Fitting

Concealment pouches and holsters cannot be worn exactly the same way by two different people. However, there are some general principles that can help you figure out what works specifically for you.

The information here is a distillation of lessons learned from both our own experience and what others in the industry have already said. A lot of credit is due to PHLster for condensing most of it to the extent that they already have.

General Tips

  • A man wearing a red plaid shirt and gray pants, seen from the back and side, with spotlights showing locations where the shirt is loose.

    1. Look for Good Places

    How you are shaped and the clothes you wear will dictate the positions where something can be concealed under your clothes. Pay attention to where your clothing hangs consistently loose in a variety of poses (seated, standing, squatted, crouched). These are the places where you might be able to hide something.

  • A person wearing a teal T-shirt and gray pants with a gun that is too large for their frame tucked into their waistband, with their hands gesturing around the gun.

    2. Choose a Gun That Fits You

    You will not be able to fit every gun in every potential place to conceal it, and as this photo shows, it gets worse when you’re small and wearing tight clothing. “Dressing around the gun” can help, but one’s regional climate dictates the practical limit of such advice.

    AIWB works well if you have enough drape in your shirt up front, but it has a hard limit on the length of gun you can carry comfortably unless you use something like the PHLster Enigma to move the belt for your holster higher than the waistband of your pants. You will also be limited on the size of grip that you can conceal.

    Behind the hip can offer more capacity, but you will still have limitations. Forward cant (tilt) can help conceal a longer grip in this method of carry, to a point.

    As you consider these limitations, also consider what would be “enough gun” for your model of threat. It may be less than you originally thought.

  • Black belt resting against a triangular marble and wood block against a white background.

    3. Use a gun belt

    If you’re not using a shoulder holster, the gun is going to be supported against gravity by a belt. Less pressure is required when that belt is stiff, as that reduces the tension needed to resist torsion from a top-heavy gun.

    Under-the-clothes gun belts (like from Mastermind Concealment or the PHLster Enigma) will provide the same benefit while allowing you to position the gun independent of your pants waistband. This might allow you to carry in a better location at the expense of making it harder to disarm and rearm throughout the day.

Coarse Adjustments

  • A man wearing a red plaid shirt and gray pants adjusting his black belt. He is also wearing a watch on his left wrist.

    Tension and Tolerance

    Because you must have a belt or other garment pulling the gun against you to keep it in place, you will have an adversarial relationship between comfort and concealment. Tighter belt, more concealment, less comfort.

    To get these to meet in the middle, we’ve found it best to optimize two things when adjusting our equipment. We want the least belt tension necessary to conceal the firearm, and we want to maximize our tolerance for belt tension. The choices of where the gun goes and how the holster is adjusted affect both.

  • Two pistols in different holsters, the one on the right is in a foliage green Mockingbird Defence holster, viewed from the side on a gray background, spotlights pointing out the gap between the guns and the table caused by the holster design.

    Minimizing Tension

    We’re generally trying to get the gun to stay inside the drape of our shirt. If we don’t want to squeeze it into us with our belt, the equipment has to be set up to allow that. Our basic holsters don’t include much adjustment in this respect, but they’re also designed to not need it.

    The diptych shows an inexpensive holster on the left, and a Mockingbird Defence holster on the right. If you can imagine the gun belt replacing gravity, and yourself the table, you can see how our holsters are set up to push the gun into you with minimal belt tension. We accomplish this with an integrated wedge, and a torsion bump to twist the gun into the wearer using belt tension (like a wing or a claw).

    If you have the space, carrying a longer holster (if not a longer gun) can stabilize the top of the gun and help keep it from tilting forward. If you don’t have the space, this will be painful.

  • A diptych showing a plastic pen being pressed against a hand. On the left, the pen is pressed into the palm of the under blue light. On the right, the pen is held between two fingers that are then crushed together with another hand under red light.

    Maximizing Tolerance

    As the image should viscerally demonstrate, softer tissue tolerates direct pressure from hard objects better than bone. If we want to maximize comfort, we want to place the gun on a bed of soft tissue that fits inside of a place where a gun can be concealed.

    This principle is what proves the most limiting. This is because we're looking for the overlap of many criteria for the soft tissue:

    - correctly shaped to accept the gun (flat or concave)

    - big enough to accept the gun

    - fits within the drape of the shirt

    - isn't highly ennervated

    - thick enough to not get pinched against bone

    This is also why appendix carry tends to work if you're the right shape. The abs are big, they can fit a gun within the drape of the shirt, and they can tolerate pressure. However, there's a lot of stuff near them that doesn't.

  • Anatomical illustration of a human skeleton highlighting the lower back and pelvic area with red shading around the lower ribs and pelvis, indicating regions of potential discomfort.

    AIWB: Position

    Vertical and horizontal position are the most important fitting variables when carrying up front.

    Vertical location is easier to understand. There are things at the top and bottom of your abdomen that are uncomfortable to have a gun press against: your ribs, and your pelvis / groin. The gun needs to fit somewhere in between so it’s not sitting on bones.

    The horizontal axis is more complicated. If you had a perfectly flat abdomen and a prominent chest, the ideal location for concealing a firearm would be centered above your groin. This would maximize the available vertical and horizontal space for the firearm, and your chest would provide plenty of drape for your shirt assuming you don’t wear tight clothing. However, most people are not built like this, so the gun probably needs to be somewhere between your center and your side. Finding this can be difficult.

  • A man sitting on a stool, with a red highlight around his lower abdomen indicating potential pain or discomfort.

    AIWB: Finding a good Horizontal Position

    Start in a seated position and place the holstered gun inside your waistband at your center. Slowly move it out to the side until your abdomen no longer tilts the gun forward. You will likely find a place where your legs (or features of your pelvis) will prevent you from moving the gun out without lifting it up, or without pinching something sensitive. If this happens before your abdomen stops tilting the gun forward, you may need to use an under-the-clothes gun belt to lift the carry position of the gun.

    If this cannot work for you, there may be adjustments you can make over time that will make it easier to carry a gun up front, or you can try carrying behind the hip.

Fine Adjustments

  • Close-up of hands adjusting the belt clip on a gray Mockingbird Defence holster using a screwdriver.

    AIWB Holster Clip Adjustment

    Our AIWB holsters allow the clip to adjust up and down. The standard belt clip kit includes two rubber washers, which allow the clip to also be tilted forward and back.

    To adjust ride height, loosen the belt clip screws, and slide the clip to the desired position. Moving the clip lower on the holster will increase the ride height. A higher ride height will be easier to draw, but harder to conceal. Tighten the screws to lock the adjustment in.

    To tilt the clip away from the holster, tighten the bottom screw more than the top screw. This can encourage the holster to tilt back into you.

    The AIWB handgun holsters do not include adjustable cant, as the holster is usually so wide that this isn’t desirable.

  • Close-up of hands adjusting the belt clip on a black Mockingbird Defence magazine pouch using a screwdriver.

    AIWB Magazine Pouch Clip Adjustment

    The magazine pouches have all the adjustment of the holsters, but they also have some cant adjustment. Cant is tilting the holster along the plane of the belt. When wearing a magazine pouch up front, it can be desirable to have this angle for speed, and to match the angle of the pelvis for comfort.

    To adjust, loosen the screws, then slide and pivot the belt clip into the desired position on the pouch. Moving the belt clip lower will increase the ride height. Angling the belt clip further inward will tilt the magazine out. Tighten the screws again to lock the adjustment in. As with the holsters, tightening the bottom screw more than the top screw will tilt the clip away from the pouch, and encourage the pouch to tilt back into you.