Mr. Untactical
Master Class
<part 2>
That's a lot of great honesty in self-assessment, right there.
The 3.8 Compact - and the XD SubCompact, which was my other alternative at the time I was shopping for a carry gun, back in Q4, 2010/Q1, 2011; I went with the 3.8 Compact because I would have wanted to send the XD SC out for grip texturing, and that most likely would have made it a wash price-wise between the two...and the XDm gave me two more rounds onboard) - is Goldilocks for me in terms of "the juice being worth the squeeze." While I also have a smaller single-stack alternative for the rare instances when the 3.8 Compact is just too big to successfully conceal, I think we're of the same mind where it comes to going smaller.
That "juice being worth the squeeze" phrase, in reference to the increasing effort required to successfully mitigate felt recoil in consecutively smaller iterations of what is otherwise the same gun (i.e. G17, G19, G26) was something picked up from DocGKR on M4Carbine.net, where he made the following post:
^ When speaking of grip, many of us here - both you and me included, it would seem - favor the modern "thumbs forward" grip.
That said, there's a lot of differences in just how it's executed: https://www.xdtalk.com/threads/grip-this.257169/
In Vogel's class, his demonstration of his "thumbs forward grip" had his left thumb (he's right handed) riding so far forward that it was in-essence coming off the grip:
View attachment 25138
^ *image not mine, stolen from the Internet.
One of the things that he said in his class is that his grip often causes his slide to not lock back on-empty, but that given his shooting needs, the slide not locking back on-empty is not that important, and that he'd rather compromise that in order to get better recoil control, which *is* what's important to him.
So that gets us to where we are in our discussion...what is actually important to us, right?
At one point, I experimented running my support hand more and more forward (as you can see via the "Grip This" thread link to XDTalk and its outlink to the DefensiveCarry.com thread, I really focused on the grip during my earlier days in the sport/hobby), "à la Vogel," if you will. While my split times dropped, I started to incur first the occasional failure of the slide to lock back on-empty, and eventually I got so far forward on the gun that I was occasionally causing the slide-stop to trigger, as the thenar eminence of my support hand interfaced in a manner so as to cause it to engage when the gun recoiled. While I debated with myself as to whether the former was an OK trade-off, the latter was of-course a non-starter, so I started to ratchet my support hand grip back a bit.
Meanwhile, with my dominant hand, my right thumb-tip is just long enough -with it riding above my support hand- to still occasionally trip into the slide-release and prevent reliable/consistent lock-back on-empty. Here, luckily, there was a hardware solution for my software problem: Springer Precision makes a redesigned slide-catch/release that is relieved specifically to increase clearance at this junction.
I bring up both of these embarrassing (for me) scenarios to show you that you're definitely far from alone - and furthermore, to also help you see that for those of us who aren't quite at the level of the Grandmasters and world- or other top-level champions that we're also often tweaking our techniques in the search for that next best thing.Furthermore, I am also hoping that you'll see via the DefensiveCarry.com Forum posts that the words "thumbs forward grip" is only a rough description of a technique that, in and of itself, carries wide-ranging implications and considerable variation in the details of just how it is accomplished. [ Take Vogel's grip, for-instance: What's often not cited about his grip is that he starts to build it via his back and chest muscles, all the way forward. It's not just how his hands look when they're on the gun, it's also just as much about how he applies pressure to his grip, including his unique "twist-lock" of the grip in his dominant hand. ]
Again, best of luck, and again, no thanks needed!
Thanks or no, I appreciate the detailed, thoughtful responses. I've replied (before I saw this) with images that show a couple of interpretations of the thumbs forward grip - one similar to what I use now, and one that I've been trying to remember to migrate to, thanks to my Hellcat adventures. One advantage of the version that has me place my right thumb at the base of my left is that - somehow - it does tend to naturally prompt me to pronate my left elbow a bit, which gets more of my left hand meat on the grip... which is supposed to be a good thing.
I really didn't get into this handgun business in earnest until about 2018, so I've got a couple of years of muscle memory to unlearn. And that's not just for the range sessions - which are generally supervised (local indoor and outdoor facilities) where they frown on drawing from the holster. But one thing I've noticed in trying to tweak my grip is that doing so from a static shooting stance is one thing, but implementing that new grip consistently from the draw is a whole other proposition! That will take some fair number of repetitions before it becomes automatic.
Going by the numbers, I can totally see the reasons why the "overlay" thumbs forward grip makes all the sense in the world - there is no flesh on the slide stop, ergo no way it can accidentally be brought into the functional equation of the firearm's operation.
It's kind of like resting your hand on the gear selector in the car. It works fine until you hit a bump and knock that sucker from drive into neutral!
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