If you take your shooting skills seriously, you will test your shooting skills periodically in order to see where you stand. The best way to do this is through what the industry calls “drills”. I personally call them “tests” because that is exactly what they are. Take a moment and look up what “drills” are so we can all be on the same page prior to beginning. So let us start out by making it clear that tests are meant to expose what you learned and drills are meant to help you learn a specific thing/skill. For this article, I am going to cover how to do pistol drills so you can test yourself with confidence. DRILL FINE MOTOR SKILLS Think of how you were taught addition and subtraction in school. It was through isolated exercises (1+5=X, 52-37=X, etc.) that were challenging at first, but became easier with repetition. Physical skills like shooting are very much the same, but require a little more time for the brain to comprehend and align with the desired movement. Think about the amount of precision in movement that goes into shooting. First, you have to grab the firearm in the correct way with your firing hand. Next you put your support hand on the firearm in the right position and apply the right pressure, in the right areas (Position, stance, isometric grip pressure). Then you must hold the firearm out perfectly still while using tiny sights to point exactly where you want that tiny projectile to land. Lastly, you must maintain that isometric pressure on the grip and hold the firearm perfectly still on target, perhaps while moving (compensating for the bounce of walking), and then use the trigger finger to pull the trigger as fast as you can, without moving the sights off the original aiming point. This entire process is filled with fine motor skills. The only gross motor skill in the entire process is pushing the gun away from you and towards the target. And this is just the process for getting one shot off, and without active recoil recovery techniques and visual reconfirmation. What about follow-up shots, reloads, malfunctions, transitioning from one target to another quickly? Each one of these components of shooting can be broken down into drills. NO FUNDAMENTALS? I call grip, trigger control, and sight picture ‘components’, not fundamentals or foundational skills, because they are neither universally foundational nor fundamental. Hitting a moving target is dependent on many variables and you cannot say that everyone using a firearm in this situation is going to NEED to get a perfect stance, textbook grip, and smooth trigger pull to hit their target with acceptable accuracy. In reality, the closer your target, the less your sights, grip, and trigger pull need to be perfect to get a good hit. I’m sorry that I’m not sorry, but I like to start off by seeing things for what they are. In some situations, such as extremely close range, you can do everything wrong and still make good hits. On the other hand, when distance and time are increased/target size is reduced, you will see more of a need for certain components of marksmanship. Some components will be required more than others at different ranges and times. It just depends. This is not me saying that they are not important to learn, but rather my explanation on why I call them what I do and to prime you for following articles. GRIP TECHNIQUE I like to talk about grip these days because it is the one component that seems to affect all the others and can/does make or break shot placement. There are several ‘grip techniques’ for pistols and 99% of instructors/coaches/gun teachers out there will say they have figured out the secret sauce to gripping a pistol properly (Baer Solutions seems to have the best method so far, in my experience). No matter what people say they were taught, I see a majority of people get what ‘LOOKS LIKE’ the modified isosceles/clamshell grip, but without applying pressure in the right spots. I call this issue a ‘cosmetic grip’ because it may ‘look’ right, but it lacks the application of pressure in the proper areas. The result is the firing hand jumps out of the support hand and/or the shooter has to constantly regrip and the shots are all over the place when the speed is increased. This has to be fixed first before you even drill anything, which means you’re going to have to pay to play like the rest of us. Don’t think that you will be able to YouTube your way to success on grip technique either. After you learn what right looks and feels like, then you are ready to drill it with dry fire daily. But how are people supposed to ‘drill’ grip without shooting their pistol? GET A GRIP I have spent a good amount of time not being able to shoot for up to a month at a time. When I was not on the range, I was conducting drills daily in order to maintain or build my skills. 90% of my drills were around establishing/reestablishing and maintaining a proper grip and building the muscles used when we hold the pistol tight to counter recoil. I have several drills I have come up with to target muscles and body parts responsible for controlling your gun, but for the purposes of this article, I will condense it to just the basics. I like to start off with aiming isometric exercises. Sometimes I do this with weights in order to build endurance in the shoulders, but you can use just your pistol of choice (unload it so you aren’t another statistic of idiocy). Get into a good shooting stance and aim the pistol at a light switch or something tiny like a thumb tack strategically placed in your man cave. When you aim in, be sure that you are not only getting the PERFECT GRIP, but are also being firm with your shooting hand while giving primary recoil control over to your support hand. This means you need to pinch the grip with the palms of your hands and try to crush the grip with your support hand fingers. Also don’t forget to apply forward rotating pressure with your support hand (TORQUE) in order to further assist in controlling recoil. Using your support thumb to point towards the target is essential to locking into this position. Think of your thumb as your pointer and your torque lever. For these isometric exercises, I will usually hold the aim for 30-45 seconds (use a timer) and apply as much force on the pistol as possible in the manner I described above. Each rep should be challenging and should be felt in the wrists, shoulders, and chest. That is the sign of proper technique. Between reps, take a minute break and try to do 6 reps. Again, perfect grip every time and maximum squashing pressure while staying perfectly aimed in on a tiny target is the name of the game. This drill accomplishes helping you learn the physical skill and build the EXACT muscles used for proper aiming. You’re welcome. WRAPUP
I could go over several other things like trigger pull drills and everything else, but this article was just to give you something to think about. I am an advocate of training in isolation (isolating the skills and training them) and I like to use certain tests on the range to test them. But that will be in another article. Just remember that the main point of this article was to encourage you to get out there and conduct drills on ISOLATED skills instead of running the tests like drills.
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