I inevitably get variations of this question after posting new pistol drill videos: What is the best pistol drill to practice?
The answer is easy: Drawing the gun from the holster. The second most important skill to master is placing the gun back into the holster. As a matter of fact, short of getting into an actual gunfight, holster work will be the single most dangerous thing most of you will ever do with a handgun.
Right about now, some of you will have the urge to chime in and argue the point. Topics like sight alignment, muzzle awareness, manual of arms, natural point of aim, trigger management, gun safety rules, etc, etc, etc will be made.
It’s lost on me at this point, so let me explain.
I have been in this industry a long, long, long time. I have trained new shooters. I have trained cops. I have trained SWAT officers. I have trained contractors. I have trained active US Military Soldiers. I have trained housewives. Gun guys. Old men. And honest to goodness, physically disabled shooters.
The biggest tell between a good shooter and a great shooter is his ability and proficiency to draw from and re-insert a gun into a holster while under duress.
If I have seen it once, I have seen it literally 1000 times. Somebody who “knows how to shoot” looks like a monkey humping a football when you insert holster work into their responsibility matrix. This isn’t just a new shooter phenomena. It’s something I see with life long gun guys.
Took me a while to figure it out, but it came to me one day while watching some students shooting for fun at lunch. The casual shooter, even one who has a holster, will start their shooting sequence with the gun in hand, possibly pressed out. They will shoot, explain, comment and otherwise expound all kinds of “expert” feedback on a gun’s characteristics, handling and accuracy all the while never working it from the holster.
If you aren’t drying firing while drawing from a holster, that’s leaving a lot of skill on the table. If a shooter isn’t drawing a gun from a holster when running a live drill, he’s leaving A TON of skill on the table.
Once you have figured out enough about a gun to not ventilate yourself, next it’s time to work it from the holster. Every. Single. Time.
Sincerely,
Marky
www.John1911.com
“Shooting Guns & Having Fun”
Areas of focus: Defense and National Security, Modern Light Weapons, Small Arms, Weapons Training.
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