![\"\"](\"http:\/\/dryfiretrainingcards.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/men-woman-range-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI see this almost every time I go to a range during public hours\u2026<\/p>\n
The debate of how far out to put the target.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Put it too close and it doesn\u2019t look very \u201ccool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Put it too far and it would be embarrassing to miss.<\/p>\n
Should I put it at 21 feet because of the \u201c21 foot rule?\u201d\u00a0 First off, there is no 21 foot rule.\u00a0 Tueller didn’t call it a rule and he’s refuted that claim numerous times since.\u00a0 Second, 21 feet is kind of an arbitrary distance that the FBI came up with in the 1930s for the average length of a residential hallway…it was a time when cops used revolvers and the sights sucked.<\/p>\n
Should I put it at 11 feet since half of law enforcement fatalities happen within 11 feet?<\/p>\n
Should I put it at 9 feet since an \u201caverage\u201d self-defense encounter happens within 3 yards, lasts 3 seconds, and 3 rounds are fired.<\/p>\n
The answer is a little simpler and a little more flexible than you may think.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of distances that are important.<\/p>\n
The first distance is 6-10 feet.<\/strong><\/p>\n 6 feet is about as close as you can get to a hanging paper target without the muzzle blast from normal self-defense rounds moving the paper too much.\u00a0 6-10 feet is close enough that ANY gun\/ammo combination can shoot 1\u201d or better groups.<\/p>\n Drilling holes flat footed at the 6-10 foot range is an indication that you can align the muzzle properly and press the trigger without disturbing muzzle alignment.<\/p>\n Any flyers or problems that show up here will be magnified with distance, stress, speed, and movement.<\/p>\n Grip, stance, breathing, and follow-through all help, but muzzle alignment and trigger press are the only two things that are vital.<\/p>\n This SEEMS like it should be simple, but what I\u2019ve found over time is that only about 10% of shooters who carry regularly\u2026including military, law enforcement, competition, and concealed carry permit holders\u2026can actually shoot a 5 round 1\u201d group at 6-10 feet with perfect lighting and no time constraints.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re in the 90%<\/strong> who throw an occasional shot at 6-10 feet, it means is that you\u2019ve got some of what I call \u201clow-hanging opportunities for improvement\u201d<\/strong> that will be magnified with speed, distance, movement and stress.\u00a0 Work that you do here gets incredibly HIGH leverage results and will impact all shooting that you do, regardless of the gun, distance, or speed.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019re drilling holes at 6-10 feet\u2026then what?<\/strong><\/p>\n It depends on what phase of learning you\u2019re in.<\/em><\/p>\n Whether you’re building a basic skill or trying to make it resilient.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re trying to build skill, you want to aim for a distance where you\u2019ve got a 75%-90% success rate, regardless of the size of the target, speed of shooting, stress level, or speed of movement.<\/p>\n That may be slow fire at 5, 25, 50, or even 100 yards, rapid fire, shooting while moving, or whatever combination of speed, accuracy, stress, and movement that puts you in that 75%-90% success range.<\/p>\n That means that you’re hitting your intended target 7-9 times out of 10 and the misses tell you where the edge of your performance envelope is.<\/p>\n People carrying with the intent of using a firearm to save lives should strive to be able to make head shots out to 25 yards with boring regularity on-demand with no warmup and body shots out to 50-100 yards 80-100% of the time.\u00a0 < This is particularly important for law enforcement in the age of active shooters and terrorist attacks.\u00a0 When you can deliver hits at distance, distance becomes your friend.<\/p>\n At first, you want to focus on perfection and a 99%-100% success rate, but once you’re dialed in, you want to start expanding your performance envelope.<\/p>\n For IDPA, \u201csuccess\u201d might be -0 hits.\u00a0 For USPSA, it might be A-zone.<\/p>\n BUT, depending on what you\u2019re doing, you might need\/want to relax your definition of success.\u00a0 As an example, if you\u2019re shooting at 50 yards, shooting fast, or training for self-defense while moving laterally off-the-x, you might call success anything in the -1 or B zone (reduced silhouette)\u2026or it might be ANY hit on target.<\/p>\n But the goal should always be to make precise hits faster, fast strings of fire more accurate, and do it under more and more challenging conditions.<\/p>\n The way you want to structure your practice is to start with drills where you\u2019re shooting at a 99%-100% success rate, push conditions until you’re at 75%-90%, and then end with 99%-100% again.<\/p>\n I like to think of it as a sandwich.<\/p>\n Start with a sure-thing, push it, and then end with a sure-thing.<\/p>\n As we cover in Praxis<\/a>, this will optimize learning speed and give you the most bang-for-the-buck for your training time and training dollars.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got the skill built and you\u2019re working on making it resilient to stress\u2026by whatever means of stress inoculation you happen to be using\u2026then you might want to push things to the point where you\u2019re only succeeding 25% of the time\u2026but you still want to dial stuff back to where you know your performance envelope where you can succeed 75-90% of the time and end with a win.<\/p>\n How\u2019s this play out at the range?<\/p>\n Start with a few rounds at 6-10 feet with sterile conditions, push time, distance, speed, movement, and stress until you\u2019re in the 75-90% success range, and then end with a few reps at 6-10 feet again.<\/p>\n As you see, no matter how fast-and-cool or how tactical you want to be, it all comes back to a solid foundation of the fundamentals\u2026muzzle alignment and trigger press.<\/p>\n Get those down as a solid foundation and the sky is the limit.<\/p>\n Skip over them in an attempt to get to the \u201ccool\u201d stuff quicker and it\u2019s like driving a sports car with the parking brake on and a clogged air filter\u2026it\u2019s simply impossible to shoot up to your potential.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why shooters at all levels\u2026from new shooters to guys retiring from tier I and special mission units go through our training and report dramatic improvements in performance.<\/p>\n If you are looking to build skills that you and your loved ones can depend on in a pinch, you really need to \u00a0go the Praxis Dynamic Gun Fight training >HERE<\/a><\u00a0 There’s no other training like it and no other way to build this much life-saving, threat-stopping skill, this fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see this almost every time I go to a range during public hours\u2026 The debate of how far out to put the target. Put it too close and it doesn\u2019t look very \u201ccool.\u201d Put it too far and it would be embarrassing to miss. Should I put it at 21 feet because of the … Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advanced-pistol-drills-performance-neurology","category-brain-based-pistol-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t