Range card CCW-01 · Score sheet and drill library
Skill you cannot measure is an opinion. This page is the measurement layer: the exact courses of fire that produce a number, the published standards that number is compared against, and the diagnosis that tells you which drill to shoot next. Every drill states its distance, target, start position, string-by-string course of fire, par and scoring, because a par time quoted without those four things is not comparable to anything.
Skill content only. Nothing here is legal advice, and this page is not a substitute for instruction from a competent human who can watch you shoot.
Shoot these cold, in your carry gear, with the gun concealed the way you actually carry it. Cold means no warm-up string, no dry presentations in the parking lot, first shots of the day. A warm score tells you what you can do on your best day; a cold score tells you what you own.
2.50 spar, every string
Proves: draw to first acceptable hit on a 4″ head circle at 3, 5 and 7 yards, and a 10-yard pair, from concealment. Ken Hackathorn calls it his gold standard for whether a carrier is actually ready.
5 rounds. Pass or fail. No partial credit.
90 / 100instructor-level score
Proves: B-8 accuracy at speed across freestyle, strong-hand-only and weak-hand-only, all inside 2.5-second strings. Justin Dyal's benchmarks: 90 good, 95 very good, 100 clean.
10 rounds. Misses and late hits both cost points.
3.00 sBill Wilson, open carry
Proves: recoil control and vision under speed, six shots to the A zone at 7 yards. Published standards genuinely disagree; see the drill entry for all three.
6 rounds. Clean or the number means nothing.
< 7.00 sAdvanced tier
Proves: the whole manipulation chain, 2 head shots on a 3×5 card, slide-lock reload, 4 body shots on an 8″ plate. Todd Louis Green's tiers run Novice to Expert.
6 rounds. Published gear adjustments apply.
50 / 50clean, at 3 yards
Proves: trigger control with no clock to hide behind. Score is the distance at which you last shot it clean, not a time.
50 rounds. Print the target; it is the instruction sheet.
Pick one named assessment, shoot it cold at the start of every range session, and write the number down. A single tracked number over a year is worth more than every drill on this page shot once and forgotten. John Daub's convention for this is simple: cold means cold, so you step to the line at your worst and you find out.
Nearly every defensive pistol standard on this page is built for a close, short, fast problem. That shape comes from a small number of named datasets, each with real limits, and it is worth stating the limits because they bound what the numbers can honestly claim.
| Dataset | What it actually is | Reported figures | Selection limits, stated honestly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Givens student incidentsRangemaster, Memphis; summarized by Greg Ellifritz, Jan 2022 | Defensive gun uses by people who had taken Givens' training, collected over decades of teaching in one metro area. | ~68 incidents. Over 90% at 3–7 yd, majority 3–5 yd. 2 at contact distance. 3 outliers at 15, 17 and 22 yd. Reported outcome: 65 wins, 0 losses, 3 forfeits (students who were unarmed when attacked). | Not a random sample. These are trained, armed, motivated people in one city, and the incident set is self-reported to the instructor. It describes what happened to his students, not a national base rate. |
| FBI LEOKAFBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Officer Survival Spotlight | Law enforcement officers feloniously killed, compiled nationally by the FBI. | Over 1985–2014, ~50.9% of officers killed with firearms were shot at 0–5 ft. Over 2005–2014, 62.2% within 0–10 ft, of which 44.8% at 0–5 ft. | A different population with a different job. Officers approach people they suspect; carriers generally do not. Useful for distance, useless for round counts or for the decision to engage. |
| Composite incident profileJohn Daub, KR Training, from Givens, FBI and DEA sets | The working profile trainers design courses of fire against. | Armed robbery pattern, 1–2 assailants, 3–7 yd, very limited response time. Shorthand: three shots, three yards, three seconds. | A design heuristic, not a prediction. It tells you what the standards are built for; it does not promise your problem will look like it. |
Sources are linked in full in section 14. Figures are as reported by each source; none are re-derived here.
If the problem is over in a few seconds, an untimed group tells you almost nothing about whether you can solve it. That is the entire argument for the clock.
It measures a real and useful skill, precision under no time pressure, and that skill transfers. It just is not the skill the incident profile stresses.
Claude Werner's argument, adopted by Daub: the shooter who lands the first solid hit seizes the initiative. Most standards on this page load heavily on that one measurement.
It shapes what you practice and at what distance. It is not an argument for a caliber, a holster brand, or a round count in the magazine.
Three of Givens' incidents were past 15 yards. Keeping a 15 and 25-yard string in your rotation costs a handful of rounds per session.
A dataset of trained shooters overstates how well the average carrier does and understates how ugly an untrained response looks. Read it as a ceiling, not an average.
