Take a Defensive Lap Drill

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Here's another great balance of speed and precision drill. It's called the take a lap drill. And there's a few different ways that we can do this. We're gonna talk about version one, two, and three.

Version one of the take a lap drill uses a target like this SEB target from Law Enforcement Targets. This is a great versatile target that we'd like to use a lot here. And one thing you can do is you can recreate this at home. You can make this work however you want. If you have another target that has multiple small target areas, or even with spray paint you can just create a target like this that will simulate the same situation.

And allow you to practice the take a lap drill at home on your range. The way the take a lap drill works is very simple. We're gonna ahead and engage the numbered target areas. One, two, three, four, five, six, in order until we've gotten around into each one. Or we're gonna limit our number of rounds and see how many of those targets we can hit.

So in the first version, we're gonna limit ourselves to six rounds only. I'm gonna start with the one and I'm not gonna progress to the next shape, the next number target until I've gotten a hit on the one. Now you can decide at home whether or not on the line hits count or not. Here at Valhalla on the line counts. It's an easier way to run the drills that you can truly assess your work on the target.

And you can see anything near the shape on the shape in the number on the line will make itself clear. Anything on the line or inside the shape is gonna count. You've assessed that target well enough to know that you have defeated the threat to the point where you can go to the next one. This is a balance of speed and precision drill. You wanna make sure you're using enough deviation control to get the hit you need to get.

I'm gonna limit myself to six shots. Let's see how we do on take a lap drill. Again, remembering that with multiple targets we wanna train ourselves to go through separate recognition phases, and shift our bodies laterally. Now, if we have multiple targets that are close to one another, we're not gonna come all the way back into the ready position and make a huge lateral motion because that will cost us time. It'll actually cost us efficiency.

But it's important that the final motion to your target is out towards the threat in your line of sight, in parallel with it. So we wanna make sure that we are breaking those elbows and coming back out on a target. What's interesting is if we're running a timer on that drill we'd probably see that my splits between shots got longer as the duration of that simulated critical incident went on. So the idea of concentrating on multiple targets finding the next target, all the motion I was probably exerting more deviation control as we went on, and it obviously resulted in better hits in this particular drill. So that's take a lap version one, six rounds how far can you get.

If you find yourself consistently getting all six of your targets you either need to make your targets smaller or move back or push yourself to see how fast you can go. Again, if you've gotten to the point where you're shooting about as fast as is practical and you're still getting all the hits simply change the size of the targets, change the distance to the targets, or change both balance and speed and precision means working with all the variables you can to understand how fast you can shoot in an intuitive way. We talked about the warrior expert theory and that's the idea. Is making sure that we understand how fast we can shoot intuitively, because we recognize our balance of speed and precision requirements, based on our awareness that comes from realistic and frequent training. Take a lab version two is very, very similar.

What we're gonna do with take a lap version two. Is I'm going to go from one through six. I'm gonna make sure that I engage each target with at least one round before I go to the next one. But in this case I'm not gonna limit myself to six rounds. So I may push myself to go a little faster knowing that I have more than six rounds to use in my firearm is gonna allow me to push, push, push, push, push.

I would still love to do it in six rounds but I'm gonna use combat accuracy and balance of speed and precision to see how fast I can get through. And if I do miss I'm gonna allow myself the follow up shot and continue to assess the situation, to see if my target still poses a threat that warrants lethal force. So you can see that with version two of the take a lap drill. I take that follow-up shot very quickly. I'm actually doing a little bit of a drill we call volume of fire.

The idea being that I'm gonna continue a consistent string of fire until the threat stops presenting itself to me or to someone I'm trying to protect. So with the indication here that I'm looking for it being the hit inside the line or inside of that shape I'm gonna continue to follow up quickly. So if we look at the split times between a new target and the followup shot there'll be dramatically faster on a followup shot. That's the important balance of speed and precision issue that we're looking at with version two of take a lap. For version three of the take a lap drill.

We're gonna go back to the same limit of rounds that we had for version one. And version one we only had six rounds to fire and we were not gonna go to the next threat until we had successfully engaged the first one. Then the second one then third one, fourth one, fifth one, sixth one. In this case for version three I'm actually gonna take one shot at each target and see how many hits I get. So that's version three of the take a lap drill.

And as you see, I threw one shot on the four. Missing the four is part of my learning opportunity try and understand why I missed that shot. What happened? Honestly, I think I was more erect than I should have been and not leaning forward. You can play the tape back and I'll just have to think about it.

Whenever we're training. We wanna try to take opportunities to raise the stress level and make the shooting a little more realistic. Try to give us some distraction from just the shooting. Once we understand the fundamentals and we're consistent with the fundamentals we find ourselves shooting efficiently in a given drill. I want to try to change it a little bit so that now it's a little more stressful.

We're not focusing on say trigger control as much as we are the big picture. In this case the stress is gonna be provided by competition. Now we have to be careful about comparing competition and defensive use of a firearm. But in the case of stress, performance anxiety, and always wanting to be the winner, of course nobody wants to lose a competition. There is some real stress and there's some actual distraction from the shooting and the basic fundamentals that takes place.

So we've got Jeremiah and Peter on the line. We're gonna do version two of the take a lap drill, which means on my command they're both gonna try to get a hit in every number all the way, one through six, as fast as they can. We're gonna see who actually completes that task first. And we're gonna watch and see how the stress might affect them compared to if they had shot it earlier just going through the drill. Let's see how it works.

One thing that's very interesting about that competition is that both shooters failed on an assessment of their targets. So while they each completed the drill and Jeremiah got done first, if we take a good look he actually did not get an effective hit on the fourth. Similarly, at the end of the drill Peter did get what we consider an effective hit on the line with the six, but he proceeded to fire a second round as a follow-up anyway, learning to assess your target especially under stress is part of understanding the balance between speed and precision. Anytime that you apply stress and you take someone out of focusing just on the shooting drill or just on the fundamentals of shooting even. It's interesting to see how that affects their ability to proceed with the drill.

Keep the cognitive thought process going and perform the complex skill of shooting a firearm defensively. The last thing I wanna talk about with the take a lap drill is how you can create some stress if you're working by yourself. One of these timers with a random start button is a great way to go. So if I'm out the range trading by myself and I wanna go through take a lap drill, and after I've gotten down the basics, gotten the fundamentals, played with different target sizes, different distances, different variables as I can. Without worrying about another training partner, I then might go to a timer because that replaces a training partner in a couple of ways, A it creates a performance anxiety.

It creates a goal and a record of how fast you were able to get all six targets. And that's important that behavior really will change the way that you approach the drill. The other thing that's important about it is it gives you that recognition response. So if you don't have a training partner to say up or go or start or yell or whatever it is that you're going to recognize as the cue to start the drill. Having the buzzer go off on that random star We'll give you a little bit of a startle response and certainly a cue to recognition that will let you start the drill go through using good fundamentals and good defensive training tactics, such as recognition followed by response.

Instead of just I'm at the target I'm gonna shoot. So what happened was after establishing that pattern in my mind of one, two, three, four, five, six. And after having hit the two and the three on single shots after my first shot at the four I started to move out to the next target and then realized that I had not gotten a combat accurate hit that I had not actually stopped the threat had to go back and take multiple follow-up shots in order to do that. What's important to realize that if in your head you normally would only shoot one shot at a target, or shoot a double-tap or shoot some pattern of two plus one or three, three, three, or whatever it is. That pattern that prejudgment about how many rounds are going to shoot will interfere with your ability to deal with the threat efficiently.

