How Should You Hold Your Gaming Mouse? Mouse Grips Explained
Reading Time: 5 minutesFeel awkward when you try to use your gaming mouse? We’ve got a few different mouse grips to choose from.
Mouse grip is one of the things that are commonly talked about when it comes to shooters. If you need to know more on the topic, we will guide you through the most common mouse grips and when you should use them.
Here are the different ways to grip your mouse and how you should go about holding your own mouse.
Why Is Mouse Grip Important for Gaming?
Just like how athletes have a stance when playing their sport, the same can apply to your grip while gaming. The most relaxed grip isn’t necessarily the best for gaming, just like not being in an active stance while boxing is terrible for your reflexes and movements.
Mouse grip is mostly preferential, but different grip styles offer different advantages which may be important depending on the types of games you play. Holding your mouse the right way can be the difference between consistently hitting your shots and consistently missing them.
The Most Popular Gaming Mouse Grip Styles
There are too many ways in which you could possibly hold your mouse. But, there are three basic types of grips that most grip variations will fall into.
Trying out different grip styles and understanding them may result in you discovering a grip that’s better than the one you’ve had before. Here are the three base grip styles that you can start working from.
1. The Palm Grip
The palm grip is probably one of the most common ways that people hold mice, especially those with small hands. If you hand most people a mouse and let them hold it, chances are they’ll hold it in a palm grip unless they’re already experienced gamers.
The palm grip is characterized by plenty of palm contact, especially on the center of the palm. It is a very relaxed grip and the mouse fills the inside of your hand, leading to plenty of stability. The image above is how this writer’s touches the mouse with a palm grip, it may be different for you.
One of the biggest downsides to the palm grip is that it limits your fingers from moving around. This can make it difficult to shoot things that are above and below you. It also limits the amount of adjustments you can make with your fingertips which can lower your potential for precision.
However, due to its stability, tracking aim is actually quite consistent with this grip. Tracking is quite strenuous for the hands and tracking with your fingers can be inconsistent. The palm grip allows for more consistent and relaxed tracking.
2. The Claw Grip
Claw grip is how many good first-person shooter players use their mice. This grip is known for curled fingers resembling a claw, hence, claw grip.
Curling your fingers allows you to have more range of motion to move the mouse around easily while still staying planted on the mouse at the base of the palm. The palm will sometimes lose contact with the mouse on upward movements as you’ll use your fingers to move your mouse up.
The claw grip is a great grip to experiment with if you want to improve your aim in almost any game. It serves as a great foundation for any changes you might want to make to improve your aim.
If you find that your hand is slipping because of sweat, you should check out these easy gaming mouse modifications you can do to your mouse. We have a solution for a slippery mouse problem.
3. The Fingertip Grip
The fingertip grip is a fairly-recently popularized grip with a few niche mice made specifically for it, such as the ~$300 Zaunkoenig M2K and the G-Wolves HSK. These mice don’t have a long back to rest your palm on.
This a pretty extreme grip where your palm makes no contact with the mouse at all and all control is done with just the fingertips. This grip is pretty hard to do on heavier mice, which is why it only started gaining popularity after mice started getting light enough to be comfortable to move with just the fingertips.
This grip allows for the most amount of precision and freedom. As long as your mouse isn’t too big that moving the mouse down with your fingertips doesn’t make it bump into your palm, you’re able to use more range of motion of your fingertips for a larger precision area.
One downside to this grip is that you might experience fatigue more quickly, especially if you grip the mouse tightly. This shouldn’t be a problem if your fingers are relaxed even in tense situations. Another problem you might face is that you might get some instability and jittery aim for long tracking situations.
What Mouse Grip Style Should You Choose?
After years of playing FPS games and trying to improve my aim in various ways, we’ve come to a conclusion when it comes to grip styles: get good with different mouse grips and use them when needed.
Strictly sticking to one type of grip style can be limiting, and will probably distract you from focusing on the game itself. The best way to go about it is to use the base grip styles and use them when the situation calls for them.
Be Dynamic With Your Mouse Grip
If you’re facing a tracking aim situation like in the image above, it’s probably a good idea to plant your palm on the mouse without putting your fingers flat on the mouse so you can still move the mouse up or down easily in case the enemies jump or crouch. That grip would still be considered a claw grip as your fingers are curled, but the increased palm involvement allows for stability.
If you’re trying to hit precise shots like a headshot with a Marshall in Valorant, it’s best to use a fingertip grip, or less palm on a claw grip so you have a lot of room to make precise adjustments quickly.
You don’t have to follow these exactly, but we want you to understand the thought process behind the change in grip styles. Understanding this will help prevent you from falling into the trap of strictly sticking with one type of grip for ‘muscle memory’ reasons.
If you want to find out what the right mouse is for you, check out the key characteristics of a good FPS gaming mouse to make sure that it’s got the right features and shape for you.
Get to Grips With Your Gaming Mouse
There is no one right way to hold a mouse. The three main categories of mice grips are just generalizations of the ways people hold their gaming mice. If you want to get good aim, the best way to do so is with a lot of practice and experimentation.
The right way to grip the mouse is the grip that makes you hit the targets in that situation. Mix it up and grip your mouse in whatever way that makes you hit your shots.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-should-you-hold-your-gaming-mouse/
Ref: makeuseof
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