Recommended First Drills

[Eager]

The buddy and I have decided we need to do drills to help us improve. I've been competing in USPSA for a year and a half, he's been doing it for a few months. We have access to the pistol bays, so for a few months now we've practiced by setting up a mock stage and just done it over and over without a timer. We'd now like to start doing some skill building drills but don't really know which to start out with. Someone suggested the Bill Drill, so we're ready to try that, and even will likely have a borrowed timer.

Any other suggested drills for first time "drillers"?

Edited September 1, 2006 by Eager

[shred]

There's a ton of drills been posted here over the years, but most all of them will require a timer of some sort. Get thee to the BE Store Page

[XD Niner]

Order a copy of Steve Anderson's book on dry fire and range drills. You can get it here: Refinement and Repetition by Steve Anderson

[Matt Griffin]

I recommend a continuing course of dryfire, if for no other reason than it trains you to look for sight picture, since that's the only feedback you get. Your trigger finger will rapidly overcome your ability to see the sights after a few thousand rounds, and you'll be disappointed that you seem to be getting worse with practice. You HAVE to train yourself to only shoot after you see the sights. Steve Anderson's book is the shortcut to figuring out your own methods, highly recommended.

An average person can probably work a trigger around .19 splits with no effort, but that in no way suggests proper hits on target.

H.

Edited September 1, 2006 by Houngan

[j2fast]

Order a copy of Steve Anderson's book on dry fire and range drills.

+1 Steve's book is excellent

[Eager]

Guys,

I'm going to range tomorrow morning. Can't anyone suggest any drills at all to do there?

Are you saying I should stay at home and dry fire? I want to go outside and have fun.

Edited September 1, 2006 by Eager

[wide45]

Safety first.

Draws, getting a good hit at various distances.

Reloads.

Getting into a position, and firing a shot.

Firing a shot, and leaving a position.

Always knowing where the shot is going when it breaks.

You will get more improvement, faster, out of doing one skill at a time,instead of running a stage, or drill with multiple skills.

[Genghis]

From holster, one target at 7 yards or so: Draw, fire 1 into the A zone, reload, fire another into the A zone. Good practice drawing and reloading. You'll need a timer to gauge your progress.

If you don't yet have a timer, you can slow fire and work on technique.

[EricW]

1&1: Draw shoot one, reload, shoot one

Transition Drills: Place 5 targets scattered in front at random from 5 to 25 yards and make sure that there are *wide* transitions. Draw "shoot" 5. Draw, shoot 5, reload, repeat. Start in Box A, go to box B, shoot 5. You can easily kill 2 hours with 5 targets with all the different stuff you can do.

Shoot on the move: Do it in the backyard on uneven ground. See how far away you can be from the target and still call alphas on the move.

Plate Rack Drills: Do a search. Practice shooting plates in varying orders. It forces you to *look* for the plate instead of just lining up on the next white thingy.

SloMo: Do everything in slow motion. Focus on perfection. The biggest mistake I made in practice was flailing away trying to hit times.

Timers: Leave it in the bag. Timers are good, but I feel they're pretty self-destructive when you're starting out. I only use my timer occasionally to evaluate my progress.

El Prez: You can do that one 97 bazillion ways and it's easy to set up and home or on the range.

All these drills can be done dry or live fire.

[Flexmoney]

There are 421 topics in this particular forum...many of those devoted to drills. Put some fresh ink and paper in your printer and go to town. In a short while, you could have a 3-ring binder full of drills.

[XD Niner]

You can also set up some of the simpler USPSA classifiers assuming you have some suitable targets. Just go to the USPSA page, look under additional content, and then under Classifier Stage Diagrams. Print out a few that look good to you. I like High Standards, El Presedente, Nuevo El Presedente andTight Squeeze. Each tests a different set of skills.

If you have a timer, you can then compare your HF (Score/Time) to the USPSA database. You can find this classifer calculator at http://www.ohiouspsa.com/calculator_scripts/percentage.php. This will enable you to determine how you compare to the bazillion competitors who have shot a particular classifier in your Divsion.

Edited September 2, 2006 by XD Niner

[Al Capizzo]

Check the "Skills" forum here. Lots and lots of drills.

I've never been particularly inventive about coming up with drills, but believe me, anything you can think of to work on is covered someplace on the forum.

And as already mentioned, Steve Anderson's book is great for really honing the fundamentals, and Saul Kirsch's book "Perfect Practice" is full of good drills and info.

Have fun!

[standles]

When doing your drill remember to follow through after the shot. IE hold the sight picture after recoil for a few seconds. This feedback is invaluable bot hconciuosly and subcounciously. You can adjust grip/pressure/finger postion etc based on that feedback.

A BAD example is doing draws. You hear the buzzer...draw as fast as you can...fire the shot.. then immediately drp the pistol to look at the target. BAD BAD BAD LOL!

Another thing using the same example is to do the drill slowly at first paying attention to each move and economizing the motion. Speed up as you go till you flub it. Back off build up again. MUSCLE MEMORY ON CORRECT TECHNIQUE.

Establising the grip is FIRST AND FOREMOST before you draw.

Anyways. Just passing along what helped acceleerate my skills set.

Steven