“Scorpion grip”
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Nobody can deny popularity of practical shooting sports in USA these days. “3 gun competition”, USPSA and etc, have huge influence on shooting community all over the world. Some of the techniques learned from the competitive shooting were even adapted by many different militaries from around the world and by mastering and improving some of these techniques, many people build their franchises on it.
“Scorpion grip” in action.
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Generally, I’m very open to what competitive shooting offers, but recently I’m getting really annoyed by some of the techniques which are being pushed down our throats by “industry leaders” on AK community. Let me pick on so called “scorpion grip” first. I see people “suffering” from it all over the places these days. You can see on their faces that they really feel uncomfortable with it when running AK, but some DVD / YouTube celebrities said that this type of grip is the best, so they have to learn how to use it. Now to be perfectly clear, I would agree that in short run, “scorpion grip” is the best grip you can have on the rifle. Keyword here is “short run”. The problem with it is, that it is very impractical way of gripping AK rifle. First of all, AK has large portion of the weight upfront – this is because of the piston design, but also regular AK muzzle brake and front post are not helping either.
Dima “running” with magazine well grip.
Picture by Dmitry Moroz
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AK operators could be limited from utilizing “scorpion grip” by their rifle hand guards as well – especially if someone would like to use iron sights, there is huge probability that line of sight would be blocked by hand wrapping upper portion of the hand guard…but going back to the weight upfront problem, why is this important? Simply because of the mechanics. Operator arm is at disadvantage now and must deal with much more physical stress, because it has more weight to handle at the end of the rifle. The easiest way to witness physical consequences of “scorpion grip” on your body is to run with that grip constantly for few minutes without the rest. I can almost guarantee you that your arm is going to scream for break. That failure to understand AK mechanics and lack of respect for its design puts often AK users on the collision course with the reality in this situation. Mag well grip may not be as sexy as “scorpion grip”, but it works very well, so in my honest opinion, unless you are competitive shooter, I don’t see the real need to train a lot with “scorpion grip”.
Magazine well grip.
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Yes, it is good idea to be familiar with it, know the limitations and maybe find the way where it could be used best, but I would rather spend my time on mastering something what I’m going to use most of the time in the real life which is magazine well grip…You may not agree with my arguments and I’m perfectly OK with it. If something works great for you, I don’t see the reason why anyone should change it, but please, don’t blindly jump on some idea only because some famous person on YouTube said so…
Stay tuned for Part 2.
More about ways to hold your AK rifle in this very good video from Dima:
I have also discussed some AK rifles grip issues before in this video:
– Rob Ski
