I have pretty large hands but I get the most comfortable shooting grip on my M&P with the small grips.
I’m wondering if there are people with freakishly large hands and that’s what the large grip is for or what?
I’m wondering if there’s something I don’t know yet about grip that would make me choose the larger grips?
What size grip do you use?
Thanks for the help.
I don’t know how one could find the large grip optimal… 
Have you ever tried gripping the gun with NO back strap installed? 
I have medium sized hands. I can palm a basketball, but barely.
I use the large backstrap. The medium or even small feels most comfortable.
Most people will go to what feels good at home and not what translates to the best shooting grip. If the smaller backstraps are giving you good purchase with the meat behind your thumb on your off hand than by all means use them. However, if using the smaller grip just “feels” good but you find that your off hand is more or less being held off the frame or making a kind of bridge with your strong hand fingers and the meat behing the strong hand thumb than you might want to increase the grip size to allow more room for your off hand to fit.
The purchase that the off hand get will do far more to tame recoil than a nice comfortable grip(this of course assumes that you are torquing your off hand thumb forward in the forward thumbs style grip).
I am not saying that the small grips wont work for some people. They may very well give them all they need, but dont allow the idea of what “feels” good when static to decide what works good when shooting.
One of the problems with using a backstrap that is too small for you is that your right hand thumb (as a righty) can keep the slide from locking back on the last round (as it is making too much contact with the slide catch).
Something to consider.
C4
My hands are smaller than average. I can’t palm a basketball…at all.
I use the biggest backstrap because, while it feels weird, I can control the gun better and get better accuracy than with either of the other two. The Med “feels” best, but my groupings turn into a soup sandwich.
I have average size hands, but longer fingers.
The Medium grips feel good, until I go to shoot the gun. I get too much trigger finger and the gun doesn’t point/index properly every time.
When I used the large grips, trigger finger is where it’s supposed to be and all is good when shooting.
But when holding the gun for an extended period time, (conducting building searches, on a perimeter, ect) especially on hot muggy days, I found the large grips felt like holding a brick. I felt as if I had to hold onto the thing so it wouldn’t drop, vs. having the gun feel as an extension of my hand, which is what previous guns felt like under stress.
I took a large grip and attacked it with a wood rasp. The end result was keeping the spacer of the large grip that is on the top and goes where the web of your had is. The rest of the grip I made approximately the size of a Medium grip. The end result was the right size, but ugly. So I stippled the thing.
The end result was a Med-Large grip.
I have been carrying this issued M&P for over 4 years now. The grip I made was done within a couple of months. The only problem with making extra’s is to get two the exact same size.
I have largish hands and long fingers. In the store the medium grip “felt” best, but when shooting I had problems with the slide locking back; I also had so much of my trigger finger jammed through the trigger guard that more than once I unintentionally depressed the magazine catch during recoil when practicing strong hand only shooting(!).
Using the large grip naturally puts my trigger finger exactly where it needs to be, keeping it away from the mag catch, and gives me a much more consistent grip and sight alignment to boot.
I use the small. I dont consider my hands small by any means, but I feel I shoot the best with it. I dont shoot bad with the others, the palm swell just feels better. Here is the kicker, on guns that do not have this option to change the backstrap, I dont have any concerns. Unless the gun is a desert eagle, you shoudlnt be worried too much, beyond preference. It is unfortunate that a feature that should be standard creates as many concerns as it does.
As a side note though.
My current M&P9L is kind of an game gun so I cant do any more than stipple the grip insert. On my next one I will definetely be lowering the rise behind the mag release. I find that though I dont have any issues with releasing the mag, and my times are just as fast, I can use the mag release easier with the medium grip.
I use the small insert. It offers me the best feeling grip, and the least amount of grip shift to drop the mag.
For me, the small grips “feel” great, but do not allow adequate control of the pistol. On the M&P40, I use the large grip; with the M&P45, I take a large grip and Dremel down the back edge so it offers the same trigger reach as on the M&P40/large grip combo–in essence creating a medium large grip…great minds think alike! As noted above, you want to maximize hand contact with the grip while simultaneously ensuring proper contact between both hands–how it “feels” has nothing to do with it, how it shoots is what matters.
Interesting. I used the small backstrap on my M&P9 until I started running the Crimson Trace grips. I haven’t shot my M&P40 yet but I will plan on testing each backstrap to see which works best with that caliber.
Wow thanks for all the input. I never tried shooting with the other grips just because of how unwieldy the gun felt.
After reading the responses I looked at how much coverage I was getting one handed and with both hands. It looks like the Medium is gonna have the most contact with the Small having a lot of overlapping. My support hand (left) is barely making contact with the left side of the gun using the Small insert.
Should I just video myself shooting with each grip to see how my gun torques left to right?
Large hand but short finders, Mid-size works best for me overall.
I have medium-large sized hands, and I am using the large backstrap.
I brought all three backstraps to the range with me, and simply stuck with the one that I shot the best.
The medium “feels” best in my hand, however, I simply shoot better and more consistent with the large installed.
I suggest actually shooting with all three, as you may find the the most comfortable when just holding/fondling may not necessarily translate to the best shooting. I don’t particularly find Glock 19’s comfortable in my hand. At all. But I shoot them REALLY well. On my M&P, the large seems to fill the minor voids left by the medium and small backstraps, giving me better contact and better control during live fire.
I tried medium and large, the medium worked great for my wife, and my long-fingered somewhat large handed self works better with the large grip… I’ll have to see how I shoot with the medium backstraps, since it’s going to be ‘her’ gun.
Well you got me interested now. I’m 9.5 inches. After trying out some of the other grips for coverage rather than comfort, I can see why so many are using the larger sizes. Range day Friday, we’ll see how it goes.
I have small-medium sized hands and originally went with the small because it felt best. After practicing with the small for some time, I switched over to medium because my groups were more consistent when shooting 1-handed. Now the medium size grip ‘feels’ best because I know that I am more accurate using it and shooting from the draw I can get the web of my hand more consistently in the same place.
Your groups will do that for you without the need for some Survivorman camera setup, I’d imagine.
My accuracy doesn’t change with the insert size. I use the small because it allows me to better lock the gun into my grip and control it. I really don’t see a difference between any of them in slow fire. My hand size is completely average. The small and medium are both comfortable, the large just doesn’t “fit” as well. I can still shoot well with it but the other sizes work/feel better for my hand size.
Before their were interchangable grip inserts you had to train until the gun felt right and did what you needed it to do “as is” or change handguns entirely, something we all did and still do I’m sure 
.
I guess I’m a bigger proponent of focusing more on the fundamentals and less on the perfect fit. I think a Glock feels like holding a new bar of soap in your hand but I can hit with one as well as any other handgun. In slow fire. The M&P feels better to me and I can put my hand on the gun in a manner that’s much closer to a perfect grip much faster than I can a Glock.
From the holster, going fast, I find the smallest insert gives me a more consistent grip and sight picture as the gun travels out towards the target, even when it’s not perfect. That gives me enough consistency to make good hits at handgun ranges very quickly, out to ~10 yards. I have to slow down to make those hits with any handgun beyond 15 yards and swap guns completely to consistently make them beyond 25. By consistent I mean staying inside the -0 area on a standard IPDA target, that’s a pretty big area, paper plate sized. I can do the same thing with the medium insert as well, the small just seems to help me get a little more consistency from the holster, going “no-fumble fast”.
I’m pretty sure that I could make the medium feel just as good and get the exact same results given a few thousand rounds and at least that much dry fire time or another handgun entirely for that matter.