Excellent points in the last two posts by Taadski and Talionis. Reference grip, Robbie Leatham demonstrates how grip effects speed and not necessarily accuracy. You can shoot an A holding the pistol with just two fingers, you just can't shoot fast (and accurately) that way. So, bad grip, still shoot A's, just slower. If it takes a crush grip to shoot an A slowly, something is wrong and you should fix it.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
This is very true. Personal anecdote reinforcing this is from my first and second stages at nationals this year: It was so hot and wet when we started shooting in the afternoon that I couldn't hang on to the gun properly to save my life, despite stippling and liquid grip (which in retrospect, I over-applied and didn't let fully dry). On the first stage, my splits were notably slower than they would be with a correct grip, but the hits were ok. On the second stage, I tried to shoot at the same speed I normally do, even with a bad grip. I had a pretty fast time but ended up nearly zeroing the stage because of mikes and noshoots. Grip shouldn't affect accuracy, but it really does matter for speed.
Last edited by Talionis; 08-23-2016 at 12:08 PM.
TY83544
One more thing, a red dot tells you a LOT, in real time, about your trigger press.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
I got a little bit of time yesterday to play around with "making everything right". The first thing I did was toss the medium backstrap w/o beavertail on the G19 to match my G17. In just blindly and naturally picking up both pistols I noticed that letting my finger rest naturally on the trigger puts the trigger safety directly behind the lower third of my index fingernail. Doing some reps, I find that if I do a clean "stress free press" I get zero movement two handed and the least amount of movement SHO. Obviously I need to spend some more time dry firing SHO to clean that up, but I would have to say that it is significantly improved vs. what I was seeing the past couple of weeks. I also noticed that, with this particular placement, the base of my index finger from base knuckle to middle knuckle, moves different than what it was last week and over the weekend. Particularly, it moves away from the frame of the gun, as opposed to stationary or towards it. I'll be tracking this slightly as I move forward.
I also tried working on making my two handed grip as natural as possible while also making sure that maximum surface area of both hands are on the pistol as possible. In the past, I've stumbled upon that experience leading to the best recoil control I've ever had, so I'm trying to replicate that here. While maintaining that level of surface area contact, I then examined bending the elbows slightly as well as making some effort to flare them out. I noticed two things upon flaring them out. 1.) Flaring them out too far begins to erode on how much surface area contact I'm making with the gun. 2.) Flaring the elbows seems to activate my pecs and traps, something I remember reading somewhere around here about how that's a good thing. There does seem to be a happy medium to a point where I can flare my elbows and still make max surface area contact. I think I will practice this feeling and focus on that until my next range visit. In keeping that grip, I did notice how pressing the trigger as described above was fairly effortless and didn't seem to disturb the sights at all. Given that with this grip I seem to have the gun centerline to myself as well as underneath my dominant eye with VERY little turning of my head, if any, I'm GUESSING that I may be on to something.
As far as overall effort being put into how hard I grip the gun, I don't seem to feel like I'm putting a ton of effort into it, but my grip as described above caused me to notice a couple more things. 1.) The flaring of the elbows does feel like it's imparting an inward pinch on the upper part of the grip. 2.) I still have grip texture imprints on both palms/fingers suggesting sufficient force of grip. I could probably exert more effort in how hard I grip, but I think that might be counter-intuitive at this stage. Whenever I start to impart more grip pressure with my support hand, I naturally want to do the same with my firing hand. Given that I DON'T want to do that with my firing hand, I'll revisit trying that later if I deem it necessary.
At this point I think I've made a few changes that I can continue to practice. I know its just words and not pictures, but if there are any red flags in there somewhere, please let me know as I'd like to catch, mitigate, and eliminate those issues sooner rather than later.
Thanks for everyone's help as I try to work through this. It's greatly and much appreciated.
EDIT: One other thing I forgot to mention. In the spirit of modifying my dry fire practice routine as per JC's recommendations, I'm working really hard to not pin and hold the trigger to the rear and then cycle the slide. I'm finding that I'm having to consciously retrain myself to not do that. I'm also noticing that by not pinning the trigger, it feels like I'm pressing the trigger with less force/effort overall. Is it possible that I've been torquing the gun via trigger press effort from dry fire practicing incorrectly?
Last edited by spinmove_; 08-24-2016 at 12:13 PM.