Gripping with your fingers

[Pierruiggi]

I know there are countless threads on gripping a gun, but I haven't seen this particular subject discussed. So I made a new thread.

About 3 weeks ago, I accidenatly discovered a new (for me) way of gripping the gun.

Keep in mind I have large (although not meaty) hands and long fingers.

It goes like this, I grab the gun as I normally would, and apply pressure with the fingers ONLY. Like if I were trying to push it into my palm (I can't find a way to describe it exactly). The pressure is applied from the second articulation towards the tip of the fingers. I do this with both the gripping hand and the support hand. Also when shooting single handed. While I shoot without the thumbs touching the pistol, I used to also apply pressure with the base of the thumb, in the palm. This in the long run created a discomfort in my hand that would inevitably lead to tension. This way I'm using mostly the muscles in my forearm (since the fingers bend using tendons conected to the forearm, they don't have muscles themselves. Exception being our human race opposable thumb, that indeed has a muscle in the hand, like I mentioned earlier) and not put my hands into strain.

I also find it easier to isolate my trigger finger (both the right and left one).

Thing is I've been only succesful when using it with a side to side grip with both hands.

Now the good and bad news, all from my perspective of course. YMMV.

The good news:

-I'm more comfortable.

-It's easy to reproduce.

-It's quite efficient.

-It's more neutral, I always end up getting aligned sights with this technique. Before I would sometimes get my sights misaligned when presenting the gun, hinting irregular or uneven strenght applied.

-It's less prone to induce tension, I can apply much more strenght without shaking.

-Better trigger control.

The bad news:

-Shooters with short fingers will probably find this difficult to do.

-Because of the pressure being applied from the second articulation towards the tip of the finger, this (or at least I) can't be easily applied with Brian's "strong hand grips front to back and weak hand side to side" technique.

Now, I understand this post is lousily written, but I'm very tired, hungry and thirsty all at the same time right now. Please be pacient with me.

It goes without saying that every opinion or criticism is welcome.

[short_round]

It sounds like you used to shoot a lot of bullseye.

Anyway, if it works for you then I would think there's nothing wrong with it. I would guess that how the pressure is applied to the grips is not as important as where it is applied and how much.

Before IPSC I used a grip with a "High Thumb Hold" and the little finger sticking out like I was drinking tea because I did not want to disturb the gun before the shot broke. My grip has since evolved through various stages of getting more and more contact with the gun with as surface area of my hands as I can. I get more feedback from the gun.

[Pierruiggi]

Hmmm... How weird... What made you think I shot lots of bullseye? I never did. I jumped straight from "plinking without any real technique" to IPSC.

I think that where you apply pressure is directly affected by how you apply it. Remember that when you apply pressure into specific places in the gun, you are at the same time also applying pressure into specific places in your hands that can and will affect your shooting. There lies the purpose of this thread, to see what people think about the details of gun-hands interaction regarding pressure points.