Slide-racking issues come in many flavors; let me share my own odd personal journey to slide-racking humility.

Several years ago, my wife had extensive surgery on her shooting hand. Substantial recoil was subsequently painful when shooting and she had to give up her preferred 357 magnums. She decided to switch to a semi-auto in a lighter-recoiling caliber. She tried all of the pistols that my son and I owned and the only one she could rack -with difficulty- was a Glock 17. With around 50 years of shooting experience, she certainly knew the techniques for racking a slide.

Watching her struggle, I became disappointed and concluded that, for whatever reason, she just did not want to go through with the effort. I mean, she could have simply locked her elbows and twisted her shoulders enough to rack the slides, although she claimed she could not. Having been married over 40 years, I know when to leave topics alone, so I just shook my head as she bought a .22 for range fun and a .380 for concealed carry.

And then providence intervened to enlighten me ... I injured my left arm and damaged the ulnar nerve. The first symptom of the nerve damage was when I tried to squeeze one of the dog's squeak toys and did not have enough grip strength to even do that. After a few weeks of therapy and exercises, it was time to get back to the range! I got a pistol out of the safe, grabbed the slide with my left hand, and ripped the slide out of my left hand trying to rack the slide.

My epiphany came the second time I tried to rack the slide. Instead of ripping the slide out of my left hand, I just struggled vainly to pull the slide back. After ripping the slide out of my left hand once, my brain had automatically taken over and told my muscles to stop just short of losing my grip on the slide! If I thought about it deliberately, I could rip the slide out of my left hand, although that did not achieve the objective of racking the slide. If I was not focused and deliberate, my brain shut the racking effort down before I lost my grip on the slide.

What I discovered -and my wife already knew- was that there is no common technique to overcome a lack of grip strength. But we also learned that there may be other workarounds. My wife has more grip strength in her shooting hand than her off hand, so she can do a bit better by switching hands to rack slides; pushing forward with the web of the hand on the frame's backstrap requires minimal grip strength.