How to Grip a Handgun

Most of what you think about a how-to grip a handgun is wrong. Most of what you have been taught has evolved. And most of it doesn’t matter anyway. 

You don’t need a good grip on the gun to make a good shot. That is a myth.  You need to hold the gun in a way so it doesn’t move while you press the trigger to make a good shot. 

To make a good shot you don’t even need to hold the gun tight enough for the action to function. 

Ever seen someone holding the gun upside down and using their pinkie to make a shot and hit something?

See Jerry do a 200 yard upside down shot here.

What kind of grip did he have? Unconventional? Definitely not what you have been taught. 

The science of gripping a handgun continues to change. When I started 25 years ago it was, grip the gun with your thumbs wrapped over in what would be called a revolver grip today. I shot a 1911 like that for years and made it work. 

Then I was taught thumbs up along the side of the slide. It didn’t work for a lot of guns because when you press against the slide it will slow down the slide velocity and cause a malfunction. 

Along came the Glock and thumbs touching the slide no longer mattered. Thumbs up came in vogue. My hands are too fat, and I skipped this evolution. When I was forced to use a Glock overseas the thumb wrap didn’t work so I evolved to thumbs forward. 

Over the years I have tested every grip that has come along.  Few are an improvement to my shooting.

The minutia of gripping the gun is killing you as a student.

I really don’t care how you grip the gun as long as you hit the target.  Then we will look at how fast you can do it.  Easy.  

A good grip only matters for two reasons: Making the gun function, and controlling recoil

When I teach an intro class, I will teach grip and do it very simply and quickly. 

Here is how to grip a handgun for beginners:

• Grip the gun all the way up with your strong hand as high as it will go on the backstrap. 
• The slide should run straight in line with your forearm
• Point your strong hand thumb up.  That gives you all the room for your support hand to go.
• Put the support hand against the frame where you see all the room your other hand made. 
• Push the support hand up, point your support thumb to the target (thumbs on the same side) and wrap your fingers around matching the other hand. 
• Now grip it tight.  Not white knocked or shaking, but tight with both hands. 

That’s it. Simple. 

After that comes experimenting a little with individual guns for individual people.

We as a gun culture work way too hard on this with way too much minutia. 

Here are some of the crappy ideas I’ve been taught over the years:

For a while, it was a style to teach different amounts of grip pressure with different amounts for each hand.  Some instructors would say grip it 50/50 while others talked about 60/40.  I never understood any of that and again skipped the trend.

I was taught to lock the elbows and push everything forward.  I was also taught to bring the gun close with elbows bent to absorb shock. 

The latest trend comes with torquing the gun.  So, once you have your grip, then make sure you rotate your hands out, or in, at the shoulders to create torque on the gun and grip it tighter.  Then the gun will move less.

All of that is crap.  We can talk about generating more force on the gun and getting stronger, but the gun is going to move… physics. 

The gun is supposed to move. If you kept the gun from moving at all it would not cycle the slide and load the next round.  We need some movement. 

You also can’t stop the gun from moving.  You have to absorb the energy of the bullet going out the barrel.  Physics is a mother when it comes to this stuff and will always be there.

When we look at the laws of physics (simple ones) like equal and opposite reactions, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, and Einstein said, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

To short cut, the entire cycle of energy in a handgun, the energy is unleashed by burning the powder.  The burning creates pressure and pushes the projectile down the barrel.  The pressure is pushing in both directions.  It pushes the bullet down the barrel and the gun towards you.

That energy is absorbed and bled off in a bunch of different ways around the pistol. 

The inertia of the gun absorbs some of the energy.  That’s why heavier guns seem to kick less. 

The slide is pushed backward, and some energy gets absorbed and stored in the recoil spring.  Some energy of the slide moving is used to unlock and cock the gun. 

In your plastic-framed guns, the frame actually bends a little and absorbs some energy. 

What is left, the shooter has to take care of or let the gun move.

Even the best shooters, when you watch their videos of them shooting, the gun is moving and their body is moving.

Finally, we are to where grip can matter.  It’s not keeping the gun from moving, it’s how the gun moves in relation to the target through the shooter.

The easiest way is to track your sights. Two ways to see this:  

First as an okay to good shooter:  Where to do the sights end up after recoil?  Moving your body position will have a much bigger effect on this then how you grip the gun.  A really horrible grip will have some effect, but not as much as you think.  The gun will move in the hands and not return to where it was pointed.  Once you get those big things, then we can talk about where your thumb is and how much you are gripping the gun.

Second is an advanced shooter:  If you can see the sights moving back and forth while the gun is cycling while you are shooting, congratulations you are an advanced shooter.  On my best days, I can watch the sights move back and forth as the gun is recoiling.

Advanced shooters can actually see the change their grip makes on the gun when they are firing it.  And they can see if changes in their grip will make them shoot faster because the sights will track straight back and straight forward right back on the target. 

Take the basics and go test the grip for yourself.  The only way you will know is if you can see those sights moving or see where that sight comes back to after the recoil.  Everything else is purely guessing. 

I can tell you what works for me, but I am 6’2”, 320 pounds of gym rat, with giant hands, long arms, and short legs.

If you aren’t built like I am, then my technique will probably not work for you as well as it does for me. 

But I’ll give you some advanced tips you can try that I have learned over the last 25 years of working on this. 

How to grip the gun for an avid shooter:

• Get as much meat behind the gun as possible.  That means from your hands to your toes.  If you are bladed or have anything off-center, you could get more meat behind the gun and that will help your perceived grip more than anything else.  What you think might be a grip problem can start in your stance (to learn more about the different stances see this article on shooting stance).
• Grip it hard with both hands.  As hard as you can without shaking the gun.
• Practice only moving your trigger finger not your entire hand.  This is a big problem for most shooters.
• Improve your grip strength, arm strength, and overall strength to grip the gun tighter over longer periods of time.
• Make sure your hand pressure is being applied evenly on both sides of the gun by both hands.  You may be pulling to one side or the other and not know it.  Crush your finders and palms together not just try to hold on to the gun tighter.
• Pull your arms in with a little bend out in your elbows.  Now crush your arms together like your hands are flat and you are trying to crush something.  The closer the gun is to your face, the more leverage you can get in concept.  Go try it to figure out if or where this will help you. 
• Make sure your elbows and wrists do not bend up or down.  You want them to bend out a little.  So, when the gun recoils the motion comes back instead of going up.  EXCEPT when shooting heavy recoiling guns like .44 mag and up.  Then the gun should be recoiling up and to the side of your head so it doesn’t hit you in the chest or in the face.  You need lots of room to decelerate that heavy recoiling gun.
• Practice and study, try new things, and then go back to practicing again.  Learning grip can only be learned on the range with lots of dedicated practice… not just shooting.

My entire point of this article is to stop worrying about your grip so much.  Once you become a master class shooter then we can debate the minutia of your grip.  Until you are shooting on that level, everything you say and do is all theory. 

Now go practice and become a master class shooter.

Stay Safe,

Ben

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