What to Do With Your Hands

"I'm not sure what to do with my hands"

-Ricky Bobby, 2006

If you're in the same boat as Ricky Bobby, that's okay, I'll get you pointed in the right direction. The grip is the foundation on which you will build all of your shooting ability. Without a good grip, shooting accurately and quickly becomes exponentially more difficult.

There are a couple of things we need from our hands, or in other words our grip. First, we need our hands to be consistently in the same place, applying consistent pressures, because shooting is ALL about consistency. The second is durability, your grip needs to be strong enough to allow you to shoot quickly. If we can achieve these two things, the result will be consistent sight behavior and a rock-solid grip, both of which are absolutely critical.

There are three checkpoints we can use to assess if our hands are consistently in the "right" place. There is more than one way to skin a cat and as long as your grip results in consistent sight behavior you're on the right track, but there are some commonly accepted checkpoints, as seen below.

Checkpoint 1: Firing hand (dominant hand) as high and tight as you can get into the beaver tail.

Checkpoint 2: Support hand (non-dominant hand) index finger should touch the bottom of the trigger guard and laying on top of firing hand fingers. Ensure you have still met checkpoint 1.

Checkpoint 3: Roll your support hand into place and stack your thumbs, as seen above. There should be no space between your firing and support hands. Ensure you have still met checkpoints 1 & 2.

Now that we have an idea of where our hands need to be and how to check them, let's introduce our first dry fire drill:

"Trigger Control at Speed"

I hope this helps. Have a good one.

Shoot Fast, Don't Miss