Have you ever bought a shiny new mouse and wondered why you didn’t like it as much as the internet led you to believe you would? That’s probably because your new mouse doesn’t have the same mouse grip you do. Most gamers don’t pay attention to the way they hold their mouse. Each individual has a different style of holding a mouse and each mouse has a different structure that lends itself to a certain type of grip. When you go mouse shopping these are two very important aspects to keep in mind and yet most gamers don’t even know about them. Things like the size of your palm, which hand you use are all important things to consider when you buy a mouse.
Broadly, there are three categories that a person’s mouse grip will fall into:
1. The Palm Grip: This is the most common grip that most people would use. If you place your entire hand on the mouse and you rest the base of your mouse on the rear of the mouse, then you are a palm grip user. The mouse is gripped by the gamer pinching their hand to hold the mouse between their thumb, the base of your palm and either their ring, or little finger. The index and the middle finger rest completely on the left and the right mouse buttons.
In extremely uncommon circumstances, a gamer might use their little finger to hold the mouse, and rest his index, middle and ring finger on the left click, scroll wheel and right click respectively.
Note: If you hold your mouse like this, please stop. You’re weirding out everyone near you. Also, what sort of games do you play that require you to use the scroll wheel at the same time as the left AND right click!?
On the right, you can see the palm grip is defined by the user placing the entire surface of his fingers and palm on the mouse. In the palm grip, the contact points on the mouse are large and undefined.
2. The Claw Grip — The claw grip (or as I call it, the T-rex grip) is another style of holding a mouse that requires the user to arch their hand and form a claw shape, pulling the mouse in with their fingers so the rear end of the mouse is stabilized by barely touching the base of their palm. Imagine a T-rex using a mouse. That’s the claw grip.
The claw grip is characterized by the arching fingers required to hold the mouse and press each mouse button. The mouse is held and controlled by the tips of the user’s index and ring or pinkie fingers and stabilized by the base of the user’s hand so the mouse does not sway when it is lifted.
The main difference between the claw grip and the palm grip is that in the claw grip, only the fingertips and the base of the palm come into contact with the mouse whereas in the palm grip, the entire length of the fingers and the whole palm rests on the mouse surface.
3. The Fingertip Grip — The fingertip grip can be considered as a subset of the claw grip, where the user grips the mouse solely with the tips of his/her fingers. While technically this style falls under the claw grip, it is a popular grip, particularly amongst proponents of certain genres of games, thus elevating it to the status of a primary grip style for gameplay. Unlike the conventional claw grip, the base of the palm is moved away from the rear of the mouse. Although this means the mouse is less stable, this grip lends itself to increased precision and control of the mouse instead.
