Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns March Shooting Drill--FAST

I know that seems slow when you're shooting it, but six and a half seconds is pretty dang fast. The FAST drill creators consider anything sub 7 seconds to be "advanced".

http://pistol-training.com/drills/the-fast

I finally got around to doing this today. First run was 8.05 then a bunch of runs with misses trying to find my speed limit. I Thought I had a 5.44 but pulled 2 just off the bottom of the plate. finished with a 5.97 and a 6.27. I ran the same type of gear setup as Blue except I used a Beretta.

Thanks Blue. I enjoy the drills you post and have run some of my guys through them for fun.

Blue,

Have you run the "El Presidente" drill? I probably have the name wrong, but you set up 3 silhouette targets at 15 yards (the same target you're shooting in the drill you filmed). You load your handgun however you want. On the tone you draw and fire two rounds into each target, mandatory reload, then fire 2 more rounds into each target. It's an old drill and I believe we "borrowed" it from IPSC, incorporating it into our qualification course.

I've shot that drill but it's been a long time since I have.

Well, I was first commissioned in 1984 and quit in 1999...so the drill is rather old...like me. A friend of mine at the time, Andy Harris, was nationally ranked in IPSC. He helped the owners of a local gun store run it. He taught me another drill he simply termed "The Wild Willy". You place a silhouette at 10 yards, get in the ready position with your firearm holstered, and at the tone you stepped quickly over a line (he actually had a super-fast little jump over the line) and dumped 6 rounds into the target as fast as you could pull the trigger. It sounded easy enough...man, was I wrong! When I first started training with him he could take MY Glock and empty 6 rounds into the silhouette in half or less than half of the time it took me to put 6 into the silhouette.

That sounds like a variation of the Bill Drill, which is draw and fire six rounds into the A-Zone (but from 7 yards). I can do that in around 2.40.

But adding a step at the beginning would slow it way down. You don't realize how much a single step can slow you down until you put it to a timer. For me, it's easier and faster to shoot while I keep moving than to move-stop-shoot.

Our Sheriff never would let us train the commissioned deputies to shoot while moving. They felt there was too much liability. Given the sorry shots most cops are, including the ones in my agency, I kinda of agreed with him. But, that meant when the SHTF they'll do exactly as trained; if they weren't trained to move for cover and fire, they won't. They'll draw and fire, rooted to the spot they're on until either the bad guy is dead or they were. We had a Hogan's Alley set up, but that's more for target identification and shoot/don't shoot differentiation, and, there were very, VERY generous time allotments to finish the course. A couple of our deputies competed in IPSC, and they laughed every time someone virtually walked through the course, never sought cover, never gave any voice commands...etc, etc, etc. We tried to follow case law and make it as realistic as possible, but we had to dumb it down or fully half of our department would not have qualified to carry a firearm. It was very discouraging at times.

That is El Presidente but it is from the 7.



Travis

not to be contentious but 10 not 7
http://www.uspsa.org/classifiers/99-11.pdf

…although when Jeff came up with the drill the targets were originally 3 YARDS not 3 FEET apart---that makes it a lot tougher.

The whole story is buried somewhere in the Gunsite Garantuan Gossip books. Cooper was in South America training the body guards of some muckedy-muck (El Presidente) and came up with the drill as a fast assessment as to whether they had any basic skill. He said that if they could do the drill in 10 seconds, they were good. Unfortunately the drill then became so standard that it became irrelevant---top guys were shooting it in the low 4, high 3 second range.

As noted by Greg, I think the El Prez is still a relevant drill if you shoot it as originally designed (10 meters/yds back with the targets spaced 3 meters/yds apart) with a real defensive pistol using realistic gear.

Cooper also considered "clean" scores as the only ones that counted.

That is an awesome sight to see for we mere mortals.

……at the Chapman Academy for an alumni re-union in the very early 80's after everyone had left, a few of us stuck around and just did drills for fun----John Sayle, myself, Mike Plaxco and a couple of others----Mike shot it in 3.9 IIRC. There's not a lot of wasted motion, that's for sure.

I would have LOVED to have seen that. I keep my 10mm loaded with the original Norma load: 200 grain semi wadcutter FMJ at 1200 fps. It's not quite that fast out of my Glock barrel...but it's close, and it has a bit of snap to it when fired. I'm going to start practicing the grip change Blue was describing...moving the left hand up one finger on the right hand. Just doing it with no gun I can tell that there is less "up" available if the pistol is gripped that way. Now I have to unlearn 32 years of gripping the pistol the old way.

I finally got around to shooting this today. My best time with glock 19 was 5.23 with most runs in the 5.40's.

Best with my 1911 was 6.24 with most runs running 6.80's. Twice on the reload the magazine release stayed depressed not allowing the magazine to seat. On one run I engaged the thumb safety after reload. That will slow you down.

Dink

…..that's pretty darned good, Dink.

Thanks.

Dink

Tomorrow is the last day to shoot guys.

It's hard to believe with all the pistoleros here only six of us posted our times.

Dink

I did this again Saturday with a CZ P09 out of a Safariland 6004 ( hit with a heat gun to get it to fit) best time was a 6.99. I had a bunch of throwaway runs where I missed a shot that were faster. I like this drill.

Bump for mojo.