Defensive Shooting Standards Drill

Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. All right, one of the most popular questions I get from students and online is, what are some drills that I can run? Well, the reality is that defensive shooting drills should really be geared more towards skill development and towards getting better. Towards understanding the context in which you need to apply your skills. Once you've developed them, then measuring standards. But everyone in the shooting community is so used to drills that measure standards, that that sort of what people look for. They say, okay, Rob, you've got a shooting program. You're a firearms instructor, been in the industry for a long time. You put a lot of information. What are the drills you use to measure student's capabilities? Well we measure student's capabilities subjectively. Because everybody's an individual and every fight is gonna be a little different than any other fight. So as soon as you set up a drill that has very choreographed parameters and everybody's shooting exactly the same number of rounds and the targets are always the same distance and it's the same number of shots every time, you end up really chasing a skill set that is different from defensive shooting and you end up chasing that skill set that helps you obviously do better at the drill. So this is an attempt to show people how they can use the concepts of subjectively evaluating their performance. And throwing in some counter ambush which of course means information processing and still get the practice, the actual skills that will help them in a defensive shooting situation. And it's a fun drill. It's one that you can run with your friends. It stirs things up a little bit, and it keeps you on your toes. But it also tries to keep you honest to the actual techniques that we're trying to develop for defensive shooting. So let's take a look at how it works. First, I've got two barrels. Of course they doesn't have any barrels, any two markers. I've got a set up here. It's about five steps apart. So I've got this marker. I take one, two, three, four, five. I end up at this other marker. So we want to set up a staging area which is the shooting area, five steps. And we wanna divide it into three sections. So what I've done simply, there's a marker on the ground, plus I've got a wood marker here. I've just taken one good healthy step from one marker. And that's where I've got one shooting area. Take one good healthy step from here. I've got the other shooting area. We're gonna start in this center area. What this does is allows us to make sure that we're doing lateral movement. So during this drill we're gonna wanna move across those lines and spend some time in each one of these three sections. If we look at the targets, they're set up at 15 feet. Now 15 feet is the area where 86% of the shootings that people need to get into to defend themselves happen. So we think about what that means. 86% of the shootings happen between this distance and one step takes me to about 12 feet. Another step takes me to about nine feet, this distance. So somewhere in here. So we're actually doing this drill at the outside distance of most defensive shootings. Now that's 86% in this range. Obviously there are some percentage that happened even closer. So that gets us over 90% of the defensive shooting situations that we know of or personal offense are gonna happen within this range. So we're actually at the outside distance. We're getting some good skill, some practical skill tests. What I've done with the targets, as you notice that two of them are marked. Now this is where the counter ambush and information processing aspect of this drill comes in. And this is why you need a training partner to run it. Two of them have been marked with numbers, with spray paint. So this one says three, this one says four. And you'll notice that this one does not have any number on it. One of the keys to this drill is information processing and this is really what customizes the drill and makes it defensive shooting. You know, that we call defensive shooting counter ambush shooting just to get that much more emphasis on the fact that this isn't something that you can choreograph. It, isn't something that you can expect to happen. And of course, because it's defensive shooting, we're going to make sure that we're set up with gear in the way we would normally carry defensive gun. So I've got a very traditional setup today. Back here at about a four o'clock, five o'clock carry full-size defensive gun and a super tuck holster. And I've got a spare magazine tucked into my pocket. The last aspect of this drill is that we wanna make sure that the first magazine, the magazine that's inside of your gun has fewer rounds than it will take to complete the drill. This means that at some point you're gonna hit slide lock, and you're gonna need to do a reload. Once again, this isn't something you wanna choreograph. You're not gonna put five rounds in here every time and know that after your fifth shot you're gonna have to do a reload. That's just gaming choreography. We gonna make sure that we're actually responding to slide lock, getting our reload done and getting back into the fight. And the whole time we're gonna be doing lateral movement. So let's talk about that lateral movement. Every time that we change targets, when we first engage the targets. When we get the gun out of the holster. And when we have our slide lock reload, we're gonna make sure that we change locations. So we've got three locations. We're in the center. We're over here on my right. We're over here on my left. What that means is if I hit slide lock and I'm in the center, I'm gonna move over to one of these other areas, as I complete my reload. I'm gonna finish doing what I was doing or engage the next target. And before I engage the next target, I've got to move into another shooting zone. And throughout this drill, between the reload, engaging two targets and a drawing and or possibly assessing that third target, I need to spend some time do one of those actions or complete one of those actions in each one of these boxes. If I don't do that then I failed to meet the performance standards of the drill. Obviously we're gonna wanna do this from concealment. I'm gonna go ahead and put my ear protection in. And I'm gonna put my concealment garment on. Eye protection and I'll start with my back to the targets. And the final piece of the puzzle here, because it is counter ambush, is that I'm gonna start with my hands below waist and out to the outside of my body. Before I can reach for the gun, my hands have to come to the front of my body and be above my waistline. In other words, something like this. Some kind of a startle response. As I turned to identify the targets and start processing information before my hand can reach for the gun or I can start clearing my concealment garment. I need to have that normal startle response. Bring my hands above the waistline and in front of my body before I go back down. So this won't count. This won't count. It's gotta be up here protective and then back to the gun. So I've got a training partner off to the side and he's gonna give me the up command to