TargetTalk

Just how "tight" do you hold your right arm to lock your elbow with AP? I'm still a new shooter with just 2.5 months experience and I've had some soreness in my forearm just beneat my elbow. Is this a normal beginner thing or am I perhaps trying too hard to "lock up" and stiffen my arm? Thanks, todd.

Normally pain is from over-exertion. When you say "beneath", do you mean across the elbow on the outside (bone/point side)? That's also known as Tennis elbow. On the inside (sensitive part, inside when arm is bent)? That's Golfers elbow.. I suffer from this myself and it exacerbated by doing things like bicep curls.

Or when you say "beneath", do you mean on the forearm... which would be totally new to me.

Anyway, to answer your question, my elbow locks but there's no muscle tension doing it. I don't Force it into a locked position, it just stops naturally at full extension. My dad can not extend his arm as straight as I can, and my wife can Hyper-extend her arm ~ both shot pistol where their arm naturally stops. Don't worry so much about the position, though if there's pain, DO worry (and understand) that. I'm still trying to understand what sets off my pain (it's occasional and random, I know lifting weights aggravates it for a time, but shooting the next day rarely does).

As Brian says, pain is bad. Don't 'lock' the elbow out just shoot with your arm straight, but comfortably straight. Rest it if it doesn't improve, I'd suggest at least a week. You might also find one of the anti inflammatory gels massaged into it helps (it does for my tennis elbow, in the forearm).

Rob.

Or when you say "beneath", do you mean on the forearm... which would be totally new to me.

This one..
Thank you Brian,
I've been really tensing up my forearm, making it stiff, to LOCK my elbow and I think have over stressed some muscle/tendons. It doesn't bother me so much when I shoot, but it's painful if I lift something, on the top of my forearm just beneath the elbow crease. I'm taking some time off and motrin to let it come back. Thanks for your input, todd.

It is fairly normal for a beginner to experience these pains.

You are holding an unfamiliar weight in an unfamiliar way.

One thing I find is to look at the direction the fleshy part of your elbow is facing. If it's straight up there will be more pressure directly onto the elbow joint which can cause pain in the muscles that stabilise the joint.

Rotate your arm so that the direct pressure is not on your elbow joint and is instead being bared by most of your arm.

Good luck.

Aches from using muscles differently is fairly normal for beginners, pain from straining muscles / tendons is not.

Rob.

I think perhaps too I've been hyperextending my wrist, "locking" it down as far as I can get it for stability. When you flex your wrist down,should I be forcing it as far down as I can get it?
A few weeks ago I did build up with putty the front of my grip under the middle finger. My 46M was nose heavy and this brought the front sight up. Maybe I built it up too much and am having to hyperextend to counter (I really did add quite a bit of material). Initially, it sure felt better to flex my wrist down to line up the sights rather than trying to hold the sight UP. I didn't even consider that modification when I started this post.

Thanks for all the replies, todd.

You shouldn't be doing anything with your wrist. As you lift the pistol, the weight of it should pull your wrist down to its natural stop without any muscle effort on your part. If your sights are not in Perfect alignment (close your eyes for several seconds, or as you rise and settle onto the target), then you need to keep working on the grip. I assure you, when it's right you can repeatably have perfect sight alignment and the scores will reflect it.

FWIW, that was the one major hurdle I could never get over with my 46m. I shot it for years, long enough to get thoroughly hooked on AP shooting and tinker with it lots, but I could never nail down the grip. I bought an LP10 based on the adjustability of the grip and it is my Favorite feature. Not changing how the grip fits my hand while correcting for horizontal and/or vertical error is a beautiful thing to someone who struggled with it for so long.

toddinjax wrote:I think perhaps too I've been hyperextending my wrist, "locking" it down as far as I can get it for stability. When you flex your wrist down,should I be forcing it as far down as I can get it?

Out of interest, who told you that this would be a good idea.

As a general rule, trying to force any joint as far as it will go is rarely a good idea in pistol shooting.

If you are having trouble keeping the front sight high enough with a normal wrist position then either get a gun that isn't so nose heavy or strengthen your wrist.

Hand and wrist are all controlled by musculature in the forearm, not in the hand as such, even trigger finger flex is a forearm operation. I don't know of any AP that requires an extreme medial flexion of the wrist, though I found the angle of Hammerli FP 150-160 series to be too extreme for me to tolerate. Locking of the elbow is dependent on morphology of the joint, and some folk, like myself, actually cannot manage this (had to do handstands in school by pure muscle power in the right arm as the joint could not be locked).
As has been said, pain is not a good thing and changing pistols or grips may be the best solution.

Dr Jim

David Levene wrote:

toddinjax wrote:I think perhaps too I've been hyperextending my wrist, "locking" it down as far as I can get it for stability. When you flex your wrist down,should I be forcing it as far down as I can get it?

Out of interest, who told you that this would be a good idea.

As a general rule, trying to force any joint as far as it will go is rarely a good idea in pistol shooting.

If you are having trouble keeping the front sight high enough with a normal wrist position then either get a gun that isn't so nose heavy or strengthen your wrist.

I thought the reason for the grips being raked on an AP was to FORCE you to tilt your wrist down, as opposed to the straighter 1911 style grip.

toddinjax wrote: I thought the reason for the grips being raked on an AP was to FORCE you to tilt your wrist down, as opposed to the straighter 1911 style grip.

Nope. That is the "relaxed" state of the wrist. No muscle involvement what-so-ever (good, you don't want to use muscle for AP). It'd be hard on joints with WILD recoil on a centerfire though

Potentially this soreness in the elbow area could also be caused by gripping the airgun too tightly.