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Articles by Chris Sajnog
Learn to Live Like a Navy SEAL: Today’s Warrior Class
By Chris Sajnog From the May 2015 issue of SOF Across the ages, every great society has celebrated and revered a great warrior tradition and passed on the stories of these heroes in folklore. We can look back to the Spartans, Roman legionnaires, Vikings, knights, samurai or Aztecs, and each time we will find that a strong warrior class coincided with a strong nation. The warrior spirit is alive and well here in the greatest nation in history.
Sajnog: The Secret To Shooting Like A Navy SEAL
January 31, 2020 4:30 PM ET By Chris Sajnog Ever wish you could shoot a gun like a Navy SEAL? I can tell you the “secret” of how we do it…but then I’d have to kill you. For those of you who have read my book, you already know the secret. For the rest of you, here it is…there is no “secret.” It all boils down to dry fire practice — and lots of it. Dry fire is the generic term for practicing weapons manipulation with an unloaded gun.
Sajnog: The Seventh Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
January 03, 2020 12:19 PM ET By Chris Sajnog Follow-Through Follow-through is a term that most of us have heard from the first time anyone taught us about marksmanship fundamentals. But it is also one of the most neglected. Maybe because it’s last on every list, shooters assume it’s the least important. But neglecting the follow-through can negate all the steps you previously took to deliver an accurate shot.
Sajnog: The Sixth Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
December 27, 2019 12:08 PM ET By Chris Sajnog Trigger Control Trigger control needs to be maintained throughout the firing sequence, and this can be especially difficult with a pistol. The two main reasons pistols are harder to shoot than rifles are the shorter sight radius and the trigger-to-weapon-weight ratio. Any time your trigger weight is more than the weight of the weapon, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
Sajnog: The Fifth Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
Breathing I remember being taught what many of you were likely also taught about breathing as a marksmanship fundamental; to hold your breath. At the time it made sense. I was being told this by an instructor who shot better than me and who was running the course of instruction I was attending. I was in the military at the time and being taught by some of the best shooters in the world.
Sajnog: The Fourth Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
December 13, 2019 12:10 PM ET By Chris Sajnog Sight Picture We’re now going to cover sight picture, which is taking your sights and aiming at a target. As we found with Sight Alignment (The Third Habit of Highly Effective Shooters), Sight Picture is also not as simple as point and shoot. There are a few things you need to keep in mind if you plan on walking away from a two-way range. So What Is Sight Picture? Proper sight picture is when you take a PERFECTLY ALIGNED sight and place it on a target.
Sajnog: The Third Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
Right after the invention of rifling, sight alignment is the most important advancement in man’s ability to fire an accurate shot. Sight alignment and sight picture are two terms that are often used interchangeably and many times used as one and the same. It’s fine to put them together once they are both understood, but it is vital to know that they are two different and very distinct keys to hitting your target.
Sajnog: The Second Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
November 29, 2019 9:58 AM ET By Chris Sajnog This is a series of articles by SEAL instructor Chris Sajnog. Click here to see the first habit of highly effective shooters. Grip Your grip is your connection to your weapon system. Without a good grip, your weapon will go to the path of least resistance and your shots will fly aimlessly off their mark. Most novice shooters will grip their gun by copying what they’ve seen in pictures or movies, but there’s a better way. Don’t follow Hollywood.
Sajnog: The First Habit Of Highly Effective Shooters
November 22, 2019 4:39 PM ET By Chris Sajnog, Body Position/Shooting Platform No matter what weapon system we’re talking about, a solid shooting position is essential to good shooting. The more solid the position, the easier it is to hold the gun and control the trigger without disturbing the sight picture. Whether you’re shooting prone, kneeling, standing or any unconventional shooting position, you should have as much of your body directly behind the weapon as possible.
SAJNOG: How To Shoot With One Hand
Learning how to shoot with one hand takes practice. When most people hear the word practice, their thoughts immediately revert to repetitive evolutions they’ve done numerous or even countless times. And let’s face it, that’s what practice is — repeating what you already know until it’s ingrained in your DNA. These are skills that an operator, police officer, or civilian who enjoys shooting can look back on and use in any stressful operation, traffic stop, or on the street self-defense situation.
Top 10 Navy SEAL Sayings And Their Meanings
4:59 PM 12/30/2018 | Guns and Gear Guns and Gear | Contributor To Your first name Message By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting US Navy SEALs are the most elite combat unit in the world. Along the way we’ve picked up some of the most famous sayings, quotes and commands of any military unit. Join me in a stroll down memory lane as I not only list the top ten sayings that stand out in my mind, but also give you the inside scoop as to what they mean. 1.
Sajnog: How To Aim A Gun The Right Way
Aiming your gun needs to be done a certain way if you like hitting your target. I think it’s fair to assume you like hitting your target, right? Before you can really understand how to aim a gun, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about some technical terms. What I’ve just briefly described is a two plane sighting system (think physics, not airplanes). With this system, there are two types of errors you can encounter: angular shift errors and parallel shift errors.
Sajnog: 11 Bad Habits Of Shooters And How To Break Them
6:10 PM 12/04/2018 | Black Rifles & Tactical Guns Guns and Gear | Contributor By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting In my experience, people have often acquired a number of bad habits that make them bad shooters. The list below explains the top 11 bad habits I’ve seen in my 25+ years of training everyone from US Navy SEALs to new shooters. If you’ve found yourself engaging in any of these bad habits, it’s time to correct yourself and work toward improvement.
Sajnog: Committing Learning To Long-Term Memory
12:17 PM 11/23/2018 | Guns and Gear Guns and Gear | Contributor By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting Think back to your most recent learning experience, when it was imperative for you to commit the information to memory. You probably had to review the information several times before you felt comfortable with it, right? And even after you felt comfortable with it, did you still forget it a few days or weeks later?
What To Take To A Shooting Course
1:22 PM 11/20/2018 | Ammo & Gear Reviews Guns and Gear | Contributor By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting It’s the morning of a shooting course you’ve just signed up for. What do you need to know and have before you hit the range? Know The Conditions First of all, is the course being held indoors or outdoors? This could make a big difference in what you should wear that day.
Pro Tip: Practice Dry Fire
dry fire training (v)- the practice of “firing” a firearm without ammunition or practicing the manipulation of a firearm I know most of you are just like me and want to get better at shooting, but don’t have the time or resources needed to improve or maintain this critical skill.
When Tactical Gear Is Too Much Of A Good Thing Via @dailycaller
By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting Is it just me, or do you sometimes lie awake at night wondering how much equipment is too much on your kit? I know some of you out there are saying, “I can’t believe this guy is actually writing about something so insignificant!” And I can understand why some of you may think this issue is about as important as which color socks work best to kick in doors.
Chris Sajnog: Top 5 Navy SEAL Firearms Via @dailycaller
By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting I recently posted a list of my Top Five Must Have Weapons Systems for Navy SEALs. I came up with that list when my good friend and bestselling author of Target America, Scott McEwen asked me for my top five weapons. Since I’m a believer that we are the weapons and we choose which tools we will use in battle, my response contained things such as mindset, your teammates and support staff.
Sajnog: How To Establish An Effective Firearms Training Plan Via @dailycaller
By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting Has your firearms training hit a dead end? Not progressing as fast as you’d like? The problem likely isn’t with the instruction; it was with the input (or lack thereof) into the personalized plan you made to reach your goals. You did make a personalized plan…didn’t you? If not, don’t feel bad. Even some of the best shooters in the world don’t understand how to successfully put together an effective firearms training plan.
Gun laws targeted for change
There’s a major problem with our country’s gun laws and, as one of the Navy SEALs’ leading firearms instructors, I cannot ignore it any longer. In fact, I am going to go so far as to voice here that I want to regulate gun ownership.Please, don’t get me wrong; I fully support the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and am a proud gun owner myself. But I’ve also had to stop watching the news.
Twelve ways to live like a Navy SEAL in 2016
Throughout the ages, every great society has celebrated and revered great warrior traditions. We can look back to the Spartans, Vikings, Samurai, or Aztecs, and find that strong warrior classes coincided with strong nations. However, our society is beginning to shun warriors and lower them on the social ladder. Warfare has moved away from the martial arts style of combat and towards a more mechanical, detached system.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Dry Fire Training With A Pencil [VIDEO & Download]
Dry weapons training (a.k.a. dry fire) is one of the most effective training tools you have at your disposal. It not only saves you time and money because you can do it at home, but it also helps you learn to shoot faster than learning at a live fire range. Now, am I saying that dry weapons training or practicing without live ammunition is better than actually shooting a gun? Yes.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #7 - The Importance Of Constant Feedback
Think about any other sport. Now, as you picture that sport’s practice sessions — is there any supervision? Is someone watching them? Coaching them? Of course they are! Any instructor who doesn’t require a supervised practice program is either not serious about making shooters better or doesn’t know any better. In other sports, practices are supervised — all of them. Can you imagine an NFL team running plays in practice without its coaching staff on hand?
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #6 - Deliberate Practice
Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of Psychology at Florida State University, has been a pioneer in researching deliberate practice and what it means. One of Ericsson’s core findings is that how expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #5 - Dry Weapons Training
Dry fire is the generic term for training with an unloaded weapon. Unlike what many seem to believe, it does not just mean pulling the trigger. I can teach a monkey the proper way to pull a trigger (although he might just slap the hell out of it). Dry weapons training involves everything you do with that weapon, from the fundamentals to shooting on the move.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #4 Focus - How To Focus On What Counts
The Old Rules of marksmanship taught us that to hit our targets we needed to line up the front and rear sights and aim those sights at our target. The problem with this, as I stated in my previous article, is that you can do these two things and miss the target every time — and many people do. Why is this? Because they are missing the most important detail on accuracy: The old rules say nothing of focus. Let’s compare and contrast the old rules with the new using the power of the sun.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #3 Physics - Mechanics, Not Methods
The Old Rules of marksmanship were focused only on the physical parts of shooting. But hopefully as you’re beginning to see, there are a lot of other aspects, far more fundamental than simply how you stand or grip a gun. Even when we take a closer look at the Old Rules of marksmanship, we can easily see that none of them are truly fundamental to shooting; they are all just methods to getting there.
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #2 - Planning
If you are not where you want to be in your shooting game, you’re either not motivated enough, you’re getting poor instruction or you’re not using a custom training plan. I’m putting my money on the last choice. Chances are pretty good you are following a firearms training plan that worked for someone else or was just randomly made for anyone. How in the world is a random plan going to help you? I guess if you’re hoping for random results?
Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog Shooting Series: Rule #1 - Mindset
Without question, the most important part of shooting is what happens in the space between your ears. If you don’t believe me, put a gun on a table in front of you. Now, try to shoot that gun without thinking about doing it. Sound too simplistic? Sorry, but it really is that easy. How you stand, grip the gun, focus and pull the trigger are all determined by how you think about doing them. But even more important, the reason you are training can have a huge effect on how well you shoot.
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