I recently shot
the 5X5 drill with my Glock 17. You
might guess from the drill name that fives are going to be involved. You would be right.
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| I would call this a pass. 1/100 of a seconds is meaningless. |
The drill requires firing 5 rounds in 5 seconds into a 5 inch circle at 5 yards from the low ready. It a pass or fail test. You either accomplish this or you don’t.
What is the difference between a drill and
an exercise?
Exercises usually focus on a specific
activity. Ball and dummy, in which a
live round in mixed with non-firing dummies, to practice not anticipating
recoil.
Reloading exercises like shoot two and
reload two, teach magazine/speed loader/moon clip reloads. I’m sure you can find a host of pistol and
rifle exercises. These can be thought of
as basic skills.
Drills usually have parameters. For
example, a 2-2-2 drill has you fire two rounds into a two-inch circle located
two yards away, move two yards sideways, fire two more rounds in to the same
target. The goal is to do it faster and
faster until you start pushing rounds out of the circle. Here we are testing trigger control, target
acquisition, sight alignment, movement and balance. When you start failing the test that becomes your
limit and you want to improve that.
You could say exercises become drills when
we time them.
It is perfectly fine to go to the range
and spend the trip plinking at targets or swapping stories with other
shooters. Not every trip has to be a
skill builder, no matter what those steely-eyed, tactically garbed,
professional trainers say. But when it
is time to make sure the rust hasn’t formed, drills are an excellent way of
checking that.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you need
special targets. I ran my 5X5 drill with
a paper NRA 50-yard smallbore target ((NRA A-27). The bullseye is exactly 5 inches across and
there are 5 to a page.
Most of my times were under 5 seconds, but
I had a little trouble with dropping rounds.
Why?
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| Times are good, but I'm dropping a shot and I'm low. |
Maybe the dot sight was off. I set up a rest at six yards and shot a 5 shot group on the “S” on the top target. The gun performed as it should, so it wasn’t the gun, it was me.
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| The Glock shoots well, but sometimes the sights come loose...not here. |
Eventually I started shooting the 5 shot
groups under five seconds the drill called for.
That’s not the success you might think it is. The goal of every serious shooter, for every person
concerned about self-defense with a handgun is performance on demand. My goal is to have passing performance on
demand. It should be yours as well.
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| Thats a pass, but you can see I need to work on controlling my group size. |
So I stared digging into my performance. It was soon apparent that target acquisition was the problem. Raising the gun up from the low ready caused my dot and ring to disappear and it took seconds to find it.
Once you know the problem, start modifying
your behavior. On the beep, I started
bring my hands up to the high tuck position, then pushing outward. Now I knew where my dot and ring were and my
performance improved.
Again, it is only with a timer can you
start quantifying your performance.
For giggles I wondered how I would shoot a
5X10 drill, that is a five-inch target, at five yards but ten rounds in ten
seconds. I got all my hits in 8.8
seconds.
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| 5X10 drill, I found it rather easy, once I found my sights! |
Here’s the split times, and they are eye
opening.
1st shot 2.1 seconds
2nd 1 second
3rd 0.8 second
4th 0.7 second
5th 0.7 second
6th 0.8 second
7th 0.7 second
8th 0.7 second
9th 0.7 second
10th 0.6 second.
Again, this points out where I need to
work, finding and aligning the dot on my target.
Both as a sport and a practical skill, performance
on demand is a goal that requires continuous improvement.
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