Cy Soto Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Can you maintain a tight grip on your gun and not hold your breath? ______________________________________________________ The tighter I grip my gun, the more difficult it is for me to breathe while shooting. Is it possible to keep a super-tight grip on the gun and stay relaxed enough so that you don't hold your breath? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan550 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 I guess anything's possible, but I'm with you, Cy. I take a few deep breathes, then at the "Standby" command, take about 1/2 another and pretty much hold it during firing! Get kinda red-in-the-face sometimes, but for me that works. Alan~^~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyDucky Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 stop clenching your pecs and abs so much. dryfire and practice breathing while firing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exmr2sw Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Breathe during the course of fire? Whats that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Can you maintain a tight grip on your gun and not hold your breath? ______________________________________________________ The tighter I grip my gun, the more difficult it is for me to breathe while shooting. Is it possible to keep a super-tight grip on the gun and stay relaxed enough so that you don't hold your breath? Not me. I pay the RO a dollar to slap me every 15 seconds and say: "Breathe, stupid...." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgardner Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 I'm too old and ugly for anyone to do rescue breathing on me if I pass out so I made a special effort to learn to breathe as I run the course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Most shooters hold their breath while shooting. This is why you see so many shooters being excessively out of breath on a long course of fire that has a lot of non-stop blasting. You need to breath normally at all times while shooting. Doing so greatly reduces your tension level while shooting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cy Soto Posted June 26, 2014 Author Share Posted June 26, 2014 You need to breath normally at all times while shooting. Doing so greatly reduces your tension level while shooting. I agree but finding that balance between keeping a tight grip on the gun and holding my breath has proven to be an elusive strategy. I have tried the grip enhancers like Pro-Grip and the grip-strengthening devices but I always feel like I could grip the gun a little bit tighter. When I do, I feel the gun shooting "flatter" but that's when I start holding my breath. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkm Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Try getting that same strong grip but without tension from your chest/abs like Lucky mentioned earlier. That has been a focus of my dry fire lately. I have been trying to keep all the "tension" in my hands/wrist/forearms/biceps so I can move the rest of my body without being all jerky and tight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jshuberg Posted June 27, 2014 Share Posted June 27, 2014 It absolutely blows my mind that people advocate a death grip on the gun. Get a moderate grip, and rotate your hands inward at the elbows/shoulders. It takes very little muscular strength to do this. What this does is control the gun with big muscles, rather than small ones in the hand, and forces grip strength to be focused high up on the grip where you need it, and hand muscles alone are unable to do this no matter how strong your hands are. Let the muzzle flip happen. You don't need to hold the gun perfectly level during recoil. As long as it returns back to exactly where it came from before you can physically operate the trigger, muzzle flip or the motion of the front sight doesn't matter at all. The gun wants to recoil, it wants to muzzle flip. Don't fight it, learn to dance with it. What's more, by adjusting the amount of inward rotation and angle of pressure of each hand, you can tune the "spring" that is your grip to get the front sight to return back to where it came from automatically. It's almost like steering the front sight the same way you could steer a tank or a bulldozer. Yes, going death grip on the gun does work, but you're expending more effort than necessary when doing this. Conservation of effort leads to conservation of motion, and minimizes both fatigue and flinches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_C Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 More than one way to skin a cat I guess. Ben Stoeger says he grips so hard he sometimes peels skin off his strong hand with his weak hand. He seems to do ok with this approach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carmoney Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 The really good shooters grip the gun really HARD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toothguy Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 It seems like I shoot better if I grip really firm but don't tense my shoulders and arms. When I started shooting I was taught to hold my breath so now it happens automatically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 Learning to not hold your breath while shooting is like learning any other skill ... Work on it in dry fire and then confirm it in live fire. You must learn to shoot with your hands and get the rest of your body out of the equation. You hear the term 'floating the gun', this occurs when you've learned to shoot with your hands, tension free. You'll know when you get there as your times for things like BIll Drills will be sub 2 sec on command as will sub .2 sec splits .... And yes, you should be gripping the gun really hard, but not so that your arms are shaking ... Watch your front sight and how it tracks, it will tell you everything you need to know about how much grip pressure you should applying ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glockified Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 I'm going to have to pay attention to my breathing the next time I shoot a match. Haven't really thought about it until now.