TargetTalk

Just how does one "lock" the wrist for AP? Is it just a matter of concentrating on that area and tensing the muscle or is there more to it?

This is one of those things that is easy to say, and everyone who has done it for a bit knows what it means, but it's hard to tell someone who hasn't experienced it exactly HOW to do it. I'm sure a doctor could tell you exactly what the technical names for the muscles are, but that doesn't help either. You have to learn by trial & error what it feels like and how to call it up on demand.

The theory is that you want to apply just enough muscle tension to stabilize the joint. Any more than that will just tire you out needlessly.

Try this: Hold your arm out straight, and completely relax the wrist. The hand will drop, and probably angle in a bit. Now, using the wrist muscles, lift and rotate the hand to a more normal shooting position, as if you were holding a pistol. Those are the muscles involved. Now, apply just a little more tension to hold the hand in that position. Instead of being floppy, if someone were to bump the bottom of your hand upward, the entire forearm should move as a unit.

You can try the same exercise with the pistol. The idea is to eliminate the wrist joint as a variable. The same idea applies to the elbow. Ideally, the arm and wrist should be a single rigid unit. Just don't over do it.

I think the muscles that firm the wrist by itself are found about 1/3 of the way from your elbow to your wrist. It is hard to isolate these without including the hand squeeze muscles. I am not sure if the elbow's inside should be rotated hard upwards or not.

toddinjax wrote:Just how does one "lock" the wrist for AP? Is it just a matter of concentrating on that area and tensing the muscle or is there more to it?

Years of practice!

davidjohngoode wrote:

toddinjax wrote:Just how does one "lock" the wrist for AP? Is it just a matter of concentrating on that area and tensing the muscle or is there more to it?

Years of practice!

OP: Don't get discouraged by noise like this. Actually, a couple of weeks should be plenty for this one piece of the puzzle. Getting all the rest of it sorted out can take a bit longer...

jackh wrote:I think the muscles that firm the wrist by itself are found about 1/3 of the way from your elbow to your wrist. It is hard to isolate these without including the hand squeeze muscles. I am not sure if the elbow's inside should be rotated hard upwards or not.

I've seen all sorts of conflicting "wisdom" about how to arrange the elbow joint. It's probably increasingly important when firing calibers with significant recoil. I think for air pistol, whatever is stable & comfortable is probably OK.

I have seen some people shoot with the joint axis horizontal, so the weight of the pistol helps to lock the elbow. I tend to get inflammation of the sinovial membrane, which this aggravates, so it's a non-starter for me.

With heavier recoil, I've heard some people advocate having the pivot axis vertical so the arm tends to stay rigid in recoil. I've also heard that some people have injured their elbow this way. Others favor having the axis horizontal so the elbow can flex naturally during recoil, but that seems like it would be harder to do repeatably. Both of these extremes feel unnatural (at least to me), and take significant training to do automatically.

I just stick my arm out in a comfortable position & don't worry about it. The axis of my elbow joint is about at a 45 degree angle. On the other hand, I never was much good at sustained fire with a .45, so maybe that's part of my problem...

"Locking" the wrist is a misnomer - it cannot be locked in the sense that your knee or elbow can be locked. I think it means that once the gun is raised to the firing position, the position of the wrist with respect to the forearm does not change; the relationship of the sights to the eye and the target is controlled by movement from the shoulder. I think.

I bought a couple of Gripmaster Pro hand exercisers, medium and heavy, and keep them in my car so I can work them on my commute. I also move my wrist around so that I'm making that movement independently of the squeezing action. I don't know if a real coach would think that's a good idea, but I did see an improvement in my grip and wrist steadiness after a few weeks.

Roger

Toddinjax;

Locking your wrist is simply done with surgery.
What they do is take bone marrow out of your hip, cut open your wrist, take wires and spread the bones apart with a device with your hand mounted on a board, pack in the bone marrow,release it , install a couple screws to hold it together and let it fuse together.

That is what was done to me many years ago when I broke mine.

I really need to take advantage of this treatment ;)

Clarence

C. Perkins wrote:Toddinjax;

Locking your wrist is simply done with surgery.
.... , install a couple screws to hold it together and let it fuse together.
...

