Drill Modifications

A wall can be easily added to practically any drill to increase variety.

While clearing a home solo is pretty much one of the worst tactical things you can do, sometimes less than ideal situations can’t be avoided. Especially if you have loved ones elsewhere in a home that must be protected.

Practice safely moving through a door without flagging yourself.

A training partner could also randomly put targets in a room that you have to find and engage – which is a great way to work on vision speed.

People have gone through entire gun fights without dropping what they have in their hand, like their cell phone. Practice dropping whatever is in your hand by simply dropping something at the beginning of any drill.

Use something like an empty ammo box – something that wont be damaged when it’s dropped. Start with it in different hands in different positions

We are seated for large portions of our day. For office workers, possibly most of our day. (Get up and move around more! It’s good for you!) Drawing a handgun from a holster from a perfect standing position is different than drawing from a seated position. The more often you sit, the more often drawing a handgun from a holster should be practiced.

Try drawing and shooting from a seated position as well as drawing while standing up and moving.

There could be a situation where you need to draw and shoot from a seated position and there could be a situation where you can get up and move – so practice both!

Shooting is shooting – but if you’ve never shot in the dark, it can throw you through a loop. Becoming familiar with gun manipulations in low light is useful for any self defender.

Clearing the concealment garment is one of the most important steps in a conceal carry draw stroke. Fumble the draw and you could show your hand too early and get shot before the gun gets into the fight.

Practice your draw stroke with all of the different types of clothing you wear so you can consistently draw the gun from concealment no matter what you’re wearing.

Don’t forget to test our seasonal wear, particularly winter clothing.

Most drills require two shots each as two shots is a nice general purpose number. However, variety is key in training. Bumping it up to three or four shots per target (especially in dry fire) is a nice bit of variety for just about any drill.

Shooting while kneeling or crouched can change up your muscle tension and center of gravity. This simple change will help ensure familiarity with any shooting position out there.

When occluded targets become visible, it requires the eyes to identify the target, snap to the target, and then transition the gun to the target. All three of those are valuable skills for any handgun shooter, making a simple vision barrier a powerful addition to any drill, particularly drills involving movement.

In practical shooting, we generally don’t get to start with our body perfectly squared up on the target and ready to go. In defensive shooting this is even more so the case.

Regularly change up your body orientation to the targets when running drills. The more variety you get, the stronger your index will be no matter where the target is.

This is a trick pulled from USPSA as they can design stages that require the last three targets to be shot one handed. Bringing this into training allows us to practice one handed (primary or support) shooting in a way that softens the blow of the “less fun” nature often associated with one handed shooting. Sprinkling in one handed shooting every training session helps take what is often perceived as a drudgery and turns the shooting skill into a strength.

Simply take any multi target shooting drill and engage the last one, two, or three targets with the primary hand only. Re-run the drill but engage those same target(s) with the support hand only.

If you only get one shot at the drill, it increases the stress which helps future performance under pressure. This is especially potent when training with a partner. Or try videoing yourself and posting it online, no matter what.

Running repetitions of a drill at a reduced speed allows to focus on the details of the execution to ensure quality. It’s a great way to engrain new technique.

It’s common in training to put an array of targets, shoulder to shoulder at the same height. In the real world targets aren’t all at the same height, so change the verticality in training.

Many, if not most, handgun drills involve standing in one spot and performing some gun manipulations. Which is unfortunate since shooting on the move is a common and valuable skill, particularly for self defenders and practical pistol competition shooters.

So take any existing drill and simply run that same drill while walking in any direction.

Changing the direction of movement is encouraged.

You have to go fast to know what it feels like. Bringing targets closer makes it easier to push speed. Over time, the distance can be pushed out and still maintain acceptable accuracy.

A great way to leave sooner and shoot sooner is to plant your feet and shift your weight in the direction of movement. If you’re exiting a position to the right, if your body weight is leaning hard to the right, it becomes easy to push a little bit further and let your body weight carry you forward for faster acceleration.

This modification is best used on short drills, but even shifting your weight back and forth from side helps you get comfortable shooting while your sights are moving no matter the conditions.

Movement is an on demand skill – especially for conceal carriers. The ability to instantly move in any direction is extremely useful.

Wearing a weight vest during movement drills forces you to keep your center of gravity low and controlled. It doubles as a great workout too!

Using the current target, simply broaden the area on the target that is deemed to be acceptable accuracy. This allows for faster shooting and very often accuracy doesn’t degrade at all, or if it does, by only a little bit.

When struggling to speed up transitions, try moving targets closer together. This allows shooters to more easily push speed and get comfortable going at that speed. When transition speeds begin to plateau, widen the distance between targets and try to maintain that same speed.

Moving targets further apart is a great way to improve target transitions. The further targets are apart, under travel and over travel becomes more prevalent. This forces shooters to get more precise with their transitions.

If the targets are close together, moving the targets slightly further apart while trying to maintain the same transition times is a great way to improve transition speeds.

You have to go fast to know what it feels like. Bringing targets closer makes it easier to push speed. Over time, the distance can be pushed out and still maintain acceptable accuracy.

Pushing speed and accuracy requires snapping the eyes and sights to a fixed point on target. Putting a black dot on the main point of aim helps train the eyes to snap to a small central point on target.

Adding cover to the partially obscure the target shrinks the available target area forcing accuracy.

Using a ”no shoot” target for partial cover increases the risk of the shot for pushing greater accuracy constraints.

Simply push the target distance back to increase the precision required to achieve acceptable accuracy.

Moving targets further apart is a great way to improve target transitions. The further targets are apart, under travel and over travel becomes more prevalent. This forces shooters to get more precise with their transitions.

If the targets are close together, moving the targets slightly further apart while trying to maintain the same transition times is a great way to improve transition speeds.

Pushing speed and accuracy requires snapping the eyes and sights to a fixed point on target. Putting a black dot on the main point of aim helps train the eyes to snap to a small central point on target.

Don’t have enough room to move targets back further? Use half size or one third size targets to simulate targets that are further out.

When struggling to speed up transitions, try moving targets closer together. This allows shooters to more easily push speed and get comfortable going at that speed. When transition speeds begin to plateau, widen the distance between targets and try to maintain that same speed.

Run transitions without pulling the trigger. Pay attention to where the sights move and stop.

Moving targets further apart is a great way to improve target transitions. The further targets are apart, under travel and over travel becomes more prevalent. This forces shooters to get more precise with their transitions.

If the targets are close together, moving the targets slightly further apart while trying to maintain the same transition times is a great way to improve transition speeds.

When dry firing with an array of targets on the wall, it’s common to start at one side and work to the other. It’s convenient, it makes sense, and it’s a bunch of short (easy) transitions. But in practical pistol shooting, transitions vary greatly in lateral distances – it’s very important to practice wide and narrow transitions.

Increase the variety of transition distances by starting on the far right (or left) target, transitioning to the far left target on the other side, then back to the second most inward right target, and back and forth going to the next inward most target all the way through.