Springfield - Worlds Collide: Figure 8 Drill

All right, worlds collide; competition, defense, the number one problem, What's the magic G word? What's the biggest insult that the defensive side throws your way? Gamer. Yeah, gamer. That's what we hear all the time.

You're just gaming it. You're gaming it. So, this is the drill that can't be gamed. You know, and this is a drill that we use as an evaluative drill inside of the combat focus shooting program. And we've had a lot of guys, probably not quite at your shooting level, we've had a lot of guys, grandmasters in light, come through the class, that come through the figure eight drill, and it blows their minds.

I don't think you're going to have that much trouble with it because you understand the importance of applying a thought process to what you're doing with the gun and this drill forces you to think. And by the way, can't be timed. So, we're going to get rid of this and we're going to let you shoot, not on the timer, but on your brain. Oh. Figuring out what problem you need to solve.

Whoa whoa whoa, you're starting to activate my least effective tool. Here we go. My hands, and my fingers, and my eyes. They're good. Figure eight drill; really simple.

So, I've got your gun. What they don't know is that I loaded the magazine. So, I've got your magazine staged and staggering in a way that you don't know when the reloads are coming. Okay. We don't know how many shots are going to fire at each target, and you've got two markers on the ground that are gonna let us simulate a 360 degree environment.

Okay. You're just gonna move in a figure eight that's where the drill gets its name. You're going to move in a figure eight around these two boxes. Okay. I'm going to give you a command, that command will represent some problem you have to solve, some target you have to find.

So, let's say that I said, two. Well, I'm going to orient, you know, as if a shot came from over there, and you're walking through the mall, two. Well, you're going to get your gun out, do what you do, plant and shoot. Give me three to five shots per target. You wouldn't know how many shots it's going to take to stop your next threat.

So, we're not going to do the double tap thing. I don't care whether you use three, four, or five, just mix it up. Okay. Three to five shots into that target. If you hit slide lock, you're going to do your reload.

Okay. But if you don't hit slide lock, you're going to come back in and make sure you don't have anybody else to shoot. Go back to your holster. Relax. I'll have you do the figure eight again.

Okay, now Go ahead. So, when I'm moving through the the figure eight position, what do you want me to do when I'm shooting? When your shooting you can just plant. You want me to hold my ground? Yeah, hold your ground, get good and stable.

Drive the fastest set of shots you can, and get a high center chest, move through this, and here's where this comes in for us, what we want to make sure people aren't doing on the range is sort of lying to themselves about their capabilities to shoot the gun while their brain is making decisions and while they're reading the variables of their environment because you know, as well as I do, it's really easy to shoot that super fast double tap, shooter standby go Right, because you get into a pace and you're almost like, standby, ready, like staging and a driver. Exactly. And you know, we don't walk around the mall like that. If we knew there was going to be a shooting at the mall that day, we probably would have ordered off Amazon right? I walk around the mall like this.

Well that's cause you've got the vest and the whole shirt and everything. I got the whole shirt and everything. Right. All right, you understand the drill? So, do you want me to stay here and orient the targets?

No, just walk around because you might have to turn, the bad guy might come from your left. He might come from your right. Okay. All right, here we go. Go ahead and walk around.

I like walking around Seven! Five! Bullets Rob, fighting ain't gonna work here. Awesome, hand back . You can go ahead and stage that magazine right back in your carriers.

Even though it's a depleted that's going to help us in this drill because eventually you're going to hit slide lock. It's going to be empty empties. And that's where we want to see you respond to slide lock without the choreography of knowing what's going to come up. Do you want me to load another blank up? I'll get rid of that one and we'll have that one as your reload.

Now, check it out, in the replay, and this is going to be in slow mo now next to us as we talk about it. I don't know if you know this, but when I called out five as you were kind of finishing and you weren't in this shooter, standby mode, that gun came out and swung past the five and you sorta wagged it back. Really? And that's one of the things that never would have happened if you knew, reload your gun, drive out on the five cause you would have staged that. Right.

So, that little bit of a wag is the kind of thing that happens when we've already got the gun out and we're hunting. You don't want to be the guy in the mall, when the police show up doing this looking for the bad guy, right? Right. We want to be back here, when we see that target, then we drive out, get our shoulders set and all that. And even though you're one of the best shooters in the world, those are the little tiny things that this drill does, just to remind you, I don't want to be out here hunting; I want to be in here hunting and drive out only when I need to defend myself.

Excellent. Check it out. Figure eight . All right. Half of eight.

Half of eight. I don't know what that is. Oh shit. There you go. Holster.

So, as soon as we start engaging the brain, I know you know how to shoot brother. I can't count Now, if I said to you, now, let's just look at the camera for a second and I just want to restore faith in America's educational system for our international viewers. If I were to say to you, Rob Latham, what's half of eight? Four. Okay.

All right. Just checking because if for a second there with a gun in your hand, that seemed like the most complicated, most complex thing a man could ever be asked to figure out. I should have just shot everybody, shoot them all. I'll let God sort it out. And that's what this drill does.

And you know, we get a lot of people like, Oh well, if I were shooting the figure eight, I'd figure it out. I appreciate you putting yourself out here to do that. This is what happens in our classes. People say, well, you don't use a timer drill. So, you must be making everybody feel good and everybody's a winner.

Did you figure out the things you need to think about? Yeah. There you go. I never, I never thought, you know, four is half of eight. I learned that in first grade, I think.