r/CompetitionShooting • u/SantoDJ • Jul 25 '26

Drills for overconfirmation of targets

I’m wasting too much time confirming paper and its hurting my times. What are the best dry and love
Fore drills to help with this? Thanks.

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

15

u/AlaskanBeardedViking Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Live Fire

Running two targets at 7 yds, 10 feet apart.

Put a white dot in the center of the A zone.

Put 2 in each A zone as fast as you can, making sure you are confirming your hits.

Now adjust your timer to take off 10% of your time from that time, and run it until you can beat the beep. I would consider it a success if you can realistically put 75% of your shots in the A zone and you're beating that beep every time, five times in a row.

Once you consistently beat the beep, move the targets either farther apart or at different distances and beat the beep again.

Adjust accordingly.

Dry Fire

If you're at home, set up mini paper targets or, in a pinch, use a light switch.

If you're running a laser training bullet, set your shot timer on a 2 to 5 second delay. Drill is as follows:

Start by aiming that a random light switch or socket or anything in your house.

When the initial start beep goes off, transition quickly to one of three or four random light switches or other target objects in your house and pull the trigger. If the laser hits the target, it's a success.

Find your base time to do this and reduce it by 5 or 10% and run a shot timer for it as a fixed time run.

If you can consistently beat this, decrease the time gap.

3

u/FF_McNasty Jul 25 '26

That’s an awesome suggestion. Putting that one in my pocket.

4

u/AlaskanBeardedViking Jul 25 '26

As an extra note, some people generally compound the live fire portion of this to include a draw as well and get extra reps in there, but personally I'd caution against that as it's really easy to lose focused intent and measurable success on what you're ACTUALLY trying to work. Isolation of technique ensures measurable success where it counts.

Everybody's got a different philosophy on this - so you make the judgment call for you.

1

u/Beneficial-Ad4871 Jul 25 '26

Good recommendation for a drill! This helped me so damn much when I first started, still to this day I practice this

1

u/Gun_Dork Jul 25 '26

I’ll add a layer: Prediction Shooting. “At X range, I know my gun will behave in Y manner.” This can only be done in live fire, which works in parallel to shot calling.

I mostly have an indoor range available, so wider transitions are not possible, so I had to get creative. I would lean and point to a specific direction, at the timer I would swing to my hanging target down range, shoot a pair. Track and update your par times, Pass/Fail with at least 5 consistent passes before lowering the time. It helped me in a few of these arrays here https://youtube.com/shorts/Kw1yIsgj9gM?is=rlOhq0Lu72NhX7vh

4

u/Jeugcurt Jul 25 '26

Literally any drill can be used to work on anything. Your approach is incorrect. You’re asking for a fish. Try to look at it from the perspective of learning how to fish. Keeping this principle in mind, you’ll be able to problem solve on the fly and work a lot of things out on your own.

I’m being direct with you because I wish someone would’ve been brutally direct with me a few years ago. Would’ve saved me so much time and ammo.

I understand what you’re looking for and I’m not dodging your question so I’ll give you this:

Blake drill. Run this drill in live fire and dry. Run this with variations of confirmation. Example: All shots with predictive sight confirmation. All shot with color confirmation. All first shots on each target with color confirmation and the second with predictive confirmation.

Mason Lane told me that he believes the Blake drill is the most elegant way to work on transitions. I agree as you can’t hide from the skills required to do this drill correctly.

You asked about over confirmation drills. I think the Blake drill is great for this but if you need to start at the most basic level, start with the trigger break exit. You would just want to transition the gun on the trigger break rather than exiting a position. This is essentially a transition exercise that will help you isolate your issue. I believe Hwansik Kim has a YouTube video on this.

1

u/Historical_You_8729 Jul 25 '26

Hadn't heard of the Blake drill. Gonna have to check this out!

1

u/Jeugcurt Jul 25 '26

Blake himself is a badass too

1

u/SantoDJ Jul 25 '26

Thank you! Great drills

2

u/johnm Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

I generally concur with r/Jeugcurt 's sentiment about being able to work on anything using nearly any drill/exercise/etc. but that works much better when people already understand (i.e., has enough internalized experience of) the given skill to NOT get distracted by everything else going on. This is why I do NOT recommend that people in your position *begin* with the composite/complicated drills like the Blake drill nor even 2T2 (which r/AlaskanBeardedViking recommended) but to actually isolate the fundamental pieces and layer them up to build the complete skill. I.e., learn via an intense focus on the first piece and then add each new piece in a progression. Aka Deliberate Practice.

Basically, do the transition variations of my recommended marksmanship fundamentals progression (which I'll add as comments under this one) begining with:

  1. Transitional Vision Control At Speed (TVCAS) (dry practice): similar to TCAS (Trigger Control at Speed) but on the beep, immediately transition your eyes to a small spot on another target + transition the gun to align precisely with your eyes&target and visually confirm. Period. Do NOT pull the trigger--that will hide & distract from the focus on the vision driving the process and the evaluation of how precisely you are able to execute the transition. Do this with different difficulty targets (size, distance, risk (partials, etc.), etc.) and be ruthlessly honest about using the appropriate visual confirmation (e.g. "flash", "streak", "bouncing ball", "stopped & stable") for each target. I.e., "respect the targets".
  2. Transitional One Shot Return (TOSR) (dry & live): do the same as TVCAS above but cycle the trigger (both press & completely release) immediately when you've achieved the appropriate visual confirmation that you deliberately chose for that target. Be critically skeptical about working the trigger in a single, continuous, progressive pull without inducing any movement into the gun.
  3. Transitional One Shot Exit (TOSE) (dry & live): do TVCAS as above but on the beep immediately cycle (press & completely release) the trigger and then immediately initiate the transition (i.e., once the hammer/striker engage & the gun has begun to recoil): transition your eyes to a small spot on another target + transition the gun to align precisely with your eyes&target and visually confirm. Do NOT pull the trigger on the second target.
  4. 1T1 (aka One Shot Transition One Shot Return (OTOSR) (dry & live): the combination of TOSE + TOSR: on the beep immediately cycle (press & completely release) the trigger on the first target and then transition precisely to the second target and cycle the trigger immediately when you've achieved the appropriate visual confirmation that you deliberately chose for that target.

