Grip Strength, Gender, and Shooting Performance

[Eyesquared]

In years past, the relationship between grip strength and pistol shooting performance has been discussed at length on this forum. I think the general consensus was that the more strength the better, and that you can only go so far without above average grip strength (for a male). I don't think a lot of people would have said "You can make top 16 at production nationals, with average male grip strength." There was also some discussion about how even the top female USPSA shooters weren't particularly competitive with the top male GMs at national-level matches (finishing at around 65-75% of the winner), which could be attributed in part to a grip strength disparity.

This year, both Justine Williams (who is still a junior shooter) and Ashley Rheuark placed in the top 16 at USPSA Production nationals (13th and 14th respectively), beating out some well known shooters like Phil Strader, BJ Norris, Shannon Smith, Matt Hopkins, etc. I don't know how their grip strength compares to the top male GMs, but I suspect they outperformed many shooters who were physically stronger. All this has me thinking that maybe you don't need to close a #2 CoC to be competitive in an action pistol sport, although it might not hurt either.

Thoughts?

[Clusterfrack]

Great topic. My thinking on this has evolved significantly over the last few years. Most of the instructors I have studied with emphasized the importance of the CRUSH grip with the support hand. Crushing the gun was supposed to reduce muzzle flip and isolate the sights from the trigger press.

However, I am now convinced that beyond a minimum level, a crush grip is not required. Relaxing my grip from "max crush" to "tight enough" has allowed me significantly improve my shooting, reduce fatigue, and has largely eliminated my chronic elbow and arm pain issues.

I grip the gun hard enough to keep it from moving inside my hands during recoil, and have developed better trigger control that doesn't move the gun. As well, I have improved my wrist tension, elbow mechanics, and stance. I'm still gripping the gun hard enough that I have to stop and rest during a long dryfire session. Like a very firm handshake.

Hwansik Kim has an excellent discussion of grip strength and recoil management, but it's behind a paywall.

[voodoo_man]

While I don't game, I do shoot pistols - a lot.

One thing I have experienced over the years is figuring out exactly what type of grip is most necessary for effectively using a pistol. The main factor has always been consistency. Years ago there was a trend of "crushing" the gun for the sake of grip and then that went away because it wasn't working (and largely doesn't). Consistently putting pressure on the grip of a pistol to provide you with the same, expected, results is the best practice in my opinion.

For example, when shooting two hand freestyle at 25 yards for accuracy, I have found that using the forward thumb of your non-trigger hand to push slightly on the frame in a 45° angel while you are pressing the trigger provides a huge accuracy benefit. I have consistently seen improvement in anyone whose tried this and it has nothing to do with crushing grip strength.

The trick, in my opinion, is to find your personal level of grip required for pistol shooting and then work to evolve that. It's never completely loose or crushing the grip, it's usually somewhere just tighter than center.

[Greg]

Did the women have fewer penalties because they were more accurate? That would be my SWAG on their placement.

I still think training hand and forearm strength is worthwhile. However hard you wish to grip the pistol, being stronger means you’ll achieve that at a lower % of maximum effort.

[blues]

I agree with above comments. I train my grip a couple of times a week with deadlifts, Ivanko Gripper, and bands for extension exercises.

Personally, I think the crush grip on the gun is overstated and overkill. A good strong grip without trying to overdo it seems to work better for me.

I'm not trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

[BigD]

. All this has me thinking that maybe you don't need to close a #2 CoC to be competitive in an action pistol sport, although it might not hurt either.

Thoughts?

Who said this in the first place?

Closing a #2 is not equal to “above average strength.” It’s more like “well above average strength”. I reckon there’s many people in the top 16 that can’t close a #2.

I’d just rephrase the last sentence to say “maybe you don’t need above average strength to be competitive.” Cause you clearly don’t need well above average strength, judging by the men in the top 16.

