Draw or paste five inch targets on paper or cardboard. Place the target five yards away. From either the low or high ready position, shoot five shots in the circle. All shots must be inside the circle, or break the line of the circle. This drill is best performed with a shot timer, but can be done with a stopwatch – the time standard is 5.0 seconds or less. You are proficient at this drill if you can repeat this five times in a row without a miss.

Click here to watch the drill being performed.

This drill is a good drill for a number of reasons. For someone to be able to complete this drill consistently, they will likely have to be proficient in all of the fundamentals of pistol shooting (take our Pistol I class if you don’t know these). The Fives Drill will also help you determine if you have a gun that you can comfortably and competently handle. If you are unable to complete this drill successfully, increase the size of the circle to six inches, and the time standard to six seconds. Once you can complete the Fives Drill successfully on a regular basis, attempt to do the drill from a holster (if you are qualified and allowed to do so).

Tip – get a good follow-thru after each shot, and don’t break the trigger until you know that you have a good sight picture each time.

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This drill isn’t ‘fancy’ or necessarily ‘fun’… but this week we are featuring this classic drill because too many people often overlook its importance.  What is the drill exactly?  It’s just like it sounds, fire one shot on one dot.

From the high or low ready position, smoothly present the gun to the target, obtain proper sight picture, smoothly pull trigger, reacquire sight picture, remove finger from trigger, return to ready position.

Click here to view the drill.

 If you have taken some of our classes, you’ll notice that we often start off with this drill.  We do this because it’s a great drill to reinforce all the fundamentals in a slow and controlled manner.  This drill also gives us many repetitions on the most important shot – the first shot.  You will find this particularly helpful if you have a double action only, or double action/single action pistol.  If your gun has a double action, you should be decocking after each shot.  Unless you are testing yourself ‘cold’, this is a great drill for everyone to warm up with.  The ‘One Shot on One Dot’ drill will help you learn, or reinforce, the fundamentals – one shot at a time.  It’s also a great drill for conserving ammunition while getting in good practice on something useful!

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Many people overlook the importance of getting familiar and proficient with shooting one-handed.  When would you shoot one-handed?  The short answer is, only when you have to.  The examples here are focused on personal defense.  The first reason people usually give for reasons they’d be shooting with only one hand is because of an injury to your shoulder/arm/hand.  In addition to this, there are plenty of other reasons, some perhaps more likely, that we would need to do this; you may have a child that you are having to hold on to while moving to cover, or you may be dragging a wounded person to safety when another threat pops up.

Shooting with one hand is harder than with two.  It’s harder to hold the sights steady, and harder to manage the recoil and get a quick next sight picture.  All of the same shooting fundamentals still apply with one handed shooting.  The trigger squeeze may be slightly harder since you are having to support the gun in just one hand and also pull the trigger with a finger from that hand.

Start in the high ready position, present out and take one shot using your standard two-handed grip.  Then remove your support hand and take one shot using your strong hand only.  Carefully transfer the pistol into your support hand – stay out of the trigger well during the transfer!  Take one shot using your support hand only.  Return the gun to your strong hand and go back to gripping with both hands in the ready position.  Repeat.  It’s generally best to start this drill at three yards.  Work your way out to five yards as you keep your groups tight.  

Click here to view the drill.

Tip – when shooting with one hand, try canting the gun just slightly to the inside.  This will help the gun recoil in a more natural alignment with your arm/body.

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Similar to the ‘One shot on one dot’ drill, this drill is a great drill to help us get warmed up, and adds in one more element – transferring to another target.  This drill doesn’t require a lot of ammunition, and there is no time standard.  You should take as much time as necessary for you to shoot very accurate during this drill.  If you are hitting in tight groups, start to speed it up and spread your targets farther apart.  Your targets can be placed in various positions; above and below each other, side by side, or diagonal.  Keep practicing good follow-thru by making sure you get a next sight picture after each shot.  Don’t always go the same direction, ex. left to right – mix it up.  Also, vary the shots, ex. don’t always go one shot, transfer to target – two shots… sometimes start with one shot on first target, sometimes two shots on first target.  Remember, take your finger off the trigger BEFORE your sights come off the target!  Take it slow, this drill is great to learn and reinforce all the fundamentals.

From the high or low ready position, smoothly present the gun to the target, obtain proper sight picture, fire one or two shots, transfer to the next target and fire one or two shots, reacquire sight picture, remove finger from trigger, return to ready position.

Click here to watch video of the drill.

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We want to keep our drills of the week applicable to all types of shooters; therefore, we will continue to vary the type of drills we feature. This may mean that some drills may not apply directly to your type of shooting. Shooters may be a part of one or many categories, such as; recreational shooting, competitive shooting, defensive shooting, target shooting, and others.  The ‘one shot, reload, one shot’ drill is great for all shooters that want to speed up their combat reloads, but is particularly helpful and advisable to defensive focused individuals.

For this drill, the shooter will load at least two magazines with one round each. Keep one magazine out to load into your pistol and place the extra magazine(s) in your magazine pouches or belt – bullet tips faced forward. Load your pistol, you should have one round chambered and an empty magazine in the firearm.

From the high ready or holstered position – fire one shot, conduct a combat reload, and fire one more shot.

The steps for a combat reload are; finger off trigger, quick glance to see that your slide is locked back and mag is empty, and strip the magazine.

Index a new magazine and insert into magazine well.

Tap, tug, turn weapon over putting slide into support hand with thumb up, pull slide to rear to chamber a round.

Fire your next shot.

Click here to see this drill performed.  For further description of a combat reload, you can view our Training Tips video here.

This drill can be done repeatedly in a row with however many magazines you have on your hip. You can also mix it up by putting between 1-3 cartridges in each mag so you can’t ‘game’ the moment at which your pistol goes empty. Remember, we want to train to do things that will work for us nearly all the time, regardless of which pistol we are using or how dirty it is. We strip the mag out and don’t assume it will just fall out. A lot of us have had muddy/dirty mags before that don’t fall cleanly out. Don’t assume you are empty after firing one shot if the slide is still forward. Treat this as a misfire and tap/rack, at which point the slide should now lock back to the rear and you can commence the reloading procedure.

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