For Christmas, a great friend of mine — who had apparently taken pity on me for my well-worn, level-two leather holster — gave me a beautiful new concealed-carry rig from JM Custom Kydex. I love it, but it’s definitely different from the holster I’ve had for several years (and drawn from quite literally about 10,000 times). I knew I had to quickly get used to the new one if I was going to begin using it in the near future, so that first evening after I got it, I began repetitions with my Blue Gun, doing about 100 draws. A couple of evenings later, I did another set of 100 draws.
A couple evenings later, I loaded a couple mags with dummy rounds and started doing some of my typical drill regimen using that new holster.
As we all know, that sort of thing can get pretty old, pretty fast, so I began contemplating how I could mix things up a bit. Then I remembered a tip someone had submitted to Police1 a while back — perhaps three years ago — involving shoot-don’t-shoot dry-fire drills with your TV. Here’s the thing. I love my TV, so — despite the bumper stickers imploring me to do so — there’s no chance in the world I’d ever point my pistol at that beautiful HD screen (never point at anything you’re unwilling to lose forever!).
But I spend 10-12 hours a day in front of a computer monitor, and shooting that thing occurs to me roughly once every three or four hours (at a minimum!).
So I set up a PowerPoint slideshow with 42 shoot-don’t-shoot slides consisting of 21 shoot targets, 21 don’t-shoot targets (if you must know, I chose to use images of three famously nice-looking bikini-clad supermodels, three famously-evil terrorist dirtbags, and one of a famously-gnarly movie zombie). First, I created a random number of each image as well as using the roll of a single die to determine the order in which they appear. I set the slide transition such that a blank slide comes up in between each image, allowing me to practice scanning, breathing, and reholstering, as well as giving me time to get ready for the next decision-making cycle before the next image is revealed.
This is, quite admittedly, a very (very) poor man’s Hogan’s Alley, but I’ve found it to be a pretty interesting way to do lots and lots of repetitions on my awesome new holster. Hell, every few slides I even get to see a really attractive woman in a bikini.
The whole point of this little column is twofold:
1.) When you get a new piece of gear, it is imperative you go well out of your way to consciously practice repetitions with it so you get to a place you’re comfortable — at least as comfortable with it as the gear you’re replacing, if not more so.
2.) Be creative in developing drills that enable you to practice technically- and tactically-sound skills, while simultaneously “mixing things up and keeping things interesting” within a safe training environment.
Stay safe out there my friends.
