I will admit that I am one of the worst when it comes to making a concerted effort to practice with just one hand. However, recent injuries from over-training mixed with a strong desire to continue my advancement of skill with a pistol have led me to training with at least one hand. I found it to be quite rewarding. Let me break down how this can do wonders for you in practice and on the range.
CONTEXT
Imagine that you are in a situation where you only have your strong hand to shoot with because you need your support hand to move or hold someone/something. Perhaps your support hand is out of commission from injury or a wound. Perhaps you are on the phone with 911 and legally holding your ground. On the other hand, what about if your strong hand is incapacitated and must continue fighting? Don't wait until the unlikely happens to think about preparing. Afterall, if you are going to argue about statistics and unlikely events, we can go straight to how unlikely it is that you will ever use your firearm against more than a paper target. So cut the excuses and slice through that pride pie and get to training and practical practice.
GRIP STRENGTH
One of the most essential elements to shooting is being able to control the firearm under recoil. In a real fight, the goal is to be fast enough to matter. In many cases, it is all about out-shooting your opposition, particularly the armed variety. Grip strength in the primary shooting hand (strong hand) is something you should always be looking to advance. However, if you are ever in a position where the support hand is your only chance at a strong opposition, you will wish you spent time fostering it's ability to deliver a good performance.
Grip strength is not just acquired through using a gripper, but I feel it's best to practice your aim with the pistol you are using. Squeeze the hell out of the pistol while you are practicing dry with a snap cap. Simply concentrate on squeezing each finger with full force and then all at once until your whole hand is working on crushing the grip. I recommend doing this in 5-15 second intervals with generous breaks in between and wrist stretches to protect your joints. Once you feel confident that there has been growth in your strength, I would test with pulling the trigger simultaneously. This can definitely grow your forearm muscles if you use a DA of any kind and try to pull the trigger fast until you can't pull anymore.
Many people are going to wonder why I would recommend a DA pistol if only just for practice. It is simply because history has shown us that those who go heavier in training will have a much easier time performing in the real world. Take the Roman Legionnaires for example, who used swords and shields twice as heavy as the real thing in training. This built strength and forced coordination throughout training. Even today, it is not uncommon for the military to put you in training scenarios where the odds are heavily against you just to feed your aggression and will to fight until the very end. Why not take this type of training and incorporate it somewhat into your firearms training?
COORDINATION
We have become quite accustomed to the idea that we must have two hands on the pistol for absolute accuracy. This is absolute BS. Accuracy is your ability to put the bullet where you want it whether that is the broad side of a barn or up the ass of a flea. However, I understand that there is one area that shooting one handed can seriously disrupt and that is the balance and coordination while aiming. When you are trying to aim and brace a pistol with one hand, your body is going to have to be positioned in such a way that will allow you to brace the pistol and aim it in an ergonomic and supported manner. An example of this is when you are squared off with the target, you will find that it will suit you better to cant the pistol slightly inwards in order to get a better and ergonomic alignment of the sights. When using one hand, your overall aim may change slightly, so practicing shooting with one hand can offer you the opportunity to understand this difference and naturally make physical and mental adjustments.
FORCED PROPER PRACTICE
It is not uncommon for people to use technology in order to augment or replace a skill that is essential to competent marksmanship. Lightened triggers, ported barrels, stippled grips, and the list goes on. The most common thing is for people that still can't pull the trigger properly to modify the trigger weight. This is a standard practice, which has caused a huge portion of the shooters out there to be under an illusion about their true skill this entire time. I think that if someone were to practice with a stock double action pistol, particularly when shooting one-handed, less people would feel the need to get trigger jobs done. Let's be honest, most of there trigger jobs are not done because the shooters need BETTER performance, but rather because they just need to be able to perform even at a basic level. First you must actually practice, then you must make sure you are practicing properly in a way that improves your skills directly and indirectly.
A HUMBLING EXPERIENCE
We all know that person at the range who has shot for a billion years and shot billions of rounds. This is supposed to mean that they are the top performer when push comes to shove, right? Well, my suggestion is to use one-handed shooting as a good tool for humbling the braggers and those comfortably swollen with self-stroking delusions of personal superiority. If they actually learned something from shooting a billion rounds, one-handed shooting will show it. Most who fail this will stumble for excuses but will end up being humbled if they are worth a damn as a human being. But be ready for the braggers to have a million excuses and arguments about how shooting one-handed is stupid. Common excuse as a last ditch effort to save face.
Shooting is a true testament of someones ability to have terrific communication between the mind and the body. When shooting, you are calming the mind and overriding the desire to brace for recoil and overriding your physical makeup that causes sympathetic movement when pulling a trigger with a single digit. A dying cockroach has enough force in it's twitching leg to let off the trigger on some of these modified guns, so pardon me if I don't take you seriously if you use mods and are not a top level competition shooter. Shooting at speed with one hand will tell a story about your ability to handle the pistol and control it while shooting accurately while also shooting fast enough to matter.
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