A lot of classes with drills for self defense are extremely low round count…classes and training for combat and CQB are extremely high round count.
There is a misconception by some that shooting a lot of rounds will not yield a lot..and for a an untrained newb that’s true..
Like I said in an earlier post..I took a 2 day course test and today..yesterday was a 1000 rounds of handgun and today was supposed to be another 1000 but it got rained out…
Last weekend I had a CQB course at work in the shoot house and I stopped counting rifle rounds at 740ish..and probably 200 rounds out of the pistol just during transition and buddy carry drills.
Bench
Which is what I was kinda getting at. 200 rounds in an hour at the range seems excessive for a newb to retain any sort of muscle memory in basic mechanics like racking, trigger reset point, mag switching, emergency reloads, failures, etc. During the ammo shortage & ridiculously high prices, I learned to do some basic drills reinforce skill, yet spare ammo. I mostly train for personal / home defense, although I've taken a few tactical type classes. One was a 4 day (Frontsight in NV) and we went through about 750 rounds that entire time.
I've found drills like this to be very helpful.
Randomly load four different magazines with two to four rounds each. When done, shuffle them such that you can't tell which is which, or have a partner load and shuffle them for you. Load one magazine at random, chamber a round, holster your weapon and store the other three on your belt or on the bench in front of you.
When ready, draw and fire two shots at the torso area of the target, then briefly pause and fire a third shot at the head. If you run empty before firing all three shots, perform an emergency reload and fire the remaining shots. Do not anticipate the reloads; focus on maintaining good two-handed shooting fundamentals until the potential need to reload becomes an actual need.
Exercise extreme care when doing live-fire holster drills. If you have little or no experience drawing and quickly firing a loaded weapon, do so with exaggerated slowness at first. Maintain excellent trigger discipline and muzzle awareness all the way through the draw motion until you are fully extended and ready to fire. Worry about drawing and firing quickly only after many safe and successful repetitions at slow speeds.
When you can quickly draw and fire two rounds to the torso and one to the head, reloading quickly as needed, then move the target farther downrange and/or move on to timed drills.
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Randomly load four different magazines with two to six rounds each. Load exactly fifteen rounds between all four magazines. When done, shuffle them such that you can't tell which is which, or have your partner load and shuffle them for you. Load one magazine at random, chamber a round, holster your weapon and store the other three on your belt or on the bench in front of you.
Wait for your partner to call a number. Draw and fire two shots at the torso of the corresponding target, then one to the head. If you run empty before firing all three shots, perform an emergency reload and fire the remaining shots. Do not anticipate the reloads; focus on maintaining good two-handed shooting fundamentals until the potential need to reload becomes an actual need.
Exercise extreme care when doing live-fire holster drills. If you have little or no experience drawing and quickly firing a loaded weapon, do so with exaggerated slowness at first. Maintain excellent trigger discipline and muzzle awareness all the way through the draw motion until you are fully extended and ready to fire. Worry about drawing and firing quickly only after many safe and successful repetitions at slow speeds.
Once you've fired the final shot at the target's head, your partner will call a different number. Engage that target in the same manner, reloading as necessary. Do not re-holster your weapon between targets.
If your partner calls "reload" in between target engagements, perform an emergency reload if your current magazine is empty. Perform a tactical reload (retain the partially spent magazine) if your current magazine has rounds remaining.
The drill concludes successfully once you've fired all fifteen rounds, three at each of the five targets, with ten clear body hits and five clear head hits.
For advanced versions of this drill, vary the number and position of targets, vary the number of rounds in each magazine, and/or race against the clock.
