There is certainly nothing wrong with spending time at the range just having fun. I’d choose shooting as a recreational activity over golf any day. But, there is a difference between going to the range and actual training.
Training involves having a goal and having a plan.
Your goal can be very general (“improve my shooting”) or very specific (“shave two-tenths of a second off my draw stroke”). But whatever the goal is, your practice sessions should be focused on that.
Your plan revolves around your goal. Your plan should specify what drills you are going to practice. Planning in advance means less wasted time at the range … time that could have been spent training. Before you begin shooting, there should be an outline in your mind of how you’ll spend your session at the range. Don’t just jump from random drill to random drill. Pick a skill, pick some drills that will develop that skill, and concentrate on improving.
There are certain drills I do almost every time I practice. There is a test I use as my warm-up every time, for instance, so I can track my improvement over days, months, even years.
But at the same time, if you get the opportunity to practice frequently, you don’t want to get bored with your drills. So it’s a good idea to have multiple ways to practice the same skills. For example, there are three or four different drills I use for working on accuracy. I may use one for a few sessions in a row and then switch to another to keep things fresh. I always work on marksmanship fundamentals for at least part of every session, but that doesn’t mean I have to use the same exact drill two hundred times.
Another important aspect of training is that you have to make your shots count. It’s cliché but true, practice doesn’t make perfect … only perfect practice makes perfect. If you start to lose focus, stop. Don’t do a drill ten times just to say you shot x-number rounds of ammo. If you’re not paying attention and getting something mentally out of each iteration, you’re wasting time and ammo that would be better left for another day.
Of course, it’s OK to have fun while you’re training. The more fun you have, the more likely you are to come back again next week and train some more!
Stay safe! ToddG
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