Target Variations Skill Development

Here is another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Now we're gonna shoot a drill that primarily deals with the change in distance, you know, whenever we're doing a balance of speed and precision drill, we always want to identify which of the four factors or which few of the four factors it is that we're changing. So, when we look at they size of the target, the distance to the target, the conditions under which we shoot, and of course our anticipation of the need to shoot. We wanna be able to say to our training partners or at least to ourselves, this next drill that we're gonna through will affect this factor. And this factor specifically for this next drill is going to be distance.

So as we go through this drill we want to also keep in mind that these drills are appropriate for anyone who's interested in defensive shooting whether someone's gone through the Combat Focus Shooting Program or gone to our Advanced Pistol Handling Program or even trained with us at all before before, really doesn't matter. If you understand the balance of speed and precision concepts and you work through these drills you will be able to identify areas that you can improve it areas where you can become more efficient. And of course one of the ways that we become more efficient is through consistency, with our mechanical skills and our manipulations doing things in the same way, in the same place at the same time as often as possible, will make us more consistent and therefore more efficient. But remember, you can't be efficient without being affective, and the balance of speed and precision drills will always support that idea of efficiency, effectiveness consistency, as long as we have integrity and sticking to our principles. So for this next drill, we've got six targets set up down range, for each shooter and each one of those targets has a number in it.

I as a training coach this time, I'm gonna be calling out one of those numbers, the guys will do their lateral movement, 'course Bill and Kent are both experienced shooters and they're used to working in different types of dynamic drills that we're gonna be going from the holster whenever possible we wanna train for the worst case scenario because we'll always be able to deal with being in more control, but when we're out of control and we're caught off guard we wanna be as prepared as possible for the mechanical skills such as presenting from the holster that we need to do. So we're gonna go from holster on the command one, two, three, four, five or six. We're gonna let them shoot two or three rounds, at the appropriate target. Of course they're gonna do their lateral movement do efficient reloads, assess the environment, and then go back to the holster after a string of fire. You guys ready?

Yes yes Great.Face down range, standby for your commands to fire. Three! Five! 'kay good, guys don't forget your lateral movement on recognition by your command to fire, Remember to do your lateral movement , get offline from the threat. One!

Five! Yeah be sure to pause at the ready position up here in front of our chest before we re-holster and use that overhand technique when we're doing our re-loads. One! Two! Three!

and move on those reloads. Five! 'kay, we're gonna go ahead and move back now. We're gonna double the distance to the targets. We're gonna have the shooters move back on the line and we're gonna go again double the distance two to three times the distance that we were at relative to our targets, and we're gonna use exactly the same commands, exactly the same idea when I get out a number They're gonna fire two or three rounds at the target shape that contains that number.

Now whenever we're doing drills that require a lot of reloads and when we're moving through a lot of magazines, it's important if we have extra magazines maybe stowed in our pockets somewhere. that we then move them into the position that were most likely to actually reload from. So guys if you have those extra magazines throw them back in your carriers, you know, it does no good to practice reloading from a pocket that we would never actually have a magazine in during a dynamic critical incident. Makes more sense to continually stage them up to the place where we would need to reload from Of course that's going to make our training more realistic and that's always better. Four!

Six! Four! Four! Okay, now we'll go ahead and take a look at the targets. One thing you may have noticed and, usually the shooters in the middle of the drill won't notice it, but as an observer, you may have noticed that I called the numbers differently , whether were close or far.

When we were close, I called two, three, one and five. When we were further back, I called four and six. This is gonna give us they opportunity to take a look at the balance of speed and precision for each shooter, at different distances. Now, I could have told them ahead of time , I was going to do that. But, whenever we come we wanna try to not be artificial we wanna try to not choreograph for the shooter what it is they need to do.

We don't wanna mentally prepare them for something that in the real fight, in a real defensive situation they're going to need to recognize on their own. So by simply moving back, of course the shooter should recognize that by being further back they're going to need more deviation control. And if they don't, then We're gonna be able to point out to them where the balance of speed and precision might be off. Well if we take a look at this target, of course, it's a great target all of our hits are combat accurate, but if we take a really close look at the targets that we shot from close distance, the two, the five, the three and the one, as opposed to the four and the six, remember if we defined this whole target a our combat accurate area, an area that is likely to significantly affect the targets ability to present a lethal threat to us, then we want to use that whole target area. That's gonna be more efficient.

Or what we can see is, when we were up close, on Kent's target, his groups are rather tight and he's really not taking advantage of that whole area. But when we moved back, his group started to open up and use hat whole area very efficiently. So if anything, we might say, Kent may be a little under-confident up close maybe you could have shot a little faster, therefore been more efficient, you know, like we say. "what happens in half a second, can be the difference between life and death. It can be the difference between your success and your failure in a dynamic critical incident." So if we can be half a second faster and still affect the threat, we're better off, that's more efficient.

So this drill allows us to change the distance for the shooter, in the middle of a drill, where everything else remains pretty much the same and take a look and our balance of speed and precision and our confidence in our ability. And we always want our confidence in our ability and our actual ability to be very close When we do that, frequent and realistic training in a drill just like this. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.