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Shooting on the Move: Best How-To Drill

You don't need to set up a custom USPSA course each time you want to practice shooting and moving. Here are some simple range training concepts to get started.

Shooting on the Move: Best How-To Drill
Training was conducted at the Staccato Ranch near Austin, Texas. Staccato has built an incredible, dynamic range which boasts indoor and outdoor pistol bays, trap and sporting clays, competition ranges and even a cowboy-action range.

Efficiency of motion. This idea shows up in almost every firearm course I’ve taken. More often than not, it applies to the draw or reload, but my eyes have been opened to how poorly I’d applied efficiency of motion to shooting while moving. For some background, Guns & Ammo sent me to a SureFire training event near Austin, Texas, to evaluate the new XC3 Subcompact Pistol Light on the Staccato CS. Along with the SureFire hosts, training was led by Matt Pranka of Xray Alpha, whom I cannot recommend enough. If anyone is at the cutting edge of modern firearms training, it’s Pranka and his Xray Alpha company. If you’re fortunate enough to find an open slot in one of his classes, let me encourage you to jump on the opportunity before it fills.

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Matt Pranka of Xray Alpha performing a demonstration with the new SureFire XC3 Weaponlight. This compact pistol light boasts 550 lumens and 7,200 candela, and more than one and a half hours of runtime with one 123A battery. The hybrid beam provides excellent night visibility for close- or medium-range engagements.

Movement Drills

Let’s consider the primary drill, and then I will explain the logic and finer details. The drill doesn’t require much, just your preferred handgun and holster, two targets and a stick. (Arguably, you don’t need the stick.) You can start at the 7- to 10-yard line and place the stick parallel with your target. Standing behind the stick, you simply need to draw and put two rounds on each target, then two more rounds on each target, all while simultaneously stepping over the stick. The effort should be one continuous movement. Your step should begin on the draw, and your finish position should look identical to your starting position. From here, you can do the same thing with a backwards step. Do this several times moving forward and backward over your stick. Once you get the hang of forward and backward movement, turn the stick 90 degrees to practice lateral movements. The same approach applies. You will fire a total of eight shots, all while moving. You should be shooting two shots while transitioning between both targets. The left-and-right, or “side-to-side,” movement drill over the stick is trickier than forward and backward, but once you get the hang of it, this drill will improve your movement for both competition and tactical shooting purposes.

Walking While Chewing Gum

This drill seems simple, right? Well, as Pranka puts it, the drill is a lot like walking and chewing gum at the same time, simple until you start thinking about it. Let’s get into the finer details of what we’re actually training for. Performing the drill successfully is about the stance. A good fighting stance is similar across most martial disciplines. The point of the stance is to enable you to begin your attack or react to your adversary. Most people can quickly figure out how to get into a good starting stance, but it almost always falls apart during training once we have to move to a new location. The goal of this drill is to end your movement in your starting stance. Regardless of where you end up, the next time you move, it will be from your starting fighting stance. This leads us back to efficiency of motion.

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As we move around and shoot between different positions, people have a tendency to “coil up,” as Pranka described it. This leads to inefficiency of movement, which means slower times in a competition and potentially a worse outcome in a tactical situation. By ensuring you start and stop in the same position every time, you can prevent that “coiled up” feeling. This also allowed us to start moving to the next position faster, while also engaging targets accurately. Building on efficiency of movement, Pranka dispelled a common myth that has seeped into civilian training from the military and law enforcement sectors: Don’t cross your legs while moving tactically. I suspect the concept stems from martial arts. where crossing your legs could lead to being forced off balance and into a poor fighting position. If you lose your gun in a fight, you can worry about not crossing your legs then. Pranka points out that everyone successfully walks around crossing their legs while walking every day, most of us without tripping at all. You’re not going to suddenly forget how to walk because you’re holding a rifle or pistol. After all, you can probably walk and chew gum at the same time.

Putting It Together 

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Once you get the hang of this drill, you can start to apply it to more dynamic training.

Once everything starts to click with you mentally, the fundamentals of these drills will apply to any situation that calls you to shoot while moving, even when you’re simply moving to the next target. Efficiency of motion helps to beat the bad guy. There are a few more points to keep in mind as you practice these drills. Don’t forget to focus on the target. As you start training, you’ll instinctively want to slow down when it’s time to shoot in order to focus on the dot or to align the iron sights. Focusing on the sights may cause you to overshoot the target when transitioning, meaning that you will lose time and efficiency while trying to reposition the sights back on the target.

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This drill doesn't require a lot of space. Even with a full class, everyone was able to perform this drill at the same time.

Finally, consider the pace of fire when shooting. Pranka gave a great demonstration for the class after a few attempts at performing this drill. For most of us, we would engage the first target with two shots, then there would be a slight pause during the transition to the second target. Then, another pause while moving back to the first target, and a final pause with the last two shots on the second target. In practice, it sounds incredibly fast, but Pranka showed us otherwise. With a continuous, steady pace of fire, Pranka demonstrated that without pausing while transitioning between targets he was three-quarters of a second faster than if he allowed even a slight pause. These movement drills are so practical because they can be done with minimal space, yet they have unlimited application to dynamic shooting scenarios. Even with pictures, though, it is difficult to fully relate these drills. Fortunately, Pranka and Xray Alpha have developed several training videos that are available online and are easy to find. Pranka makes these drills look easy, but don’t be surprised if mastering them requires a few range sessions.  




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