Dry fire, doing it and doing it right

[pudly]

I honestly don't see the value of grip strengthening for lighter triggers. I do plenty of dry fire practice with light-moderate trigger semi-autos and feel very comfortable with the results without any special grip strengthening exercises. Double action revolvers certainly need more strength and might benefit from the exercise. Either way, it won't hurt to improve your grip strength.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I honestly don't see the value of grip strengthening for lighter triggers. I do plenty of dry fire practice with light-moderate trigger semi-autos and feel very comfortable with the results without any special grip strengthening exercises. Double action revolvers certainly need more strength and might benefit from the exercise. Either way, it won't hurt to improve your grip strength.

Recoil control.

Think of it like this. If you throw a ball as hard as you can, do you give up precision? Of course. If you throw a ball at 70% of your strength, can you be more precise? Of course.

Similarly, you can hold the gun harder and not induce shake, not have issues isolating the trigger finger, etc if you can hold the gun equally tightly with 70% of your grip strength.

 

[pudly]

OK. Grip strength for recoil control makes more sense than for trigger control on a semi-auto.

 

[Woody968]

I should have been more clear with the question, it did sound like I was still talking trigger pull.

 

[Twangbanger]

I should have been more clear with the question, it did sound like I was still talking trigger pull.

In addition to recoil control from the grippers, I think a resetting trigger can be good for developing the trigger finger independence and strength to run the trigger quickly. This latter is probably only important for people who are trying to shave seconds on qualifiers for matches and stuff like that, but it's a "thing."

Some advice for anyone wanting to get started, don't over-do it. Repetitive motion can be a bad thing at some level, and I've gotten tendinitis in both arms/wrists from doing too much. There can be a tendency to think if a little of something is good, a lot is better. My thought process was, "Cool, I can get better by just nerfing away in my gun room away from the range...I'm gonna do a ton of this!" Bad idea. Warm up your hands/wrists/arms before each session, and at the first sign of tenderness that lasts after the practice session, give it a break until it goes away, then come back more reasonably.

 

[Woody968]

Thanks for the advice. Not looking at shaving seconds for matches yet, but I can see myself wanting to get involved in things like that down the road.