"Interesting" grip advice...

[RancidSumo]

I got some advice today on my grip from some people that supposedly know a lot about this stuff (who and where I'm going to leave out for now). It was interesting to say the least and, IMHO, complete crap. My dad seems to be taking it as gospel though because of where it came from and so I figured I would ask all of you.

The grip that was taught involves pressure on the front and back of the grip but NOT on the sides. In fact, I was told that before putting your support hand on the gun, you should be able to put your little finger between your main hand and the grip of the gun. That gap is apparently supposed to stay there even after putting your support hand on the pistol with a similar gap on the other side with the support hand.

Next comes the thumbs. The instruction was to have thumbs pointing at an upward angle, left crossing over right (for a righty)

Anyway, seemed like terrible advice to me but I've been wrong a couple of times in the past. Is this one of those times?

[John_Wayne777]

What discipline did the people promoting that grip shoot?

I ask because I don't know, say, the world of competitive pistol bullseye very well and so it's possible that there are some bullseye shooters who use that kind of grip to achieve world championships in that discipline and I just don't know about it.

If you look at IDPA, USPSA, or IPSC, however, you won't see anyone at the top levels using that kind of a grip. They won't use that kind of a grip because their goal is to establish as much contact with the grip of the gun as possible, because grip = control. If you leave the two main control surfaces of the gun untouched, the weapon will recoil unpredictably and you have to spend time re-aligning the sights. With a proper grip the muzzle rises predictably and the sights fall back into more or less their original orientation.

If the grip you mentioned is something that gives an advantage in a particular shooting discipline, then it is a highly specialized technique that offers little when you aren't within the narrow confines of that particular sport. If someone's goal is performance in a more action based competition or in being able to put bullets into bad guys on the street, they would do well to adopt a grip that provides what is important in those arenas.

One has to look at their intended application and determine if a technique presented to them from some sort of competitive arena has any resemblance to their application. Pistol bullseye, for instance, is a very challenging endeavor...but it bears very little resemblance to a gunfight. The full contact, weak wrist locked, "thumbs forward" grip, however, is used by everybody from competition shooters with the goal of shooting paper as fast as possible to elite counter-terrorism units who kill people for a living.

[Gutshot John]

The grip that was taught involves pressure on the front and back of the grip but NOT on the sides.

Uhm that part is actually correct. You're not going to control recoil by putting pressure on the sides.

That's not to say you're not touching the sides of the grip but most of your control won't come from the sides.

It's pretty basic physics...when the gun fires and the slide goes rearward to eject the round, the muzzle flips up...what happens to the frontstrap? Since the grip is essentially a lever, your best mechanical advantage for controlling muzzle rise is the front strap of the gun. The "weak wrist lock" isolates the pinky tendon to keep the hand "locked" precisely to keep the front strap from moving forward.

As for the thumbs...well what can I say.

[John_Wayne777]

Uhm that part is actually correct. You're not going to control recoil by putting pressure on the sides.

Every top shooter I've ever trained with teaches a decided "clamping" of the weak hand to apply significant pressure to the sides of the grip for recoil control.

[JSantoro]

Uhm that part is actually correct. You're not going to control recoil by putting pressure on the sides.

That's not to say you're not touching the sides of the grip but most of your control won't come from the sides.

It's pretty basic physics....

Given that it's physics, just how does the support hand NOT clamp on the sides of the primary hand, given that the primary hand is taking up any space that the support hand might touch from the front and back? Matter cannot be in two places at once. That's also physics.

Primary hand does the fore-and-aft squeeze, support hand does the port-to-starboard squeeze (since that's all it can do from a physiological standpoint, anyway), which puts a box of support all the way around the butt of the gun and provides the anchor point for your support arm to provide the stabilization it may. Which is to the forward and lower part of the primary hand, locked in by one's fingers being bricked together, but the bulk of the pressure is on the sides.

There's variation in just HOW MUCH grip pressure an individual shooter might apply to the sides, but that's a matter of what the shooter gives them their best results.

Side-to-side pressure by the off-hand is a correct methodology for achieveing a secure grip on a handgun that assists with good recoil management.

