Mike Brewer

I'm glad the advice helped. Now that your marksmanship is on a good road, let's talk about working out of the holster. This is just my own preferred method, and there are millions of other ways out there. This isn't as fast as some of the race guys' methods, but it's still very fast and it's more tactically sound, so give it a try and then look around for modifications.

The key here is consistency and precision. This is a case where practice doesn't make perfect - perfect practice just makes precision.

Empty your gun and lock up all live ammo. Make sure that there's no way on earth that a live round can make it into your weapon, and then double check to make sure.

Next, gear up. Wear your gun the way you'll be carrying it. If you wear outside the pants with a shirt flopped over the gun, then train that way. Inside the waistband holster? Train it so. Don't make things easier for the sake of feeling good about your speed in the basement only to find out that you can't unfuck the gun from your jacket when you need to in real life.

I carry outside the pants on a high ride belt holster just behind my blue jeans seam aft of my hip pocket. I drop a shirt or jacket over my gun and so that's the configuration I'll address here. There are two ways to make the initial movement, one of which I am fonder of. My preferred method is to raise my off hand to a protective/offensive position in front of me. I should be able to hit with it, stiff arm someone to keep distance, or protect my gun side in case he tries for my weapon. Remember - just because the off-hand isn't actively engaged in drawing the gun doesn't mean it should be neglected as a weapon.

Next, clear the clothing. I generally do this with my thumb by sweeping my extended thumb backward from my centerline, hand held palm-side down. When I get past the gun, I drop my hand straight down onto the grip. My off-hand is now hovering near the center of my body well clear of the muzzle and the line it will follow. It's bad to shoot yourself through the off-side palm.

As soon as the muzzle clears leather, I pivot it forward toward the bad guy. Reason being, if I need to fire on a closing adversary or from extreme close range, I want that muzzle on him, not the floor. From there, the gun comes up to meet my off-side hand and then punches forward to line up the sights. We already talked about grip, so I won't go into it again, but that's the grip you should have as soon as your hands meet. When I say "punch forward," I mean you should keep your head and eyes up and forward facing and push the gun forward into your line of sight. Don't slouch or bring the head/eye down to the gun.

To reholster, reverse the process, keeping the muzzle forward until just before you reholster. Again, the tactical reason is that you want to be ready and able to re-engage a threat at any point.

Now that the basics are there, here's the routine. Again, do this sans ammo, and make sure there's no way in the world a round could accidentally find its way into your gun. Execute the technique I just described in a slow (five seconds per repetition) pace. If you find yourself feeling clumsy, go even slower. Do at least one-hundred slow, disciplined repetitions. Make each one exct and precise. If you screw one of them up, stop, reholster, and get it right. Reinforce correct execution, and don't let yourself get sloppy.

Next, do a hundred reps at a three-second pace. Same thing. Go a little faster (this is still a slow draw), but push yourself to execute everything correctly in less time. Get used to that idea. It's not about "Going Faster," but about doing the same things with equal smoothness and precision in less time. If you think about going faster, you're going to end up so focused on speed that your technique will fall apart. On the other hand, if you focus on doing things right in less time, the idea that you're "doing things right" comes first.

Work your way to less and less time. When you start flubbing often, you're at the right speed. Back it down until you're getting it right every time again. This is akin to the method for determining grip strength. Grip til you shake, and then back off until it levels off, remember? Well, in this case, you cut more and more time until you start screwing up and then back off until you stop screwing up. Now it's time to hit the range. You should have around a thousand reps of this movement in dry-fire mode before you ever set foot on the range. Not only that, but they should be perfect, since you stopped and didn't count the bad ones.

On the range, load one round. Holster in the carry position. Don't worry about going fast - just do the five second pace again. Pay attention to each piece of the motion and how it flows, only end the draw stroke with a trigger squeeze and a well-placed shot. Drop the slide and reholster. Go through the whole painful process again. Five second pace, three second pace, two second pace, a hundred reps each. At two seconds, you're executing a slow, casual draw. Once you get so intimately familiar with that motion that you're doing it in your sleep, do it again with a full magazine. BE DISCIPLINED! Make yourself go slow. Resist the urge to speed up. After you've invested five or six thousand repetitions of dry fire and live fire drawing, it will be so natural and smooth that you can start cutting time.

For that phase, you'll want a buddy and an IDPA or IPSC shot timer. The idea then is to wait for the signal tone, thn draw and fire at the casual pace. Without neglecting safety, you're now going to push to do it in less time again. Now, accuracy is your measure of success. Go as smoothly and quickly as you can and do it in less and less time until your accuracy starts to suffer noticeably. If you did the dry fire the way I've suggested, I'd wager your time from draw to first shot will be hovering in the 1 to 1.3 second range. Like before, get to where your accuracy begins to falter and then back off until you get it right more often than not (70% success rate is a good guideline). After 500-1000 rounds of disciplined and attentive practice, I'd be surprised if you weren't nailing the draw and a double tap with accuracy in 1.2 or so. It'll get better the more you practice correctly, and dry fire reps are every bit as good as the real deal, so invest the time in home training. It'll pay dividends.

Let me know how well this pans out for you. I'm glad the last set of tips helped.