I don't know folks manage to hurt themselves doing that, the first time I had the opportunity to shoot a PGO shotgun I weighed like 125 lbs, was coming off a long period of illness and was pretty weak.
The loads were full power Federal 000 and Remington 3" slugs, after missing embarrassingly with the first shot from the hip and finding the recoil nowhere near what I expected I put that thing at eye level and cleaned up the rest of the targets. At no time did the gun come anywhere close to hitting me in the face.
Actually, compared to firing a big nasty revolver round in the .44 mag bear load and up class, the pistol gripped 12 gauge is pretty tame stuff.