I’ve never been big on making New Year’s resolutions, because they seem to be pretty quickly forgotten. But, one that I make every year and do my best to follow through on is to practice my defensive shooting as much as possible. Now, you’d think that a career lawman-turned-gunwriter wouldn’t need regular practice sessions to stay in top form. Well, you’d be wrong.
It’s just a natural fact that we lose any skills involving hand-eye coordination very quickly if we don’t practice. Shooters, musicians, artists and athletes, to name a few, are all subject to this malady. You either use it or you lose it.
Periodically, we get people in a shooting class who inform us that they have been shooting for years, some since childhood. And, frankly, that usually makes the instructor staff cringe because they know it’s going to be a long, hard day. While I certainly appreciate their service, what a person was taught in the military 20 years ago doesn’t mean a thing unless he or she has regularly practiced it since then. The same goes for the person who was the ace on the 4H marksmanship team back in high school. All of those things are great, but they truly don’t mean a thing if we haven’t been practicing regularly.
Now, I know that work and family schedules can get in the way and cause us to push our practice time aside. And it is also a fact that ammo costs keep going up and range sessions can get expensive. Well, nobody said that life was fair. In spite of all that, there are things that we can do to stay in practice.
One of those things is to make your range sessions more focused. Instead of expending ammo on informal plinking, it is a good idea to shoot a few defensive drills that emphasize and improve our skills at pistol presentation, accurate hits and fumble-free reloads. Nearly every month one of the Shooting Illustrated writers will post useful defensive drills and many of them are aimed at getting the most from the least amount of ammunition expended. Working on specific defensive skills helps when time and ammo are on a budget.
Of course, another way to practice, saving time and ammo, is dry practice. Again, we want to focus on specific skills. Ten minutes, three or four times a week, working on a smooth pistol presentation and trigger press will pay dividends without a shot being fired.
So, writing all of this for you is also a way of reminding myself of the importance of regular practice. And I would write more, but the weather is nice today and I’m headed to the gun range to practice what I preach.
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