Weak hand grip causing this?

[Jshuberg]

Provided your grip pressure is consistent, and is at least the minimum necessary to control recoil, there is quite a range of pressure that should work just fine. Quite often people adopt a "death grip" to compensate for other problems. While this can work well, and theres nothing wrong at all with a strong grip, if you can't shoot as well with a medium grip, this may be indication of another problem.

Try this - close your eyes, draw your weapon, grip it as if to control recoil, and open your eyes. Your front sight should be somewhere in the notch of the rear. If its not, you need to work on drawing to your natural point of aim. Provided that your front was somewhere in your rear, close your eyes again, and relax your grip to the least amount of pressure that you would ever dare fire a weapon with. Hold there for a few seconds, and open your eyes. The front sight should still be somewhere in the notch of your rear. Now try this with a death grip, when you open your eyes, the front should be in the notch of the rear. If during this exercise you discover that your point of aim changes with grip strength, there is a problem with either the orientation and positioning of your hands, or possibly in the *uniformity* of your grip strength, as opposed to the *level* of your grip strength.

It should be obvious that a consistent point of aim across a wide range of grip strengths is desirable, and evidence that you are in fact gripping the weapon correctly. Here's an exercise that is mostly done for trigger control training, but once you are able to do it well it will begin to give insight into your grip as well. It pretty much requires a heavy DA/SA trigger, so bust out your Sig if you have one.

Put a spent piece of brass on top of your front sight blade and balance it squarely in the center (you may have to aim upward slightly to make the top of your sight level to the deck). Slowly squeeze the trigger until the hammer falls. The case should vibrate a little but it should not fall. This helps develop a very nice trigger squeeze. Once you get good at this you'll notice that while the case doesn't fall due to trigger errors, it will tend to slightly "walk" in a particular direction everytime the hammer falls, and will eventually fall off after a certain number of trigger squeezes.

What I discovered is that what causes the case to walk is an error in grip position or uniformity. Actually whats happening is that at the instant the hammer falls, vibrations are introduced into the pistol, and much like a car with spinning tires, the frictional between the case and the sight is reduced. If the gun moves at all in the milisecond or so after the hammer falls, the case will tend to stay put, and the gun will move slightly undernmeath it, and it will appear to have "walked" slightly in the opposite direction the gun moved. If your grip is correct, the case will tend to vibrate and possibly walk around on the top of the front sight, but it will tend to move one way one shot, another way for the next etc. If the case tends to take a straight line off the sight, this is indication of a grip anomoly that you want to correct. Try changing things up and retrying this drill until you can squeeze the trigger a dozen or more times before the case eventually walks off the sight. Once you get to this point, this should be your new reference grip.

Correcting your grip for consistent point of aim across a variety of grip pressures, and eliminating any unwanted motions or torquing of the pistol when firing can all be done during dry fire. Next time you go to the range, you might be surprised at how much a proper grip can improve things. A really strong grip may be a good thing for maximum recoil control and such, but if someone is using a strong grip to mask an undiagnosed error of some kind, they should loosen it up a bit and listen to what a weak grip has to tell them about their shooting technique.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Jshuberg

[mgrs]

Jshuberg- Thank you for the thoughtful posts in this thread. Rarely have a I heard someone dissect technique components so far, and it is a good read.

I am absolutely guilty of using a support hand death grip to mask trigger control problems with a Glock. I find that instead of drifting low and left like most Glock shooters, I drift horizontally right at times, which I think may be caused by my excessive support hand grip combined with poor trigger control.

I actually have the most trouble with trigger control in my Glock 34, which has the lightest trigger of any of my glocks. It might be because the break feels longer and mushier, with more opportunity to to shift the POI as it breaks.

None of this stuff shows up much at speed on cardboard, but shooting dot drills and longer distance plates, I begin to see it.

