This series is written for folks who wish to know what they need to practice in order to hone themselves into better shooters. Let's start by identifying certain things that a shooter would want/need to have in his possession in order to improve his handgun shooting and manipulation skills.
1. Focus on safety
First of all is absolute safety-mindedness. One of the best building blocks when learning to shoot a handgun is copious dry-firing drills. In order to conduct a dry-fire drill the person practicing needs to have ... an empty handgun.
Do yourself and your friends/neighbors/family the favor of cultivating an area in or around your home for these exercises and then hang something up in the direction that you will be aiming that will either completely stop an errant round or greatly impede its ability to injure or kill. Some good ideas are dry-fire ballistic pads, layer upon layer of building material or a clear backstop for a long way back.
There are so many things that can be accomplished pertaining to handgun shooting without one single round of ammo being fired. Looking at the cost of ammo today, coupled with how hard ammo now is to obtain, this should be a consolation to many.
2. Keep an open mind
After placing safety first and foremost in your mind, you need to maintain an open mindset. Just because something has worked for you in the past does not necessarily mean it is the best way to perform a particular skill.
Sloppy practice will not make a better shooter — but will make you highly skilled in whatever sloppy method you may be using. This is counterproductive to being the best that you can be.
Do not just discount one suggestion or another simply because you have never "done it that way," but be willing to at least try something new in order to grow as a shooter. As the old adage goes: "If you keep doing what you've always done, you will keep getting what you've always gotten."
3. Buy a shot timer
Next, the shooter wishing to be better needs a measurable way to keep track of progress, and that usually means buying a shot timer. These can be purchased starting around $100, but are invaluable when it comes to finding out what works best and what doesn't. Even the base models today are manufactured with options such as par times and reviewing that are customizable for the operator.
4. Develop a plan
The last thing to be mentioned in getting started is something that a lot of people overlook and shouldn't: Always have a plan before starting your practice session. No matter if you are planning to dry-fire or are going to the range and live-fire, you need a plan in place before setting out to practice.
Ordinarily speaking, a practice session shouldn't exceed two hours, nor should you fire more than 200 rounds of ammo due to the fact that you will tire rapidly. After that point, you will start to see diminishing returns on your efforts.
Do not attempt to practice a large amount of various exercises in the same session. Pick one or two different items upon which you know you need to improve and work on those skill sets per session. People often attempt to fit way too many different exercises into a practice session and end up overloading and fatiguing their bodies and minds.
If at all possible use a video camera to record your practice sessions, and then go back and review what you worked on with a critical eye in order to improve.
In the next article, we'll start on specific exercises to practice — both dry- and live-fire. Have fun!
