Speed up your 1-Handed Drawstroke From Concealment

Today, we’re going to talk about 1-handed drawstrokes from concealment.

I sprained my wrist falling on the ice a couple of weeks ago, so I haven’t been able to use my left hand while shooting since then.

This weekend, I even shot an IDPA match 1 handed, because that’s all I had.  It was slower, but not THAT much slower.  My time from beep to first hit on target from concealment with a subcompact wearing an IWB holster was still less than 1.3 seconds and my splits were still about .4 seconds and under .25 for close targets and on one stage I ended up down zero on 6 targets that required 3 hits apiece.

To be clear, I’m not patting myself on the back…just making a couple of points.

First, I have gone out and done live fire practice once on my own outside, once at an indoor range and 3 times running drills outside with other guys in the last 4 months.  99.9% of my practice has been doing dry fire drills for 5, sometimes 10 minutes per day 5-6 days a week.

Second, there seems to be an expectation that when you go from 2 handed shooting to 1 handed shooting that everything is going to go to hell in a hand basket.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Clearing cover takes a little longer and needs to be smoother and more precise with 1 hand, and it’s easier to manage recoil with 2 hands than with just one, but bullet placement shouldn’t be affected and once you get your grip on your gun, your first shot speed shouldn’t be slower.

If you’re less accurate with 1 hand than with 2, you need to ask yourself why…

1.  Is your gun too heavy?  (Probably not)
2.  Are you rushing your shots?
3.  Are you trying to make up time?
4.  Are you letting your concern about recoil control in the future hurt your trigger control right now?
5.  Is your 1-handed drawstroke bringing your sights up outside of the line between your dominant eye and the target?  It’s probably going to be slightly different than your 2-handed drawstroke and if you don’t practice it on a regular basis, it will take you longer than necessary to line up your sights.

If you don’t have muscle fatigue, you should be able to bring your sights up into alignment between your dominant eye and the target and press the trigger straight to the rear without disturbing sight alignment, and make perfect hits 1-handed.

It’s going to take longer between shots for your sights to come back into alignment, but that shouldn’t affect bullet placement…you just have to exercise a little visual patience and wait until the sights are aligned again.

Keep in mind that in a fight for your life, you have the rest of your life to solve the problem…and 99% of the time, it’s worth it to take .1 seconds to get your sights on target and press straight back than to rush the shot, miss, and need to take .25 or .5 seconds to actually get the NEXT round on target.

Here’s the Facebook version:

Smooth, consistent technique is important, but when you increase the stress level, the speed that you’re moving, and add in the chaos of real life (gloves, coats, 1 hand, etc.), the importance of smooth, consistent technique shoots through the roof.

If you’re serious about mastering the defensive pistol, you really owe it to yourself to go through the 21 Day Alpha Shooter home study course.  It focuses on the fundamentals of shooting…the stuff that will have the biggest impact on your ability to hit paper targets on the range, and run and gun and put effective hits on targets that are trying to do you harm.  Learn more by clicking >HERE<

If you’ve got any questions or comments on this, let me know by commenting below.

Also, a couple of other things…

First, last weekend, 60ish of y’all signed up for 21 Day Alpha Shooter for the “Blue Lives Matter” promotion.  We’re donating a deck of Dry Fire Training Cards (and a little more) for each sale that comes in through that promotion.  I’ve been in touch with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department Range Master and we’re meeting up next week to get him the decks.  Thanks to all who helped make this possible.

Second, I need some crash test dummies.  I have got a pistol shooting video diagnostics package that I offer that costs $197.  The people who have gone through it so far either can’t or don’t want to have their analysis videos posted online.  So, what I need are a handfull of people (4 or 5) to do 10-20 minutes of specific dry fire drills in front of a camera and upload them to me.  I’ll analyze them and then I’ll do a full workup on your drawstroke and reload technique for free.  My plan is to post the videos online as examples to show people who want to see examples of the video diagnostics package.  So, if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP by commenting below.  (Michael N…you’re in already)

Please follow and share: