Brian
There are only three grips that the hand makes. One is the carry grip. Great for pull-ups, great for dead lifts, great for getting all the groceries in the house. There's the pinch grip. Good for picking up pins, good for throwing footballs. Doesn't have a whole lot to do with shooting. And then there's the crush grip and this is what we use to hold onto the gun. The
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Brian
Hey everyone. Brian Hill with the complete combatant. This is your man of dry fire Monday. And this is active self-protection extra. I get a lot of comments on the video about how high my thumbs are relative to the slide of the pistol and it makes people concerned that the pistol's not going to function properly. And if you look at the last nearly two years of shooting on these videos, I've never had a malfunction. So it's really not a concern for me, but it is a concern for other folks. So let's talk about grip methodology. I'm an adjunct instructor also with a modern Samurai project, which is Scott Lansky's group, and I use his grip methodology because it works. It works well and it really works well in regards to my performance. So I'm willing to change as soon as something came along. I have this discussion a lot in class.
Brian
Alright, cert pistol, everybody can put in pocket for a second is about thumbs. People are very concerned with their thumbs, but there are only three grips that the hand makes. One is the carry grip. Great for pull-ups, great for dead lifts, great for getting all the groceries in the house. There is the pinch grip, good for picking up pins, good for throwing footballs, doesn't have a whole lot to do with shooting. And then there's the crush grip and this is what we use to hold onto the gun. If you lift the thumb, you'll have a slight reduction in grip pressure, but very little. But if you lift the pinky, the grip really falls apart. So we're always working from the bottom part of the hand. Since the gun here is going to lift, I want to have the greatest grip on the bottom of the gun.
Brian
All right, so this is where my action is. It wants to go this way, but there's really not a lot of muscle up here to stop it. So it has a little lift like this and the best way to control that wanting to tilt is to grip at the bottom portion of this. So what I'm going to do is get my hand as high as I can. Now I have very large hands if I just kind of make a kind of halfway grip, I don't even get all the way on this Glock 17 model of a cert. So I'm going to get as high as I can. Now, when we first started shooting revolvers, we do thumb down and it was a good reason for that. Alright, the cylinder gap, if your thumb gets in front of that can be really not very beneficial to your thumbs.
Brian
So we did thumbs down and this became a power grip, but the big thing is it creates a wedge inside of here where my palm can no longer grip. So we moved away from that. Went to 19 elevens nature of the 1911. We kept our thumbs up. You had a grip safety that needed to be engaged, you had a thumb safety. So both thumbs were up. Now Glock came along, dominates the market and they have a really funky grip angle compared to other guns. So what happens with the support hand is people wanted to rotate their hand all the way forward along the slide so they end up in this position. Now I'm going to tell you as a mixed martial arts instructor, this is not a optimal position for your wrist. In fact, it's in very suboptimal position. It's very weak like this. You're not putting bone behind it.
Brian
You're actually putting yourself in a position where you have less strength. We would call it a wrist lock. It's a great place to wrist lock somebody. If I grab anything athletically, whether it's a bat, whatever, I'm going to keep my wrist in a neutral position. So when I build a grip according to Scott, I have to give credit where credit's due is it's up over and through. Now what my thumb does is it looks like it's on the slide, but if you guys really look at it, it's just not touching anything because after four decades of different thumb positions, the conclusion is thumbs really don't play a big role in gripping the pistol. I'm gripping with these bottom three fingers. I'm doing primarily with these four. I really only have seven fingers on the gun and the thumbs can only get in away. This one's on the wrong side, so it can't apply grip pressure.
Brian
But what I see a lot of tactical shooters do is create this position right here where the high register pushes against the thumb, which is fine while both of them are there. Soon as you move it though it's going to drive the gun in a circle. And this is where we get low and left a lot because you're releasing the pressure on this side and the circle can tend you right here. And that's where people tend to shoot. So I don't want any pressure in with a thumb to balance this. When I do high register, I bend it slightly so it's in a stronger position and I let my thumbs stay off the slide. Now let's think about this critically, Brian, what could go wrong with that grip? Well, one thing that happens is my slide tends not to lock back on the last shot, and the only place that really, really matters is when I'm shooting IDPA because you have to shoot the gun empty so it creates extra time arm shooting a drill like the casino drill where I have to shoot seven, reload, shoot seven, reload, shoot seven.
Brian
It costs me a little bit to go back and rack the gun if it doesn't lock open, because tendency is if you're not a good counter, you get to that seventh, eighth shot, you press the trigger again, you get nothing. So you're going to reload the gun, then rack the slide. That costs a lot of time. But as a defensive shooter, am I really concerned about locking the slide back? Well, we know defensively it doesn't happen very often. We don't get to shoot the gun and reload it, so it's not a big concern to me. I'd rather be able to manage all 17 shots in front of that and not worry about the slide locking open and get my hands out of the controls. Now if you put your thumb on the slide and you dig in over the top, you may have real problems, alright?
Brian
And it is hard for left-handers because the ejection port is open here, but me putting it along the bottom and pointing towards the target, we simply don't point at people with our thumbs. Alright, we point with our index finger, which means our wrist is in a neutral position. So what I want to do is lock all this in. You can see how my grip is with a Glock style angle. So let's see what an HK angle gives me so my hand isn't nearly as tilted as it is on the Glock. You can see how the Glock really forced people to want to finish that rotation through. And there's some great shooters in the world that do it that way, but it doesn't mean it's principally driven. It may be personality driven, it may fit them and the gun that they're using, so I'm going to do is put it right here. Now my thumbs are up, but once again, they're really not touching the slide. And even if they do touch the slide, how big a difference will it make? Well, let's find out. Alright, so I have a target over here, not worried about the target. We're seeing if this interferes with the slide. So I build the grip here, I'm going to push real hard with the thumb
Brian
And the gun still worked. All right? It's rubbing back and forth on my thumb and you're going to have to trust me. I can't turn the gun sideways and shoot it like that. So it made no difference really. Now, if I were to hook it over the top, maybe pressing down, I could stop it. All right? But I just don't engage the thumb because it's on the wrong side and it can't help me grip anyway, okay? The only thing that really did for me overall is it drove one shot to the right, pushing in with that thumb. So it may be something to look at, but your thumb's high if they're floating in the air and I have a better grip with the four fingers that matter and the other three that are involved is more important than what my thumbs are doing because since we have four processes of thumb down, thumb all the way up, thumb forward, and now a thumb at a 45, we have to assume and can maybe make our hypothesis there that thumbs don't matter in the shooting process, it's more important that these four do the work.
Brian
There are over 80% of the strength and it goes up significantly. This one has very little, this one has very little because it's out of line. It's good for picking things up, but it's not good for gripping. Reason in fighting that we're always talking about putting the thumb here is because people get injured when the thumb sticks out. People that do boxing gloves a lot, they get in that habit because it's hard to curl a thumb under, catch it on an elbow and you break the thumb. Ask me how I know that I did it myself. And then the pinky is really prone to getting hurt, but when you grip, it should be pinky ring finger, middle finger up, and then the thumb is not doing anything. This one is around the corner. Can't apply a lot of support. This one's on the wrong side.
Brian
So in my opinion, having the thumbs high is fine. Now, if you shoot better in a different position, continue to do so. But I would suggest maybe experimenting with this up over and through this kind of wave theory of bringing the grip underneath and rotating 'em together until they hold still. And you may find that you can manage your pistol a lot better if you watch me shoot, the gun doesn't move a whole lot. Now part of that is postural stability. I've created a good base behind the gun and the posture and the grip always go together. You can have a great grip and lousy posture and the gun's going to go everywhere. You have great posture and a lousy grip and the gun's going to go everywhere. So I can't really separate those two. They have to be together. Alright, let's shoot it one more time. See what I'm talking about here? So I'm getting my body really built in. I'm pressing down into my base, my feet are pointed in the direction I want to go. I build my up over and through and as I drive out here now I'm just going to hold the gun still and let my body absorb.
Brian
And as you guys could see, it didn't move a whole lot. Okay? I'm just absorbing that as it comes through me and having a good grip on my thumbs high never interferes for me with the pistol functioning, although it does interfere with the slide, which I have deemed unimportant and my particular application of armed citizenship and shooting in classes. So it's up to you guys always up to you. And there can be some differential on this, but you've got to build a grip that manifests itself in being able to grip the pistol and it doesn't fatigue. One of the problems with this is we're engaging a group of muscles that doesn't hear. When I grip a pistol, it's underneath. It's not up top. So whenever I see people really squeezing out here and I see this bustling and they're trying to turn in, they're actually lifting away.
Brian
When a puncher strikes hard in a cross, the weight needs to be on the underside of the punch instead of up and out unless they're punching down because then they lose weight. We want to be connected to that same thing when I grip here, I want my grip to connect underneath so that my armpits involved with it. Alright guys, hope that helps you out. Those opinions are my own, but they're shared by a lot of other fine shooters and just continue to practice. It's always hard to change your mind. And I always ask people, what proof could I offer you to get you to question your assumptions? Not change 'em, but to question them. And that's a really hard thing to do, but I want the best way. And if something comes along in the future that shows benefits over this, I will adopt it because I want to be the best shooter I can be and I want to get rid of anything that can make it a problem.
Brian
We did this in martial arts. We made martial arts stagnant to the point because one instructor had done it a certain way. Everybody should do it a certain way. And that's just simply not true. We're going to grow, we're going to evolve and we're going to change, but we have to follow how bodies work. And this is not a very strong position. It is an in position, it locks us in, but it won't give us the best benefits overall. But it's hard to change. It's always the process. It's hard to change. Those of you that don't like to change, it's difficult. Alright? I'm very connected to what I do. Every change costs me time, a lot of time, months of time to really get used to it. And I'm just like, I changed to the VP nine from the six P 2 26, completely different field gun.
Brian
And I got to tell you, I did that last year and I just now really feel connected to the gun. I know every in and out of it, but I had to experiment. Don't hesitate to experiment. Make a hypothesis and try to falsify it. Alright? If you can show a reason that you've got a better grip, show me a reason and then we'll do better with it. Alright guys, thank you for watching. Thank you for letting me ramble on in my coaching mode with this and always apply critical thinking to what you're doing. Alright, this is active self-protection extra. Hit your subscribe button, hit your like Manus recoil meter is perfect for this. It will show you how the grips is working for you, but you have to have more than a sample data of five shots or 10 shots. It should be hundreds of shots with you practicing and trying to improve that grip over and over so that you have a good enough sample size. I've had great success on the range. I probably see somewhere in the nature of a thousand students a year shooting and I see them improve with this grip, but I see the fight too, and it's not easy and I understand that. Alright, as always guys, maybe today we'll change that. We're going to question, then we're going to measure, then we're going to refine and then we're going to perform. Thanks for tuning in.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDnQ8kHnfBg&t=24s
Credit: Brian Hill, Active Self Protection, The Complete Combatant