Today, we are going to be covering three basic drills. The first drill we are going to cover is called Twenty Alpha. This drill consists of four 5-shot strings starting at 10 moving back to 15, 20, and lastly 25. This is a drill that I use, as well as the rest of the Action Shooting Team uses, to help warm your hands up and get ready for the rest of the shooting day.
I have already shot my first five round string from 10, now we are going to move back to 15.
The goal of this drill is to have all 20 shots in the Alpha. I use a timer not only as a start signal, but a gauge for my time at each yard line. As I start moving back in yards, my times are going to get slower as the Alpha box gets smaller. As you can see, I have a pretty good group here. I have one in the Charlie. I shot that from the 20 yard line. What that tells me is I need to slow it down just a hair, watch my front sight, and utilize a little better trigger control.
Now the next drill we are going to move on to is called the Bill Drill. The Bill Drill consists of three 6-shot iterations from the 7 yard line. The goal of this drill is to have all 18 shots inside the “A” box as fast as possible. One thing I like to say is that you can only shoot as fast as you can see your front sight. So this is what it looks like in real time.
The name of the game in the Bill Drill is recoil management. And a good grip is the foundation of recoil management. Without a good grip, you are not going to be able to fight the recoil. And without fighting the recoil, you are not going to be able to speed up and gain time. As you can see, I kept all 18 shots inside the a box, which tells me that I can start to speed my splits up, little by little, until they start to creep into the “C” box.
The next drill we are going to go over is called Triple Six. The target setup for the Triple Six starts off with the 15 yard target straight ahead of the shooter. The second target is offset by one yard and is 10 yards down range. The third target is the 7 yard target and it is offset by one yard from the 10 yard target. The Triple Six drill consists of three 6-shot iterations. The goal of this drill is to utilize the skills you have sharpened in the previous two drills.
First, you have your target at 7 yards, which requires good sight alignment, but speed.
Next, you have your 10 yard target which requires you to shoot fast while maintaining good “A” hits.
Lastly, you have your 15 yard target, which requires good sight alignment and trigger control to have good “A” hits.
On the 7 yard target, I am focusing primarily on speed and going at about 80%. For the 10 yard target, I am starting to shift my focus to my front sight and shooting at about 60% speed. For the 15 yard target, my focus is primarily on my front sight and trigger control and my speed is about 40%.
Here we have the 15 yard target, I have five good shots here, and one just outside the a box which tells me I need to slow down just a little bit and focus on my front sight.
Here we have the 10 yard target, I have five good shots here and one just cutting the perf on the “A” box. I need to really focus on my front sight, but my speed is good.
Here we have the last and final target at 7 yards, all six shots are in the “A” box and this is a good target.
Now I am ready for a good day of training on the range and all three of these drills you can do at your home range. Until next time stay Army strong.
