Learning to shoot with non dominant hand

[Dennis]

I'm bringing this back up because I have another surgery on Monday. The joys of getting to wake up for another day. I'm determined to learn and grow from this. My goal is to learn to use my left hand alone without the bad habits I've developed over the years. Slide manipulation and mag loading might prove challenging. I'm confident I can work through all of this successfully.

[Robert1234]

I'm bringing this back up because I have another surgery on Monday. The joys of getting to wake up for another day. I'm determined to learn and grow from this. My goal is to learn to use my left hand alone without the bad habits I've developed over the years. Slide manipulation and mag loading might prove challenging. I'm confident I can work through all of this successfully.

The problem with that is that habits are in the head, not the hand.

Good luck.

[Verdha603]

Honestly, just straight up practice.

I'm pretty much the worst of both world's (left eye and left hand dominant), so I had to teach myself to get proficient right handed. It's significantly easier in my experience to get good at it with a handgun, since you don't have to worry about your dominant eye being on the wrong side, but it will take some work with long guns. My groups might be an inch or two bigger on my weak side than my strong side with a handgun, but at least I'm proficient enough to be able to quickly put rounds on target without losing a lot in accuracy.

Long guns though, forget it, I'm sticking to using rifles and shotguns on the left side until I lose a hand or eye on that side.

[broadside]

I broke a finger on my strong hand last year and shot 10 matches or so, two were major matches, weak hand only.

The first 6 matches I couldn't use my strong hand much at all so I learned to just get a mag into the gun with two fingers (between thumb and index) and would seat it using my knee. I borrowed a lefty holster and reversed my belt setup.

Slide racking was done by using just my index finger on my strong hand pulling the rear sight. Gun was a DA/SA SP01.

You get pretty good pretty fast when its your only option and you are shooting 150-300 rounds a weekend for 4 months