Controlling muzzle flip

[MNshooter]

I'm looking for the best grip tightness. Too much causes sight movement (shaking) and too loose lets the gun shift. I'll find what works.

Next match, try holding the pistol with your strong hand and asking one of the top shooters at your club to grip the pistol with their weak hand as if they were shooting.

Kinda like the movie Ghost, right?

I'm enjoying this thread as my grip is terrible.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[CHA-LEE]

I'm looking for the best grip tightness. Too much causes sight movement (shaking) and too loose lets the gun shift. I'll find what works.

Next match, try holding the pistol with your strong hand and asking one of the top shooters at your club to grip the pistol with their weak hand as if they were shooting.

I do this exact example while training classes to show students with improper grip angles or pressures how the sights SHOULD track when you are using a proper weak hand grip angle and pressure. The most common response when I do this is "Wow, the gun doesn't seem to muzzle flip at all!!!".

[Jshuberg]

If the gun is moving in your hands, and your holding it at least as tightly as you hold a hammer when pounding in a nail, the problem isn't grip pressure, it's hand placement or grip uniformity. It doesn't take very much grip strength to keep the pistol from moving in your hands. If you need a death grip to keep it from moving, your hands are wrong. You should look to solve the problem where the problem actually is, rather than solving all control problems with "I need a stronger grip".

You should be running a thumbs forward grip, where the meat of the support hand fully contacts the pistol where your weapon hand doesn't. This will likely result in your support hand being canted forward more than your weapon hand. There should be physical contact completely around the entire grip of the pistol, and your grip strength should be uniform on both sides. The more surface contact between your hands and the pistol, the less pressure you need between your hand and the gun to provide sufficient friction that the gun won't move under recoil.

The majority of your grip pressure should be between the back of your hands, where they mate together and contact the back of the pistol. If you are primarily using your fingers to apply grip pressure to the gun, the back can more easily move under recoil. The muscles of your fingers are also very weak compared to the muscles in your hands, wrists, and forearms, so relying on finger strength can cause shaking and fatigue to occur faster.

When your main grip pressure is between the meat of the base of the hands at the rear of the pistol, you maximize the physical contact on the gun. Finger pressure simply locks it in place. When the back of the gun is very solidly held in place, and you pre-tension your wrists forward towards the recoil pressure, your hands become a spring.

You should be able to fire a round, and have the gun come back to where it came from without any additional muscle movements or effort. This isn't all about grip strength, it's about hand placement, and uniformity of pressure around the grip.

Hope this helps.

[Hi-Power Jack]

If the gun is moving in your hands, and you're holding it at least as tightly as you hold a hammer when pounding in a nail, the problem isn't grip pressure, it's hand placement or grip uniformity.

You should be running a thumbs forward grip, where the meat of the support hand fully contacts the pistol where your weapon hand doesn't.

Excellent description, IMHO.

[neckbone]

If the gun is moving in your hands, and your holding it at least as tightly as you hold a hammer when pounding in a nail, the problem isn't grip pressure, it's hand placement or grip uniformity. It doesn't take very much grip strength to keep the pistol from moving in your hands. If you need a death grip to keep it from moving, your hands are wrong. You should look to solve the problem where the problem actually is, rather than solving all control problems with "I need a stronger grip". You should be running a thumbs forward grip, where the meat of the support hand fully contacts the pistol where your weapon hand doesn't. This will likely result in your support hand being canted forward more than your weapon hand. There should be physical contact completely around the entire grip of the pistol, and your grip strength should be uniform on both sides. The more surface contact between your hands and the pistol, the less pressure you need between your hand and the gun to provide sufficient friction that the gun won't move under recoil. The majority of your grip pressure should be between the back of your hands, where they mate together and contact the back of the pistol. If you are primarily using your fingers to apply grip pressure to the gun, the back can more easily move under recoil. The muscles of your fingers are also very weak compared to the muscles in your hands, wrists, and forearms, so relying on finger strength can cause shaking and fatigue to occur faster. When your main grip pressure is between the meat of the base of the hands at the rear of the pistol, you maximize the physical contact on the gun. Finger pressure simply locks it in place. When the back of the gun is very solidly held in place, and you pre-tension your wrists forward towards the recoil pressure, your hands become a spring. You should be able to fire a round, and have the gun come back to where it came from without any additional muscle movements or effort. This isn't all about grip strength, it's about hand placement, and uniformity of pressure around the grip. Hope this helps.

Although the movement has been reduced, the return to battery isn't as good as I would like, or expect. I wasn't sure I had the hand placement thing correct either.

A trip to the range today may be in the works and I'll incorporate your description of hand placement and see how that works.

Thamks

[Whoops!]

First to address your last post, try changing to a lighter recoil spring if you're still using the stock spring.

