Bartholomew Roberts
April 18, 2010, 11:05 AM
Lately I've been reading several threads asking about vertical grips and the impression I've gotten is that a lot of people look at it as just a piece of gear that you stick on a rifle. I've been using a vertical grip for about five years now and I thought I would share some of my experiences in hopes of both learning something that will help me and maybe letting someone else learn faster through my experiences.
Initially, I was not a fan of vertical grips. I had never really found them all that comfortable and felt they were gimmicky. One day I was trying to do a very specific drill in a very specific time. The drill was called a "box drill." I started out 15yds from two IDPA targets about 7' apart. At the buzzer, I would begin moving. The goal was to put two shots into the lower -0 zone on each IDPA target and then one shots into the upper -0 zone on each target, effectively drawing a box with the muzzle. The idea was to shoot this drill clean (no misses) in under 5 seconds.
The problem was I couldn't do it. If I was fast enough, I dumped shots outside the -0 zone. If I was accurate enough, my time went longer than 5 seconds. At the time I was using a magwell hold with support hand or griping the handguard in the traditional fashion. After many frustrating runs, without even realizing what I was trying to do, I reached far out to the end on my Knight's 7" FF-RAS and grabbed hold of my flashlight in something that looked like this:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59065&d=1271605453
All of a sudden, I had a sub-5 second clean run, and then another, and another. I felt like Archimedes when he sat in that bathtub. :D Although I didn't realize it at the time, grabbing the flashlight like that actually had several advantages over a vertical grip; but comfort wasn't one of them, so I decided to buy a vertical grip.
For the vertical grip, I went with the Grippod polymer. At 7oz weight, it combined both a vertical grip and a bipod. It also helped me learn faster. What I had not yet realized, despite the flashlight experience is that it matters WHERE the vertical grip is. The less mass in front of the grip, the easier it is to control that mass. Because the Grippod was also a bipod, I mounted it towards the front of the rail, only leaving room for a flashlight in front at the 6 o'clock position. As a result, I started using a more forward grip almost right from the start.
However, I was disappointed to see that my box drill times went UP instead of down with the vertical grip. This didn't make any sense to me; but after experimentation I noticed a few things. The first thing I noticed is that people seem to want to grip a vertical grip like this:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59066&d=1271605453
For me, this grip sucks. You can see that the wrist is bent at an unnatural angle that causes discomfort. You also have the problem that all of the weight you want to control is sitting an inch or so above the top of your hand. If you aren't moving and you have a perfect stance where the muzzle is recoiling straight up and down, this position works (although the fatigue caused by the wrist angle kicks in earlier).However, if your position is a little off, or you start moving, the weight tends to roll around on top of your hand causing the rifle to recoil up and to one side or the other. This makes splits and target-to-target transitions slower. It was impossible for me to shoot a clean, sub-5 second box drill like this. Even sub-6 second was rare.
Before I even finished the first session, I had switched to this grip.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59067&d=1271605453
By putting my thumb up on the knob that attached the Grippod to the rail, I did two things that helped me (again without realizing what I was doing). I helped change the angle of the wrist a minor amount so that some of the tendons were less extended. This helped reduce fatigue.I also took a slightly higher grip and could control roll a little better with my thumb. This is a grip I used a long time and it worked decently for me; but I still had a tendency to revert to my flashlight grip when I needed to shoot fast because I knew it would work; where my thumbs-up grip only worked about 50/50.
CONTINUED BELOW
Initially, I was not a fan of vertical grips. I had never really found them all that comfortable and felt they were gimmicky. One day I was trying to do a very specific drill in a very specific time. The drill was called a "box drill." I started out 15yds from two IDPA targets about 7' apart. At the buzzer, I would begin moving. The goal was to put two shots into the lower -0 zone on each IDPA target and then one shots into the upper -0 zone on each target, effectively drawing a box with the muzzle. The idea was to shoot this drill clean (no misses) in under 5 seconds.
The problem was I couldn't do it. If I was fast enough, I dumped shots outside the -0 zone. If I was accurate enough, my time went longer than 5 seconds. At the time I was using a magwell hold with support hand or griping the handguard in the traditional fashion. After many frustrating runs, without even realizing what I was trying to do, I reached far out to the end on my Knight's 7" FF-RAS and grabbed hold of my flashlight in something that looked like this:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59065&d=1271605453
All of a sudden, I had a sub-5 second clean run, and then another, and another. I felt like Archimedes when he sat in that bathtub. :D Although I didn't realize it at the time, grabbing the flashlight like that actually had several advantages over a vertical grip; but comfort wasn't one of them, so I decided to buy a vertical grip.
For the vertical grip, I went with the Grippod polymer. At 7oz weight, it combined both a vertical grip and a bipod. It also helped me learn faster. What I had not yet realized, despite the flashlight experience is that it matters WHERE the vertical grip is. The less mass in front of the grip, the easier it is to control that mass. Because the Grippod was also a bipod, I mounted it towards the front of the rail, only leaving room for a flashlight in front at the 6 o'clock position. As a result, I started using a more forward grip almost right from the start.
However, I was disappointed to see that my box drill times went UP instead of down with the vertical grip. This didn't make any sense to me; but after experimentation I noticed a few things. The first thing I noticed is that people seem to want to grip a vertical grip like this:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59066&d=1271605453
For me, this grip sucks. You can see that the wrist is bent at an unnatural angle that causes discomfort. You also have the problem that all of the weight you want to control is sitting an inch or so above the top of your hand. If you aren't moving and you have a perfect stance where the muzzle is recoiling straight up and down, this position works (although the fatigue caused by the wrist angle kicks in earlier).However, if your position is a little off, or you start moving, the weight tends to roll around on top of your hand causing the rifle to recoil up and to one side or the other. This makes splits and target-to-target transitions slower. It was impossible for me to shoot a clean, sub-5 second box drill like this. Even sub-6 second was rare.
Before I even finished the first session, I had switched to this grip.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=59067&d=1271605453
By putting my thumb up on the knob that attached the Grippod to the rail, I did two things that helped me (again without realizing what I was doing). I helped change the angle of the wrist a minor amount so that some of the tendons were less extended. This helped reduce fatigue.I also took a slightly higher grip and could control roll a little better with my thumb. This is a grip I used a long time and it worked decently for me; but I still had a tendency to revert to my flashlight grip when I needed to shoot fast because I knew it would work; where my thumbs-up grip only worked about 50/50.
CONTINUED BELOW