signal the start of the drill. Go. Okay, so let's take a look at what happened. I got my go signal. I did my startle response and I turned and I moved into this quadrant of shooting. I gauge that target three times, I hit slide lock. I moved through this section, into this section, finished my reload while assessing the environment not looking at the gun, notice it there was no target there. I finished my reload here and engage the target directly in front of me with four shots. And then of course I simulated another assessment and went back into my holster. So did I achieved the performance standards? Well, I think I got my hands up in front of my body before I got my gun out. And I moved laterally. So I got into this second section. I engaged the first target with three shots and I got three hits inside of the area we've designated as the combat accurate area in the chest. I hit slide lock, moved through this section, into this section. So now I've spent time in all three sections. I did my reload without looking. Got the reload done, had processed some information, knew that wasn't a target. Drove out here and got four hits on this target. So I met the objectives. Now you'll notice, that there's no timer involved in this drill. If I do this one time, like this setup and then we scramble the targets or we change the numbers or I don't notice I turn left and I don't have a target to shoot at at first. And the target ends up being further away than it was this time. The numbers become really irrelevant from drill to drill, from run to run. And that's really hard for a lot of people to accept. Because we're dealing with processing information, because we're dealing with random strings of fire. It's very very hard to have a standard time that we're trying to beat or classify people. Or even compare one person to another. Or my own runs to some other run. All I can do is practice my skills, get my skills as good as they can be and drive myself with some training discipline. My motivation should come from the fact that I want to do better, right? If I come out here and I look at the targets and I see a setup and I practice that setup, and I practice that setup and I practice that setup. Obviously I'm just gonna get really good at that setup. Not necessarily the fundamental skills that I can apply in the drill. Certainly you could bring a timer out and you could time your splits between shots. You could get a timer out and time how long it took you to do the reload. From the last shot before slide lock to the first shot afterwards. All of those things would be interesting. And could be valuable in terms of motivation or evaluating your time in the middle of one drill versus your time in the middle of another drill. But to run a timer on the entire thing, would really be completely irrelevant. So this is a standard defensive shooting drill. It's a drill that will let you practice your counter ambush skills and put them to good use. Now, obviously I set these numbers up. I set this drill up. In order to do this right, what I need to do is have somebody else load my first magazine. So that I don't know how many shots are in there. I need to have somebody else paint the numbers on the actual targets. So we could obviously recycle this. At this point, I can come down here, cover that up. Cover this up. We can get out a pen and cover up these circles and say, okay, that's a hit. That's a hit, that's a hit. That's a miss, that's a miss. We can have a training partner come out and put up some new numbers and then I could run the drill again. In fact, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna grab these magazines. I'm gonna have them reloaded. I'm gonna have one of my training partners come out and set this up, so that I can't see what I'm dealing with. And then we'll check a real run that actually involves some processing of information, that's legitimate. All right, so I've got my training partner Mitch in the scene now. What he's doing, is he's actually gonna go ahead. We've marked the old hits. He's gonna go ahead and put some numbers on the targets. It doesn't matter where the number is. Remember if you turn around and look at someone holding a gun, maybe someone's holding a shotgun, shooting at people in a mall. You might look at the gun, but then need to look back at the chest when you shoot. So it's actually a good idea to put the number of shots that need to be fired into the target, somewhere other than right over the chest. This also allow you to recycle the targets for several runs. You and your training partners can take turns. So I honestly have no idea what numbers he's putting up on the targets. And we set some guidelines. Maybe between two and six or three and eight or whatever it may be. And I've got an empty gun. I actually got a round chambered. I've got no magazine in the gun. I've got a full magazine in my pocket, which is where I would normally throw a magazine. He's inserting the magazine. Now only he knows how many rounds he put in there. So he put something less than the total number of rounds it's gonna take to complete the drill. That way he knows how many rounds it takes to complete the drill. I have no idea. I don't know when I'm gonna hit slide lock. All right, let's take a look. I'll just stand by and again, he'll give me a go. Go. All right, let's take a look. Again, I think I did my startle flinch pretty good. I think I made it into each zone. I did my reload. Got out of the way. There was no number here and there's no new hits. There's a number three here and there's three hits. And over here, there's a number five and there's one miss and four hits. So, and it technically, you know, you might decide if you're gonna start scoring and keeping things in your head. Well, that's not really a miss it's, but it's not an A zone. It's a down one, whatever. None of that matters because your score from run to run, isn't gonna matter. What's gonna matter is, my training partners are gonna tell me well on my first shot on that target. As I planted over here, for one reason or another as I extended, I shanked that shot off to the left. Now, understanding that you're going to miss. Understanding that you're going to fumble your reloads. Understanding that you're going to shoot the wrong number of shots in that target. You might have trouble seeing the numbers. That's all part of the defensive shooting situation. And obviously that's gonna affect your performance, when you don't know what's happening behind you. So when you have that training partner when he sets up your magazines, when he sets up the numbers, when he sets up the order of the targets, that's gonna make this real, really what it's all about. Having fun when you're out at the range is important. Maybe some competition makes that fun. But the competition, if you're really focused on defensive shooting training needs to simply be on executing your skills properly and forcing yourself to process information. And then evaluating accurately, what actually happened. It shouldn't be just trying to beat a timer or try to set a record on some choreographed drill that you do over and over and over again. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips, just like that one.