Second, don't think it's all about your weak hand as so many advocate. It's definitely a combination of both. I liked the video someone posted of Michelle off Team Glock earlier. I will submit another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12AwzH4NygU

This man consistently places in top 20 at Nationals, is a GM and factory sponsored CZ shooter, and is slow to get into and out of positions. I'll add this, he's slow in the video I posted, he's shooting a little conservatively for nationals. I'll leave you to make the observations, but I think if you take a good hard look, you'll see things that people haven't advocated here that both he and Michelle, and other GM's Ive seen do.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Whoops!

[toothguy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDzC6djUQxM&list=PL3B0361DD58FA0BB0

[Whoops!]

Another thing with the video that was just posted . . . Your "death grip" is probably equivalent tension to his "firm grip." It's like a heavyweight boxer saying, "don't punch as hard as you can." Work out your arms when practicing.

[toothguy]

I really think the most important thing about the grip is to get the gun to track well.

[Whoops!]

That's why you shoot Bianchi ;P

Just kidding of course. I think it's about both, tracking as well and as minimally as possible. After all, the less it tracks, the less chance for error, the less time to track, etc. We wouldn't use compensators if it was just about tracking well. Although, they do help the gun track well if designed correctly.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Whoops!

[Jshuberg]

People use the hammer analogy a lot, but I suspect most people just imagine pounding in a nail and how much grip pressure is required to keep the hammer from moving in your hand. If your having trouble with grip strength, your imagination may not be sufficient for determining the appropriate amount of pressure.

Try this, go into your garage, grab a hammer and some nails and a piece of scrap lumber. Try pounding a nail as far as you can in a single whack. Actually do this, don't just think about it. Play with different grip strengths. Feel how the hammer feels in your hand when it doesn't move. Feel how the surface contact between your hand and the handle locks it firmly in place. This is all the grip pressure you need when shooting a pistol - in fact its very likely when you really give a nail a good whack, that the impulse introduced into your hand is actually *more* than when shooting a pistol. It takes remarkably less grip strength than many people realize to hold either a hammer or a pistol solidly in the hand.

The difference is simply hand placement, uniformity of grip pressure, the psychological effect of the report, and the fact the slide recoils towards your face.

Another thing you can try is shooting into a berm with your hands in the low ready position. This will minimize the psychological effects that make you *think* you need more pressure than you do. Play with hand orientation, grip srength, and pressure uniformity shooting from the low ready and you may find that you're able to dial in what you need to be doing faster. Just make sure that you are completely safe when doing this.

There are 3 movements when shooting a pistol that must be accounted for:

Movement of the gun within your hand

Muzzle flip - upward movement of the muzzle relative to the rear of the gun

Upward movement of the entire gun from the point in space where it was fired.

Different muscles are reposnsible for controlling/managing these different movements:

The muscles in your hands and fingers are what keeps the gun from moving within your hands.

The muscles under your forearm and wrist act as a spring to manage muzzle flip, and returns the front sight back to proper alignment in the rear.

The muscles on top of your forearm and wrist act as a spring to bring the gun back to the same point in space it occupied when fired.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Jshuberg

[CHA-LEE]

How much actual grip pressure you need to use varies greatly depending on the type of gun, ammo power factor, weight of the gun, and how the springs are setup in the gun. For example, if you are shooting an open gun that is setup with a proper load, comp, and springs you can get away with a lot weaker grip pressure than a light weight Limited gun using major PF ammo. In my own testing between Limited guns, I know that it takes significantly more grip pressure to properly manage the recoil on a light weight setup (28oz gun) verses a heavy setup (44oz gun) while using the same power factor ammo.

If you have poor grip strength but want to increase your ability to manage the recoil, use a heavy or compensated gun with lighter recoil and hammer springs. But this is really just a band aid to the issue of not gripping the gun hard enough.

In the end, I have found that there really is no replacement for having very strong grip strength. The stronger your grip strength is the better you will be able to manage the recoil with your normal "Firm" grip and not feel the need to death grip the gun to manage the recoil and allow the sights to track properly.

Jay brings up some very good points though on using proper hand placement on the grip of the gun. If you are not using the proper hand placement while gripping the gun then how hard you grip the gun really does not matter.

