Drill of the Week: One Shot, Reload, One Shot

Drill of the Week:  One Shot, Reload, One Shot

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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