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While At the Range (How to Grip a Glock Pistol)

185K views 118 replies 53 participants last post by  Storm Shadow 
#1 ·
While at the range I noticed my friend shooting with both his hands wrapped around his grip.

I do the same thing but use one finger on the trigger guard. He had a 2-3 in group at 7 yards.

He was shooting a P226 .45. I was shooting my Glock 22 and I am usually OK with shooting a 6 inch group with a few fliers but if I can improve I with my grip I might as well.


Is there something to Not using a finger on the trigger guard?
 
#2 · (Edited)
While at the range I noticed my friend shooting with both his hands wrapped around his grip.
I do the same thing but use one finger on the trigger guard. He had a 2-3 in group at 7 yards.
He was shooting a P226 .45. I was shooting my Glock 22 and I am usually OK with shooting a 6 inch group with a few fliers but if I can improve I with my grip I might as well.
Is there something to Not using a finger on the trigger guard?
Yes, there is. At my gun club we teach an Action Range Certification class, where I have been one of the instructors for about a year. We teach the grip illustrated in the following photos, which I will try to explain here:

1. Grip the pistol with the strong hand as shown in the first and second photos. Note that when your trigger finger is not going to be on the trigger to shoot, it should be held up on the frame or slide to prevent an accidental discharge. The strong hand creates a gap that you fill with the support hand (noted in the photo). It is important to get the strong hand as high on the back of the pistol's beavertail as you can, putting you in position to better manage recoil.

2. Rotate the support hand forward slightly and fill the gap, shown in the third photo. The photo does not show much rotation on my support hand, but I hope you get the idea: rotate it a little to make it fit the gap. Both thumbs should be pointing forward, but providing no support. For right-handed Glock shooters, be sure to keep your right thumb below the ridge that sits beneath the slide stop lever so that you don't accidentally activate the slide stop or prevent it from activating when it should. The four fingers of the support hand wrap around the knuckles of the strong hand. We teach our students to keep their support hand index fingers off the front of the trigger guard, because if it touches the trigger guard it will inadvertently steer the gun. The support hand index finger is better used to provide more strength to the grip.

3. The fourth photo shows the grip established with the finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

4. The last photo shows that the hands fit together without gaps. This may vary depending on the amount of flesh on the shooter's hands, but if we see a gap there it is often a sign that the grip is "off" or that it has come undone when shooting, which is common with new shooters. Where I stand when I am teaching, behind and to the side of the shooter, I can see the gap clearly if it is there, and the shooter can easily see it as well. Sometimes we use a Sharpie to make a "witness mark" across the point where the base of the the thumbs are touching, to remind them to keep the grip together. (We are sure to ask for their permission before writing on their hands!)

What you cannot see clearly in the photos is the position of the trigger finger: we teach students to pull straight back through the trigger "break" to the stop, using the pad in the middle of the distal phalanx of the trigger finger. I'm kind of proud of all that medical anatomy talk, I just looked it up! The point where we teach them to pull the trigger is in red in the attached drawing. We also teach them to release the trigger only as far as the reset, so that follow-up shots are quicker and there is less movement of the trigger finger.

I am not, by any means, saying that this is the only way it should be done. I am saying that this is what we teach new pistol shooters, and we get good results with this grip.

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Chris
 
#31 ·
Yes, there is. At my gun club we teach an Action Range Certification class, where I have been one of the instructors for about a year. We teach the grip illustrated in the following photos, which I will try to explain here:

Chris
thank you very much for the explanation and graphics.
i now see and understand where every thing is supposed to fit.
 
#3 ·
You can put a finger on the trigger gurad but it really serves no usefull purpose. Work on your sight alignment to improve your groups. At 7 yards you should be able to keep the in the one inch neighborhood.

Sent from my Ally using Tapatalk 2
 
#11 ·
I will add that you might be shooting too fast to realize the potential of a premium handgun. Glocks are very capable of out shooting all of us offhand, so there is always room for improvement. So the next time your at the range do some precision drills with 1 " dots @ 7 yards or 2" dots @ 15 yards. Cut the dot exactly in half with the front sight or shoot 6 o'clock if thats easier. If I could out shoot my 17 I would quit work and shoot full time.
 
