There’s no shortage of shooting drills you can use to improve your accuracy. The aim small, miss small drill, as above. There’s dot torture. The 1-2-R-3 drill. The only problem: most people don’t do them. When they do go to the range, they blast away, burning up ammo to little effect. But not you. You’re too smart for that. So spill for the benefit of everyone…what’s your favorite shooting drill?

 

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42 COMMENTS

  1. Tactical shotgun emergency reload drill. Start with one round in the chamber, tube empty, and four shells in your chosen ammunition receptacle- plate carrier, dump pouch, jeans pocket- doesn’t matter. Fire your five rounds as quickly as possible while loading only through the ejection/loading port. Costs about a dollar in ammunition and is great fun; I think I was down to eleven seconds last time I ran it.

  3. The 1 round two pull drill. I almost always start range time with this one. Helps to relax the body and smooth follow up shots. Similar to the empty chamber drill with a revolver.

    • I have two 10 round Glock 19 mags that came with my MA/CA compliant Glock 19. I use them strictly for practice.
      I do the “Ball and Dummy” drill mixing in snap caps randomly in the two mags.

  4. Me and my shooting buddy dont get to go to the range too often, about once a month, so when we do get out there we dont like blasting away, we like to make use of our time. So we actually have a book of drills that we keep adding to, as well as full stat keeping so we can actually track our improvement.

    A few of our favorites are
    Dot Torture (We use it to warm up)
    Dirty Diamond
    2 x 2 x 2 Drill
    Blaze X
    1-R-2 Drill
    El Presidente
    Bill Drill
    F.A.S.T Drill

    I could go on, alot of them are fun, but those are the ones we probably run the most.

  5. Mostly prone, long range shooting, dont do a lot of drills although i should, i practice a draw and double tap at home with the bb pistol in the back yard

    • I think it’s where you point and shoot when you need to, with whatever firearm is at hand, with whatever ammo is available at the moment.

      Kind of like driving without all the driver training.

      Seems to work out well for me. And millions of non-tactical gun owners around the world.

    • DeWalt and Makita are releasing new models in time for Black Friday; you can pick your own. They’re louder and noisier than standard drills, hence the ear muffs and eye pro in the video.

    • A shooting drill is a complex contraption that uses firearm cartridges to spin the shaft which spins the arbor which spins the drill bit. It really shines when you need the “percussion” feature (better known as a hammer drill for drilling into concrete).

      Note that you should not confuse a shooting drill with a screw gun which uses firearm cartridges to launch screws, rather than bullets.

      (badump, tish!)

      • *Looks at impact gun*

        Now I know why the damn thing puts so many holes in my walls. Starts out all nice and smooth and then flips it’s own giggle switch!

  8. I am partial to Mozambique drills.

    I also like “shoot, don’t shoot” drills as well as drills that require moving and shooting enemies while avoiding hits to friendlies.

    • I just finished 500 rounds of the Moz over 4 days…and I still suck at it. So damn hard not to rush that head shot. I usually still strike then head, but I tend to hit just above the 4″ circle target at 15 yards.

  10. NYPD Mag Dump Drill

    Place three IDPA targets side by side.
    Middle target is the brown (shoot) target. Left and right targets are white (no shoot).
    With a timer, on command, shoot wildly trying not to hit the center target until slide lock. Perform a reload and shoot while running away.

      • Actually one variation is to use a blindfold to simulate a dark stairwell.
        Take up the slack in the trigger and start walking toward the target. When you contact anything, start shooting.

    • Seems like a controlled double tap to each white target’s grape would be sufficient and save ammo, you know, in case more civvies enter your field of view…

      Never know when you might need to gun down a mass of innocent people, not just one to three.

  12. I’m sorry to say, I’ve never really done any real drills. What I have done is make up my own targets are try to master the fundamentals and use existing targets in odd ways.

    For example, yesterday I took a ‘battleship’ splatter target and alternated five rounds AR with five rounds pistol against different colored ships to improve my handgun basics and practice height-over-bore training. Dime-size targets at 7yards is tougher than it sounds for both pistol and rifle.

    Either that or I really need practice…

    • The pistol should be right on.
      My wife and I compete with the battleship targets. We alternate three shots each and switch guns after each turn using a G43 and G19.
      I haven’t thought about using the AR. I’ll give it a go next time.

      • I was pleasantly surprised when I was drilling dots at 5 yards, so I moved it back to 7 and it got a whole lot harder.

        The AR was fun. I hadn’t done much height-over-bore training before and had to learn on the fly. By the end of the hour I was doing pretty well with it.

  13. The “Mad-Minute” stage of the SMLE Centenary (plus a few years by now) match.

    Done at 200 metres. The rifle is on the ground with 10 rounds loaded and the bolt forward on an empty chamber. You are standing waiting for the targets.

