I know I’m not the only one who has gotten strong thumbs from loading magazines. However, I should have paid more attention to the lessons of working smarter and not harder; this technique will spare you pain and make it faster and easier to feed your magazines.

During one of the shooting courses I took in New Mexico, it would rain quite a bit on our outdoor range, and so on the days it didn’t rain we had to stay later into the night to make up for lost time. Man, those days of loading over a 1000 rounds actually split the skin on my dry thumb.

I finally ran down to the local gun shop and got a mechanical loader and put this to good use. But I eventually learned a really good technique that I’ll show you here. This method works better than the traditional method. Why?

Good training sometimes means having to blow through a lot of rounds. Have some good gear.

The old-school method that everyone uses only utilizes the thumb to push down on the magazine spring. This newer method, with the magazine turned around, actually incorporates the wrist and forearm muscles; therefore you have stabilizers that control the magazine while you use your thumb to press the ammo down and in.

It may seem odd at first doing this but I guarantee it will save you time, and “wear and tear” on your thumbs. Being able to use your wrist and forearm muscles to hold the magazine gives you greater control of it and therefore the ability to seat the cartridges more quickly. Try this a half dozen times until you get the hang of it.