#6 ·
You are most welcome!

I feel I have to explain the length of that post (which just grew again). I have been making up some training materials for the Action Range Class, and a couple of days ago I looked on this forum to see if there was anything I could use concerning the grip. There is, or rather there was, but the video was deleted. The subject was fresh in my mind when the question came up from Tremors, so I was more than prepared to answer it. I am trying to control myself, but I have a tendency to use 200 words when 20 will do just fine. Please bear with me, I mean well.

Chris
 
#5 ·
That's the way I was taught to shoot "cohland" very nice photos to show proper grip...at seven yards your group should be within a few inches at most.....Sight alignment is most important and then trigger squeeze....
 
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#9 ·
Thanks Chris! Excellent post!
 
#13 ·
Another great thing that Chris has pointed out is the proper finger placement for GLOCKS. It should be noted that different firearms can shoot differently based on where the finger is placed on the trigger and everyone needs to do what is best for them but for most people, the proper finger placement is to rest the pad of the index finger on the trigger. Putting the index finger all the way in so that the first crease is on the trigger is often too much and will cause the shooter to "pull" the trigger to the right as the finger is depressed.

Many GLOCK owners prefer the rounded triggers over the standard triggers now because they feel that the angled trigger lets the finger pull or push to one side.
 
#14 ·
I use the same grip described by Cohland, "thumbs forward". Excelent description!

Since changing (a few years ago) I noticed improved groupings and faster times from holster to sight aquisition, and I feel the weapon more secure. About the finger in the guard, I can see no benefit in doing that, only possible negatives with finger pressure jerking the gun ever so slightly off target.

To the OP, keep in mind that your friend was shooting a different weapon than you. The sig 226 is much heavier than your Glock and is a SA/DA action trigger. I would suggest you shoot his weapon and see if you get better results also before blaming your grip for the accuracy.

I shoot my CZ SP-01 in one ragged hole at 10 yards, and I never got the same result from my G19!
 
#16 ·
Well, I'm thinking about it! The course we teach is something like basic action (competition) shooting for new shooters, so you need to take that into account. It's not defense shooting, not aimed at IDPA, so there are differences. We don't shoot from cover, we drop magazines with ammo in them on the ground, that sort of thing. I would take photos of one of our professional instructors (LE, ex NY State Trooper, a real pro).

The basic stance we teach is:

. feet parallel with shoulders, about shoulder width. This allows the shooter to swing left or right easily, useful for USPSA stages with multiple targets.
. knees not locked, maybe slightly flexed, but not flexed so far that they put load on the thighs, since that will lead to fatigue.
. back bent forward just slightly from the hips, definitely not bent back. We want them to lean into the recoil a little.
. arms extended straight out, elbows may be locked (shooter preference). We find that if new shooters don't lock their elbows we tend to get limp-wristing and not much control of recoil.

We also cover the draw (again, for action shooting, making sure that the shooter does not cover himself/herself when drawing), how to shoot on the move, and speed reloading.

How does that sound?

Chris
 
#18 ·
Probably not! Remember the old saying, "If you can't DO, then teach."? Well, I am learning that I'm a better amateur teacher than I am an amateur shooter. Good technique, but the scores aren't so wonderful. But it's fun!

Chris
 
#21 · (Edited)
Again, Chris has nailed it! Once a year I spend 30 minutes with a QUALIFIED instructor to go over all the bad habits I picked up from the previous year. It really helps me to have someone who knows what to look for point out the little things I don't do well. Just bad habits I may have fallen into. Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
 
#22 ·
That sounds like a great idea. I probably need to spend about 3 hours with a qualified instructor instead of 30minutes. Maybe we could enlist Chris to be a traveling instructor. I've never had a lesson in my life. I suppose my shooting proves that. I appreciate Chris' tips.
 
