Change The Way You Think About Gripping A Pistol, Part 1: The CLP Method

[@Hunt2-pr5ku]

Great information and excellent explanation.

[@byronmclean8323]

My latest pick-up, a Volkmann lightweight .45 bobtail has thin grips. With that thickness of grip, I sometimes have an issue with the beavertail safety not depressing enough to allow a clean trigger pull. These grips have a deep trough to the magazine release, so I’ve been playing around and realized that, if I get a solid draw grip with the strong thumb sitting in the trough, and then the support hand reinforcing that thumb against the grip, support index finger on the front of the trigger guard, and support thumb straight up, I get a rock solid hold with only half of the support hand strength utilized, no interference with the slide lock or thumb safety controls, and a clean trigger press with no wobble. I am going to try it out at the range this weekend to see if it works as well as it does in dry fire.

[@bighaasfly]

I have very large hands. My strong hand grip wraps nearly entirely around the grip of the pistol with my finger tips nearly touching the palm of my right hand. I added mouldable clay to the front strap on my grip and let it form in the joints where my fingers meet my palms. After that, I hardened it, affixed it with caulking for a secure yet non permanent adhesion and then wrapped the whole thing in skateboard tape. This made my finger tips stop shortly after rounding the front strap and left room for my support hand palm to contact the gun whereas before my support hand was stacking on my strong hand fingers. The additional contact area made my marksmanship rise immediately and significantly. It’s literally a custom fit to my right hand now. It ain’t pretty but it sure does work good. I love it.

[@coleverret2269]

Bubba’ed

[@bighaasfly]

@ something like that! 😄

[@KonadorAuchindoun]

7:00 was nicely explained

[@andrewdelaix]

My perception, and commenters correct me if I am wrong, I think that if you have sufficient grip on the gun that it doesn't bounce around on recoil you have sufficient grip and if you grip harder than that it is just superfluous. At that point the recoil is being transferred into your wrist and now recoil mitigation is about good structure and wrist strength.

[@brianshuler6951]

Your statement that the specific grip on guns is in a constant state of flux is something all of us shooters should understand. Changes in grip strength, injuries, age related ailments, weight, different gun configurations/designs, and many other factors may require adjustments to how we can best grip a firearm for optimum performance.

[@Nick--_]

Grip isn't necessarily about reducing recoil but rather making recoil predictable. You don't really care how much your dot/sight rises in recoil as long as it returns to the same spot every time. Once you've established reasonable recoil control, changes in grip pressure affect the predictability of dot/sight return under recoil as well as how much you move the gun when pulling the trigger and how quickly you can pull the trigger without running into bad trigger presses or trigger freeze. It's a balancing act of all those things.

[@TacticalAdv]

These comments are great! Was truly my hope to spur some conversation

[@jameswebb2856]

Great video. Can you do a video showing this concept as it relates to One hand grips?

[@TacticalAdv]

Why yes, yes I can

[@alankerby8613]

Interesting discussion. A couple of things to consider. First, think of the basic principles of biomechanics; where and why hand contact placement mitigates recoil. For example, web high under tang keeps pivot point high. Base of backstrap in natural groove between the thenar eminence and hypothenar eminence (against the solid carpal bones of the wrist) provides stability, not so on the soft hypothenar eminence fat pad. Fingers on front strap (especially the strongest 4th and 5th digits) provide vise-like pressure towards the carpal bones in the hand that has contact with the lower backstrap. The lower the counteracting force (4th and 5th digit rearward pressure with maximum distance from pivot point), the greater the counteracting force of muzzle flip rotating around the pivot point. Simple lever principles here. Second, low coefficient of friction of skin on metal/plastic frame. COF low but highly variable depending on skin moisture and level of stippling. Not effective for recoil mitigation but side pressure helps with rotational forces. Despite individual variations, basic biomechanics are invariant. Looking forward to next part.

[@TacticalAdv]

This is a series and your thoughts are indeed represented in some of the later videos. Thanks!

[@atcair33]

Here's one of the problems. Unless you have done some martial arts training where you learn to control different muscle groups differently It is very hard to take a regular civilian and teach them this quickly. For example in my martial arts training we had to have a solid fist but are whole arm had to be loose for speed. Normally when you make a fish you end up tightening all the muscles of your arm. Learning to make a fist and have my entire arm loose took a lot of time. But it taught me to control my hand muscles differently than my forearm muscles and differently than my bicep muscles. In order to get I guess what you would call a proper grip on a handgun first you have to take into account the fact that everyone is physically different. 120 lb woman will have a different muscular makeup than a 250 lb guy. So you can't have one overall grip and muscle tightening because you'll have to change it for different physiques. I've been shooting for a long time and it seems like your grip is built over time. First I was taught the master grip principle. I learned to use that over time but still had a little bit of trouble with recoil control. Then I was watching a video that said to force your hands in a certain way like you're trying to pull the gun apart. Well that was the magic ingredient. But it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't spent so many months perfecting the master grip. Why? Because it took a while to build the muscle memory so that my grip would repeat automatically without my thinking about it. So when I added that new layer I could focus on those new muscles and forget about the muscles in my hands because the muscle memory had been built. So actually now that I think about it getting to the point where you have a supposed proper or good grip on a handgun is more like building layers. You have to start with the basics, train those until it's muscle memory and then the start adding new pieces. You're not going to get a perfect grip and perfect recoil control your first 3 months shooting. It's just not going to happen. But all of that leads me to a second problem I'm trying to understand. If you buy a guitar you don't take one lesson and then go off and join a band. But it seems like people buy a handgun, take one course probably for a concealed carry permit and never see an instructor again. It seems to me as instructors we should be trying to develop our students the way guitar students go to their instructors. Once a week for a couple of months or once every other week. With all of my years and experience shooting I can tell you for a fact that one lesson or one friend teaching you something the day you bought your gun for the first time is not enough to make you a competent shooter. Can you go to the range enough times to get away with using your firearm in a life-threatening situation? Most likely. But I think of all the years I went to the range and didn't have specific goals or specific things I was practicing and now that I look back I was just pissing money away putting holes in pieces of paper. I enjoyed the shooting but I wasn't getting better because I wasn't learning. I wasn't learning because I wasn't working with an instructor. And nobody from the day I bought the gun to my friends that help me go to the range for the first time, to the people at the range to the magazines and anybody else ever push the idea that I should be taking regular lessons. Why is that? If someone can make a career or at least pay most of their bills teaching people to play guitar then why shouldn't firearm instructors be able to make a decent living with five or six students a week? I mean if you work at a company you probably can. I'm talking more about the independent firearms instructors like Independent guitar teachers. Anyway if anyone has any ideas or would like to put some kind of group together where we start working on developing ways to get students to treat us like they do private instrument instructors, please let me know. I'd be happy to create something where an instructor that doesn't want to work for some big company can make a decent halfway living independently teaching people how to shoot. Maybe it's a silly dream but for as serious as firearms are compared to guitars or trombones you would think students would take it more seriously. I'm not sure why they don't.

[@ASPextra]

Oh I disagree. Chris teaches regular folk this stuff all the time. They get it pretty quickly.