Worlds Collide: Skill Development Gun Shooting Drills

All right, let's talk about skill development drills. Now I think we both agree where this fits in. We may not agree on how to do it, but where it fits in. You have to learn how to do something first, right? That's correct. We have to learn how to get the gun in the shooting position, good grip, decent jerk control, sight alignment, sight picture. Once you've learned the skills, you have to develop it, and we both agree that drills are how we do that. That's correct. Let's talk about how we're gonna do drills. All right. We've got kind of like your style targets and my style targets. Give me a drill. Well, to start off with- What are we gonna learn? In our game, almost always you're gonna start with a draw. Okay. So the first thing I'm gonna teach people how to do is to draw. So I don't have a timer here, but the draw is basically gonna be the mechanic of coming out, and shooting. So you do it repeatedly, hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of times, until you don't even have to think about it, so you can draw, and shoot a one second draw. The next step is to add shots to it. So I'm gonna draw and shoot two shots. All right. So then there's the next one is. So I work on that. So, obviously I don't look for the sights, because I see the sights, because I've done all that work you talked about before. Sure, that's over there. So the next one is gonna be target acquisitions. I'm gonna come up and shoot them. All right? Then the next one is multiple shots on multiple targets. And I probably better load here because in a minute- God forbid you hit slide lock. I would hate to have that happen. Oh my god, how impractical. That would be just a couple simple things. So I've done draws, multiple shots, target acquisitions, multiple shots on multiple targets. All right, check it out. All right. So now we're gonna come over here. So I'm with you, right? We're gonna work on, the first thing we're gonna do, is we're gonna talk about from the ready, right? So we got it from a defensive standpoint, first of all, we're gonna make sure people can do this from the ready. So they're in the ready position. So you're skippin' the drop portion of it because you see that as another element. We're gonna get it. So just right from here, I want to make sure they can drive that gun out and take the shot. Right. Again, we're not looking for the sights. Draw the gun out, kinesthetically aligned, drive the gun out, drive the gun out, drive the gun out and take those shots. And once we're in the torso, then we start refining it. Now we're gonna try to get everything locked in. So we get everybody just getting the gun into the torso. Right. Then we get into the point where now they're here and they're really gonna get that head down. This is where I see a lot of the competition guys hate, is getting everything tense and locked in, but I wanna use that. I'm not worried about shooting a stage, I'm not worried about swinging around. I'm worried about the development, because here comes the multiple shots. Once I get here, and I get consistently inside that box. Now I'm gonna look at multiple shots coming out, and coming out, knowing that I got my big, massive engagement. My muscles, my back, and I can fire that shot. Now, if I get that tap rack, it doesn't work. So now I come back in, I get my reload gun, draw back out again. I'm back in place. That's how we get to multiple shots, is we start here, just getting in the torso anywhere, lock it in, get it in the box. And then once we're in the box, we throw out the multiple targets. Now we'll think about going from the holster. Now, one of the things people don't like about the way we teach presentation from the holster is I don't wanna teach it in isolation. So what I saw you doing in your drill was just isolated presentation to shot. But we have to put bookends on that. I need to put that in a contextually appropriate place. So we talk about not being upright. When we're, when we start people shooting, they're gonna pretty upright. Then we're gonna lower their center of gravity and get them locked in. And we saw, that time we went from just the torso to inside the high center chest. But now what we're gonna do is we're gonna let that happen more naturally. So we're gonna simulate this startle reaction, right? So you're starting here, or you're even starting here. Right. I'm going in and throwing that movement, that athletic setting of the body in, then I'm reaching for the gun, and we may as well move while we're doing it. Then I'm gonna drive out and take that shot. Then I'm gonna come back in, I'm gonna assess, I'm gonna make sure I don't need to shoot anybody else. I'm gonna collect and process information. And then I'm gonna get that gun back into the holster. All right, so every time it's this, even when we're doing those multiple shots straight. So I'm throwing movement in, I'm throwing in the bookends of assessment. And then I'm going back to the holster so that the skill is being developed in context. Because the number one thing I see, problems, people coming out of the competition world, really good at skills in isolation, but not so good at the skills in context. Why don't we switch? Right. So I'm gonna come over here. I'm gonna go ahead and do that thing you do, where I grab a fresh, fresh-ish magazine. I'm gonna go ahead