Good videos on teaching the draw stroke/press out

[Clusterfrack]

I like to break it into two parts:
1. Automatic sight alignment. Draw and sights are aligned or dot is in the middle of the window.
2. Automatic point of aim. Sights or dot appear where you look.

If you were so inclined, could you expand a bit on this?

As @Gio posted, developing an "index" allows the shooter to look at a spot, draw, and have the sights/optic aimed at that spot.

This requires two skills:

1) Automatic sight alignment. Can the shooter extend the gun from high ready and have the dot appear in the center of the window 99.9% of the time? If a shooter "loses the dot" they don't have this skill well developed. In my experience, that requires many 1000's of reps just on this. Next, is establishing that index from other positions, including from the draw.

A more difficult skill is 2) automatic point of aim. The shooter simply looks at a spot, and can extend, draw, transition, turn, or move and have the dot appear in the middle of the window and on target.

[backtrail540]

SLG's take -

https://pistol-training.com/the-draw/

[Darth_Uno]

Was talking to a friend about this yesterday, because of this very thread. And he said that he does the "elevator" draw. Because nobody told him not to, and that's just what he ended up with. I guess I never paid that much attention to his draw. As far as running drills, we're pretty much neck-and-neck. Our consensus was, much like hitting a baseball or playing guitar, "it's not stupid if it works" but you need to be good enough to know what you're talking about before you go telling someone to always/never do this or that.

[MickAK]

Fighters have different punches, so there's no reason we can't have different draws.

This post stuck in my head for a few weeks. It took awhile to sort out why it did. I think it's a good analogy.

I think it comes down to understanding performance you can rely on at a certain level of proficiency and having a good understanding of the time commitment each level of proficiency demands.

If someone rushes me I have a couple of different strikes that I know to be solid fight enders. Right hook and right uppercut are great ones. Lights out strikes. But they require very exact timing and placement to do that. I know how much time it takes to be proficient enough to land those reliably, even against an untrained person. It's considerable.

Conversely a backing up overhand right is less likely to be a fight ender. It can be, but it's pretty dependent on the other guy being where I need him to be. But I can throw it whole ass and still be in a good place to move forward with what I need to do.

So given time constraints I practice that more than any other strike, because I can't rely on being in top shape when the flag goes up. I'm going to be where I am, all of life's interventions considered.

I look at an index draw vs a protected draw the same way. What I've experienced is the first thing to go when training slows down is absolute awareness of muzzle clearance and the time penalty involved in not using the most efficient draw stroke isn't worth the potential problems that come along with that lack of awareness. So I practice both but I lean more heavily towards a protected draw.

I've noticed over the years that we take our training cues from professionals while not being professionals ourselves. Professionals are obviously the ones to learn from, but I pay the most attention to professionals that understand that their students aren't professionals.

[Joe S]

@MickAK, I like this line of thought.

[TCinVA]

So given time constraints I practice that more than any other strike, because I can't rely on being in top shape when the flag goes up. I'm going to be where I am, all of life's interventions considered.

I look at an index draw vs a protected draw the same way. What I've experienced is the first thing to go when training slows down is absolute awareness of muzzle clearance and the time penalty involved in not using the most efficient draw stroke isn't worth the potential problems that come along with that lack of awareness. So I practice both but I lean more heavily towards a protected draw.

I've noticed over the years that we take our training cues from professionals while not being professionals ourselves. Professionals are obviously the ones to learn from, but I pay the most attention to professionals that understand that their students aren't professionals.

This right here.

My "index" left entirely when I contracted COVID and suffered nerve damage that I hope isn't permanent, but has impacted everything I do with my hands. It was literally here one day, gone the next. I had to think about keeping a grip on things in my hands or I would drop them for weeks. I was struggling to run the manual transmission in my daily driver. I couldn't play songs I've known for years on the guitar anymore.

I have to be a lot more deliberate about everything I'm doing now, and that includes running a gun. I don't have the luxury of "muscle memory" anymore.

It's not completely back at square one because unlike before I understand what I'm trying to do and the steps involved. I have a good process and I can work through that process and still get good results. The more tired/dehydrated I am, the harder I have to concentrate to keep those good results.

My peak level performance is degraded...but my consistent performance is better than ever. That's because the injury has forced me to refine my ability to direct focus on the right parts at the right time.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Just throwing this out - saw it on Greg's weekly feed:

https://buildingshooters.com/stop-te...wstroke-first/

Almost every law enforcement agency in the country starts new recruits out with firearms training by giving them a duty holster and handgun (simulated or real), then asking them to practice drawing from the holster.

In some cases, this is done without ANY instruction provided on how to accomplish this task at all. In many cases, this is done prior to recruits attending the academy and in almost all cases this is literally the first exposure to firearms training new police recruits have ever had.

This means that teaching the draw is done before the trainees know (by which we mean possess the ability to perform with unconscious competence) how to properly grip and control a pistol during recoil.

What is the end result? It is not just bad shooters. Often, it is unfixably bad shooters.

Not promoting this view - just FYI.

[DMF13]

Just throwing this out - saw it on Greg's weekly feed:

https://buildingshooters.com/stop-te...wstroke-first/



Not promoting this view - just FYI.

He's not wrong.

The training I got on grip, and draw in the USAF, was abysmal, and started with the drawstroke first. Back in the early 2000s it was a little better at FLETC, but still taught starting in the holster. What really helped me was I went to some of the after hours weapons handling, and BeamHit, training they offered. There I got some more individual attention, where an FI fixed my grip, and THEN had me work on the draw.

Scott Jedlinski's method of starting with proper grip, and working backwards to holster, is the right way to teach it, IMO.

[TCinVA]

Scott Jedlinski's method of starting with proper grip, and working backwards to holster, is the right way to teach it, IMO.

For what it's worth, AFHF was doing that before there was a Pistol-Forum. Might just be why so many people who trained with Todd went on to have exceptional levels of skill with a pistol.

And I'm sure there are plenty of examples of exceptional instructors who knew WTF they were doing teaching the fundamentals of shooting first and then building a draw program that emphasized the purpose of the draw was landing in the reliable fighting platform that had already been built in prior training that will predate AFHF and Todd's emergence on the scene as an instructor.

At this point I don't think anyone can lay claim to inventing anything. The most useful things I've learned have always gone back further than the person who I heard it from. If somebody did genuinely invent something, it's considerably better than even odds that it's stupid. What sets an instructor apart isn't necessarily inventing a new concept, but the ability to give a student/client sufficient understanding of the concept that they can apply it at speed.

The question becomes, then, why the institutions seem to settle on teaching pistol the wrong way.

To be blunt, there's little evidence of a systematic approach to training inside the institutions, at least when it comes to teaching firearms. Attempting to analyze how people learn and craft instructional programs around that understanding isn't nearly as widespread as it should be.

[WobblyPossum]

While I like the efficiency of the index draw, it’s context dependent like everything else. If you’re carrying concealed AIWB your support hand needs to clear the cover garment to the point that the strong hand can get the gun out of the holster without catching the rear of it on your cover garment. That usually means your support hand has cleared the garment to approximately the sternum level. The support hand also needs to keep control of that garment until the gun is completely out of the holster so your strong hand with the gun is also now at approximately sternum level. At that point you do the old meet-and-greet with your hands pretty close to where a high compressed ready would be. The concealed AIWB draw lends itself to a press out style draw just due to the nature of getting the gun out of the holster. You can round that 90 degree transition from the L-shaped draw into a slightly more efficient J-shaped draw but the pure index draw isn’t really an option anymore. I believe @SLG recently posted about the draw and brought up similar points.