“Okay, now switch hands.” Sounds simple enough yet it makes your heart skip a beat. Rationally, you know the same fundamentals apply to your non-dominant hand as they do to your regular dominant hand, but you’ve yet to test-drive the other side. In your support hand, the grip feels like it’s somebody else’s. Your trigger finger acts socially awkward, like it’s meeting the trigger at a networking event. And a small voice in the back of your head asks the question every nervous shooter asks: What if the gun jumps right out of my hand?

That fear is completely normal, and it doesn’t mean you’re bad at this. Yet as you get started and work through predictable new-shooter skills, a familiar thought shows up: My weak hand is terrible.

The good news here is that despite your inclination to accuse your support hand of being less talented, it isn’t. What it is, is inexperience. Your support hand has spent its whole shooting life literally in a supporting role. It has stabilized the grip and helped manage recoil, but the dominant hand got the starring job. Now it has been volun-told and promoted to lead. It has to establish the primary grip, operate the trigger, bring the sights to your eye, and keep the gun steady through the shot. Your dominant hand does all of that on autopilot because it has years of repetitions behind it. The support hand just hasn’t had its reps yet.