Q about Ben Stoeger's Practical Pistol technique on grip...

[rmantoo]

I'm a C shooter in USPSA. I've been shooting competitively on and off for 20+ years, but am only just now going through the analytical process of learning to shoot. To that end, I have been reading and going through books...lots of books on shooting.

One of my favorite so far has been Stoeger's Drills and 15 minute exercises. I liked it so much, I bought another one of his books.

In "Practical Pistol, Fundamental Techniques and Competition Skills," Ben Stoeger says, "It seems then that if someone wants to grip the gun something other than as 100% as hard as possible then they need to offer up some sort of reason or justification."

He goes over this several times (on page 24)

By 'as hard as possible,' does he mean, over an extended period of time? Or as hard as possible at any one time?

I ask because from a physiological pov, any muscle group exerting 100% of force will quickly fatigue, and will not only get weaker in a logarithmic manner, but will also experience tremors/shakes, and cause related muscles to suffer greater stress and fatigue as they try to compensate. If you can exert, for example, a maximum of 50lbs of force per hand at any one point in time, you can't hold that 50lbs indefinitely. Over the next few minutes to many minutes, attempting to maintain that level of force will cause huge side effects.

So... do you continue to exert your maximum grip throughout the day, stage after stage, or do you start at 70, 80, or 90% on Stage 1 and mainatain that as you go?

[Chris iliff]

CoC for starters.

I'm guessing here, but I think Ben is talking about just when you are pulling the trigger. Which really cuts down on time.

But even if he is not, total time for most matches is not all that much time. Plus, you have these long breaks between shooting. I don't think what you are saying applies as much as you might think.

But, you should take note that grip strength plays a big part in what we do. CoC= Captains of Crush. Look them up and start training.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Chris iliff

[entropic]

I think he means: Grip the gun as hard as reasonably possible while shooting, without degrading your grip strength over the course of a match from overexertion...

[ZackJones]

FWIW, he'll probably reply here but you can ask him directly on his sub-forum here on Enos.

[chuck s]

I don't think Ben really thinks about number percentages as it pertains to grip. I think what he means is " why not grip the hell out of the gun with all your available resources at the time?" A firmer grip means more control and less recoil movement, unless of course someone can prove otherwise.

[rmantoo]

CoC for starters.

Been working with 1, 1.5, and 2 for several years.

[rmantoo]

FWIW, he'll probably reply here but you can ask him directly on his sub-forum here on Enos.

DOH! This is me, hitting forehead, not having even considered the sub-forum when I posted this.

[kneelingatlas]

FWIW, he'll probably reply here but you can ask him directly on his sub-forum here on Enos.

DOH! This is me, hitting forehead, not having even considered the sub-forum when I posted this.

This is why I love this forum! It's a place where us mere mortals can come rub shoulders with the giants in the sport and the industry

[JaeOne3345]

Ben specifically talks about variable hand tension on page 7 of the newest dry fire book. He states you need to be gripping the gun very hard when you are in the actual act of shooting/firing the gun, but you also need to be able to turn this level of tension down a notch for manipulations such as reloads. If you are firing the gun, grip the hell out of it.

[emjei]

After so many years of shooting I'm also looking at the sport with a more logical view

I get better and flatter recoil when I grip the gun hard specially with the left hand but now I have a problem where the slide doesn't look back on an empty magazine....

Its a CZ by the way .... I guess I need a RAMI slide stop

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

[BeerBaron]

of course you cannot grip the gun at your max for any great length of time. but consider an average lvl2/lvl3 match of 12 stages over 2 days. 2 long, 4 medium and 6 short stages. you are not likely to be even 'holding' the gun for more than 4 minutes total and the actual 'shooting the gun' probably half of that. so that's 2 minutes of gripping it as hard as you can which is just 1 minute per day. is that possible? maybe. is it possible to go up to say 90% for that 2 min over 2 days? I think so.

Jerry Miculek talks about this too and says he grips his guns as tight as he can as he wants basically no recoil. what he wants is the sights on target for as much time as possible. any time spent in recoil is time with the sights not on target.

many people advocate the fairly relaxed grip, or have some kind of weak hand/strong hand percentage equation etc. but guys like Ben, Jerry etc to me seem to advocate gripping it as hard as you can. and in fact Jerry even says if you can shoot 200 rounds in a day (which is more than half of the average 12 stage match) and not have sore and tired hands then you are not gripping it hard enough. I would certainly be happy if I could shoot like Jerry!

Edited May 8, 2014 by BeerBaron

[Roons]

Ben specifically talks about variable hand tension on page 7 of the newest dry fire book. He states you need to be gripping the gun very hard when you are in the actual act of shooting/firing the gun, but you also need to be able to turn this level of tension down a notch for manipulations such as reloads. If you are firing the gun, grip the hell out of it.

^ This was also something he discussed during his class. Be relaxed to be able to do everything quickly, when breaking the shot, have a tight grip to the point your weak hand fingers are turning white.