Do You Need More Cheek Pressure?

Have you ever heard this phrase? “That gun fits you but to shoot it well, you will have to either use a little more cheek pressure or just float the bird a little” Our 30 years of research has shown us that if you must use more cheek pressure to make a gun shoot for you, it does not fit you. And floating the target is not the answer.

Shooters who use a lot of cheek pressure typically think that it gives them a more aggressive approach to the target and that they will shoot better if they “get into the gun more!” If shooting skeet, (a gun up game) shooters typically mount the gun more firmly than sporting shooters. They also move the gun with their body like a tank turret, which means they move the gun from their legs up through their shoulders. Everything seems to be locked in place, and while there is some arm and hands movement, there is a lot of body movement and a good amount of “cheek weld.”

News flash: as you age, balance becomes a more important aspect of shooting than almost any other thing. And your balance doesn’t get better with age! We find that moving the body less helps tremendously with consistency and performance in both skeet and sporting.

Due to the variety of presentations, sporting shooters typically move the gun more with their hands and arms and use a narrower stance than skeet or trap shooters. In skeet, the breakpoints on pairs are close together, but in sporting they are anything but close together. They are often split such that it requires the shooter to raise their head off the comb to first acquire the target and then move the gun and break it.

When this happens, the shooter must reposition their cheek on the comb as the shot comes together without checking the barrel to make sure the cheek is in the correct place before they send the shot.