Rancid, I'm with JW. I wouldn't call what that Kenobi was teaching to be ourtight wrong, but sounds strongly like niche-type shooting, for something very type-specific. I'm not too up on wheelguns; don't a lot of folks that still shoot those things cross their thumbs?

[Gutshot John]

Every top shooter I've ever trained with teaches a decided "clamping" of the weak hand to apply significant pressure to the sides of the grip for recoil control.

Try and experiment pinch the gun with fore and aft between thumb and fingers, then do side to side with same.

Now lift the front of the muzzle until the gun moves to simulate flip.

Which one requires less force?

The point is that most of that control comes from fore/aft than side/side. That's the whole point of the thumbs forward wrist lock.

[Gutshot John]

Given that it's physics, just how does the support hand NOT clamp on the sides of the primary hand, given that the primary hand is taking up any space that the support hand might touch from the front and back? Matter cannot be in two places at once. That's also physics.

I didn't say there was no contact on the sides, only that you're going to get more muzzle control with front/back. You don't agree that when the slide goes back the front strap goes forward as the muzzle rises?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UveQ8NSAlo4&feature=fvw

The weak hand is superimposed on the strong hand, knuckle row to knuckle row. By pushing with the strong hand into the wrist lock of the support hand you get much better control than trying to muscle/clamp it from the sides. Archimedes had his shit together.

[John_Wayne777]

Dude...you are dramatically over-complicating the matter. The original question was whether or not you are supposed to apply pressure to the sides of the pistol when you grip the gun, and whether or not there is supposed to be air space between your hands and the grip panels.

The answer is that if you are attempting to gain maximum control of the machine that is spitting fire and projectiles, you want as much contact with the grip as possible and you want to apply deliberate pressure around all 360 degrees of the grip (which means you are deliberately squeezing the grip with both hands) with no airspace. Every...I repeat...every top competition shooter in the action sports uses that style of grip and they are gripping the gun with a lot of force. Watch the forearms of people like Jerry Barnhardt, Rob Leatham, or Todd Jarrett sometime. They have grips like a gorilla on steroids.

EDIT -- the idea of air space between the grip panels and your hand on both sides seems especially difficult to swallow if the advice is being given to people with normal hand sizes using double-stack handguns. For many to achieve that would require having some sort of really goofy strong hand grip on the gun that couldn't possibly allow managing the recoil of the pistol well since the strong hand can't really apply much force on the gun. If somebody has really long fingers and a single-stack handgun they can probably pull it off...but normal people using real pistols probably can't.

[Gutshot John]

Dude...you are dramatically over-complicating the matter. The original question was whether or not you are supposed to apply pressure to the sides of the pistol when you grip the gun, and whether or not there is supposed to be air space between your hands and the grip panels.

Ok well then I wasn't the one that overcomplicated the issue. I never said there was a space between your grip and the gun, in fact I said the opposite.

From my first post...

That's not to say you're not touching the sides of the grip but most of your control won't come from the sides.

I simply said that most of the control came from front/back not side to side. No competition shooter I know of disputes this.

[JSantoro]

I clamp a 2x4 into a bench vice, which comes in from the sides. If I do it right, I'm not going to move the wood in any substantive fashion by banging on the front or back end of it.

Gutshot, I think I see where you're going, but I'm unfamiliar with all the dynamics that go into doing a push-pull with your hands in an isosceles stance. I just know that pushing and pulling on my hands is exhausting, and refuse to do it ever again. I definitely understand the interlacing of fingers over knuckles and other naturally-occurring depressions; what I referred to as "bricked."

You can get the same effect...strike that, wrong way of thinking it... I can enhance that effect by clamping with my off-hand per usual and rotating my elbows outward, which tightens up the tops of both hands without having to grip harder with the strength of my hands. Less energy expended for an effect that is as stable if not moreso (subjective). It's pretty easy to feel that the pressure laterally on both hands, and that translates into enhanced ability to control recoil.

If one isn't applying some kind of worthwhile, palpable pressure from the sides SOMEhow, there's a hole in their grip and it's likely gonna be problematic.