The short answer to all of this is ....... Muzzle Flip is for Wussies

[neckbone]

If the gun is moving in your hands, and your holding it at least as tightly as you hold a hammer when pounding in a nail, the problem isn't grip pressure, it's hand placement or grip uniformity. It doesn't take very much grip strength to keep the pistol from moving in your hands. If you need a death grip to keep it from moving, your hands are wrong. You should look to solve the problem where the problem actually is, rather than solving all control problems with "I need a stronger grip". You should be running a thumbs forward grip, where the meat of the support hand fully contacts the pistol where your weapon hand doesn't. This will likely result in your support hand being canted forward more than your weapon hand. There should be physical contact completely around the entire grip of the pistol, and your grip strength should be uniform on both sides. The more surface contact between your hands and the pistol, the less pressure you need between your hand and the gun to provide sufficient friction that the gun won't move under recoil. The majority of your grip pressure should be between the back of your hands, where they mate together and contact the back of the pistol. If you are primarily using your fingers to apply grip pressure to the gun, the back can more easily move under recoil. The muscles of your fingers are also very weak compared to the muscles in your hands, wrists, and forearms, so relying on finger strength can cause shaking and fatigue to occur faster. When your main grip pressure is between the meat of the base of the hands at the rear of the pistol, you maximize the physical contact on the gun. Finger pressure simply locks it in place. When the back of the gun is very solidly held in place, and you pre-tension your wrists forward towards the recoil pressure, your hands become a spring. You should be able to fire a round, and have the gun come back to where it came from without any additional muscle movements or effort. This isn't all about grip strength, it's about hand placement, and uniformity of pressure around the grip. Hope this helps.

Jshuberg , your above comments/instruction has made things right. Placing the weak hand thumb base rearward reduced the flip and resulted in nice return to battery. Had a good session at the range this afternoon. Thanks to all.

[Jshuberg]

Excellent!! Now that you've found something that works well for you, don't be afraid to experiment with different thing from time to time. It's likely your grip will evolve and change slightly the more you shoot, and as you shoot different guns. This is a good thing, as you'll be constantly fine tuning and refining your technique

[pjb45]

I found that shooting minor in 45 ACP helped in lots of areas.

Grip and trigger control were improved when i could eliminate recoil as part of the equation. Another aspect was a suggestion from Matt Burkett. Put 10 rounds into the berm--no focus on a target--as fast as you can. You we start to see the muzzle/front sight rise and lower.

Captains of Crush from Manny Bragg also helped with grip strength - I was able to grip the gun strongly but with less tension as my grip strength improved.

[Nimitz]

At the start of every training session I do half a mag of berm shooting to verify that I have the appropriate grip to get the sights to track straight up and down. This works as a nice little reminder to my subconscious on what the proper grip is for the rest of the session and if at any time during the training session my sights start not tracking correctly I'll just stop, walk over to the berm and shoot a few rounds to "remind" myself what the proper grip is. I don't want to spend 100 or more rds reenforcing the wrong grip in training. I like to correct problems immediately when I ID them ....

Edited November 15, 2013 by Nimitz

[Wannawas]

Don't lock your wrists, but use the muscles in your wrist on the underside of your forearms to resist backward and upward motion. The gun only recoils in one direction, so "locking" your wrists is an inefficient use of muscle tension, as doing so resists movement in all directions. There are 3 things that need to happen to manage recoil properly:

1) Your grip should be of sufficient strength so that the gun doesn't slip in your hands during recoil.

2) Your wrist muscles should be tensioned forward, acting as a spring so that the muzzle will return to proper alignment without additional effort.

3) The upper side of your forearms should be tensioned slightly downward, as if you were pulling down on a rope that doesn't move, so that the gun returns to the same point in space that it came from without additional effort.

The tension required is not very much, and you should use the least amount of muscle strength necessary for the "spring" to bring the weapon back to where it came from automatically. You should *not* be moving any muscles when firing the gun other than your trigger finger. If you move or tighten in anticipation of or in response to recoil, you are doing it wrong. Your arms should be fully extended, but don't lock your elbows. You want the recoil to happen, don't brace against it or try to eliminate it. Let the gun recoil, let the recoil energy be absorbed into your body, and then the "spring" created by your muscle tension automatically returns the gun to where it came from. Being properly relaxed and only using the minimal muscle strength is key. Don't fight or try to control the recoil, absorb it and manage what happens when the recoil energy subsides.

If you try to muscle away the effects of recoil, your fighting a losing game. If you allow the recoil to happen, and tension your muscles correctly so that the gun returns "after" the the muzzle flip, you will find that what ends up happening is that the muzzle flip becomes almost non-existent in the process. While this is kind of neat, it's not actually the goal - the goal is for the gun to snap back to where it came from automatically. If the gun returns in less time than you can physically reset and squeeze the trigger again, it doesn't really matter how much flip there was.

Using "special" loads or hardware might help initially, but you absolutely want to master the skill of managing recoil. If you try to bypass this skill with equipment, it's just going to hurt you in the long run. It's no different than installing training wheels on a bicycle instead of learning balance. Don't be that guy, develop your spring and practice stillness and relaxation when firing.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for taking the time!

[newmexicocrawler]

Thumbs forward.....GRIP GRIP GRIP