Timed handgun shooting drills

[rogerv723]

[USPSA GM]

Try looking up USPSA Classification Courses, they have a bunch and they are shot by 1000's shooters. There are well known stages such as "El Presidente" which has been used as a benchmark for several decades.

[rodralig]

I tried looking online for timed shooting standards and drills and could only find a few vague things. Does anyone know what the timed standards are for police or military for handguns? Such as draw to first shot in X amount of seconds or 5 shots to center mass at X yards in X seconds, things like that.

Referencing from this article: https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/w...-arent-better/

You can maybe use this as an anchor point? You have FAST, the Bill Drill, the Failure Drill, Air Marshal, etc. etc.





OR, check this out, as well: https://pistol-training.com/drills



That said, handgun timed standards for MIL/LE will vary - depending on the team (Patrol or SWAT), department, etc. But in my experience, they are quite lax needing to account for the lowest denominator... Just take any PD's qualification test.

As such, would go with @USPSA GM - the Classifier standards are shot by thousands of shooters with some being the best in the world. As per the late Ron Avery, if you are going to see how good you really are when it comes to shooting - this may be the benchmark.



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[NorthBay Shooter]

Rod - there are a couple of different ideas here. You can check out Bob Vogel's police quals - he shoots the quals test in half the time at double the distance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py1WRpcl6E

Here is the FBI qual test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ud24B951U

There are some par times in Ben Stoeger's Drills book you might look at as well.

However, I would say that if you looked at USPSA qualifiers, you have everything you need. You have hit factors for all levels to see where you land.

[Rez805]

Not sure why the Vogel super challenge link didn't work. Here's an embedded version



Half the time. 5x the distance of the Ohio Police Qualifier.

It's fun to spice things up a bit!

[rodralig]

Rod - there are a couple of different ideas here. You can check out Bob Vogel's police quals - he shoots the quals test in half the time at double the distance.
....

Not sure why the Vogel super challenge link didn't work. Here's an embedded version

....

Half the time. 5x the distance of the Ohio Police Qualifier.

It's fun to spice things up a bit!

Yup! Vogel ran this in his class (2017)...

Hence, me saying in my response that most MIL/LE standards test is quite lax...


Also, ITTS in ASR has class days that runs you through the LAPD tests - Patrol, Metro and Team D (SWAT). Nice way to see how you stack up against those who are supposed to "protect and serve."



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[rogerv723]

Awesome info thanks guys!

[IVC]

However, I would say that if you looked at USPSA qualifiers, you have everything you need. You have hit factors for all levels to see where you land.

All USPSA classifiers work off of HHF or "high hit factor" - it's a sort of the best score shot by anyone, adjusted for outliers and some super-human performances.

What this means is that the classifiers are getting harder to shoot. The times are pretty much only tightening (there are some exceptions, it's a long story, not quite relevant here). It's a ratchet wrench system and as the top shooters are getting better and train more, so does everyone else have to perform better to keep shooting their class.

The classes in USPSA are simple numerical trenches so as the HHF tightens, it becomes harder to get into *every* class. This is something that is by design (at least at the moment), but it's also something that can discourage new shooters since the times are becoming much harder to achieve. I am not sure it's realistic or productive to use HHF as a benchmark for shooting performance.

For example, El Presidente is a 60 point classifier and the standard used to be "10 seconds clean" which is a HF of 6.0. This will get you mid-C class at 51% (Production Division). To make GM, you have to shoot it clean in 5.4 seconds (to get 95% of HHF). In Open, 10 seconds gets you barely to C class and you need 4.65 seconds *clean* to get GM (4.2 seconds if you hit half C-s).

So, USPSA classifiers are certainly a fun way to measure progress and compare the scores, but they are not the best general purpose measures.

[SG29736]

I saw an article with an instructor demonstrating shooting the fbi and air marshall qualifiers. He said that you should shoot it cold, with no practicing the test beforehand. But he admitted that he shot the test first and then did his test. Does he think the fbi and air marshall people qualify on it never having seen or practiced it before? Just seemed funny.
Also he used idpa or uspsa targets and I'm not sure how the targets compare to the targets they actually qualify on .