I got to chat with @Jeff Gonzales, former SEAL and head honcho of Trident Concepts, at the NRA convention. He'd once penned a blog post about developing the kung-fu grip in relation to running the Glock 26 and other pistols with short grips. Like so many things, it might not necessarily have been new info, but it was presented the right way for me to grok it. The blog post doesn't seem to be available anymore, but that's really not the point of my post.
I'd mentioned that a medical condition had forced me to give up AIWB and return to 3:30 IWB and thusly, my dedication to the 26.5 as my one gun for all seasons edc and my sincere appreciation for his article. Jeff asked me if I'd expand on my medical condition, was it a specific injury, surgery, something else?
I said I'd gone from decades of a working in a world where I could stand or sit at pretty much my convenience and comfort to a job where I was chained to a seated desk at nearly all times and a G19 in a kydex rig started to hurt. Then it hurt even more so I downgraded to a j-frame...that still hurt. More pain and eventually visible swelling ensued to the point I had to visit a specialist for a possible hernia that none of her high tech equipment could detect. Thusly, my now inevitable return to IWB.
Jeff said he'd been studying on this very subject, including lots of conversations with medical professionals, which led him to conclude that this is a largely un-diagnosed issue with AIWB, at least for some people. A doctor's office or hospital is not usually the type of environment where people of a certain ilk, like me, are not comfortable relating that they believe their underlying issue is the how/where of the gun they carry all day every day.
He went on to explain that it's not so much the size of the pistol or the composite of the holster, it's the continual pressure on a sensitive area until the tissue under the pressure starts to break down. The result is that it will take more and more time for the tissue to heal enough to carry AIWB again, and the window where it's still comfortable will grow shorter and shorter. He said he even knew of women in the ccw life that had experienced trouble conceiving who found upon further medical investigation that they had damage to their ovary that lived beneath their edc rig.
To be clear, he did not say AIWB was bad or should be avoided entirely. He did say that if AIWB was causing you pain, it's possible that you're one of the unlucky ones and that continued AIWB could lead to an actual hernia.
In my case, I carried AIWB for over a decade before it turned painful. I went two years without AIWB at all and then found my lil' .22 LCR was quite comfy tucked in my jeans around the house of an evening. I did AIWB a few times with a G19 or G26, gradually increasing the time. A few weeks back, I started carrying my 26.5 IWB for my 40mi commute and swapping to AIWB at my relatively new stand up/sit down desk. After 3 weeks, it hurt so bad I had to give it up again.
Anyway, I thought Jeff's information was interesting enough to share.
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Originally Posted by caleb
