Biomechanics of the Best Handgun Grip
Travis HaleyDescription
Shooters are often advised to “Get a good grip!” But what exactly does that mean? Travis Haley of Haley Strategic Partners presents the biomechanics of the best handgun grip and how it utilizes friction, leverage and gravity. Different types of grips are shown and their biomechanical efficiency tested. Simple science, not a complicated system. Using the best handgun grip for you ensures successful shooting.
All right. I've got Travis Haley here with me today and he's going to help me take a look at my grip and the biomechanical efficiency of it and maybe you can learn a thing or two from it as well. Travis, I appreciate you being here. Thank you, Rob. I want to talk about some things that I'm seeing out there that we're taking a little bit deeper dive into the grip, if you will and it's not recipes or systems, if you will because I don't like to be limited to a system, cause all systems we know have limitations. So I try to break these things down, the processes in which to achieve a goal. So people say, "Get a good grip." Well what does that mean really? It's just like saying get a good stance, get a good grip. See the target. Well, what does that mean? So we take a deeper dive into the science of shooting. And instead of going off a recipe, we go off of simple things that are around us all the time. Friction, leverage, gravity, biomechanics. And so I'll use Rob here to show you what I'm talking about with something as simple as a grip that you can think about when you go to the range of practice. So Rob go ahead and draw your blue gun there. God ahead and extend on the target. Okay. So now Rob's got a good grip here. So Rob's a good shooter. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna actually manipulate his grip. Like you might see out there on the shooting range where some people have thumbs up or thumbs down or tea cups and all this other stuff. So what I want you to do right now Rob, is do it like the older thumbs up, like I used to shoot 1911s back in the older days. Okay. So this is a thumbs up. What I want you to realize is when you have your thumbs up the recoil is going to go up. And what I mean by that is because of the way the hands work. If you think about the bones in the hands and without turning this into a full anatomy discussion, you have the carpal in the hand here, okay. That's this little knot back here. Most people would not even consider this a part of the thumb, but it is the base of the thumb where people get that mixed up on this hand and so in this case, we have the carpals touching each other back here. We don't want the carpals touching each other. Okay? Cause what's gonna happen is with that with thumbs up, recoil is gonna go up. Cause when I do an impulse test on him what happened is the whole gun just shifted in his hand. So we're talking about the first principle of friction. We've got to have a hundred percent friction contact on the gun. And of course this is where a friction medium would help too. Grip tape or you know be careful stippling your guns cause you can certainly overheat them and make them brittle. But having a friction medium between your hands and the gun is not a bad idea. If it's wet, raining, slippery, greasy, bloody you name it. So in this case we see an impulse test, the gun shift in his hands and you can see that space right here between his fingers separate. So now I want you to actually go opposite of that and go completely thumbs forward like this over torquing thing that you're starting to see in what we call the totally tactical world and talk about the efficiencies or inefficiencies of this. So now we have this giant gap, this daylight as I call it between, okay. His metacarpal joint here and his carpal joint to the other finger. Okay. The other hand. So now when I do the impulse test you feel that breakage in there? Yeah Okay. Okay. Lots of slip. There's no friction there. So now go ahead and get that good grip and what we're talking about when I say good grip is straight lines. Straight lines are strong, angles are weak. So if this thumb has a straight line shooting out the bore that's biomechanics, that's biomechanical efficiency. If it's angled any bit, you might need to move the hand up just a smidgen, like an eighth of an inch or so to correct that. Remember just the law of just a little bit will fix a lot. So once he has that now, for impulse the gun didn't move your hand. Did it? No. Okay. Doesn't move. Doesn't move. Doesn't move. So that's friction. That's how it works with the hands. Now, if I came in there and popped his hands off do you see how his hand popped off a gun? Okay. What we're doing there is now testing leverage. And how do we get leverage on a gun? Cause I'm sure a lot of you have seen somebody will shoot a gun whether it's a yourself and your hand slips off your gun you got to reposition it and put it back on and reposition it and fire and reposition it. That's called milking the grip. All you need to do is get simple leverage. So go ahead and extend out again. And if you remember when we were kids and you'd sit in the pool and you kind of squirt your hands and you'd have the water shoot out of your thumbs right here is where we're getting that from. Okay? The squirt gun technique, like your hands in the pool. So that's where I want you to get that contact. If I had two vice grips right here and squeeze these together that will also help connect the isosceles in Rob's case with the tension across the chest and connect this whole entire system. So now, now his hands stay on the gun and gun fires, pops and you see the hands didn't come off the gun. So now Rob is showing good friction and good leverage. It's not a recipe. It's not a system. It's science. Okay. And it's something that we can utilize on a daily basis instead of searching and looking for answers out there which is gonna be a full-time job for you. Or we can think about the real basics of where all these things started. Study biomechanical shooting history. You'll find it back in world war one, world war II, you remember seeing the publications, the old guy shooting like this with the little the helmets on, like there were storming the beaches of Normandy like my grandfather did, and that was actual biomechanics. They talked about how to extend the elbow and how to point the hips and all the other things. So there's great reference tools out there, but you can see we don't do it like that anymore. Do we? Because we're smarter. And so think about being smart instead of just being a shooter first, be a thinker. Okay. Think about biomechanical efficiency. Thanks Rob. Thank you.
as always good video. i had to pick up my gun just to see what i was doing. i do it different. not sure if it is bad or good. been a bad year for me and have not been out for quite a while shooting, since spring. cost, time, and pain have slowed me down. now when i checked my grip i found my shooting thumb comes down to complete the grip around the handle with the middle finger shooting hand. not straight out. my supporting hand cups the other and the supporting thumb goes over the shooting thumb to hold it down into the grip. of course i self taught my self many years ago. any comments on this grip would be appreciated. if i have to try and change me grip i will try, but this grip seems to give me great purchase. any ideas on this grip. after the grip is complete with the trigger finger not involved the supporting hand cups the shooting hand and the supporting hand thumb rides over the shooting thumb headed upward. hope i explained it well enough. it goes up over the thumb to try and complete the grip with the supporting hand although the distance will not allow that grip to meet the index finger. any thoughts would be appreciated. it does keep my thumbs away from the slide.
great advice,thank you
I applied the biomechanics as described and improved my score by a huge amount. 23/24 hits in the A zone. I normally would not have scored that well. What an improvement! I will be able to speed up quite a bit in all situations including during ambush training.
I have no strength in both my hands. (surgeries and some arthritis). I can only use a revolver, but have trouble pulling the hammer back, and using just my forefinger on the trigger. Two forefingers works great but I understand that is frowned upon. I also can use just the one finger, but second pad on my dominant hand. I'm hoping to have my gun worked on for the hammer, but I'm really concerned about the trigger. Surely I can't be the only person out there...or am I. If I can't get some advice soon I'm getting a baseball bat and practice swinging low....and get the bad guy in the knees. Hope you have some suggestions. Thank you.
I would like to see how the palms of your hands...the fat part under your thumb should be placed on the pistol. to achieve the straight thumb of my non-dominate hand I have to shift the grip of my dominate hand into a less firm hold. The palm of my non-dominate hand is flat upon the magazine (handle) portion of the pistol which pushes my dominate thumb out of it's dominate grip. Is this correct?
All your videos are really good.Thanks for keeping us up to date. If you ever get up to northern Maine let us know.
The more I watch the more I learn that I know very little. Education is so valuable, thanks.
Very helpful video about holding the hand gun.thanks
Very helpful video about holding a hand gun,Thanks
A couple of videos that change my view of something and change my bad habits are worth the price of membership. I got a lot out of this video. Thank you.