So, a segment of my class is the development of the grip and stance. I found people understand and learn better if they know why to do something and are not just told to do it because it is better.
First there was the one handed push the gun out by your side and shoot. That way, your other hand was still available to hold the reigns of your horse! People still used this on the ground and it was and is still used by quick draw artists. Dig up video/film of old FBI pistol training. Not only did they use one handed hip shooting, they used a barricade technique that is more appropriate to Biannci Cup than combat shooting but that's another post.
Next came the realization that there was this other hand flopping around that could maybe do something useful. Since the gun was heavy (NOT) maybe we could use the other hand to help support its weight. Thus the cup and saucer was born. In addition, when shooting revolvers still, many people got the idea to hold the wrist of the strong hand with the non-dominant hand. See above about barricade technique.
Along comes this young upstart named Weaver that got all uppity about isometric tension to steady the gun. His idea was that by pushing the gun out with the shooting hand and pulling it back with the support hand you could steady the gun and used the pretension-ed muscles in your shooting arm to push the gun out and counteract some of the felt recoil. There is a stance that goes along with this grip to put the gun on target. Couple issues here though, the stance allows you to pivot easily one way but is slow back behind you and it is using the large muscle groups in the chest along with the arms to "fight" recoil.
With the advent of dash cams, police departments were finding out that when the poo was flung out of the fan out on the streets, their officers were more likely to just push the gun out in front of them and start slapping the trigger instead of using the trained Weaver stance. Why is that? The standard startle reaction (which precedes many gunfights) is simply to push your arms out in front of you as a purely defensive move to push the danger away from you. Why not do something with that? Another thing going on at that time was action shooting had moved its way out of SoCal and away from the great Col Cooper and there were a bunch of really fast shooters (none of them LEO's) that were shooting really fast and accurate after having dropped the Weaver stance and grip and gone to something called Isosceles.
Along with the new stance came a new grip that was called thumbs up or thumbs forward and sometimes hands high grip at various times. Along with the grip, the stance was pushed out to resemble something similar to golf or baseball where the weight is up on the balls of the feet pushing the gun way out in front of the shooter. Now commonly referred to as nose over toes. (I was there learning to be a better IPSC/USPSA shooter around that time. I had learned weaver and was transitioning myself shooting alongside Chip McCormick and the host of really good shooters in Central Texas at the time.) (A fantastic demonstration of the grip and stance is put on by Jerry Michulek when he is shooting revolvers VERY fast. He actually uses the recoil to hold himself up and takes a step forward when he is done shooting. If only I could shoot that fast and accurate.)
The basic premise of the new grip was that instead of scrunching the body up to the side and using the chest and upper arms for isometric tension, you push the gun straight out in front of you and use the muscles in the lower arm of your support arm as the tensioned point. Pointing your support hand thumb straight forward like you would hold your hand if you were playing tug-o-war on a rope. This puts the muscle on the underside of your forearm in tension so when the gun recoils, there is already muscle tension against it instead of the wrist being relaxed. It also happens to align the meat of your palm so that it fills the gap on the support side of the gun and gets it in contact with the gun grip itself more firmly. People found out that recoil control is in the smallest two fingers of the support hand. More down this road, people learned that with all the muscles in your hand attached to each other, there is slight sympathetic movement of the other fingers in your firing hand as you tension your trigger finger to press the trigger. The realization that the support hand is really the key to holding the gun steady and bringing it back on target for follow through was a key.
So, now you have muscle tension that helps you to direct and better manage the recoil transferred to your hands. You have a natural pointing position with your thumbs so all you have to do is point them at the target and the gun follows. You have better contact between your hands and the gun to help transfer this energy more effectively and in a much more predictable manner and you have a grip that allows your stance to be more neutral allowing you to pivot both directions equally and engage multiple targets in any direction quickly and effectively. If you keep the sights lined up and practice smooth trigger control along with the improved grip and stance.
Now, all of this goes out the window if all you want to do is make one shot, then it is sight alignment and trigger control all the way. I had the pleasure of watching a demonstration shot during LFI-1 of shooting a J-frame snub with +P loads upside down (The gun not the shooter) using the pinky as the trigger finger. This is fine for one shot but sucks if you want to fire a follow up shot. It really is a complete system, if you put it all together it works very well. It just takes getting used to with practice. You do practice right?