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ardo Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 Learning to not hold your breath while shooting is like learning any other skill ... Work on it in dry fire and then confirm it in live fire. You must learn to shoot with your hands and get the rest of your body out of the equation. You hear the term 'floating the gun', this occurs when you've learned to shoot with your hands, tension free. You'll know when you get there as your times for things like BIll Drills will be sub 2 sec on command as will sub .2 sec splits .... And yes, you should be gripping the gun really hard, but not so that your arms are shaking ... Watch your front sight and how it tracks, it will tell you everything you need to know about how much grip pressure you should applying ... Great advise. I try to force myself to take a breath every time I reload. Easier said than done, I can control it in dry-fire, but in a match I'm often out of breath. Gripping the gun hard works for me, without it my lack of trigger technique shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 I breathe harder when I'm bearing down on it. My shotgun shooting is extremely relaxed, rifle, less so. Pistol, I don't often remember how I'm breathing. I try to just let it happen and pay attention to my sights. The traditional bullseye bit about pausing etc. doesn't really enter into how I shoot. If my sights bob, they bob much less than a distant popper or A-zone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yagi Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 (edited) The really good shooters grip the gun really HARD. +2 ... i mean + 1 ..lol Rob Leatham says to me to GRIP it HARD... Edited June 30, 2014 by Yagi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 (edited) I think that the most common misconception about how hard you should grip the gun is that most shooters think that everyone has the exact same base level of grip strength from a pounds of grip force perspective. This is an invalid assumption. You should always strive to increase your base level of grip strength that way your normal "Firm" grip produces a significant amount of pounds of grip force on the gun. My normal "Firm" grip produces about 100 - 120 pounds of grip force per hand. My full force "Death Grip" produces over 200 pounds of grip force per hand. I don't know what my maximum pounds of grip strength is because my cheap grip dyno only goes to 200lbs and I can max it out with both hands. In all of the testing I have done with local shooters and shooters that I have trained the vast majority of shooters have a "Death Grip" of less than 100 pounds per hand. Their normal "Firm" grip usually produces about 50 - 60 pounds of grip force. I tell these shooters that they need to increase their grip strength so their normal "Firm" grip is close to 100 pounds per hand so they can maintain a very firm grip on the gun while shooting but still maintain fidelity in their trigger and overall shoot from a less tense condition. But not many people want to put in the hard work to increase their grip strength and instead try solving the issue by other ineffective means. If you think that the top shooters competing in iron sight / major power factor divisions are gripping the gun without a significant amount of pounds of force per hand you are delusional. The next time you see these shooters at the range, ask them to shake your hand with a firm grip. Don't be surprised when they can easily crush your hand to a painful level. Edited June 30, 2014 by CHA-LEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mthomas0001 Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 I try to breathe during the non-shooting phases of a course of fire and as fare as grip pressure, 65% platform hand, 40% shooting hand. Gorilla gripping the gun will slow down your trigger finger and throw shots off...bad....trust me.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Gorilla gripping the gun will slow down your trigger finger and throw shots off...bad....trust me.... This has not been my experience. If your grip is throwing off your shots, then it's more likely that you do not have a grip pressure issue or even a grip strength issue, but rather a trigger control issue. You can grip awfully hard while keeping your trigger finger relaxed. All it takes is practice. On my Production gun, displacing the front sight so that it's almost completely occluded within the rear sight (left, right, or down), or so that the front sight is an entire post's height above the top of the rear sight only produces about 2-3 inches of deflection from center at the 10 yard range. On my 625, it is only about an inch at 7 yards due to different types of sights and sight radius. If I grip either gun with 100% of available force, tremors transmitted to the gun are not an issue at about 75% of the target distances that we work with in USPSA. But, if I back off to 85% of available force with both hands, the tremors go away and I still get excellent recoil control. I have also not benefited from the often repeated Weaver-era advice to pull with the support hand and push with the dominant hand, or to exercise more force with one hand than the other. Simply put more contact surface, more force exerted neutrally and without anticipation upon the gun, and more available force to work with period have all contributed to better recoil control with no detriment to accuracy. For 3-gun and Steel Challenge, on much smaller targets (think 10" plates at 20 yards or 18x24 at 50), I do not find an accuracy improvement in relaxing my grip. It still falls down to the trigger control. In fact, if I change my grip pressure, I find myself anticipating more than if I simply allow my forcible grip to happen and worry about pressing the trigger when my sights are where I want them to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyDucky Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 CHA-LEE speaks the truth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaeOne3345 Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Brain. Oxygen. Vision. All connected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkm Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Nothing makes me laugh more then when someone states their opinion and adds the old "trust me" at the end to drive their point home... But anyway... I guess it depends on your definition of death grip. I grip the gun as hard as a possible can and still maintain the dexterity in my trigger finger. As a result I am not slowing down or causing jerky slaps on the trigger which would displace my front sight. This isn't something I practice during dry fire (atleast with my gun) but I do work on it with the CoC grippers. I hold one upside down and close it (or as close as possible) and hold it under pressure without using your trigger finger and act like your squeezing your trigger at the same time. It gives you a little better idea of how much force you can exert without completely ruining your dexterity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgardner Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Anyone ever train anaerobically? The lack of oxygen won't adversely affect as much you if you do. Then you can hold your breath for the short periods we usually shoot and not suffer. It helps develop quickness too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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