It’s common for shooters who take their training seriously to work on eliminating or at least decreasing time on the non-shooting clock. That is, any time when you’re not pressing off rounds, you’re moving the gun. Each individual movement of the muzzle costs you time. Most shooters tend to linger much longer than needed on a pre-transition shot.
Our drill this month is a real worker bee. It trains you to deliver a well-placed transition round and deliberately decreases the time it takes you to move the muzzle and set up for the next one. Given that the average trigger press is under a quarter-second, most of the time is lost in the transition process. There are a couple of key training points here as part of this drill that can help.
The purpose of this drill is to train yourself to avoid the common errors of lingering, over-confirming or wasting any valuable time on a transition shot.
The single-shot evolution allows you to focus specifically on the transition round only. The two-round evolution trains you to manage an added layer of complexity with a second-round transition.
It may take 14 rounds for that second evolution, but decreasing visual-dwell time and differentiating splits from transitions with specific focus on rapid, bi-directional horizontal and diagonal muzzle movement is well worth the effort.
Eliminating unnecessary visual confirmation and even reconfirmation reduces the amount of time between each break. If you put this worker bee on a timer—even after a few runs—and incorporate those key training points, you will notice a reduction in individual transition times resulting in an overall time compression for the full string of fire.
Here’s the Drill
Set up a steel plate (T1) a foot off the ground at the 15-yard line. Right behind that plate, place a paper target (T2) so that it is also directly above it. Place another target (T3) at the 5-yard line to the left of T1/T2 and the last one (T4) at the 10-yard line to the right of T1/T2. Shooters seeking more of a challenge may increase difficulty by reducing target size, increasing distance or setting a greater penalty for a miss.
There are two evolutions of this drill. The first is a single-shot-only iteration resulting in a total of seven rounds. The second is a two-round evolution resulting in a total of 14 rounds.
Single Shot
Start with a holstered pistol, hands below your gun belt. On the buzzer or “go” signal, draw from the holster to T1 (steel) and place one round in the visual center. Immedi- ately move your muzzle up to T2 (above the steel) and put one in the A-box. Then one round back on steel (T1). Then another on T3 (A-box hit). Quickly move back to steel (T1) for another. Put one more on T4 (A-box hit) and finish with the last round on steel (T1) for a total seven of rounds if you shoot it clean.
Key training point one: What tells you you’re ready to press? You’re ready when your sights are aligned. Once you have visual confirmation of alignment, you call the shot before you press the trigger, allowing you to immediately move off target. There’s no reason whatsoever to hang around on that same, already-acquired and dispatched target.
Two Rounds
Start with a holstered pistol, hands below your gun belt. On the buzzer or “go” signal, draw from the holster to T1 (steel) and place two rounds in the visual center. Immediately move your muzzle up to T2 (above the steel) and put two in the A-box. Then two more back on steel (T1). Then two more on T3 (A-box hits). Rapidly move back to steel (T1) for two more. Then put two more on T4 (A-box hits) and finish with the last two rounds on steel for a total of 14 rounds, clean.
Key training point two: Your break time between rounds on the same target should be consistent. But, on that second round, just like in the previous evolution, call your shot before the press and begin your departure and arrival setup process for the next transition immediately after the press.
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