Getting Back to Training

With my hand injury having prevented me from training for a bit, I need to start getting my shooting back into shape. The best way to do that is dry practice, so I have been at it for a short time each day now. You can of course practice almost everything dry, but in my case, I am focusing on just three skills to start with. I think these three skills are the most important and give you the most bang for your buck so I thought I’d share them with you.

The draw. One of the most difficult skills is a sure hit on a challenging target from concealment. It is also one of the first skills to perish when you don’t keep at it, so it gets a fair bit of attention during my dry practice. I don’t break the trigger, my goal is to end up with a fully prepped trigger and a good sight picture. Since I’m using a par time on my timer, breaking the trigger will often lead to compromised technique in order to beat the buzzer. This is bad training, so it is better to simply remove the trigger break from the drill.

If you have never done this before (who hasn’t raced their draw at some point?), you can start with a time you can make about 70% of the time. As you get better at making the time, take a .1 of second off the time and go again.

Crashing the trigger. This particular drill I got from Ben Stoeger, though I don’t know if I do it the same way he does. I aim at a small target and just touch the trigger without moving it. At the beep, I break the shot as fast as possible, meaning before the end of the beep. You can start this drill with a fully prepped trigger if you like and then move to just lightly touching the trigger once you get it down.

After that, you can start your finger at the front of the inside of the trigger guard, and if you really want a challenge after that, start from the register position. The goal is to break the shot as fast as possible without disturbing the sights. Improvement is measured by seeing less movement in the sights. You get that by fixing your grip and trigger finger position and tension. You do not slow your trigger presses at any point.

The press-out. A staple here at Pistol-Training since the beginning, I consider the press-out to be the single most useful way to pull the trigger. It can be done very fast and very accurately, or it can be done a little slower and incredibly precisely for harder shots. All in all, it is a very versatile way to pull the trigger.

When learning the press-out, I do not use a timer. Just work on coordinating your pistol getting to your firing position, with the trigger breaking. It should be like sliding in to home plate, no pause between the gun stopping and it going off. I don’t know anyone who can learn this correctly at speed, so start off slow to learn the motor pathways. Add speed as you improve.

A couple of critical points are worth mentioning. Though a press-out can certainly be done from the draw, the real action starts once the gun is leveled at a target, so practice is usually done from a high ready position. Your trigger finger needs to start in the register position, and it does not move to the trigger until you start to drive the gun towards the target. Never start by putting your finger on the trigger, always move the gun first and let your finger catch up.

Once the shot breaks you should reset and re-prep the trigger, or at least go through the motions if your trigger doesn’t allow that. Once the iteration is done, the first step in resetting the gun to go again is to take your finger off the trigger and put it back in register. Then move the gun back to the ready position. You do not want to move the gun back with your finger on the trigger.

These three drills have kept me in good stead for many years, and though there is obviously a lot more to shooting than just these three, I’m not sure there are any drills that are more important for overall skill. Give them a shot and see what they do for you. I try to train 10-15 minutes a day on these three drills. After a couple weeks, I will add some other stuff, but I always do at least a small amount of these each time.