    The target is a 4-foot square with a 6, 10, and 16 inch vertical scoring zones (5.1, 5, 4, and 2 for the rest of the target).

    When the target appears, you sit, grab your rifle and start shooting. You have 1 MINUTE to fire off as many rounds as possible. You can reload from clips and loose rounds.

    The match is a copy of the British WW1 training and small arms qualification test.

    My best is 27 rounds away. Others have made the low 30s but the high 20s is considered the average.

  15. Hi Southern

    I thought “mad minute” was originally 300 yards.
    Trying to remember what my grandfather a WW1 veteran said. But he has been dead a long time and never spoke much about it.

    There was another shooter practicing that drill and firing with little finger at range the other week. Young shooter aged 23 I was showing some of my rifles to had never heard of the drill.

    Most of my drills is practice for hunting where off the shoulder with cold barrel is the usual thing.

  16. There is no such thing as “burning up ammo to little effect”. All practice is valuable. To misquote Dick Marchenko; “my men could pull the trigger with their dicks, for all I cared. The only point was to shoot a lot”.
    I’m past drills now, I shoot for fun. Just throw a white foam cup out downwind, and shoot it on the lower corner to make it fly up in the air. Then drill it in the air. If you miss, just bounce it again. It will get farther and farther away, making it harder and harder until you can’t do it anymore, and then its time for another cup. Its fun, reactive, cheap, difficult, and challenging. What more could a shooter want?

  18. I’m a big fan of the, “Wake up early enough to drag my ass out of bed to the shooting range” drill

  19. The sancho drill – come home early from work, find sancho with wife and unload magazine as quickly as possible into center of target. 😉

  20. My current favorite is firing one handed while not spilling anything from a beer glass filled to the brim.

    RSO’s hate this drill so it’s best practiced out in the boonies or on your own property.

    Pro/OP Operator version: Start with the beer in chest rig. rifle slung, pistol holstered. Move though course of fire. Every time you transition weapons, shotgun a beer before completing transition and engaging next target. Great practice on your transitions between pistol/rifle and keys/knife/beer. Helps you get used to having cold, wet hands too. We call it the “three gun” run.

  22. I’m not a carry guy, nor does my range allow things like holster draws (I think).

    I saw a nifty 50 round drill on Student of the Gun, then forgot what the last string of 10 was in the drill when I got to the range. Still, I thought my 40 round version was good.

    I used a B-8 target at 25 yds, no timing. I used my Walther P22 since it is my only DA/SA firearm.

    10 rounds two hands; 10 rounds right hand only; 10 rounds left hand only; and 10 rounds two hands, all DA.
    For the DA I engaged the manual safety, lowered the hammer, and disengaged the safety.

    I will tell you that the left hand shooting felt very freaky and was glad that I had the safety on until I had the firearm in a ready to fire position. That said, my left hand only shooting was actually slightly more accurate than the DA two handed shooting, which was the worst.

    • I don’t do drills, but I have to agree with you on shooting left handed… You would think I didn’t know how to hold a hammer, much less a gun. Which is why practicing that way is so important; if I ever find myself needing to shoot with my weak hand, I don’t want to fumble the gun trying to get a proper grip on it. It also makes me notice the little things, like how my supposedly ambidextrous SR9 only has a slide release on the left side. I feel like that must drive southpaws mad.

  23. I do the 1x2x3x jerk.

    You shoot a silouette 1 time by jerking the trigger, you perform a reload and shoot the silouette 2 times by jerking the trigger with no regard to accuracy. Lastly, I perform one more reload and repeat with 3 shots. The largest group size wins.

  24. Part 1: shoot 5 rounds each of two hands, strong hand, weak hand at 5 and yards.

    Part 2: Shoot off angle at 10-15 yards.

    Part 3: Advance and retreat head on and off angle. Sidestep at 10-15 yards.

  25. USCCA…more like US gun at ready position shoot as slow as possible association. You shoot that slow in a close encounter of the evil kind and you are going to die.

  26. El Presidente has alot of good stuff to practice but it can burn through ammo.

    I do a draw and four transition x drill on two uspsa targets. Shooting the upper A at 10 yards after nearly point shooting the lower A while on the clock is some good accuracy vs. time challenge.

    Bill drill on the move from left to right and right to left at 7 yards back. It’s good to know how fast you can move vs how fast you can hit.

    Moving into and out of baricades while on the clock. Also slicing pie for IDPA.

    Weak hand onlu and strong hand only I do stationary on a 10 yard target. draw and shoot 3 on lower A. Sometimes I’ll do the X at 7 yards if I’m feeling fiesty.

  27. I do a few drills but they’re pretty simple. Mainly drawing from concealment and reholstering. I will shoot one handed with strong and weak plus one handed loading/racking off belt.
    Other days, I shoot for fun or try to get super small groupings.

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