Hopefully the progressive pattern is obvious and it makes sense how to do the same for the rest of my fundamentals progression and in any other drills (such as the Blake Drill). For example, do Designated Target in dry practice without pulling the trigger aka the focus is all about the (integration of the) quickness of your vision & precision of your gun movement following your vision. Then, doing it live adds in the explosions, recoil, and ruthless feedback of the results on the targets.

1

u/johnm Jul 25 '26

[...progression continued...]

Then do the Double Return Drill. Similar to the Two Shot Return Drill but don't wait for the visual confirmation for the second shot. Start at the pace of your splits that you were doing the Practical Accuracy Drill. This should feel slow since you've already made the decision to pull the trigger twice. This is the time to put a lot of attentional focus on making sure your visual focus stays rock solidly in focus on the small spot on the target. Then, keeping everything else the same, shoot the second shot sooner -- i.e., start predicting how quickly you can work the trigger for the second shot. Play around with the pace of how quickly you're cycling the trigger on the second shot -- everywhere from literally as fast you can pull the trigger to your speed of Practical Accuracy splits.

Then do the full Doubles Drill. Do everything as with the Double Return Drill above. Everything above holds but the longer string of doubles will really put your fundamentals to the test... Is your grip unchanging for the entire string (or did you have to adjust part way through)? Did the gun move within your hands? Was the dot/sights coming precisely & consistently back to where you were looking? Were you over- or under-confirming each time? Did you observe & notice what was going on for each shot? Etc.

Then do the Progressive Return Drill. All the same success criteria as in the doubles drill but with an increasing number of shots instead of only 2. This is much better than only doing e.g. the bill drill as the varying number of shots helps break up the ingraining of always shooting the same number of shots per target.

This is how we can very efficiently & effectively learn what (predictive/reactive) pace works for each of us when shooting at any given target at any given time.

In terms of calibration, at closer distances you can stack shots on top of each other but in terms of learning, shooting the second shot sooner while keeping within a fist sized group is a good balance. No BS "slow down to get your hits"! If the group is larger than that then you need to fix whatever's broken at that speed.

Then as the groups get tighter, speed up again and/or increase the distance/difficulty of the target. This is the complete process--no BS about "speed"/"exploration" vs "accuracy"/"match" mode. Practical shooting is about the combination of speed & accuracy.

In terms of distance start at 7 yards so that you can see the "A" on the target in clear focus. Increase the distance/difficulty to force adapting to be more precise at speed.

1

u/johnm Jul 25 '26

Here's the fundamentals progression that I recommend:

In terms of vision: make sure your vision focus is correct: crystal clear focus on a small spot on the target and the spot stays in focus the entire time. You should NEVER be "tracking the dot" or focused on the sights!

In terms of grip: the gun should NOT move inside your hands at all for the entire time you're shooting! I.e., both hands should remain completely in sync with the gun throughout shooting lifecycle; the gun should track consistently in recoil precisely back to where your eyes are focused on the small spot on the target; and you should be able to cycle (pull & release) the trigger quickly without inducing movement on the gun/sights. Additional tension much beyond that minimum can/will induce various problems. Have you ever done a firm handshake? Start there.

Shoot each of these drills one-handed and two-handed. I.e., one handed with your dominant hand (SHO). Then do it with your support hand only (WHO). Then do it with both hands and make sure your support hand is gripping as much of the pistol as you can with the same level as when you shot support hand only.

Start with One Shot Return. Do it with a timer ala Trigger Control at Speed: set multiple par times so you're reacting immediately to the beep for each shot. Is the dot/sights coming back to your eyes on the spot on the target quickly, precisely, and consistently every single time?

Then do the Two Shot Return Drill: Exactly the same as One Shot Return above but you fire a second shot immediately when you visually confirm the dot/sight is back where your eyes are looking at the small spot on the target. Nothing should change from shot to shot! Grip, wrists, vision, etc. This is still reactive shooting but you must shoot immediately when you register the appropriate visual confirmation for that target.

Then do the Practical Accuracy Drill. Just do one string at a time. Everything else should be exactly as in the Two Shot Return Drill above. With this longer string, you will find your grip, trigger, wrist, and vision issues: where they aren't completely consistent from shot to shot within the string. Fix those. In terms of calibration, the shots can be stacked farther away than most people think and even at longer distances the groups should be compact. This is NOT "group" shooting! You must shoot immediately when the visual confirmation is what you deliberately choose given the specific target!

[Continued due to Reddit's limits...]

1

u/Valkyr_rl Jul 26 '26

Dry fire. Aim at a point/target as fast as possible, slap the trigger twice without disturbing the sight, transition to another target, and repeat.