While I’m on a roll today, I thought I’d share another shooting-oriented exercise from the Marcus Bag of Tricks. Caveat as always — I’m not a firearms instructor, I work on enhancing performance in people who have to perform under high stress, and some of them carry guns and shoot bad people, so I have the opportunity to test this stuff out. Smiting evil and all that, you know?
GOAL: Enhance speed of drawstroke by improving bio-mechanical efficiency through improving visual and kinesthetic processing.
This exercise assumes the shooter has previously been trained on the handgun drawstroke. With modifications, can be utilized to quickly train the novice in handgun drawstroke.
1. Review elements of draw stroke.
2. Draw with eyes open. Pay attention to FEELING of body (kinesthetics) while drawing.
3. Reholster.
4. Draw with eyes open. Pay attention to FEELING.
5. When sights are aligned, and everything FEELS right, close eyes. Break shot.
6. Open eyes. Check body position, sight alignment. Shot where it’s supposed to be? Yes, proceed. No, repeat until your shot is where you were aiming when you CLOSED your eyes. Pay attention to what you FEEL — the kinesthetics — and utilize appropriate visualization (scroll down through this blog and find the post on SHOOTING WITH THE MIND’S EYE).
7. When you can consistently place the shot with your eyes closed, after steering in with your eyes, continue.
8. Now do the entire draw stroke eyes CLOSED. FEEL the process. Open your eyes when you feel you are in alignment. If yes, proceed. If not, make any adjustments as necessary until you can consistently draw with your eyes closed and have your sights aligned with your aiming point on the target.
9. When you can consistently do this, then add the shot. Eyes closed. Repeat until you are hitting your aiming point with your eyes closed…through the entire firing stroke.
Training Points:
Don’t overthink this. Pay attention to your kinesthetics.
If you’re doing this alone, be cautious of your muzzle and who’s around you.
If you’re coaching someone on this, be cautious of their muzzle and who’s around you both.
When done properly, this exercise refines the kinesthetic map of the drawstroke, smoothing out the presentation and making it more efficient. Fast way to shave a lot off your time from holster to first shot.