Proper Use of Cover Drills

Here's another important video from the personal defense network. Let's take a look at a drill that allows us to utilize our use of cover up proper use of cover. We've got a couple of barricades set up here on the range. Kent's ready, he's loaded up got his pistol on, he's ready to go. Now of course, we've already trained concepts involving use of cover.

So we know that we don't want to crowd our cover. We know that we're going to use our lateral movement to go back and forth from one piece of cover to another. But that's the time we're going to use it. We're starting to put our skills into context whenever we can, we want to develop our skills in the context that we're actually going to use them. So we're not going to start behind cover and imagine a threat on the other side.

I'll actually call out a threat. We take a look at the targets down range you can see that I've marked them with strips of tape and with numbers. If I had spray paint, I might have sprayed painted some hash marks or spray painted the numbers on the targets. As long as it's readily identifiable to your training partner, to the other shooters that are out there, so that when I say two, Kent will know which target it is that I'm talking about down range. Understanding that how you mark the targets should be varied, it's very important.

You don't want to have the same exact markings all the time, or the same exact range commands all the time, because in the real world you're going to have to recognize each threat individually. Don't get keyed into always shooting on an up command or always shooting on a number, or always shooting on A, or B or C. Actually vary those commands when you're on the shooting range. You need to visualize a threat and also accept that every threats going to be different. And the visual cues and even the auditory cues you get of an impending attack during an critical incident are going to be different.

So here we've got a couple different markings on the targets. Kent's going to start out at a neutral position between these two barricades. I'm going to call out a target that target will represent his threat and while he's going to his pistol getting his grip, deploying it from the holster he's going to use that time he has to do lateral movement, this time not just for the sake of lateral movement and good practical, efficient training but specifically to get himself behind cover relative to the threat that I've identified just like we would want to in the real world. He's then going to use cover properly he's going to use as much cover as he can to lean in, lean out and expose as little as he has to to extend, touch, press, press, press until he feels he has significantly affected that threat again, two or three shots in something that simulates as our combat accurate area that's what we're going for on these targets these targets will do a great job of that for us down there. Kent's going to vary his response.

Sometimes he'll go left, sometimes he'll go right he's going to use his strong side cover he's going to use weak side cover. If I as his training partner think that he's favoring one side or the other a little too much I'm going to remind him, I'm going to say "hey, you know, don't get into a pattern don't choreograph it but make sure you're also using weak side cover on the right barricade, use strong side cover on the left barricade" or whatever it is that he needs to be reminded to do. Of course, in the middle of all this, he's going to continue to assess the environment after his shots he's going to make sure that he does good reloads. Lets get into this drill now, and see how Kent is able to use the skills he's developed with barricades in place. Kent take your position in the center.

Stand by One! Three! So you can see how Kent adjusted his balance of speed and precision, shooting here helps him to recognize what he's going to need to do the amount of deviation control he needs and if we look at the difference between the first target and the second target certainly there was more time taken on the second target but that's the balance of speed and precision understanding how slow we have to go how much deviation control we need in order to get the hit we need to get. Now at this point, one of the things you've heard me talk about is the idea of recognizing slide lock as often as possible during our training. When we're standing in front of a regular target without barricades, without any type of a scenario, we don't want to top our gun off in the middle of that situation we want to shoot the gun until we reach slide lock recognize slide lock, and then as a efficiently as we can get that gun reloaded back in operation and go ahead and resume shooting if we need to at our threat.

That's more realistic. That's more important than learning how to top our gun off. But now we're in more of a scenario situation. Now we've got a tactical consideration of we're behind cover, we've dealt with our threat, we've expended some number of rounds and we want to get our gun back into operation. There's a couple ways we can do that.

We can do a speed reload, which is simply getting a good magazine in our hand dumping the partially depleted magazine and inserting the new magazine into the gun there by toping off our firearm or we could do a reload with retention which of course would be getting this magazine ready putting the other magazine into our hand inserting this one firmly into the gun having a fresh gun and then retaining that partial mag maybe jammed into our belt liner or put in our pocket, we wouldn't want to put it where we keep full magazines, full magazines will go in the magazine carriers, that partial magazine will go somewhere else. So now, Kent's going to integrate that training concept into the scenario where it can be used appropriately. Three! And now having depleted some rounds he's going to go ahead and top his gun off and he's choosing to do a reload with retention and at this point he could continue on with that scenario, whatever that dynamic critical incident was. And he could do so with a fully loaded firearm.

That's how we want to use our reload with retention or our speed reload in the context of a dynamic critical incident. Two! What you saw Kent do there was great. After he did his reload, he reached, he reached the situation where he had absolutely no rounds left in the gun, he did his critical incident reload and when he chose to come back out from behind cover, he chose to go to another side instead of going to the right side where he was he chose to go to the left side and again as far as a tactical concern that's a great idea you come back behind the cover, if you could easily lateral move one to two steps over to a position where you could now go to other side of that building or that vehicle or that tree or that wall or monument, rock whatever it was you were hiding behind, even if it's just concealment and not true cover, that's going to hopefully catch that threat off guard and give you the opportunity to be more efficient and be in less danger while you're still responding to the threat. Integrating barricades, integrating multiple commands and multiple situations into your training is very important.

When you have barricades make sure that your training in an appropriate way and not simply standing behind a piece of wood and shooting while you're leaning. Training in context, realistic training with or without barricades is incredibly important. Understanding that your skill development session when you're out on the range is there, not just to practice a skill and isolation but to practice it in context, with multiple target situations to choose from multiple barricade options to move from and a lot of different options in terms of your movement will make your training better. Check out more videos just like this one at the personal defense network.