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[txdpd]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17186303/

Mean maximal hand-grip strength showed the expected clear difference between men (541 N) and women (329 N). Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects.

More men have closed a COC number 4 gripper than women have closed a number 2. I think grip is highly overrated, things like closing a No.2 gripper as an arbitrary standard, you're not even using a crush grip in shooting, it's a support grip. If grip was nearly as important as some guys make it out to be, there's no explanation for how women shoot as well as they do. Grip is important, but more importantly, unlike genetics it's something that we have control over. If there's one thing we are good at it's narrowing a broad spectrum of athletic performance down to a single factor. On a gun forum, everyone would recognize that building a 20 inch neck isn't going to make me a Formula 1 driver, what does that have to do with being born a supercomputer brain when it comes to processing visual information? Same with shooting. How are you going to know if you don't try. There's a smaller gap between an elite performer and an average Joe that tries to perform at an elite level, than an average Joe that tries and an average Joe that's content on being average.

IMO, the biggest difference is genetic. In general men's and women's brains process information differently. Women are more risk adverse, see Greg's comment on scoring. Women are better at pattern recognition. Men pick up on movement quicker, have better spatial awareness, and have better eye hand coordination. Men have more upper body mass and body mass in general, this is where grip comes into play, how that body mass is leveraged to control recoil.

[willie]

Since the early teen years I was considered a good handgun shot. A contributing factor was grip strength. From age 14 I exercised with hand grips. Later during the teen years my dad had me unloading box cars of 100 pound sacks of oil field drilling chemicals. I developed extreme grip strength and think that this trait greatly assisted me in my study of double action shooting. I have seen many poor triggers of various types but never saw one I could not manage. These comments reflect my experience. I will quickly add that there is most likely some undetermined level of minimum grip strength needed for accurate handgun shooting. However, a bone crushing grip is not necessary.

[Eyesquared]

Did the women have fewer penalties because they were more accurate? That would be my SWAG on their placement.

I still think training hand and forearm strength is worthwhile. However hard you wish to grip the pistol, being stronger means you’ll achieve that at a lower % of maximum effort.

In a sport like USPSA it's really not easy to answer if they placed where they did because of accuracy, since it's a combination of a lot of things. From looking at the results on Practiscore, Justine Williams shot a fast time, not the fastest at the match but faster than almost anyone who placed below her. Ashley Rheuark shot a very accurate match in a competitive time, with ~80% As, no misses, no no-shoots, and only 3 Ds.

I agree that training hand strength is still beneficial but I think training with grippers is getting moved significantly lower down my personal list of priorities. Going forward I am experimenting with some of Hwansik Kim's recoil control ideas (he has a great demonstration that shows how you can control recoil well with relatively little effort, and reduce muzzle dip as the slide comes back into battery) and I'm just going to consider 30 minutes of dry fire per day enough grip work for the time being.

[John Hearne]

My take is that you need at least 100 lbs of crush grip strength to shoot well. My sample size isn't huge but I have a grip strength measuring device and 100 lbs seems to be the magic number. This mirrors the same finding that Karl Rehn reached. I haven't looked at female shooters but I'm pretty sure that Karl said 80 lbs for women.

If you google for research articles on the topic, using police academy candidates, then you find research that can't find a significant relationship between shooting scores and grip strength. I attribute this to several factors. First, the typical police qualification course is a poor metric of shooting ability. It's kind of like saying if you can run 1.5 miles in 60 minutes then you "pass." If you used that same "passing" standard, you'd find no correlation between fitness and police work. Second, it is important to be able to isolate trigger finger movement from gripping with the rest of the fingers. I suspect that some police recruits were particularly well muscled, giving them high grip strength numbers but they had never developed the necessary separation between trigger finger and the rest of the hand.

I think that 100 lbs of crush grip strength in males is a minimal pre-requisite for shooting well. Once you reach 100 lbs, subsequent increases don't yield corresponding improvements in shooting.