#24 ·
Denny and DW:

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but no, I will not be offering any in-person instruction! I am just one of a dozen people at my club who help out with this program, and I am an amateur volunteer: I do this because I enjoy it.

However, if you look over in the Training and Tactics forum next week, you will see some more material. I am planning the following posts:

1) Beginning Action Shooter: The Grip (this will be a re-post of the material on the grip, with at least one more photo showing the trigger pull).
2) Beginning Action Shooter: The Stance
3) Beginning Action Shooter: The Draw
4) Beginning Action Shooter: Speed Reloading

The guy who heads up the Action Shooting discipline at my gun club will be the subject of the photos, which I plan to shoot this Friday while we are conducting an Action Range Certification class. The photos will be annotated with explanations of how we teach the Grip, Stance, Draw, and Speed Reloading and why we do it that way. Again, this is aimed at the beginning shooter. I think these planned posts might bring some good discussions.

I am resisting the temptation to go "whole hog", so we will not be covering sight alignment, equipment selection, and other topics that are covered in the NRA Basic Pistol course.

Stay tuned, this will be a fun project.

Chris
 
#25 ·
Chris I enjoy all of your post here and also they are very informative. Being an LE for 31 years, now retired, and an active target shooter we quickly forget the basics and need that reminder from a person like you to get our heads back into the game....I mostly shoot center mass Q targets where grouping tightly is not as important, but after reading these articles I'm going back to shooting circles for a while to tighten up my groups and to practice proper grip and sight alignment a little more. Thanks for keeping us all thinking....
Dan
 
#28 ·
Dan,

Thanks for the kind words. I want to make it clear that the training we conduct is intended for real beginners, many of whom bring the first handgun they have ever owned to the class. That is our raw material.

Seasoned LE Professionals such as yourself, or experienced competitors, probably already have skills development well beyond what we cover. While I'm happy to hear that the material is useful as a refresher, I want to be careful to point out that I am offering beginner material, chosen for our purposes. I don't want to be seen as contradicting other training or methods, I'm sure they all have adherents and were developed for a good reason. An example of a difference is the Weaver stance: we don't teach that, and we don't advocate it for beginners in action shooting.

The goal of our training is to teach beginners enough about safety, proper gun handling, and safety (again...) so that they can use our Action Ranges without supervision, and so that they will be able to enter a USPSA/IPSC, Speed Steel, or IDPA match and not embarrass themselves...safely.

Stay tuned, I plan to post up more beginner material in Training & Tactics within a few days.

Chris
 
#29 ·
Ooooops! I thought you meant another forum. Sorry. Well, I wouldn't say I'm a beginner and I pretty well think I've got the safety issue down but in truth I'd most probably benefit from all the other beginner stuff. I've never had a lesson in my life in how to shoot a handgun. I just picked one up years ago a started shooting. It's only been in the last year + that I've been back actively shooting a lot. Of course I was around firearms in the military but it was M-1, M-14 and M-16. So no handgun training there. There's so many different ways to "learn" to shoot. When I picked up my first Glock it surprised me. I even surprised me. It is an extremely accurate pistol even for a novice. So, I still think I could benefit by all you post and will avail myself of it. All I'm trying to do is have fun in retirement and feel as if I'm proficient in protecting me and mine from all the BGs. And, believe me, we've got'em in spades where I live.
 
#30 ·
Chris - another excellent post... Thanks for taking the time to write it and get all the pictures together... I added "How to Grip a Glock Pistol" to the title of this message and stuck it to the top of the page...

Just noticed that you are going to post this and a few other articles in the "Training and Tactics" forum... Good idea, much better place... I'll stick those to the top of the page once you create them and return this post to its original status...
 
#39 ·
Even when using the teacup method, your support hand is still outside your firing hand. That's why I was asking for some clarification.
 
#42 ·
Hansgruber, the only thing people get upset about around here is people coming to start trouble and disrupt the forum. Outside of that, the majority of us here are all willing to share and learn from each other. Sharing your opinion and experience fits right in with those goals so please, share away. I too would like to see the grip you are referring to so if possible, a picture or two would be great.
 
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