Written by: Greg Ellifritz
My friend Claude Werner recently wrote an article where he postulated most shooters don’t do any real structured practice with their firearms. They plink or play, but they generally don’t perform drills designed with realistic standards in order to improve performance. In the article, Claude talked about sharing details and photos of his practice routines to give novice shooters an idea about how they might better spend their practice time.
I think that is a wonderful idea. I plan on sharing the drills I shoot in my weekly practice sessions. Hopefully, you will get a little value out of my posts. If you like them, I’d like to hear about it. Likewise, if you think I am wasting my time, let me know that too. You can contact me HERE.
Today’s practice session was held at my local indoor range. I was fortunate to be the only shooter there this morning, so I was able to use the shot timer pretty easily.
I shot 127 rounds out of my 9mm Glock 19 (primary concealed carry gun) and 50 rounds out of my .38 spl S&W model 12 airweight snub (ankle gun I carry at work).
I started out shooting my G-19 at the Guerrilla Approach Consistency Target that I wrote about yesterday. This is the second time I’ve shot the drill. Last time I did it with my G-17. I don’t know if I was having an off day or what, but my score and times today with my G-19 were significantly worse than when I shot it last week.
I ran the drill twice. The first time I shot it in 34 seconds and had seven misses. My second round through was a little better. I ran it in 33 seconds with three misses.
After doing so horribly there, I decided to spend some more time shooting small dots. A reader sent me a dot target he had made up and I gave it a couple tries. That drill takes 29 rounds and is shot with two hands and one handed, depending on the dot being shot. I ran the drill twice.
New dot target sent in my a reader
As I started each of my dot drills with a full magazine, I had three partial magazines left. I put up 4″x 6″ post it notes at 15 feet. I used the remainder of the rounds in the magazine doing two handed “tempo” shooting. On the first target, I fired the rounds with a one second split. On the second target, I shot 1/2 second splits. On the third target I fired as fast as possible still getting hits (around .3 seconds each).
Tempo shooting targets
I finished the session with 50 rounds out of my .38 snub. As I mentioned in a previous article, I really like Claude Werner’s Indoor Range Practice Sessions drill book for shooting my smaller guns. I used his “establishing a baseline” drill with my .38.
The drill is shot from the ready position with two hands on the gun. I fired at a bullseye target, but it was designed to be fired at a full silhouette.
The drill is:
- 1 shot
- 2 shots
- 3 shots
- reload
- 6 shots
The drill is repeated at the three, five, seven, and 10 yard lines. I’m happy to say that I kept most of my rounds in the black on this one. Claude’s drill is 48 rounds. I finished the box by firing one round right handed and one round left handed at 10 yards.
It looks like I shot better with the revolver today than I did with my Glock. That’s ok. It gives me room for improvement.
I’ll post another practice session next week.
