I was thought by the .mil to not even grip the rifle with my support hand, and that's what works for me.

That's for recoil management for faster followup shots and driving the gun to multiple targets.

I would have an issue with not using the support hand to grip the forearm properly. Frames of reference are important here. I'd be curious to know what type of training and context the Soldier instructed why not to grip the forearm. I highly doubt it was anything to do with fighting with a gun. Shooting, maybe. But not fighting.

Exactly. Marksmanship. Not fighting. Try those techniques of not grabbing the forearm with multiple threats within 75 feet. They were instructing basic shooting skills, not fighting. There is more advanced training available, and if you consider the basic skills you learned to be enough, you are missing something and do not have a good frame of reference to pass on info relating to the OPs question. Its different than what you seem to have training in.

I was just taught to hold the weapon into my shoulder. No special way. Always shot expert so I figured I was good.

This....


Combat accuracy is relative to the distance your target is at, things like flash sight fire come into play at close range - which is totally against the concept of marksmanship. Obviously, as distances increase, the need for incorporating more fundamentals becomes greater.

But to answer the OP, push pull is common to see for recoil management. I've been experimenting and I've had really good results with using a long handguard and reversing the push pull. It is very natural with an Isosceles stance. Grip the handguard out further and just roll your shoulders forward a bit and pinch those elbows in while pulling back on the handguard and pushing on the grip backstrap. I found it easy to really bear down using the shoulder and back muscles and the whole stance keeps my weight forward naturally.

Push/pull feels odd to me. I have found that pulling the entire rifle into me feels more secure and I'm able to get back on target quicker. Of course, this is all new to me. I expect, in time, I will naturally modify and make adjustments.

Fellas I'm new to the forums here but I've been doing the shooting thng a while and have been teaching combat marksmanship for the past 5 years. After watching alot of people shoot and seeing shoulders moving back when the rifle fired I started teaching people what I call Positive Shoulder Most people are taught to ull the rifle into the shoulder, but nothing is ever mentioned about the shoulder. If the shoulder is left neutral the gun will push the shoulder wchich results in sight movemennt in recoil which means it takes longer to get back on target to shoot fast and accurate. To create positive shoulder just roll the shoulder/deltoid forward slighlty. Now to adress the question about how to pull the gun back into the shoulder. Most of it comes from the suppoort hand. The way I teach it is to grip the rifle long out on the forearm(you can see soem pics and video on my website www.wayofthegun.us) grip the forearm and allow the elbow to hang, this creates a camming effect that pulls the rifle into the shoulder with very little effort on your part. The firing hand may pull the rif some as well but you want to avoid over tensioning with the firing hand grip, this will result in excess tension in the trigger finger which will make it difficult to manipulate the trigger quickly. Exess tension in the grip tightens the tendons in the trigger finger which can also result in pushing the sights somewhat( not as noticeable when shooting the rifle as it is when shooting a pistol. Anyway just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

We teach the push / pull on all fighting long guns. For reasons all ready stated.