In the age of COVID/panic/supply chain-enforced dry practice, are you taking advantage of the time to work your dry practice from positions other than standing straight up? Don’t get me wrong, it’s killer to dry practice your F.A.S.T movements. That said, there is a non-zero chance that a rare defensive event may necessitate having to fire a handgun from a grounded or compromised position—including at multiple opponents, or from whatever cover presents in the moment. Dry practice is *absolutely* the time to first work on safely going from standing to roll over prone, or to work presses from a supine position (as in the case of you got knocked on your ass or slipped).
Here’s a couple of quick routines that you can run while we all wait for something other than either no ammo, or ball that costs a buck a round.
Circuit one:
Standing, 2 presses
High kneel, strong leg back and knee down, 2 presses
Low kneel (back on heel), 2 presses
Seated, 2 presses (both feet flat on floor; are your feet/legs out of the way of the muzzle?)
Supine, 2 presses (ditto)
Braced knees on strong side, 1-2 presses
Rollover prone to strong side, 1-2 presses
Rollover prone to off-side/off-hand, 1-2 presses (note hand switch; can you switch eyes? Will your vision allow it?)
Braced knees on off-side, 1-2 presses
Supine, 2 presses
Seated, 2 presses
High kneel, off leg back and knee down, 2 presses
Return to standing, 2 presses
(Since I’m doing a lot with a Ruger LCR, I do two presses on everything. No harm in going to one press on some of this, since it’s a PITA to reset the slide in some of these positions)
How’s the muzzle control during transitions? 2020/2021 seems like a good time to find out.
Here’s another one, that works going straight to roll over (gun hand arm/lat/side on the ground) from standing, using the support hand, and also simulates/drills an emergency shot to the rear from a grounded/disadvantaged position:
Standing, 2 presses
Go to strong side rollover prone; use support hand to transition, watch the muzzle, 1-2 presses
Go to bridged, 2 presses (roll to the outside of the shooting arm, bridge up, like in wrestling)
Continue to off-side/hand rollover prone, 1-2 presses
Go to double knee low kneel (pull knees to/under chest from prone transition, using strong hand to aid transition while WH controls the muzzle), 2 presses
Return to standing, 2 presses
There are people who are really good at this—and I’m not one of them. Plus, my knees are an evolutionary dead end at this juncture, like a Pterodactyl or disco. The point is, can you control both the muzzle and the trigger from some of these positions that are within the realm of possibility? What’s the best way to move in and out of grounded positions with the body you currently have?
A lot of this is impossible to practice at your local indoor range, but easy and interesting to sort out now, running dry, while a case of 9mm costs more than my first car, and is even harder to procure.
Just throwing it out there.