and put it in there. Put some rounds in there. all I want you to do is do one shot draws. Give me a couple one shot draws. One shot draws. You gotta remember, the competition world means this isn't high enough, believe it or not. Okay, tell me where. If your hands are up, you have to be wrists above shoulders. I gotta be full French, I got it. Or you can be, you can be total French position, surrendering, or totally hands down. Totally surrendering. And, no command, just go into here takin' a shot. Right. And that's so weird for me if you come up from up here, because here's where I would be protected, but up here, okay. So I come up here, come out, get that shot. Or you can be hands down, same difference, you can do hands down. Now in some games, it's this, in some games it's this? They can specify which. But the two start positions are hands relaxed at sides. Hands relaxed at sides. All right, so there you go. So I come up from here now. And that's because you know, I'm just relaxed, I'm hanging out. Oh, I'm gonna Wyatt Earp, gonna boom you. And that's what that is? All right, now shooting twice. So now I'm gonna come, I'm at right here. I'm gonna come up, I'm gonna shoot. All right. And now I'm gonna come from here. So you're developing all the techniques we have to have in competition, which apply to your world, as long as you put them in context, right? Right, right, right, right. Okay, target, target. One on each. Okay, one on each? Yep. Then we go from low. Faster. All right. I know you're faster than that. So I'm gonna come up here. There you go. I would always be pushing the speed, until you lost action. And so today, for whatever reason, I'm riding that slide stop for sure. That's all right. That's all right. So, see, that's where I see a lot of competition guys, they'll just stop. Wait a minute, I wasn't supposed to click. Right, what happened? Well we get overs, right? Do it over, do it over. Two on each. You want to go high? Perfect. Go back and forth and back again. One, two, one. And I'm out. I can go to the table. Yep. Is that legal? Can I do that competition? You can now. All right. So perfect. So you've practiced all the fundamental techniques-- Now, wait, in your classes, I'm supposed to shoot the bug, right? You have to shoot the bug. One shot, you get one shot. Oh! That's what I do, that's what I do. Jeez. All right back to the drill, back to the drill. All right. Blood and guts on- Yeah, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that, let's move on. That's the shot of the lifetime. Nobody's supposed to know I can shoot. Okay, you're right. Okay, so now we're gonna throw an IDPA element in it. Their rule is, it's specified, you can't shoot a target twice, until you shot everybody once. So you literally have to go one, one. Well, you're already here, so you're gonna shoot him twice now. So it's gonna sound like one two one, head, head One two one, head, head. Right. And you have to follow that order, or there'll be a penalty for it. Do you mind that, is there an urban, I'm not a good dancer. And this feels a lot like the last time somebody tried to get me to dance. Because it's required by the rules. All right. The value from skill-building is-- One, two, one, head, head. The value from skill-building is you're doing the most possible target acquisitions- Got it. and two hard shots. Can you say beep? Standby. Ready? Ready. Beep. There you go, so now you're an IDPA, IPS. That was a weak beep. Yeah, it was a meep. All right. So the value of skill-wise is you're practicing draws. You're practicing target acquisition. You're practicing multiple shots on targets, and you're practicing failure drills shooting at the heads. Got it. So you had to go to a smaller target. All right, head over here. All right. Now let's talk about this. So here's what I want you to do. We're gonna go over here, and here's how I'm gonna have you practice the failure drill, right? So the idea of shooting the heads, we've got this triangle up here, and that's great. We've also got these numbers. And the thing is, you don't know when this is gonna happen Right, you don't know when it's not gonna work. So for our drill, I want you to process information. So I'm gonna give you that up command. You can go from, you know, from just relaxed to here, get the gun out, drive out and use your three to five shots into high center chest on the up command. Every once in a while, I might call out a number. If I call out a number, you put the brakes on it, you look at that number, you drive out, and you take one good, smooth, precise shot into the circle that contains that number. On the number, okay. And it might happen while you're assessing, because every time you shoot a string, I want you to stop, not go right back to those, but actually stop, feigning assessment, collect some information, then go back to the holster. Wait, but I don't want to put the gun away. I want to leave it out where I can use it more better. You gotta put the gun away, so that we can simulate. So you have rules. I thought you didn't have rules, I don't like your rules. Well here's the rule, there's no point in practicing walking around the mall like this. Because they're probably gonna kick you out of the mall. So let's crack this from the holster, here we go. All right. All right. So, hey, you're talking to me, you're relaxed, right? you're relaxed, and