Five minutes of dry practice
Hey folks, welcome to Memphis. I challenge you to five minutes of dry practice, five minutes, that's all it takes. This right here, what I'm going to show you today is the dry practice routine that I have immediately before I leave the house. What I do is I get dressed for the day, I put on the clothes that I'm going to wear for that day. And when I put on my gun, I make sure it's clear. I make sure I have an actual backstop. This backstop right here is drywall, but it's on the other side of this wall is exterior brick, so it will catch your pistol round. And then also to make sure the gun is clear; I have a barrel block installed and you guys can see that right here.
Drive practice
Everything on the website, I don't even get paid for these. Okay? I don't get a dime. My payment is you not cooking off a round into your living room, and that's good enough for me. So, go get yourself a barrel block, okay? It's going to add a lot of peace of mind, not just for you, but for your family. So, I have a barrel block in here, visual indicator. This gun is clear. And then also right inside here, you'll see that that barrel is physically blocked. There's no way ammunition's going to get inside. So, the gun is clear. There's no ammunition in the room. Lemme make sure. I want to focus on holstering when I holster, but there's no ammunition in the room. And I have an actual backstop though. I actually catch bullets. I set up this camera at this angle so that you could see some stuff. Now, the reason why I practice, well, I drive practice. I try to drive practice every day, and a lot of that drive practice is geared towards getting better as a whole. But whenever I leave the house, I get at least 10 reps of drive, practice at least five minutes of drive, practice. The reason why, the reason why is because I might have to use this thing today. That's a distinct possibility.
That may sound paranoid. It might sound paranoid, but I'll ask you this. Think about this for a second. If you didn't think there was a chance that you would have to use this today, then would you even carry it? Would you even carry it? If you didn't think that there was a chance that you could carry it, that you would need it, why would you carry it? I think that anybody that carries a firearm understands that there is a chance that you would need it that day. And if you would need it, why wouldn't you have practiced? Why wouldn't you have want to practice? So, I'll ask you, when was the last time you practiced with your handgun? For a lot of folks, it was during their last class and their last class may have been months ago. So that handgun has either been carried or set in the safe and they haven't really practiced with it.
Last time they went to the range
For some people, it was the last time they went to the range, and that could have been weeks ago. Lord knows we not all of us go to the range as much as we really want to, but we have all the time in the world to practice at home and it's very, very easy to practice just for five minutes before you leave the house. So let's get right to it. I'm going to get 10 draws today. The first three are going to be at about 70, 80% speed, and then there's going to be three draws where I'm feeling comfortable, but I'm not really pushing it. And then there's going to be four draws where I'm pushing it. So, I have my timer set up. It's set up at a random start and it's set at a one second. And so all this stuff's going to be going from the holster, so make sure that I'm simulating seven yards. Excellent. I did clear the gun, but I want to clear it again. It's worth clearing twice. Okay, and holster. Excellent. Alright, and so let's 70, 80%. That felt good. That felt good. I got a good grip. I got good sights. I got a clean trigger press. Let's try another one.
Not get a good grip
That grip did not feel good. I did not get a good grip. I didn't get a good handoff of my support hand, and that's part of the reason why these first three draws are at 70, 80% because I want to be a hundred percent aware of my form. I'm not really so much focused on my speed, just on my form. We'll do one more. Okay, good. Excellent. Then once again, didn't get a good handoff. Alright, so
Practice the good handoff
Because I didn't get those good handoffs, I'm going to do a couple of really quick micro drills and I kind of messed up a little bit. I started from rest instead of starting from my usual iPhone position. This right here is the iPhone position. I'm playing with my iPhone, and then there's danger and then I draw. So in order for me to practice the good handoff, what I typically do is from the holster, I just gun sights and I don't press the trigger just yet. I'm just trying to get my support hand onto the gun as soon as I possibly can. And then I holster and I'm going to do a few of those. There we go. A few of those. That felt a little bit better. I don't really count these as draws. These are just micro drills. There we go. Okay. All right. That felt a little bit better. Okay, that felt good. All right, so now I'm going to go at my baseline. My baseline is just under a second's kind of pushing it for me. But this right here is going to be where I'm feeling comfortable. I want to at least get my sights before the beep at the very least. So here we go.
That was rough. I didn't get my strong hand where I want it to be. Let's try it again. Once again, didn't get my strong hand where I wanted it to be. So let's try it one more time. That was pretty ugly.
Few micro drills
So what I saw all of those times was I didn't get my strong hand where I wanted it to be. So before I go on to pushing it, I want to get a few micro drills at just getting my hand to the gun, just getting my hand to the gun, getting my hand to the gun, getting my hand to the gun, getting my hand to the gun. So I think of this as step one, where you have your four step draws stroke, which is 1, 2, 3, 4. So actually four step draw stroke. Sometimes what I'll do is, and that's how I break it down. Sometimes I'll go from two to four, two to four, and that's good for practice of my handoff. Sometimes I'll go from three to four, three to four, and that right there is good for getting my sights. And if I need to add a trigger press, I'll do that. But if I want to practice my sight, if I want to practice getting my sights in isolation, then I'll leave out the trigger press. And so just getting good. There we go. Good. Good, good.
Excellent. And then we'll do, and how long do I do this? I don't know, 30 seconds, 60 seconds until I feel comfortable usually until I feel comfortable. There we go. That feels good until it feels very intuitive where I don't have to think about it. I can just go. And when I evaluate it, when I feel for does this feel right, do I look for, does it look right? Everything looks and feels good. So without me having to think about it. All right, so my last four where I'm really just pushing it, here we go. I'd say that was at a 1 10, 1 20, but it felt good. I saw a little bit of the swirl whenever I pressed the trigger, but the dot stayed inside the A zone the entire time, and I'm going to count that as a hit. So let's try it again. That was a little rushed. When I pressed the trigger, I saw that dot go and it stayed in the A zone. I'm going to try to clean that up just a little bit. I'm feeling really good about it. I think that time was at maybe a one 10. No, it was like 1 20, 1 20, 1 30. Let's try some more.
That felt good. That felt really good. Let's clean this up a little bit. All right, so that felt like a 1 10, 1 15. Yeah. And we'll do one more. That was ugly. That felt like my support hand didn't get in there, didn't feel like my support hand really got in there. So let's give it one more try. That way I can leave on a clean note. Here we go. I didn't know which start position I wanted to go from. I'm just, let's try it from the iPhone position again. Let's try it again. That felt good. It seemed like my support hand was trying to catch up. So what I'm going to do is I don't have all day to do stuff like this. And even the explaining portion, that took up a lot of time. We're going into 11 minutes here. But what I really got from that was I need to work a little bit more on different positions. It's just so easy for everybody to start from the rest position, and then you could just get right to where you want to get to.
Try other positions
But other positions matter. So I got to practice those a little bit more. Also, I need to practice the handoff. Actually handing the gun from transferring control from the strong hand to the support hand, getting good support, hand grip support, hand pressure, and using my support hand to get my sights still being way too dominant with my dominant hand. I got to work that stuff out. All right, well, that's what I have folks. Leave me a comment down below if you enjoy stuff like this. If you do, give me a thumbs up. Maybe consider subscribing. And if you don't like it, please offer me the opportunity to improve. Leave a comment down below. Okay? Lemme get some feedback guys. Thanks a bunch. Thanks a bunch for watching. I challenge you to five minutes of drive practice, especially before you leave the house. Welcome to Memphis.
Link to YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfzrZC9QroU
Credit: Memphis Beech Owner and Instructor at https://www.memphisbeech.com
Also, read Range Safety & Etiquette by Smith & Wesson