now old & shaky. When I go to my Club, there are frequently people who are astonished that I can shoot 3" groups at 50 feet one handed even with a .22. Outdoors, the Club had what was once one of the best bullseye ranges in New England, with 50 yards for slow fire and turning targets at 25 yards. All the defense shooters are constantly complaining that they can't shoot at 25 yards, and the damage to the range supports that.

[Ramon OP]

There's no benefit in starting two handed. Go one handed from the beginning and use supports initially to really understand sights alignment and trigger.

Depending on the age they may even be allowed to shoot with support on competitions.

The best is to start with and to keep shooting air pistol to really shoot well. Shooting with firearms afterwards is a piece of cake.

[Hamster]

Thanks to all for your thoughts.