then that's gonna happen. I thought you wanted me in this-- No that's gonna happen. So go from this to that. All right, okay. Up! Four! Good, see now watch, holster. . First of all, you didn't assess. First bite, but yeah Look at the shot right in the middle of the four. You didn't need it in the middle, you see it anywhere, so they're all equal. But check this out. You don't, you drove that gun out and did like this looking for the form, exaggerating. Do you even know that you did that? No. Well wait a minute. So you told me to shoot the four. I said four. I shot the four. But you drove out. So before you even knew where the four was. I knew he had to shoot and I wanted to get the gun out. So let me tell you, here's how this works in my world. In my world, you're at the mall. Somebody starts shooting people at the mall. You know you need to shoot. Right. You pull your gun out and you start doing this looking for the guy you need to shoot, and then the police come around the corner. What do you look like? You look like the guy who needs to be shot. So we aren't gonna drive that gun out until we see the four. Once we know where you've seen the four, then we drive out. So we don't want to be looking for the target out here. We want to keep that gun in. Plus that we don't want to swing. Remember earlier? Watch this. Remember earlier you were shooting at these targets? As soon as you started your transitions, a bunch of those shots were over here, right? Cause you were swinging and you know that, but it's good enough, you're still in the right area. But all of a sudden, if you had to slow that down and do a headshot, it would take you more time, right? So what we say is A, swinging to a target that you aren't even sure exists, could get you hurt. And B, it's a hell of a lot easier, especially for somebody who doesn't have your skill. Not to try to slow that down and take the shot, but to turn and drive out to the shot. And then I have to worry about the swing. So what you're saying, when I finished the body shot, as well as I remembered, I shot a bunch on the body, and came back in and then you told me to go to four. Right. You don't care how quick I hit four? Not at all, because I want it to- Timer's running, Rob. Well, the timer's always running. The problem is you can't time assessment. You can't time acquiring the target in the real world. Okay, well, I never even thought about that. For me, the standpoint is, as soon as you gave me a command, it didn't matter what the number. And by the way, why are you always picking on me with the four thing? You're so good at fours. I suck at fours. Let's try it again. All right. You hit it. So I'm shooting the whole thing again? Well it depends. You're going to do whatever I say. So we're talking. We're talking. And then you've got threats around here. When I say, up! Up! All right, when you feel like there's no threat, you can go in and holster again. Two! Up! Okay, now what just happened? I shot so many rounds out of the gun that I was fairly certain I should load it after I was- So you've got one of the classic XDM magazines in there. That thing holds like 750 rounds. Remember in our simulation, in that drill you only fired three rounds. You only fired one round at the two. That's four rounds. So arbitrarily topping off, then, what that's gonna keep you from doing, is experiencing that slide lock in the middle of a string of fire. Because if I had to called up one more time, you had three rounds left, you would've hit slide lock, and it would have drilled the stimulus response pattern for a slide lock emergency reload. That's what we would be after. Okay. And that's the difference. That's so that I know how many are in it. Make me do it again. Make you do it again. I want to do it. I want to do it, but I got to not know how many is in it. All right. Because I can feel the way to the gun. Sure you can. Okay, give me your gun. You got spare mags? I got a, I got two. Up! Cool. Now here's what we're gonna see when we zoom in on that. I don't believe you that we're done. Holster. So here's what we're gonna do, put it in the holster. I don't believe you. You don't have to believe me. Two! I knew it. There you go. I knew it. I knew you'd get the shot. Well, look, as soon as you get pulled out of the drill, the skill you haven't developed, the skill, what I would consider the skill, of always after you shoot, coming back to the ready and pausing. I would agree with you completely. You shot that went right back to your holster. I would agree completely. The other thing you're gonna see is now you came out expecting you to do multiple shots, strings of fire. And what everybody's gonna see is one of the greatest shooters in history of shooting, arguably the most accomplished professional shooter on the history of earth in currently 30 years of ruling earth, the guns pull on an empty magazine, pull on an empty gun. Because you were running that trigger so fast, it took you a while to process the fact that slide lock happened, right? You know what slide lock feels like, but in the middle of this drill, there was still that. And then the recognition of slide lock, and then you went ahead, and that's what we're trying to drill. Is let that happen here so that you know what it's gonna be like out there. And that's really in between that that more choreograph drill and this more random drill.