Limp wristing

[thewillweeks]

What's the science behind limp wristing a pistol? Like what scientific laws is it that causes this to happen? I would imagine interia is the main player but I don't really know.

I have a SCCY CPX2 which I honestly don't know how to limp wrist, but a small stature female friend limp wristed here during some training and I'm now curious about how it works. Also, if y'all could, can you verify the advice I gave her to avoid future problems (which she did)?

1) Hold as high as possible, the closer the top of your hand is to in line with the bore the less "flip" and therefore less chance of limping it.

2) Intentionally stiffening wrist and elbow joints more effectively while firing.

3) Wrapping the support hand more effectively to counter act muzzle flip.

Any other thoughts? Next weekend I'm intending to teach a few new to hand gun shooters on this pistol so I'd love to have some tips.

 

[ImperatorGray]

Recoil cycles out the old casing by sending the slide back relative to the frame with enough force that the casing impacts the ejector hard enough to reliably get out of the way in time.

Limp-wristing is just when the shooter doesn't exert enough forward pressure on the frame, so that to one extent or another the frame and slide are recoiling as a unit. Or more of a single unit than they should be.

Your advice is good. I'd add full-body stance to the list: Ground your feet and lean forward as if you are about to throw as hard a punch as you can imagine, so that her body helps arrest the frame's initial movement. If she's having that much of a problem with it, I'd also advise her to at least start off giving a "death grip" with both hands, to get a sympathetic response in the muscles of each arm. As she gets used to shooting, she should be able to dial that back to the right "feel."

 

[JohnKSa]

The slide must move relative to the frame for a recoil-operated autoloader to function. And it must move fast enough relative to the frame to do all the work it needs to do--extract, eject and then compress the recoil spring fully so that it has enough energy to feed the next round on the forward stroke.

In a gun with a light recoil spring and/or a heavy frame, there's enough inertia in the frame to hold it still relative to the slide. It's pretty hard (maybe impossible) to limp-wrist a full-sized steel-framed 9mm, for example. It's pretty easy to limp-wrist a compact, polymer-framed .40S&W.

The lighter the frame and/or the stronger the recoil spring, the more work the shooter has to do to insure that the frame is restrained sufficiently.

 

[WestKentucky]

The sccy along with its competition in the ultralight pocket auto market are among the easiest to limp wrist guns ever created for the reasons mentioned above. My wife limped a couple .380s pretty bad when I had them. Once the first happened it got worse as she got nervous about it and flinched badly expecting recoil that was more than she wanted to handle along with a gun she wasn't comfortable with as it had shown a sign (in her eyes) of not being reliable. Your advice was solid, just make sure that people don't grip do high that they get slide-bit

 

[HammsBeer]

The casing pushes the slide back with X amount of force.
As the slide pushes back on the recoil spring, the spring wants to push back the frame as well.
If the shooter holds the frame securely, then all the force is used to cycle the slide.
If the shooter doesn't hold the frame securely enough, then too much force is wasted moving the frame and the slide doesn't cycle the full length and short strokes.
Result is stovepipe casing, jammed case on feeding, or no casing fed and an empty chamber.

A proper grip is firm but not so tight that the pistol shakes in their hand.
As a comparison, you don't swing a hammer with a loose grip, so don't shoot a pistol with loose grip either.

Small pistols like the SCCY are very difficult to shoot well and not a good choice for beginners. If you can get access to a full size pistol (Glock 17, Beretta 92 size) that would be much better to teach with. Leave the small pocket pistols for experienced shooters.

 

[thewillweeks]

I really wish I had a full size 9mm, I've only got the SCCY and a Glock 23, and to me the SCCY is easier to handle with 115gr than the 23 is with a 170gr which is what my plinking ammo for each is. The 23 is a sharper recoil with 170gr so I was trying to save her hands from a beating at least. Maybe I'll pickup a conversion barrel for 9mm with it.

 

[Steve in Allentown]

I wonder if SCCY offers a lighter spring. If you've got a couple of minutes, give them a call to find out.

 

[thewillweeks]

That is a thought, however the gun needs the full snap of the spring with certain bullet types to seat the round in the chamber (115 gr and other short type bullets it's picky about chambering until you smack it hard on the butt of the slide) so I don't think I'd want to mess with the spring. It does fine with my carry ammo though so I trust it, but when I'm plinking it's something I have to concentrate on snapping the slide fully. It's not because the spring is too weak, it's the angle of the bullet tip/length of case related. If it was just a plinking gun I'd consider it, but since I do carry it defensively sometimes I'm not wanting to tinker to much there.

 

[RussellC]

Heres a nice video with good info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Uqtz2asE4

Russellc

 

[mgmorden]

Good answers, but take note that limp wristing is also far more prevalent in lighter framed pistols (eg, polymer framed).

The frame of a pistol has a certain amount of inertia - which is higher the higher the weight of the frame is. That inertia will attempt to keep the frame in place under recoil, and a heavier frame will do that better even absent anything holding it place.

That's why some pistols won't limp wrist no matter how gently you hold them.

Still, its been my experience that its really, really difficult to get a gun to jam due to limp wristing. To the point that I generally can't even make it happen intentionally unless I'm holding the gun so dainty that I'd be afraid it's going to fly out of my hands if I fired it.

I'd wager that 90% of "limp-wristing" failures are just a scapegoat for an actual issue with the gun. The other 10% may be true instances but it's not as common a problem as many believe.

 

[Capt. Ct.]

I have read on these boards how Glock is prone to limp wristing. One day at the range I was the only one there so I decided to see if I could make my G-19 fail do to limp wristing. I let my wrist and the rest of my arm do the wet noodle thing. One hand. I could not get the Glock to fail.