As we just saw in this drill. We've got bill and Ken on the line now. They're both gonna shoot these drills and they're gonna follow my instructions very specifically so that they can get through the drills appropriately. And then we're gonna debrief and talk about the way our mental perception could affect our physical performance. Guys I want you to make sure that you have fully loaded weapons, make sure that you have a fully loaded magazine in the gun.

It's important to make sure that when you get ready to do a drill that has a set number of rounds, that the shooters have a set number of rounds or at least that number of rounds inside of their firearm. If we were to let them come out here, for instance for our first set of instructions which would require them to fire six shots and they don't have six shots of course they can complete the drill if they did a reload but we'd rather just have them shoot the drill and focus on the point that we're trying to make with this take a lap family of drills. Again, this is a drill concept. You can apply this to whatever type of targets or situations that you have on your training area. Okay guys, the first thing you're gonna do is fire six shots at those six different circles.

Any shot inside of the black circle is gonna count as a hit. But I want you to make sure you get your hit before you go to the next circle. You're gonna shoot the top left then the top right then in the middle left, then the middle right, then the lower left, then the lower right in that order. If you're to miss if your second shot misses on the second target that third shot needs to go back into that second target. So you're only gonna get, as far as you can on this take a lap drill based on your six shots.

If you get six hits, you'll make it all the way through. If you have a miss on the way you're gonna get stopped before the end. You understand the drill? You go to the ready position on the command up. Begin the drill.

Six shots, take a lap. Can we take a look at the targets? We're gonna let that stand the way it is. We're gonna go to the next of commands. Then we're gonna come back and debrief the whole thing as a set.

It's important that we get through a series of commands so that we can the debrief the point of the drill after they've shot all their strings of fire. Okay, guys, the next thing we're gonna do now is actually make all six hits. We want you to go in order again, top left, top right. And again, alternate left or right working your way down to the bottom of the target. This time take as many shots as you need to, to get six hits.

So take, pick as many shots as you need to use. Good balance of speed and precision concepts. As many shots as you need to to get all six hits. Shooting in the same pattern, ready position For weapon? You can start just like y'all just do a reload as you need to.

The next set of commands is going to be to shoot all six shots as fast as you can. Get all six hit as fast as you can reloading as necessary. Why don't you go ahead and hit all six targets as fast as you can go to the ready position. And again, we wanna remind our trading partners. Whenever we hit that slide lock, we wanna do our lateral movement.

Shift one body width to the left or right. Get offline from the target. Whenever you reach that slide lock situation or you get into a malfunction drill. Last set of commands is this. Last set of instructions will be fire one shot at each target, whether you hit or miss one shot at each target.

Ready position, standby. And holster. And now let's walk down here and take a look at the targets. One of the first things we're gonna do when we come down to check the targets with our training partners we're gonna ask them did you shoot all four strings of fire at the same time and in the same way? And of course, most people will say no.

Most people will be effected by the instructions that their training partner gives them. If we say, shoot as fast as you can that's it puts a very different perception of the penalty for a miss in the student's mind, as opposed to saying something like you only have six shots go as far as you can through the lap or you only have six shots fire, one shot at each target. But if we look at the target and we think about it each shooting problem was exactly the same. We needed to get six hits on six targets at the same distance each time. But my instructions as the training partner, as the coach as the instructor, in this case change the mental perception that each shooter had of what it was they needed to do.

Now this is an important trading point that isn't always easy to reflect on a square range. But with some good thought processes, some good preparation and some creativity you can use this, take a lap family of drills concept to change the mental perception that your training partners have on the range of the physical skills they need to perform. It's gonna help them better prepare for reacting with dynamic critical incident during which they may be thinking about protecting themselves, protecting their family members, stopping the threat, getting to cover. or just making it home to see their family members at the end of the critical incident. And those mental distractions are going to affect their physical performance.

It's all part of the balance of speed and precision and the conditions under which we shoot. The take a lap Family of drills allows you to let people experience that mental perception change, without really changing the physical need for shooting skill. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.