How To Use The Quiet Professional's Logbook

We have recently launched a logbook for pistol shooters. This book is designed to track your shooting progress with five core drills. These drills are the backbone for people who are looking to advance their skills as a firearms instructor, SWAT operator, law enforcement officer, or for people in action pistol competitions. In the text below, I will explain what the focus of each core drill is and some diagnoses if you see repeating patterns in your shooting.

How scoring is broken down can be found on page 14.

Each drill is designed to be shot from 10 yards at a minimum. 

Benchmarks can be found on page 15.

A full video and demonstration of each drill can be found at the bottom of this page. 

FIVE CORE DRILLS 

1. Extension to Fire - Extension to fire is one of the most common things you do with a pistol. It’s all about acquiring the front sight or the dot. The goal with this drill is to decrease the time it takes to determine what you see visually as “acceptable.” Now, the size and distance of the target will play a factor in the overall time, but speed can be gained here. You can practice extension to fire in your draw, reloads, and working around cover. 

2. Two-Shot Draw - The draw of your pistol starts everything. For example, you could draw your pistol in reaction to a threat, in response to contact, or at the start of a competition stage. Establishing a good grip is very important with the two-shot draw. It begins in the holster and builds up to when the shot breaks. Work this drill and pay attention to how fast your hands are moving along with how much time you spend aiming the sight. Distance will affect the overall time, so pay attention to how much time you lose or gain. Be sure to work out as far as you can, maybe 50 yards, once you have a baseline at 10 yards. 

3. Reloads - The instructions for setting this drill up are at the top of the page in the logbook. Once you have decided on which reload you want to track (speed, sling shot, slide lock, or tactical reload), execute it and record your time. Remember, the first shot is a give me, so don’t miss that one. 

4. Target Transitions - This drill goes further than just target transitions. When practicing these, you attain sight acquisitions, draws, and splits all in one drill. Pay attention to your draw and split to see if you are losing time focusing on another task. Compare these times to your previous two-shot draw. 

5. Set-Ups- This is your ability to “set up” into a shooting position. How fast can you get from point A to point B and take your shot? You can get as creative as you want here. The idea is for you to stand 5 yards away, on the buzzer move to your shooting position, and fire two rounds. Shot one is your set-up time, and shot two is your split time. Eventually, you can build two targets on the same sheet and work them when you are ready for it. 

Diagnosis of Problems 

In shooting, we should always measure speed and accuracy. Often, we focus too heavily on accuracy and forget about speed, even though speed is what comes out in real-life scenarios, while accuracy becomes secondary.

Start looking for trends in your performance. Numbers give us data points and a metric to measure. Below are some questions to consider when using the logbook and trying to identify issues or problems. Understand that to get to the next level, you must push yourself and accept a small percentage of misses. You have to see at an uncomfortable speed for a while to understand what's happening with the gun and to process the sight. 

• What is my cold, 100% hit, “A” zone speed?

  • When do I start to lose accuracy where each first shot isn’t an “A” zone hit? What's the difference between that time and “my cold shots always hit” time? You need more reps where you begin to lose accuracy because it’s in that space that you will begin to see the sight and become more accurate at faster speeds. 

• Are most of my first shots C’s or D’s?. 

  • You're not aiming. Don’t slow down, just aim and bring your focus to your trigger finger

• Are most of my second shots C’s or D’s?

  • Your grip may be coming loose, or you're shooting too fast to control the gun. Go back and see your split times versus your “hit every time” run time. 

• When I practice target transitions, why aren’t my draw times and split times as fast as normal? 

  • When challenged in another skill set, we sometimes forget to implement former learned skill sets. You just need more time and reps to make your draw and split time subconscious. 

• When practicing reloads, why do I sometimes get fast times and others I mess up on?

  • Dryfire more reps. Spend time working at 20% speed, then 50% speed, and build up to 100%

• Why do I keep losing the dot on the draw?

  • Spend more time dry-firing the “extension to fire” drill to acquire the dot. 

Be on the lookout for more helpful content. Happy shooting!