Are those screw accessible to adjust yaw and pitch, according with your gun's grip? :-)

Plutone;

If I knew then what I know now I would have asked the Doc to do something like that :)

Clarence

The muscle that controls wrist movement and finger movement(gripping) are all located in your forearm, that is the area between wrist joint and elbow joint. If you want do a little test on your self so you can feel where these muscle are located for each of the various action as the attached picture show. That is my right arm that I'm holding which is my shooting arm.

Now wriggle your fingers....feel the movement of the muscle?? Now move your wrist up..down..left..and right...feel??

To 'lock' the wrist you need to engage and control the forearm muscles with constant tension without necessarily gripping the pistol any harder.

If there are shooters more interested on this topic please let me know and I will post a video on exercise how to achieve grip and arm module control

Please do.

Roger

More info is always welcomed!

Zeus560 wrote:...

If there are shooters more interested on this topic please let me know and I will post a video on exercise how to achieve grip and arm module control

Of course, thanks!
Unless compelled to do, I'd avoid the surgery system. ;-)

Zeus560 wrote:The muscle that controls wrist movement and finger movement(gripping) are all located in your forearm, that is the area between wrist joint and elbow joint. If you want do a little test on your self so you can feel where these muscle are located for each of the various action as the attached picture show. That is my right arm that I'm holding which is my shooting arm.

Now wriggle your fingers....feel the movement of the muscle?? Now move your wrist up..down..left..and right...feel??

To 'lock' the wrist you need to engage and control the forearm muscles with constant tension without necessarily gripping the pistol any harder.

If there are shooters more interested on this topic please let me know and I will post a video on exercise how to achieve grip and arm module control

This is exactly what I have been working on lately. Please share your ideas and support material.

Involving the forearm to firm the wrist seems to cause a lesser need to stress the hand and therefore the trigger finger is more free to move. Also the forearm seems to help set the shoulder. Overall stability seems increased as well.

Of course core strength, posture, breathing, and mind remain important

I came across this research paper on reduction of essential tremor in muscles - a common factor for all shooters which can be reduced through long practice but never eliminated. It seems from this research that cooling offers the most obvious, legal means of tremor reduction for match shooting.
http://ep.physoc.org/content/95/3/441.full.pdf

Practicality of application is a concern, but a small insulated container (Thermos lunchbox?) with a few cloth-covered gel cooling bags or even a fitted cooling sleeve or two could provide a few minutes of forearm cooling every 20 to 30 minutes during a match. At least I can't see any warnings against this practice in the ISSF rules. And in cases where tendonitis or 'tennis elbow' is present it could easily be argued that this was a medical/therapeutic necessity, for the competitor's health. I've tested this twice in home practice and have found that 8 to 10 minutes of cooling of the whole forearm results in about a 20 minute period of rather unbelievable sight picture stability. It was freaky, seeing the front sight just sitting on the 10 for 1 to 3 seconds at a time with no shaking.

Haven't tested extensively enough to see scoring differences, and frankly I found the experience sufficiently disorienting that I was having difficulty remembering to pull the trigger. With practice this could be overcome. I'm still hesitating as to whether this is something I want to pursue... it's another layer of complication in a sport which seems more enjoyable when things are kept simple. And strength training is helping my stability quite nicely anyway. Still, if it could add 5 or 10 points to a score, ice seems tempting.

This is very interesting. I just got back from practicing free pistol in temperatures in the 90's (F, clearly). It did not go particularly well. If I could get my shots off very quickly without getting too aggressive with the trigger, they were generally OK. The window of opportunity before I started wobbling unacceptably seemed shorter than usual, but I've also been scraping paint a lot lately. Maybe it wasn't my imagination, or just excess fatigue.

I'll have to try a cool pack next time.

Great post Zeus, thank you and yes please for the video.

Zeus560 wrote:...

If there are shooters more interested on this topic please let me know and I will post a video on exercise how to achieve grip and arm module control

May be there are not too many shooters interested, but if you could post that video all the same, I'd appreciate it very much.
Many thanks.