Training - 5x5x5 Drill and 100 rounds

A couple of thoughts came together tonight on the range.  We had a beautiful day, I’d had too much indoor time over the past week with all the rain in the Midwest . . . so . . . RANGE TRIP!!!

One of the things I harp on in my classes it that each January each student should buy 1,000 rounds of ammo, budget 100 rounds per month at a minimum and then “practice with purpose"

Another topic that is making the rounds of various firearm FB groups is the 5x5x5 Drill.  5 Rounds, 5 Yards, 5 Seconds.  It wrings out several items, time to first hit, split times, accuracy, follow through, recoil management, smooth trigger press.  This drill is usually shot on a 3x5 file card.  However, since I’m fond of the LETargets SEB target, I used that.  If has 2 circles, 2 squares, 2 triangles, an ocular cavity triangle and a high center mass and pelvic girdle box.  So, I chose to use the six shapes for six 5x5x5 drills, the high center mass and ocular cavity for Gunsite’s “failure” drill formerly called the Mozambique Drill and finally 5 rounds as fast as I could press the trigger into the pelvic girdle.  Round Count . . . 50 rounds.

Here’s the toys I brought for the evening.  100 rounds of ammo, a Gorillapod tripod for my Samsung 7, Dark Angle Blow Out Kit and range refreshments in the form of a Diet Coke. 

I filmed the first two drills so take about 4 minutes and take a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Th0mcIFqV0

Notice anything?  Yep, did a profoundly crappy job of resetting my shirt after each engagement.  Just a reminder to pay attention to detail when you are running your drills.  Other than that the video is a fair representation of what I was attempting to show and talk about.  This is the value of making videos of portions of your training sessions.  It allows you to evaluate yourself much better than trying to remember what you think you did.

After this I proceeded to complete the set of drills with the following results documented on the target.  Bottom line . . . fired 50 rounds, dropped 19 of them for a “score” of 62.  That sucking sound you hear is the final result on target one.  Of course, I have another box of ammo . . . what to do, what to do.  So, I put up a fresh target and repeat the exact same process but this time from a distance of 3 yards, not 5.  And, as you can see from the target below my score improved significantly.  I dropped 8 out of 50 for a final score of 82.  I’m sure the decreased distance is part of the reasons for improvement.  But I also suspect that the preceding 50 rounds of “practice” didn’t hurt either.

So what’s the bottom line?  Shooting is a perishable skill.  If you are telling yourself that a couple summer trips to the range will keep you in ‘tune’ for the whole year . . . please, stop telling yourself stories.

You can get a lot of good work done with 100 rounds of ammunition.  You will naturally work on the foundational building blocks – stance, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger press, follow through, a smooth draw from concealment and a slow – “all the time in the world” holstering when the engagement is over.

The video is a bonus but it allows me to stress the use of the tech you have in your pocket to document your range trips.  Sharpies make it easy to annotate your target, video lets you see what you’re doing in the quiet of your recliner after your range trip.  And all of this lends itself to increasing your documentation of the practice of your craft as well your improvement as a shooter.

So there ya go.  100 rounds of ammo, about an hour of range time, a bit of video, some ink for target annotation . . . and a fine time was had by all!