[Jshuberg]

Jshuberg- Thank you for the thoughtful posts in this thread. Rarely have a I heard someone dissect technique components so far, and it is a good read.

No problem. This is exactly the kind of conversation I joined the forum for

I do have some advice for you, although I suspect many others here may not agree. If you have identified that you are experiencing trigger control issues, or even suspect that you are, I would drop all training that focusses on the development of any other skills until you get your trigger squeeze worked out. There is no other physical skill more important than trigger squeeze to get right. I tend to work out each of the fundamentals in as much isolation as possible, and then bring everything together from time to time. When working with a new student, after initial classroom lessons I get the rest of their fundamentals to the "good enough for now" state, and then work them on triger control until they can consistently group 6" at 25 yards slow fire. Then I go back to the other fundamentals and begin to round things out. This seems to be a very successful approach. Trigger control drives every other aspect of the physcial contact you have with the weapon, and is the most critical fundamental to get right.

There are a number of training techniques to develop a proper trigger squeeze. Most are dry-fire, some are live fire. Some are just educational. Here are a few things to consider or try out:

First, understand the mechanics of a proper trigger squeeze. The ideal placement of your finger on the trigger is between the knuckle crease and the center of the pad. However, this is very dependent on a lot of things - length of your fingers, length of pull, angle of pull, etc. What is most important is that where your finger contacts the trigger be in such a way that as you squeeze the trigger, that at the instant the sear releases that the angle of the force on the trigger be exactly rearward. Note that as you squeeze the trigger, your index finger makes a little arc - it does not move prefectly rearward. At only one position during the trigger squeeze arc is the motion perfectly rearward, you want that position to occur at the exact position and exact moment when the sear breaks.

You may have to sacrifice "perfect" finger placement because of the mechanics of your hand on the pistol. You may also have to sacrifice "perfect" grip as well by canting the pistol slightly if you have short fingers and a large pistol, long fingers and a small pistol, etc. You obviously want everything to be as close to textbook "perfect" as possible, but the most important thing in all aspects of how your hands are placed on the pistol is so that the trigger motion is perfectly rearward when the hammer/striker releases. There are 2 ways that an incorrect trigger squeeze can effect shot placement:

1 - You move the pistol off target as you squeeze the trigger before the sear breaks. This results from a relatively large error in the angle of the force on the trigger.

2 - You move the pistol off target by a small amount at the instant of and immediately after the sear breaks. When this happens, the resistance of the trigger drops significantly, and the pressure you were applying to overcome trigger resistence causes the pistol to cant slightly in the direction of the angle of force. If the direction of the angle of force is even slightly off from perfectly rearward, the instant the sear breaks and trigger resistence drops, the pistol will tend to snap ever so slightly in the direction of the error.

The first thing is to discover the best grip, finger placement, squeeze angle for your hand on your gun. Somethimes the error is so slight you won't be able to see it by looking through the trigger guard, you'll need to close your eyes and focus all of your attention on the direction of force during dry-fire until it is perfectly rearward the instant the sear breaks.

One very good mental exercise that can assist with this is to visualize a string connected to the back of the trigger that runs directly to a small winch on the tip of your nose. Instead of squeezing the trigger with your finger, visualize that the winch begins to ever so slowly pull on the string to the trigger, and that your finger is simply riding the trigger as it moves rearward directly to the winch. It sounds goofy, but visualization techniques are among the most powerful tools we have for perfecting technique. If you find it difficult for your finger to "follow" the movement of the trigger as it's being winched towards your nose, change your finger/ hand placement until the mechanics of the motion of your finger is natural and fluid and there is no angular force when the sear breaks.

Another good dry fire technique is to place a spent case on top of your front sight blade and keep it balanced there as you continually dry fire the pistol. This works best with a heavy DA/SA trigger. If you're using a glock, it's best to have someone rack the slide and replace the case for you each shot. It may tend to walk off in one direction or another after a few dry fires due to grip errors, but that's not something to worry about until you get your trigger issues reined in.

Another live fire technique is to send a 6" target back 25 yards. Balance a pistol with exactly one round in the web of your weapon hand, and on the index finger of your support hand. It should be wobbling back and forth if you move your hands. Then very slightly wrap your hands around the grip of the gun. It shouldn't be your normal grip, it should be a grip with only the slightest inward pressure to keep the gun from jumping out of your hands during recoil. your grip should not be holding the weapon on target, it should still be the balancing between the web of your hand and index finger. Line up your sights over the target and begin squeezing the trigger. And by squeeze the trigger I mean visualize the winch on your nose and follow the trigger rearward with your finger.

You will notice that as you begin squeezing the trigger, that the pressure on the trigger will actually help to stabilize the motion of the weapon up to the point when it fires. When it does fire, it may actually move in your hands under recoil. Thats why we only load one round (in case you drop it). As long as you're very careful with this exercise, and ensure that you always have at least the amount of grip pressure required to keep control of the gun during recoil, it is incredibly useful. What this exercise does is minimize all forces on the gun other than trigger squeeze. The effect is that trigger errors are *greatly* magnified to the point where you can more easily perceive what exactly the error is so you can correct it.

When you can get to the point where you can run this exercise and consistently hit the 6" target at 25 yards with the "weak grip trigger technique", then you can move on to other aspects of your shooting technique.

Again, I'm sure there are many that might disagree with this method, but I've found that when a person is able to perfect trigger squeeze in isolation, that he is a significantly better shooter when he returns to the other fundamentals and rounds himself out.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Jshuberg

[mgrs]

No problem. This is exactly the kind of conversation I joined the forum for

<snip>

Thanks again for the great post. This is also the reason I joined this forum- the focus and atmosphere are far better for shooting sports than most general "gun forums."

Of the two trigger control problem scenarios you mention, I was seeing the second more in slow dry fire, with a very slight "break shift" down and right or down and left, depending on grip pressure. The first will start to show up during live fire bill drills and other fast split work. I acknowledge the fact that it comes from tensing up the firing hand and mashing the trigger more trying to drive splits lower. I have been spending most of my live fire time lately working on Burkett style timing drills on small dots, with shot calling as a secondary objective.

I did also try the "loose grip on the pistol with balanced rounds" technique and was able to shoot 6" circles easily at 25yds, slow fire. I was surprised at how well the gun shot with zero grip pressure. This leads me to think that an artificially tense 'death grip' is detrimental outside drills with long strings and fast splits.

I was shooting the same G34. I agree with many here in that physical characteristics of Glocks lend themselves to more trigger manipulation errors. I do have to devote more training to conscious trigger control than with my 1911.

[Jshuberg]

Yeah, the only reason for any grip strength at all is for recoil control. A pistol can be steadied, aimed, and fired properly with only 2 points of contact and a trigger finger.

The fact that you were able to hold a 6" group slow fire with the weak grip technique, but experience errors with a stronger grip is unusual. Typically a stronger grip tends to mask trigger errors. You may simply be milking the grip, or otherwise allowing sympathetic muscle motions in your weapon hand throw your shot. Honestly I'd have to see what your hands are doing to diagnose it.

Try running the dry fire exercise where you draw your weapon to full presentation with your eyes closed, open them and verify a proper sight picture, close them and apply a death grip, open them, etc. Try going through a whole range, and see if increasing/decreasing grip strengths changes your natural point of aim. If it does, you need to modify the position of your hands or uniformity of grip strength until your POA remains consistent through different grip strengths.

Most of the time our grip strength changes at least slightly when the hand senses or the mind anticipates recoil. If a change in grip strength results in a change of natural POA, it will be very hard to shoot tight groups rapid fire until the problem is corrected.

One question, after a shot breaks does the gun automatically come back down to exacyly where it came from, or do you have to move your hands to get a proper sight picture again?