There never seems to be enough time and money for training in general, but this seems especially true for firearms training. When so many departments are running short staffed, there’s only so much time we can spend in training, so it’s critical instructors use range time efficiently. Hopefully, you and your agency aren’t satisfied with minimum standard training only designed to maintain certification. Our communities, and our families, deserve highly trained and skilled officers.
Designing quality firearms training
When designing quality firearms training, the first step is to have a plan. Hitting the range without a plan is plinking not training. Determine your training needs, objectives and performance goals. Are you going to concentrate on individual skill development, or are your officers ready to build on those skills with advanced and complex drills? When being pressured to do more with less, it may be tempting to put the cart before the horse, but an experienced firearms instructor must be able to recognize the needs of their shooters and plan accordingly.
When concentrating on the development of a specific skill, keep your drills short and simple. Repetition is the first key to developing subconscious competence. These include, but are not limited to, the draw, shooting platform, reloads, trigger manipulation and target acquisition. When building drills to hone these skills, keep them simple to concentrate your attention and focus where it is needed. Fortunately, a lot of these skills can be improved through dry fire practice. It is an easy and cost-effective method of getting a lot of repetitions because no ammo is required.
Dry practice is done without live ammunition and is safe if we are aware of a few dangers. The two points during dry practice where a danger of an unintended discharge exist are the beginning and end of a training session.
At the beginning of a training session, you must ensure the firearm is cleared and ALL ammunition is removed from the practice area. This includes magazines, rounds in pockets, or rounds sitting on the counter. Take all ammunition to another room, then come back to your practice area AND CLEAR THE GUN AGAIN!
At the end of a training session, you are done. Finished. One of the most common errors at the end of the training session is finishing up, loading the gun, then saying, “Just one more rep.” Nope. When the session is over, it’s over. Say out loud to yourself, “This session is over. No more practice.” Leave the area, load your gun, and put it back in the holster. Now, say out loud to yourself, “This gun is now loaded.”
Once you’ve confirmed that everything is unloaded and your training area is safe, it’s time to get started. Here are some suggestions to start your dry practice.
1. Place three (3) 2” sticky notes on the wall. Standing about 10’ from the wall with an unloaded handgun and empty magazines, perform 10 draws from the holster and obtain a sight picture on one sticky note. Gradually increase speed from less than 50% to 90%.
2. From the same position, perform 10 draws from the holster, obtain a sight picture on one sticky note, and add a trigger press. Work towards minimizing the amount of time spent over-confirming your sight picture.
From this point forward, if you have a shot time that allows you to program multiple par times, it can be helpful to set par times for you draw, first target, second target, and so on. If you do not have such a timer, these are still good drills to improve performance.
3. From the same position, perform 10 draws from the holster, obtain a sight picture on the left sticky note, trigger press, transition to the second sticky note, trigger press, transition to the third sticky note, trigger press. Work towards minimizing the amount of time spent over-confirming your sight picture.
4. From the same position, perform 10 draws from the holster, obtain a sight picture on the left sticky note, two trigger presses, transition to the second sticky note, two trigger presses, transition to the third sticky note, two trigger presses. Work towards minimizing the amount of time spent over-confirming your sight picture.
5. From the same position, From the same position, perform 10 draws from the holster, obtain a sight picture on the left sticky note, trigger press, reload, transition to the second sticky note, trigger press, reload, transition to the third sticky note, trigger press. Work towards minimizing the amount of time spent over-confirming your sight picture.
6. After this, repeat the steps 3-5 but work the targets from right to left.
Getting complex
Once the basic firearms skills are established to a satisfactory level, it is time to ramp up the training using more complex and advanced drills. Notice I said satisfactory level. We aren’t looking for perfection before we move on to more advanced drills. While we don’t want to move forward too quickly, only working on basic skills will only develop basic skills. With complex and more advanced drills, we can maximize our training value by incorporating multiple skills into one efficient drill.
Once again, step one is to determine the training objectives, or goals, and formulate a plan. Make a list of the skills and conditions you wish to incorporate into your drill. Once your performance objectives have been established, begin to build drills that contain layered complimentary skills.
A proper complex drill will include many of the skills necessary in a deadly force encounter and should always contain some sort of problem solving, decision-making, or cognitive component. After all, our officer’s brains are their greatest assets. These are range drills for skill advancement not scenario-based training. But that doesn’t mean we can’t include threat assessment, decision making, and problem solving into our drills.
Here’s an example of a fun and challenging complex drill that stacks a lot of skills into one low round count drill. This drill was adapted from a drill by Pat McNamara called the Scrambler Drill:
On command (shot timer) shooter will engage T1 with one (1) shot from P1 using effective cover.
The shooter will then move to P2.
At P2, shooter will engage T1 with one (1) shot from P1 using effective cover.
The shooter will then move to P1 and repeat. Shooters will only shoot one shot from side of cover then move to the other side whether they hit or miss. Shooters will engage until they have 10 total hits as counted by the instructor.
Time stops on last round fired.
Embrace training over practice
As with all drills designed to build and improve firearms skills, repetition is critical to the learning process. Allow time and resources for each shooter to perform each drill at least twice. To get the highest learning potential from the drill, students must have the opportunity to learn from their performance and attempt to improve upon it.
An unfortunate result of past range training culture causes many shooters to play it overly safe on the first attempt at a complex and advanced drill just to get a recorded time or score. For too long, firearms instructors have overemphasized an importance of a time or score. They have placed too high a value on the outcome rather than the individual steps taken to perform the drill. It is impossible to improve in any facet without stretching the boundaries of one’s performance. By playing it safe to get that score, our shooters may never know what they can accomplish.
Another way to look at it is to use sports as an example. Before the season begins, athletes go through training camp to work on performance improvement. Training camp is a time to improve speed, strength, stamina and skills. Once the regular season begins, practices are to maintain the gains made during training camp and work on the game plan for the next opponent.
If we want to improve our firearms skills, we need to create a training culture that embraces training over practice. Performance improvement requires training and pushing skills to their limits. The simple act of encouraging our shooters to go all in on their first attempt will vastly improve their learning potential. And by performing each drill at least twice, it leaves an opportunity for the shooters to learn from the first attempt, adjust accordingly, and cement the experience with lessons learned. This small reversal in approach changes the emphasis of the training from the outcome to the performance. Once we concentrate on performance, the outcome will take care of itself.
To maximize our results on the range set a goal, make a plan, and execute. Be creative and intentional about your course development and the way you encourage students to approach them. With this little shift in perspective and training culture, we can coax the best performance from our shooters.
NEXT: Discover how dynamic tactical firearms drills that integrate problem-solving improve police officers’ response times, accuracy and outcomes in high-stakes gunfights:
