Handgun Shooting Positions: The Chapman Stance

In our last post, we studied an influential stance called the Weaver Stance. In this post, we will study a stance that is very similar, which is called the Modified Weaver a.k.a the Chapman Stance.

This particular stance is named after Ray Chapman, another influential shooter. Like Jack Weaver, he had a California police background as well and was the rangemaster at the Los Alamitos police department. He adopted Jack Weaver's stance and modified it slightly. It uses the same push-pull tension of the Weaver stance, but instead of bending both arms at the elbows, the Chapman stance holds the dominant arm in a straight position and locks the elbow. The support hand elbow is bent and provides the tension.

The following two images easily illustrate the difference between the two stances:

In the above picture, we have a person demonstrating the Weaver stance. Note how the elbows of both arms are bent.

In the above image, we have the same person demonstrating the Chapman stance. Notice how the dominant hand is extended so that it is straight and the elbow is locked.

Ray Chapman successfully used this stance to win the SWCPL championship in 1964, 1967 and 1970 and also won the first IPSC World Shoot in 1975.

The advantage of this stance over the Weaver stance is that it gets its stability from both muscle and skeletal support and is more suitable for people who lack upper-body muscle strength.