Tactical Tip: why you don’t need strong hands for quick shooting
Beau Doboszenski, Owner/Lead Instructor
Originally published January 11th, 2019
Tactical Tip: Why you don’t need strong hands for quick shooting
My friend Mike Ox, champion competitive shooter and owner of Tactics and Preparedness, recently mentioned me in an article in the IDPA Tactical Brief about how to use a Vice Grip to manage recoil. His passion about the topic reminded me that many of my own readers may believe what the “gun ninjas” say about grip, so I wanted to revisit the topic.
I hate the declaration that killing the gun with a death grip makes you somehow more effective. Effective recoil management has nothing to do with your ability to “dominate” the gun. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Grip is based on physics and physiology, not a death grip.
The firearm, in recoil, only moves in a linear rotation. The top of the firearm goes up and back, while the bottom of the firearm rotates forward. Always.
This means your focus should only be on inhibiting the rotation of the firearm. We call this method Vice Grip and Support Wrist Forward.
In this grip, the primary hand holds the firearm in alignment with the bones of the arm, creating structural stability. The hand is used to wedge the rotation of the slide from the rear by driving the webbing of the hand forward into the tang of the handgun. The primary hand should hold the firearm like a vice on a work bench, however it’s positioned on the front and rear of the handgrip, not the sides.
The support hand inhibits the forward rotation of the pistol grip on the lower half of the handgun. It’s done by rotating the support hand as far forward as possible while keeping the index finger in contact with the trigger guard. Concentration should be between your ring and pinky fingers.
This grip position gives you the ability to stop the forward rotation of the lower receiver, which will stop the firearm’s rotation and therefore minimize recoil.
Guess what the best part is? There’s no grip strength involved. You only need to hold the firearm with the power of a firm handshake, which means from young shooters to older folks, everyone has the “power” to run the firearm with speed and efficiency.
Because you’re holding the firearm lighter, you can massively increase the speed of your index finger manipulation to shoot faster. And with the Vice Grip, you can grab that flash sight picture during a draw and trust that the firearm will return to alignment after every shot, which lets you speed up the time between shots. Faster trigger press and less time between shots makes for much quicker shooting.
So stop believing that your hands aren’t strong enough to run a handgun with a lot of speed. Practice and fine-tune the Vice Grip and Support Wrist Forward to experience the difference.