One of my good friends in the shooting sports is USPSA Gradmaster and current Steel Challenge World Champion BJ Norris; in addition to being an all-around good guy he’s also been a tremendous help to me in improving my shooting skills. One of the areas where my shooting has changed over time is how I draw the gun and get it from the holster to pointed at the target. I touched on this in my post about buying skill, but now I’ll go into more detail using some of the training tips from BJ to help illustrate the point.
photo by Dustin Pluth
When I started shooting, I just drew the gun. I had enjoyed some basic instruction on the four or five point draw prior to starting IDPA, but I didn’t really have any sort of refined technique. This changed when I started using a press-out draw, which moves the gun into the eye-line and drives it to the target from there. The big advantage of this draw is it allows you to refine your sight picture early and is useful for hitting low probability targets at speed. I actually think that the press-out type draw is the best overall technique for shooters interested in self-defense, because it requires fewer reps to master than an “index” type draw.
At Steel Challenge in 2011, I was working on one of the up close speed stages, and BJ asked me why I was using a press-out to hit a high percentage target up close. Which when I thought about it was a good question. The technique he showed me is different – instead of drawing the gun up to your eye-line, the gun moves along about a 45 degree angle from the holster until it reaches full extension. The big advantage to this draw over the press-out style is that it’s fast. It saves anywhere from 0.2 to 0.5 seconds off my draw depending on the target. This video from the 2009 Steel Challenge is chock full of examples of how the top pros are drawing their guns, and this is what BJ clued me in on.
The big difference between an index draw like this and a press-out draw is that the index draw actually requires a lot more practice to get it “right” than a press-out draw. With an index draw, the gun is covering less distance, but when you reach full extension your sight picture needs to be pretty good already. Which is why despite the fact that I prefer and use an index draw, I don’t recommend it for shooters interested in self-defense. A press-out style draw is a technique that be learned and put in to practical use with fewer reps and training time than it takes to get a really fast index draw. But if your goal is to become a better competition shooter, watch the pros in the video above, and start drawing like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment