Grip

Grip


I have a confession to make. I don't like making it, because it's an admission that I've failed in dry fire for a longer period than I would care to admit. I've cheated on my grip for over a year in dry fire, maybe approaching a year and a half, and I'm only now realizing that I was doing it, and that I was shorting myself all this time. Grip is such a fundamental aspect of shooting, it's hard to do anything well, or right if you are not gripping the gun.


To share a little bit about how I came to this conclusion, I've had some on and off struggles with Limited this year. Transitioning from Production to Limited, and from a minor power factor to a major power factor, I'd see matches or strings of targets with reduced accuracy, especially seen on some struggles with steel, both poppers and plates. For instance on a plate rack, I was rarely one for one, same with an array of steel poppers. When I shot Production, I loved shooting steel, I felt very confident, and the gun cycled, I never felt much in the way of muzzle rise. The truth is though, that even then, I had a barely passable grip, because too often I'd lose it, and in turn I could go from ace to chump in the blink of an eye.

In Limited I feel like I'm fighting the gun, and when I switched I instantly had accuracy issues. I could go Alpha/Mike pretty easily, and I did not understand where, and how that was happening, I just knew that the gun was bouncing all over the place. I was not smart enough to connect the dots though to my dry fire, and I kept on with dry fire the same as I always had. At a match, when I came to the line, I'd have to consciously say "Grip, ogre grip" to myself at the make ready command to will myself to do that. If I did that, my stages were definitively better than stages where I did not consciously tell myself to do that. Now, as I go back and review video, I can clearly see from watching the gun if I told myself to grip, if I did, the gun is cycling and I'm getting hits, if I did not, I see the gun bounce all over, and I don't need to look at a score sheet to tell myself that I clearly failed the grip.


The last USPSA match I shot, I came to the line on the last stage focused on grip, and I ripped off 24 Alpha's, went 1 for 1 on 5 steel, and did not come close to a charlie. In watching the video, sure as hell, I was gripping the gun, and that's what it took for me to see a relationship in grip to accuracy, and it was cue one that I was failing in practice.

About this time, we started shooting some 3-Gun, and because my rig was built with my CZ in mind, I'd switch back to a CZ for 3-Gun. Because my practice of late had all been in Limited, and I was starting to get accustomed to shooting major power factor, the CZ felt like a powder puff load, with no recoil at all. Now though, I had a consistently good grip, and I was running the gun better than I think I ever did in Production. I was not consciously having to tell myself to grip, I just did it. From 40 yard steel, to plate racks to paper, I've been a machine in terms of accuracy with the CZ. The laugh at the last match was that you need either 1 Alpha or 2 on paper to neutralize the target, and I had 2 Alpha hits on everything, running the gun fast, and hard. There were a couple of steel misses, and those I attribute to my getting lazy (last steel on a rack after running 2 plate racks, and I did not get a sight picture, I just figured I had it...dumb). The point was that my grip was the biggest difference, and suddenly I was running the gun well.

I borrowed a buddies 6" 9mm 2011 just for a test, ran some wide transitions, and there is so much steel there, the gun doesn't move, but I was taking head shots at 25 yards, and getting an "A" zone hit with solid speed, and confidence....grip, not sights was a limiting factor. I moved back to my Limited gun, and ran the same exercise, and I was slower, and I fought the gun, but with an ogre grip I was getting a head shot (maybe only 30% A's, the rest B's) but the difference was confidence in calling my shot.

Over the past couple of weeks I started to review what I was doing in dry fire, and give an honest assessment of my past practice. The reality was that when I would practice draws or reloads, or damn near anything, I would focus on the "core" part of the drill, so on a 2 reload 2 drill, I would be focused on getting my reload done to beat the 1.5 second par time, what I was not doing was paying much attention to how I got there. My grip was passable at best, but far too often I'd have my support hand just "on" the gun, with minimal grip, preparing for the next action, not treating it as a separate action. The power factor change forced me to pay more attention to my grip, but because I assumed and did not think about it in dry fire, the only place I actually focused on it was once I came to the line in live fire. Combine that with a poor habit in dry fire, one that was doing the exact opposite as what I needed to do, I don't think I was building any kind of good habit, and that in turn has played a huge part in my maddening and frustrating inconsistency.

As dumb as I felt about the fact I was cheating in dry fire, I opened the conversation with a few other shooters, and found that they also had the same question. How can you be honest and catch yourself if you are cheating and building a bad habit in dry fire?  As usual, a conversation with Les helped open my mind, and I'm going to start to adding some checks to my practice. Every third draw or so, pay more attention to grip, is it perfect? Once I add some checks, it makes it easier to insure I build good habits. Once upon a time, when I started with dry fire, I really think I had a better grip, and I practiced it. I'm not sure when it drifted off, or I stopped paying attention, but it definitely happened. Just goes to show that practicing bad habits is pretty easy. I'm also going to add some dot drills to my regular practice routine, more as a "prover" for me. At this point I feel like I know my sights well enough that I'm not thinking about them, but if I cheat with a Limited gun on grip, I'll fail miserably with the Dot Drill, so adding some more checks and balances will help.

That was a rough admission, but I also saw I was not alone with the issue, building a smarter practice, and remaining focused on everything that I'm doing will go a long way. The goal now is to build grip to a subconscious place, so I do it correctly all the time, and I don't have to think about it. Split focus in a match means I'm not going full speed, and to get where I want to be, I need every little bit of speed that I can find. Bonus here, is my accuracy should go up as well!