TLG’s Top 5: Dot Torture

Talk about a misunderstood test! Sometime around the mid 2000’s someone gave me the Dot Torture paper, properly accredited to David Blinder. I had it at the NRA range one night when Todd and I were shooting together and we both tried it. Neither of us had any trouble cleaning it at the prescribed 3 yards, and I didn’t think it was a great way to spend 50 rounds. For some reason,Todd was rather taken with it, and we would shoot it every once in a while, mostly at 5 yards if I recall correctly. When Todd started Pistol-Training.com, he incorporated the test from the beginning and when he started teaching classes, he made it a part of many of them. People seem to love it, though to this day, I have to admit I’m a bit baffled as to why.

Back to my opening sentence though. Dot Torture is a test, not properly a drill. It is designed to show you an area of weakness so that you can practice that skill. If you are already a reasonably accurate shooter, it probably won’t show you very much, especially at 3 yards. Shooting the test over and over will bring marginal improvement to your shooting. Very inefficient improvement at that. So, Todd started shooting the test at increasingly longer distances. Cleaning it at 7 yards became pretty routine, and I think he cleaned it at 10 yards at least once, but I can’t say for sure anymore.

I say it was designed to show weakness. I don’t actually know what the designer’s intent was, but I can say that it functions properly as a test, rather than a drill.

At any rate, it is wildly popular and while it didn’t originate at Pistol-Training, it was certainly made famous here. To this day, I have not met David Blinder, but I hope he knows how popular his creation has become.

In future posts we will talk about efficient ways to become more accurate, and if you train on those, you are sure to see your Dot Torture score improve, at whatever distance you choose to shoot it at.