T4
Hour 8,9,10,11,12
References:
MCRP 8-10.3 Pistol Marksmanship M9 (January 2016)
Warrior Skills Level 1
Hour 8: Dry-fire Practice
Get a set of snap caps, and/or the dummy barrel, and use them religiously.
It'll get you additional practice in disassembling and assembling your weapon.
You can (and should) be doing 100 "shots" (or more) in dry fire for every actual round you ever send downrange. You can do fifteen or twenty minutes a day, covering anything you can imagine, for exactly $0.
Hour 9: Range CoF
Here is the current USMC Pistol Qual Course of Fire(CoF):
USMC M9 Pistol CoF and scoring
40 rounds, from 7, 15, and 25 yards.
Max is 400 points.
Try to find a range where you can do that exact CoF without pissing anyone off or breaking any rules.
See how many times you can do it in a session. Four times through would take you maybe an hour, and burn only 160 rounds. Start slow, go faster as you can.
If you can swing it, set up a camera or two, or a smartphone, to video-record your practice. Do an AAR on yourself, and note what you might be doing wrong, or sloppy. Review it before your next shooting session.
Anybody can shoot Expert. It only takes practice.
Here's proof. A well-trained civilian, shooting the official current CoF:
His takeaways are excellent. It's not that hard (while being more difficult than the other services, and most police agencies). For crying out loud, he nails high Expert in 10 minutes or so, in open-toe sandals. It doesn't make you a JSOC ninja, but if you don't have the fundamentals down, you'll suck at it.
And with a pistol, a timer, and 40 rounds, you can knock it out in under 15 minutes.
That means you could do it 4 times in an hour, with rounds left over from 4 boxes of 9mm.
And you should.
Hour 10: Drills and Training
There are approximately one gajillion pistol drills. Type "pistol drills" into the YouTube search box, and you'll find pages of them.
You can do all of them for free during dry fire at home. Then, you can set goals in live-fire and confirm that you've got it.
DO THAT.
One guy a know, a world-champion cowboy shooter, broke in brand new SA Rugers by filling the action with toothpaste, putting snap caps into the cylinder, and doing his shooting drills while watching all his favorite westerns. Like 10,000 times. His actions got butter smooth (obviously, he cleaned the toothpaste out, and properly lubricated the parts, before shooting any live ammo), and he empties a gun in less time that it took you to read this. Like twenty rounds from two SA pistols and a lever gun in single-digit times. With no misses. His routine times for an entire match are lower than some people's times for one or two individual stages in a ten or twelve-stage match.
That's why he's a world champion at a shooting sport with 40-50K participants.
So, how much is your life worth, if you ever need to draw and fire a pistol at someone who means you great bodily harm?
Hour 11: Movement
GET OFF THE X.
Paper targets don't shoot back. Bad guys do. Learn to move while shooting/shoot while moving.
Hour 12: Range CoF
Re-shoot the USMC Pistol course. But do it in motion.
Far to near. Near to far. Side to side at each range stage.
See if you can do all 40 rounds in one constant non-stop, non-fixed spot stage.
I'll let you work out the mags required given the mandatory changes, and you should also practice this dry fire a few dozen(s) of times before trying it live.
Start slow, work to faster.
Use the same score matrix, and see how you compare with doing it standing in concrete.
We want to train for success, and build on earlier skills.
Bear in mind you've already improved on most military pistol training below the JSOC level.
While watching Aesop's recommended YouTube vids, I found this one which really changed how I think about training to shoot (pistol) in a real world situation.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0rGtXh23I
I think this is significant. Throws water on the concept of improving speed by merely getting faster at what you train to do slowly (and accurately). Approaches speed & accuracy (i.e., real world situation) from a totally different conceptual direction. This vid really changed something for me. I plan on trying this.
Couldn't disagree more.
ReplyDeleteRob Leatham can yak about shooting all he wants.
He probably fires somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter to half a million rounds a year, and has for two-three decades, or something equally recockulous.
Grip and trigger control are essentials of shooting properly, for everyone.
But when you have the muscle memory of 10M+ rounds fired under your belt, and a custom-tuned race gun, your need for sights has become a wee bit redundant compared to Joe Average still working on getting to his first 1,000 rounds, let alone getting his next 999,000 rounds under his belt.
What he's talking about is instinct shooting, in his case honed through shooting more rounds than the entire U.S. military has fired in training in the same period of time, not counting actual warfare.
If sights were worthless, and placement didn't matter, there'd be no need for sights on guns, and no scoring rings on targets. Or hell, no targets at all, right?
All he's advocating, from a position of personal excellence honed over decades of experience, is that Stevie Wonder can be a better pistol shooter than you.
Absent a hell of a lot of practice, t'ain't so, McGee.
This is the equivalent of having the MLB batting champ tell you hitting is easy: just hit the pitch hard over the fence.
Hey, thanks for the insight, dude, I'm sure I'll get drafted by the Dodgers tomorrow with that earth-shattering tip.
It's Miles DeMer teaching downhill skiing in Better Off Dead:
"Go that way, really fast; if something gets in your way, turn."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEHZJNQ5Y4A
Funny in a movie; as professional coaching, not so much.
If you're going to shoot, learn allthe fundamentals, including a steady grip and a steady trigger press.
When you've got as many millions of rounds as Leatham has in your record book, and you've got a wall covered with shooting trophies, we can talk about making the white belt the one for mastery, sensei.