sore muscle at base of thumb - grip wrong?

OK, this is the first and most important question relating to my report (in Handguns: General Discussion) of my long-anticipated first private lesson.

The muscle in the palm of my (dominant) hand at the base of the thumb got sore during the shooting, maybe it was cramping a little, I'm not sure, once or twice I relieved it a bit by resting it against the warm cylinder. It's still slightly sore today. This is different from what I would call a pleasant soreness like DOMS from a workout, which I have today on the front of my biceps (the part you work with hammer curls).

So I'm not sure whether I just need to figure out how to strengthen that muscle, or whether I'm doing something wrong when gripping the gun. I've been using the wrist roller and doing clench-unclenches and the gripmaster, none of them get that muscle. This morning I tried holding the gripmaster upside-down so my thumb could be the part depressing one spring, if I position it so the second segment is doing the depressing I think maybe it gets it. But if I'm doing something less than optimal in how I'm gripping the gun, that's a different problem to be solved. I'm kind of thinking that might be the case, I think maybe my dominant thumb is getting squished because it's bent under the other hand. Before we actually went to the range we sat in another room and the instructor showed me how to grip the gun, when I got it what seemed to be correct I asked him to take photos, here is the one showing the right thumb. I see the first segment does look sort of red. He told me to grip the gun as hard as possible.

Note that this photo is on the S&W standard grip, midway through we switched to the Hogue grip, he said he thought the S&W one might be too small for my hand... I was more accurate after the switch, but I don't like the aggressively sculpted finger indentations on it. Anybody know how big the Pachmayr rubber ones are compared to these two?

BSA1 said:

I do two things differently;

1. I do not grip the gun as hard as I can. A grip that tight creates muscle fatigue. I use a firm enough grip to prevent the gun from slipping in my hand when I fire it.

2. I shoot with both thumbs pointing forward. I lay the thumb of my weak hand alongside the thumb of my strong hand with both of them pointing towards the front of the gun. The problem with the grip you are using is it will not work when shooting a semi-auto. The slide will most likely cut the skin on top of your thumb or web of the hand and will fail to feed from the slide being slowed down.

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Thanks very much for responding.

Just to be clear, at least for now I do not want a semi-auto, I want a revolver. I made that decision because to me a revolver is easier to understand in that it seems more straightforwardly mechanical, and probably more importantly, if I ever have to use a gun in real life I only want to have to do one thing. Down the road I will probably try to at least get somewhat competent with a semi-automatic, just because there could be a situation where I would have to use BG's gun, but at least right now it's not what I want for my own self-defense gun.

In the original class I took a few months ago, my only other shooting experience prior to yesterday's lesson, we mostly shot semi-automatics and that's what they showed us how to hold, exactly as you describe, two long thumbs on the support side. In the class I did try to hold the revolver that way because they didn't tell us anything different, but I felt there wasn't really room to do so, especially since you have to be careful to keep away from the cylinder gap, that was why I asked the instructor last night to show me the proper grip for a revolver.

Do you have any thoughts as to the cause of the soreness in that muscle at the base of my thumb?

splattergun said:

That grip you have simply looks stressful! No wonder your thumb hurts! It seems as if you're holding on for dear life.
BSA's points are very valid. Relax and allow your hands to both support each other and the gun. And even if you never fire a semi-auto, thumbs forward is much less restrictive.

I bet your groups will improve!

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Thanks for responding.

So I just went looking for photos / videos of how to grip a revolver to see if I could see somebody reputable doing it with both thumbs forward.
At http://www.shootingusa.com/PRO_TIPS/MICULEK2/miculek2.html I see Jerry Miculek only crosses his support thumb over the back when shooting a J-frame... His hands are very large, so on a regular-size gun he has even less space than I do, but he did have both thumbs on the left side... his strong thumb is still a bit under the support one but less squished than what I was doing yesterday. If you guys are also saying that's the proper grip for a revolver, then I think I'm gonna print that photo and take it with me to the range next time. (The instructor said after the lesson he is ok with me just shooting by myself.)

One thing I can't see on the photos, can Miculek actually fit all his fingers on the grip or are the pinkies actually below it? Yesterday I was wishing the grip were a little longer, it seemed hard to fit all my fingers. I have a wide hand (about 3½") but certainly not the size of his.

