Marksmanship

I am what you might call a “fan” of dry practice. I’ve written articles about it, extolled its virtues to my friends, and engaged in quite a lot of it. In 2019 I set out to do ten minutes of dry practice per day for the entire year. I did it, and I spent a little over 62 hours dry practicing, mostly with my EDC firearm.

One of my current goals is getting more involved in precision shooting and competition. It shouldn’t be a surprise that precision has been on my mind a lot lately. As I’ve been doing more and more reading and research, I’ve come across a few interesting ways of thinking about things that I want to share with you.

The PIstol Fundamentals Challenge is my variation on the classic Dot Torture popularized by Todd Green and Dave Blinder. It’s a 30-round challenge testing your ability to maintain accuracy across different circumstances while under time pressure.

One of the easily overlooked areas of good marksmanship is controlling your breathing. I really believe it’s one of those things that everyone knows they should get control of it, but good breath control becomes one of the first marksmanship fundamentals to go out the window as pressure mounts.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the midst of a stage and didn’t even think about my breathing until after it was over. Of course, then I try to go backwards and wonder if I did it correctly anyway, or if I did it wrong and it cost me a little bit of performance.

Welcome back to another Marksman Challenge. For this one, we’re balancing speed and precision, while also giving a shout out to the guys at the Revolutionary War Veteran’s Association (RWVA) for their excellent work in the Appleseed program.

The standing position is the most difficult to master for marksmanship. With the June challenge underway and such a tough accuracy standard, I wanted to ask around for some standing position tips to help you, and me to be honest, out with earning that badge. Let’s dig into it.