In our last newsletter, we briefly mentioned the passing of renowned firearms trainer Todd Louis Green. TLG left quite a mark on the training community, and his passing has left quite a hole.
I knew of him because of his excellent website pistol-training.com. I use the resources, articles, and training drills on his website on a regular basis. Mr. Green is probably best known for his F.A.S.T. Drill (Fundamentals, Accuracy, and Speed Test). This 6 round drill tests many fundamental pistol handling skills. The shooter starts with two rounds in their pistol. On the start signal, the shooter draws their handgun (from concealment, or their duty rig) and fires two rounds at the 3 x 5 head target; performs a slidelock reload; and fires four rounds at the body target. Performing this drill clean in less than 5 seconds earns you an expert rating. So far, only 13 students have earned a challenge coin by completing the drill in one of Todd’s classes.
This drill tests your grip, draw, trigger press, reload skills, and firing grip. It is a challenge, and I encourage you to give it a try. You can find an official target here via pistol-training.com.
The famed Dot Torture drill was also popularized by TLG, although he credits David Blinder from personaldefensetraining.com with the drill. This is a terrific exercise for focusing on grip, sight alignment, sight picture, and trigger control. Over the last six months, I have incorporated some variety of this drill into every training session, which has helped my trigger control a great deal. (Target is available here.)
I use the drills on pistol-training.com during almost all of my training sessions. In addition to the dot torture drill, I find benefit in the Changing Gears drill and in Bill Wilson’s 5×5 test. The 5×5 is one of my personal favorites because of all the areas it touches in one test – it really helps you set a baseline and look at what areas you need to work on. I encourage everyone reading this to spend some time looking over the drills available on pistol-training.com or another on-line resource that you may like. These drills help you improve your skills with focused training designed by experts. They will show you where your skills are weak, what you need to work on to improve your gun handling, and give you exercises to help improve them. Yeah, it is work, but like anything else in life, the more you put in, the more you get out.