THE PATH TO MASTERING TRIGGER CONTROL

“Ball and Dummy” Drills Have Been Around for Over A Hundred Years For A Very Good Reason – They Work!

These venerable drills have lasted because of their effectiveness and have bridged the mainstream transition from revolver to semi auto pistol. I have a Police manual from the 1930’s that describes the drills in detail, so while Col. Cooper may have brought the elements of marksmanship and trigger drills to the masses, he certainly didn’t invent them. The problem with skip loading is that most shooters have not been instructed on how to do it properly, and with a modern service pistol, ignorant skip loading quickly degenerates into a sloppy failure to fire malfunction clearance drill. The beautiful thing about proper skip loading is that it can help stretch your ammo budget and range sessions while making novice shooters good and good shooters even better.

For novice shooters, the ratio of snap cap to live rounds needs to be greatly skewed towards snap caps. This ensures that the novice shooter is building a good foundational trigger press, moving the trigger straight to the rear while not disturbing the sights. If done with an instructor or coach, this method allows the coach to observe the pistol at the moment the hammer falls (or the striker moves forward). This will allow the coach to communicate with the student as to whether or not the press was good (i.e. no movement of the muzzle) or bad (i.e. the muzzle moved). When a live round is detonated, it provides the shooter with feedback on follow through and achieving a surprise break, something that is necessary to master basic marksmanship. For shooters using a modern service pistol, I’ve found that a ratio of five dummies to two live rounds works best for foundational work. As an added bonus, this relatively low amount of rounds allows the shooters more opportunities to work on their reloads as well. When setting up the magazine for skip loading, it’s important to follow a few simple guidelines.

• The shooter should never load the magazine; the coach or another shooter should load it. If it is a solo session, try to load the magazines before going to the range and try not to memorize the sequence of live to dummy. If the shooter knows which rounds are live and which rounds are dummies, the drill is useless.
• The first round loaded into the magazine should be live. This allows the slide to lock back on an empty magazine.
• The shooter should not look into or at the magazine during the reload.

If skip loading without a partner, be honest with yourself. If you press the trigger and notice movement at the muzzle, keep your trigger finger to the rear and either thumb cock the pistol (if it has a hammer) or cycle the slide partly rearward to reset the trigger (if it utilizes a striker). If cycling the slide, be sure that you don’t move the slide enough to induce a malfunction. Reacquire the sights, reset the trigger and press the trigger again. Do this until you don’t observe any movement at the muzzle when you press the trigger. For some shooters, one “do –over” per bad press may be enough, for some it may take more. After you get a good press, clear the pistol as you would a class one or “failure to fire” malfunction. As you can see, with such a high ratio of dummy to live, this drill can quickly degenerate into a frantic “failure to fire” clearance drill. Fight that urge, be honest with yourself and perform the drills “as prescribed”. It’s no different than an exercise routine, effort equals results.

As your skills progress, you’ll find that you are better served by increasing the ration of live to dummy rounds. For the intermediate shooter, a ratio of two dummies to one live works well and for the advanced shooter, four or five live to one dummy is usually right, depending on the shooters patience and skill level. The drill transitions from building skills to reinforcing them, it evolves along with the shooter.

A well rounded, advanced level shooter needs to be able to put together drills that encompass all of the necessary skills, from marksmanship to tactics to mindset. This one is a pure marksmanship drill. I realize that in this day and age, that word is taboo, but the fact remains; if you cannot hit your target, it doesn’t matter how fast you hammer your trigger. A miss is a miss. If you carry a weapon professionally, that miss might be the difference between mission success and mission failure.