Weapon Interface, Kludges & Grip Equalization by Mark Hatmaker

 

“If you miss your first buttonhole you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.”-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

Our wise and polymathic Goethe is pointing to a simple but oft overlooked fact that wrong-footing from the get-go can set up a cascade of poor habits or accretions after that first step.

If we step-wrong with our initial act, each act afterwards must have an element of compensation to adjust or supply course-correction for the preceding error and each additional deviation that follows.

These “workarounds or quick-and-dirty solutions” are often “clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain” are known as a kludge in computer science, aerospace engineering, evolutionary neuroscience, and other such affairs where “fixes” to prior problems are mainstays.

For our purposes, a kludge is any tactic or strategy that is unintentionally or unknowingly the result of a wrong-footed prior or earlier step in combat-drilling.

Often the wrong-footing [actually wrong-handing for our purposes] begins with the weapon interface itself, that is, how we grip a given weapon.

A Few Priors

·        What follows will hold for weapons with a haft or handle—knife, tomahawk, cudgel, sword, foil, epee, battle-axe, etc. We will not address firearms.

·        Each weapon can have a variety of “combat” grips applied as the interface, but we will not, say, “Here’s the four historical ways to hold a frontier trade-knife.”

·        Rather we will look to universals that were common to all grip as this is the step prior to grip-transitions in and of themselves.

Who Valued Good Grip?

·        Lumberjacks, woodsmen, scout-crafters, muckers any and all who labored day-in/day-out with haft-in-hand and applied force and shock.

·        To be “butter-handed” was not to be clumsy, but to lack grip equality/stamina.

·        Voyageurs, keelboat men, flat-boaters, river pigs, any and all who must wield a paddle or pole often against unceasing cascades of water that provided staggering PSI that could peel an oar, paddle or pole from a hand lickety-split just when the oar was needed to stop an imminent break-up on rocks or a log from pinning and crushing.

·        To be a “lub-hander” was not a good thing.

·        Knife-wielders, swordsmen, tomahawk wielders, cudgel swingers etc. all valued unwavering weapon/tool interface. Afterall if one “peels” oneself at the first or second full-bore resonant “shock” of haft on haft the next peeling is likely that of one’s own skin.

Is Weapon Interface About Strength?

Not necessarily.

Yes, grip strength was prized, and there are many old-school methods to address this, but we are going to Goethe’s “first button.”

All of the aforementioned cadre of experienced haft-in-handers valued a grip with staying power, one with stamina that could survive the continuous shock of contact and stabilize inertial forces.

To “button this first button” one should strive for grip-equalization, that is a grip that supplies a constant of forceful contact from index finger to little-finger and vice versa.

Often our grips take one of two forms…

The OK, where the maximum pressure is applied from index and middle finger and the thumb.

Or…

The “Reverse-Milker” where the pressure is greater from the small finger and the ring fingers.

Self-Testing for Grip-Inequality

These inequalities are not readily apparent but there are a few tests to check for your own possible missed first button.

I’ll provide one.

The Hang

·        Grip a pull-up bar with one-hand.

·        Lift your feet and hang.

·        Do so until your hand peels from the bar.

·        Do not hang until the burn of lactic acid sets your forearm flexors on fire [that will happen] grip that bar until the fingers peel themselves off of their own accord.

·        Note where the peel begins.

·        Do you peel from little finger to index finger indicating an “OK” grip?

·        Or do you peel from index finger out indicating a “Reverse Milker”?

·        Repeat with the opposite hand as often grip-inequalities can shift between dominant and sub-dominant hands.

If you peeled equally likely your grip is already equalized, if not, we now have a first button target to work on.

Pre-Existing Condition Test

Grip inequalities also manifest in nagging injuries.

Do you suffer from…

·        Tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis)? Pain along the outside of the elbow. Keep in mind tennis is not the only triggering activity.

·        Golfer's elbow (medial epicondylitis)? Pain along the inside of the elbow. Again, golf is not the only triggering activity.

·        Lifter’s Elbow (Triceps tendonitis)? A general mid-joint pain.

A yes to any of these can also be signs of grip inequalities.

These manifest because of repeated use with a long lever at the end of our arms applying strong inertial forces after a given swing.

These inertial forces supply a twisting torquing pressure from club/racquet/bar/cudgel/tomahawk that chain from our grip-weapon interface along the torsional twins of the radius and ulna.

This force is “spent” along the elbow joint and to some degree into the shoulder.

If we suffer from any of these, we likely understand the source of our pain—the inertial torsion applied to the elbow, but…

We often assume that strengthening or palliative care of the elbow [the “hot spot”] is the key to recovery.

Often it will likely be in correcting grip-inequalities/weapon interface that allows that swinging cudgel or battle axe to do collateral damage to the self while in pursuit of injuring an opponent.

[BTW Swinging a fist also applies shock and torsion to the elbow, correcting grip inequalities here is of utmost value as well. In other words, this sermon is for all combat sportsmen, armed and unarmed.]

Correcting Weapon Interface & Grip Inequalities

There are many old school exercises to address grip inequalities. They were done with axes, tomahawks, paddles, sweep oars, hell, anything that could be gripped.

I won’t get into these today, we hit seven of these in detail on RAW222/Black Box 9, so I won’t belabor it here.

Suffice to say, often simply becoming aware that one is “buttoning one’s coat wrong” or gripping and applying tactics in a cascade of kludges is enough to correct.

Or to return to Mr. Goethe…

“Everyone may hear only what he understands.”

In other words, awareness is often the start of a well-buttoned coat.

[For more Rough& Tumble history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]