Grass Week & Shooting Positions

—Marine Corps photos by Sgt. Jennifer Schubert. 2015.

December 10, 2014: San Diego , California - Recruit Daniel K. Schwedhelm, Kilo Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, aim in at the target in the prone position from the 500-yard line at Edson Range, Weapons and Field Training Battalion, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., Nov. 24. During Firing Week, recruits apply the basic fundamental marksmanship principles they learned to qualify with their weapon and be able to move forward with training.
— USMC Photo by Cpl. Jericho Crutcher

Recruits are introduced to the four shooting positions during Grass Week.

A Combat Marksmanship Instructor, or CMI, teaches recruits the fundamentals of weapons safety and marksmanship with their M-16A4 service rifle.

During this week, recruits become familiar with the following shooting positions:

• Sitting
• Prone
• Kneeling
• Standing

Recruits learn how to fire, how to adjust their sights and how to take into account the effects of wind and weather. They spend hours in the four positions, preparing their bodies to remain steady while they shoot.

Recruits will also "zero" their service rifle and fire a grouping exercise to verify how their individual rifle shoots. The results will tell the recruit the initial sight settings.

By the time a recruit fires that first actual shot during Firing Week, he or she will have dry-fired his or her rifle from each of the four positions thousands of times.

Above information found on the Parris Island web site, July, 2009.