A post at Modern Service Weapons this morning reminded me that I wanted to post this video from Pat Mac about his “grid of fire” drill.
Two things before we take a look at the drill and its application to USPSA shooters – Pat’s enthusiasm is contagious even in video form. Secondly, it doesn’t come off as forced or moto, it just seems like he’s genuinely happy to be out there shooting guns and running around. I like that attitude.
Now, on to the drill itself – after watching the video a couple of times, this grid of fire drill would actually be an excellent drill for competition shooting training as well. Obviously, you’d want to keep it focused on moving into shooting positions; but in the drill it covers all the different types of movement you could expect in the course of a USPSA match. To set this drill up for USPSA, I’d want probably 2 cameras on tripods as well, because I’d want to be able to see my muzzle from multiple angles. Pat’s muzzle control is “real world” in that he breaks the 180 but doesn’t do so in an unsafe way; for USPSA shooters you’d want to make sure to train this drill keeping your muzzle pointed downrange.
Modifying this drill for USPSA, I’d probably use shooting boxes instead of cones, and I’d fire two shots at each position. The focus of the drill would be firing two accurate shots as soon as possible once I’d entered the box and then immediately hauling ass to the next box. I like that Pat’s using a steel target instead of a paper target for this drill, especially since he’s using an A/C zone target. The A/C steel targets are awesome training tools for any discipline, and for USPSA they provide valuable training in not shooting deltas
All in all, the grid of fire looks like an awesome training drill, and if you make a couple of tweaks would work excellently to help train your movement skills in USPSA.
