Are there any minimal tension handgun grip/recoil management techniques?

[arcfide]

I'm familiar with many of the grip techniques and recoil management techniques taught right now. There is no doubt in their effectiveness and that people are getting really good results with them. However, a very significant portion of them, perhaps all (?), seem to rely on a very high degree of grip tension/strength. There appears to be some variance in the amount of shoulder/elbow/body tension. There seems to be some variance in the way that people describe recoil management, with a strong segment focusing on relaxing tension and "letting it recoil" in some respects, whereas others have a much more aggressive approach.

For me, there are a number of factors that are encouraging me to try to reduce the overall tension in my shooting technique, which can include long term health, fatigue, mobility, as well as mental effects.

I'm having a hard time finding *any* handgun grip techniques that are explicitly or intentionally designed to allow for minimal amounts of grip tension, except for precision Olympic style target shooting (I'm looking for something more directly applicable to defensive handgun applications). Do they exist? I've found recoil management techniques that begin to approach that, but they also involve a grip that, more or less, needs or wants to be tighter and stronger.

Essentially, I guess the big overall question is, how do I grip the pistol and manage recoil in such a manner that allows me to remove or reduce as much tension and "muscle use" from the shooting process as possible? I'm open to either two or one handed approaches (both in a single "approach" are welcome).

Many people, probably most, here have more experience than I do with this sort of thing, so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction or just lay the answer right in my lazy lap.

[spinmove_]

Unfortunately, from what I’ve been able to surmise in my still admittedly limited experience, is that with a pistol you’re going to have to give it a solid foundation one way or another.

The problem is that you’re having to duke it out with physics more than the pistol itself. If you want to get, and please forgive the term as I don’t mean to be insulting in any way, “lazy” with how rigid you make yourself behind the gun you’re going to need a bigger and/or heavier gun to simply soak up that recoil.


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[arcfide]

Unfortunately, from what I’ve been able to surmise in my still admittedly limited experience, is that with a pistol you’re going to have to give it a solid foundation one way or another.

I agree, but a pistol really doesn't recoil with that much force. There's a great Tom Givens (?) video that demonstrates just how little force there is in the recoil. It seems like there out to be a way to maximize things like body weight and skeletal alignment (i.e. -- structure) to minimize the amount of muscle engagement necessary to provide that foundation? In other words, maximizing passive foundations to minimize active ones.

[spinmove_]

I agree, but a pistol really doesn't recoil with that much force. There's a great Tom Givens (?) video that demonstrates just how little force there is in the recoil. It seems like there out to be a way to maximize things like body weight and skeletal alignment (i.e. -- structure) to minimize the amount of muscle engagement necessary to provide that foundation? In other words, maximizing passive foundations to minimize active ones.

That’s true, pistols don’t recoil that hard. The problem is that you’ve only got two points of contact and neither of them involve your shoulder. You can’t truly relax when shooting a pistol. You can grip it firmly without death-gripping it, you can allow some play in your shoulders and elbows without “locking” those tendons, you can relax your chest muscles instead of really engaging your pecs and core, but you can’t go all wibbly wobbly noodley with all of those variables or else your shot to shot time will be pretty sluggish.


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[Peally]

No, not really. Doesn't matter how you hold it, tension is going to have a direct impact on performance when there's nothing like a shoulder stock gluing you to the firearm.

That being said, tension anywhere other than your hands will screw other things up. I blow it plenty but I try to keep minimal tension in my arms, chest, etc when shooting as it craps out things like transition accuracy. May or may not be a concern to you, I'm a gaymer and CCW guy.

[TCB]

Brian Enos talks about having a pretty relaxed and neutral grip in his book and just letting the gun do its thing.

[Clusterfrack]

I have the best results when I grip the fuck out of the gun without noticing I’m gripping the fuck out of it. Heavy guns yield less crappy results under free recoil, and I’ve been amazed how well I can shoot my Shadow 2s WHO compared to lighter guns. Light guns—at least for me—require a very firm grip, not just for recoil management but for accuracy.

My advice is to do part of your practice (dry & live) overgripping the gun, and then back off until you don’t feel so much tension. Hopefully, your default grip force will increase over time. Mine has. A lot.

[txdpd]

Front sight focus, sight tracking, and timing.

Like many things on the interwebs, a lot of things with a little bit of truth get blown way out of proportion. A lot of competitive shooters are doing a whole lot of work to drop hundredths of a second off of their split times, doesn't mean that we shouldn't learn and take advantage of their hard works and efforts, but keep in mind that your goals and their goals might not be on intersecting paths.

Pick a grip that works for you and don't worry about it. Once you get the fundamentals down, if you need to chase fractions of a second you'll be in a good position to assess your efforts, if you don't you can spare yourself a lot of mental masturbation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17186303
The science says 90% of women have less grip strength than 95% of men, and there's a huge disparity in mean grip strength between genders. In my personal estimation women shoot at about 85% of the level of men. Whatever the percentage may be, there is no correlation between grip strength and how well women shoot pistols.

[nwhpfan]

First it can be very difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of your grip if you shoot one round and thing about it. Personally I can't choke out recoil and know few people that can.

The key is the gun returns for the next shot and with minimal adjustment you can fire again. Sometimes no adjustments. Think bill drill with splits in the teens. I'm aware of every shot.

Shoot with a result in mind and when you don't get that adjust your grip until you do. Gun should rise and fall consistently. Try to shoot as soon as you can once you've verified your on target. My experience was this taught me to grip effectively.

I'll add that "grip technique" can be a bit of a distraction when you look at what people are teaching. Some peoples hands, elbows, etc. just don't work the way some people talk about. That's one reason there is so many "different" techniques out there.

[That Guy]

Brian Enos talks about having a pretty relaxed and neutral grip in his book and just letting the gun do its thing.

He has also mentioned in an interview that he never meant what he wrote in his book to mean that one should not grip the pistol very firmly. (I forget the exact words used, but you get the idea.)

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