I have a separate question about that link. He says the centerline of the barrel should line up with the centerline of your forearm... but using two hands at the center of your body means your arm is not pointing straight ahead... ???

toivo said:

It may not be the muscle. I have arthritis of the CMC (carpometacarpal) joint in both hands. The pain is way down at the base of the thumb, right where it joins the wrist.

Mine first cropped up when I was in my '40s and was doing a lot of riding of "crotch-rocket" type motorcycles. By the time I was in my '50s, I needed surgery on both hands. The good news is that they have some very effective surgeries for this condition. The bad news is that you have to be in a cast for a month.

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Glad you were able to get that corrected!

The idea of arthritis crossed my mind but then I thought if that was the cause I would have experienced this already before. I did find on googling that there is something called De Quervain’s Tendonitis which can be caused by gripping things too tightly, which is what made me think maybe there was something wrong with the way I was gripping the gun.

J-Bar said:

What caliber are you shooting?

You may be getting bruising from the recoil itself if the gun grip does not fit your hand well. Or you may be hurting yourself by holding the revolver in a death grip because you are afraid of the recoil, or find it unpleasant and trying to control the recoil. To me, it looks like you are trying to choke that sucker!

In addition to trying differently sized and shaped grips, try shooting a .22 revolver for a while. Only go back to center fire revolvers when you convince yourself that recoil is not something to fear. Learn to enjoy allowing the gun to bounce.

Edit:
Perhaps you will find it encouraging that I am 71, have arthritis in both hands, and still can enjoy shooting .357 magnum and .45 colt revolvers. Roll with the punch.

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I am shooting .38 special. My original thought was that by getting a .357 revolver I could down the road maybe work up to actually shooting .357, but on watching videos of regular people (not Hickok45) shooting both calibers out of the same gun I noticed that shooting the .357 magnum rounds resulted in taking a lot more time to get the gun back into position for the next shot, so I decided to stick with .38 special for the foreseeable future... I can experiment with the big ones just as a point of interest sometime.

There is no bruising, just soreness.

This probably sounds weird, but honestly I don't even notice the recoil. At the original class I took a few months ago it bothered me for a few shots but after that it was just like "OK, that's what the gun does". FWIW, in that class I was almost as accurate with the .38 revolver as the .22 semi-automatic, then the 9mm and .40 were horrible, but the .45 was OK. Which doesn't seem logical but that's what happened.

Yes, I had the gun in a "death grip", but that was because I was trying to do what the instructor said, he said to grip it as hard as I could.

Regarding grips, I have now tried the standard S&W and the Hogue, I was more accurate with the latter but do not like the aggressively sculpted finger indentations. I just went to the Midway site and was looking at Pachmayrs, not clear which if any of those would be better.

rcmodel:
Bette Davis famously said "Getting old isn't for sissies."
IAC you seem to be saying I might just need to strengthen that muscle. FWIW I learned yesterday that my thumbs aren't very strong compared to my fingers -- the instructor wanted me to try shooting SA, it was extremely difficult to push down the hammer with the non-dominant thumb, and only somewhat easier with the dominant one, we abandoned that idea.

murf:
The palm just below the thumb is the sore place. I think I wasn't actually squeezing the gun with the thumbs, the dominant one was folded down and the non-dominant one was pushing down into the web of the dominant hand.

Trying to think more carefully about this, really the part that was uncomfortable was folding down the dominant thumb, I would much rather have it straight and parallel to the ground. Is it possible to do that without getting too close to the cylinder release? Does anyone do this? Miculek folds his under.

Frank:
Thank you very much, that looks a lot more comfortable, I was just wishing not to have to fold the right thumb under! Is it hard to keep both thumbs so carefully positioned as in the photo to avoid contact with the cylinder release?

fiftybmg said:

There is a tendon running down the inside of the thumb to the palm, with three nerves parallel to it. Holding something incorrectly while applying force can cause those nerves injury.

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That sounds like the De Quervain’s Tendonitis I found googling.

PS. I use Pachmyer Presentation grips on my IDPA revolvers, and they are good for concealed carry because they don't stick to the outer garment.

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I looked at both Midway and the Pachmayr site itself, can't figure out which Pachmayr grip might be best for me, I wish there was a brick-and-mortar store where I could try them out. How big are your hands? Mine are 3 1/2" wide by 7 1/8" long, and the length is more in the palms than the fingers. OTOH, maybe with a grip like Frank posted one of the ones I already tried would actually be fine...