Sharpen the Sword #1 – The Handgun Grip
Train your spirit. Train your hands.
Before we even talk stance, before we talk sight picture, before we talk about the draw—let’s get one thing nailed down: how you hold the thing. Grip is the handshake you give your handgun. And like any good handshake, it should be confident, controlled, and say “I know what I’m doing” without you having to say a word.
But before we even touch metal, let’s revisit the Four Unbreakables—the safety rules that never leave the room:
Treat every firearm like it’s loaded. Always.
Never point the muzzle at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you’ve decided to fire.
Know your target, what’s beyond it, and what’s on either side.
These aren’t suggestions. They’re the foundation. Break them, and you don’t just risk your life—you risk everyone else’s.
Step One: High and Tight with the Firing Hand
Your firing hand—your strong hand—needs to own its role. Get the web of that hand as high on the backstrap as you can, stuffed right up under the beavertail. That beavertail’s there to protect your hand from the slide, but it also marks where the gun’s recoil will push against you. Higher grip equals better recoil control.
This is your anchor point. Every shot starts here. If this part is wrong, nothing else will make up for it.
Step Two: The Support Hand Joins the Fight
Now, don’t shift that firing hand. Leave it locked in. Stick your firing-hand thumb up like you’re giving a silent nod to every 2A brother and sister in the Republic.
Bring in your support hand. Fill every bit of exposed grip your firing hand isn’t covering. Press that support-hand palm flat against the frame, wrapping your fingers forward so they meet and overlap your firing hand’s fingers.
Your support-hand thumb? It points forward—parallel with the slide—resting along the frame just under it. This creates a straight skeletal line of stability from your wrist to the muzzle.
Finally, drop your firing-hand thumb so it lays on top of, or alongside, your support-hand thumb. Some stack it; some run them parallel. Either way, the goal is stability and control—two hands working as one.
Things That Will Ruin This Grip
Let’s call out the bad habits now, so you can kill them before they grow roots:
Trigger Guard Grip: Don’t hook your support-hand finger around the front of the trigger guard. It creates a gap, disrupts your control, and can pull your shots off target.
Teacup Grip: Holding the gun in your firing hand while resting the butt of the grip in your support hand like it’s a fancy mug. This offers zero recoil control. Your gun is not fine china.
Thumbs Crossed Behind the Slide: This is how you get slide bite—steel carving flesh. Don’t do it.
Who Carries the Weight?
Here’s something many shooters don’t realize—your firing hand isn’t supposed to carry most of the gun’s weight. Its primary job is trigger control. The support hand is where the crushing grip comes from.
That’s important because when you pull the trigger, only your trigger finger should move. If your other fingers squeeze with it—a “sympathetic squeeze”—your shots will dive low left (if you’re right-handed) or low right (if you’re left-handed). It’s subtle. Most shooters don’t know they’re doing it. But it’s a leading cause of bad groups.
Dry-fire practice can cure it. Train that finger to move in isolation.
The Balance Between Death Grip and Dead Fish
Some folks think if they crush the gun hard enough, recoil will vanish. Wrong. You can’t beat physics with raw hand strength. Grip too hard and you’ll tremble, lose fine control, and fatigue quickly. Grip too soft and recoil will push the muzzle off line, slowing follow-up shots and inviting malfunctions.
What you want is a firm but steady grip—support hand doing about 60% of the work, firing hand about 40%. Arms extended, elbows slightly bent, shoulders forward. A posture ready to absorb recoil, not fight it.
Make This Grip a Habit
From the moment you pick the pistol up—empty, unloaded, or in a fight—make this grip part of you. Do it the same way every single time. That way, when it matters, there’s no hesitation, no fumbling, no wasted motion.
Train until the wrong ways feel unnatural. Train until you can pick up the gun in the dark, in the cold, with gloves, with sweaty hands—and your grip is still right.
Repetition is the Forge
I can’t say this enough:
Train.
Train.
Train some more.
And when you think you’ve mastered it—keep training. Because under stress, you will not rise to the occasion; you will fall to the level of your training. Make that level unshakable.
Coming Next: Stance
Your stance is the foundation under your foundation. It will change based on the fight—but your grip will not. Get this locked down, and you’ll be ready for whatever your feet need to do next.
Sharpen the Sword is your Sell Your Cloak series for practical, biblical-minded preparedness—both in spirit and in skill. It’s not just about honing weapons training. It’s about honing yourself through training an repetition. In some of our posts, we’ll be talking about grip, stance and firearms related best practices and techniques. In others, your mind, your body and your spirit will be the sword we’re sharpening.
Prepared in Spirit. Ready in Strength.