A time means nothing without the target it was shot on and the rule that decided which holes counted. Two shooters quoting "1.5 seconds at 7 yards" are describing different achievements if one was hitting an 18-inch silhouette and the other a 3×5 card. Start here.
| Target | Dimensions | What it actually measures | Drills that use it | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NRA B-8 repair center (B-8C) | 10.5″ square card. Rings: X 1.695″, 10 3.36″, 9 5.54″, 8 8.00″, 7 11.00″ (7 ring runs off the card). The black is the 9 ring and in, 5.54″. | Graded precision. The ring value converts accuracy into a number, so improvement shows up even when every shot is a hit. | The Test, Super Test, 5 Yard Roundup, Rangemaster Bullseye and Baseline, Snub Assessment Drill | Printed packs from National Target and equivalents; also printable at scale |
| Full NRA B-8 | Rings continue outward: 6 at 14.80″, 5 at 19.68″. Same ring sizes as the repair center. | The same graded precision with room to catch a wild shot and still score it. | Rangemaster TacCon tie-breaker, any 25-yard bullseye string | Same suppliers as the repair center |
| IDPA cardboard target | Roughly 18″ × 30″ overall. Down-zero body zone is an 8″ circle; the head down-zero is a 4″ circle on the current target. Outside that: -1, then -3. | Defensive hit quality with a discriminating head box, on a silhouette shape. | Wizard, Bill Drill, IDPA 5x5 Classifier, Three Seconds or Less, most Rangemaster courses as a substitute | IDPA-approved vendors; specification in the current IDPA rulebook |
| USPSA / IPSC metric | A-zone torso box roughly 6″ × 11″, with a smaller head A box. A / C / D scoring since 2018, when USPSA folded the old B zone into C. | Competition hit quality. Wider than the IDPA -0 zone in the shoulders, so a "clean" USPSA run is not a clean IDPA run. | Bill Drill, El Presidente, Gabe White Technical Skills Test, MAG-40 qualifier, ASP Skill Check | USPSA-approved vendors; dimensions in the USPSA rules appendix |
| QIT-99 bottle silhouette | Bottle-shaped scoring outline; hit inside the bottle or it does not count. | Binary acceptable-hit judgement with no partial credit inside the zone. | FBI Pistol Qualification, 2013 and 2019 versions | Law-enforcement target suppliers |
| IALEFI-Q and IALEFI-QP | Bottle silhouette; the QP version adds graded scoring rings. | Same bottle logic as the QIT-99, with a graded version for point scoring. | Rangemaster Core Skills, Handgun Disability Course, Claude Werner's Basic Skills Test | Law-enforcement target suppliers |
| Rangemaster RFTS-Q | Silhouette carrying an 8″ chest circle, a 10″ ring and a 4″ head circle inside a bottle. | Layered scoring: center, near-center, acceptable, unacceptable. | Rangemaster qualifications, 3M Test, TacCon standards | Rangemaster |
| KRT-2 | 11×17 printable silhouette with anatomically-placed zones; white and gray areas are the acceptable hits. | Acceptable-hit discipline at a printing cost of near zero. | Three Seconds or Less, Minimum Competency Assessment | Free download from KR Training; print on 11×17 paper |
| 3×5 index card, vertical | 3″ × 5″ | Precision under a hard clock. Roughly stands in for a head box or a high-chest anchor. | Playing Card Test, Walk-Back Drill, Spencer Keepers' Test, Common Tater Drill | Any office supply; tape it to a backer |
| 3×5 index card, horizontal | 3″ × 5″, long axis across | Same precision, different failure mode: horizontal punishes vertical stringing from trigger control. | F.A.S.T. head box, Keepers' Test | Any office supply |
| 4×6 card | 4″ × 6″ | The 99 Drill's standard box; the 3×5 version is the advanced setting. | 99 Drill | Any office supply |
| 8″ circle or a paper plate | 8″ diameter; a common paper plate is 8.75″ to 9″ | The field-expedient acceptable-hit standard. The 8″ circle is the recurring "center chest" zone across IDPA, RFTS-Q and F.A.S.T. | F.A.S.T. body plate, Ed Head's drill, any drill where you lack the proper target | Grocery store. This is the honest budget option |
| 5″ circle | 5″ diameter | Tighter than an 8″ chest circle, so it forces a real sight picture at close range. | 5x5 and 5^5 | Print or draw with a compass |
| 6″ circle | 6″ diameter | Andy Anderson's reasoning: hit a 6″ circle at 5 yards and you can hold an 8″ chest zone at 5 to 10 yards. | 3456 Drill | Printable; or the inner circle on a Q-PT target |
| B-27 | Large silhouette with generous scoring zones. | Very little at defensive distances. It is the target most state quals use, and its size is exactly why passing a state qual is not a proficiency claim. | Texas LTC test and many state quals | Law-enforcement suppliers |
Do not photocopy commercial targets. Dot Torture, IDPA, USPSA and B-8 targets are published by their owners; download or buy from the source linked in section 14.
| System | The arithmetic | Rewards | Punishes | Used by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Par-time pass or fail | Every string under its par with every hit acceptable, or the run is a failure. | Consistency and honest self-scoring. | One bad shot ends the run, so it produces no gradient to track. | Wizard, Gunsite Pistol Standards, 3M Test, No-Loader Test |
| Vickers count | Score = raw time + 0.5 s per point down. | Speed, while making misses expensive enough to matter. | Sloppy hits, at a fixed and predictable exchange rate. | Bill Drill 2, the original 5x5 Skill Test ranking |
| IDPA points down | Score = raw time + 1.0 s per point down; a miss adds 5 s; a procedural adds 3 s. | Accuracy twice as much as Vickers does. | Misses hard. Five seconds is an eternity in a 20-second run. | IDPA 5x5 Classifier and IDPA matches |
| Comstock / hit factor | Hit factor = total points ÷ total time. | Maximizing points per second, so it grades everyone on one continuous scale. | Nothing absolutely; a fast sloppy run and a slow clean run can tie. | USPSA, Rangemaster Core Skills, SCAT, Snub Assessment Drill |
| Rangemaster index scaling | Index = points ÷ time, then index × a course constant. Core Skills uses ×20, SCAT ×12.5, Snub Assessment ×8. Par score is 100 in each. | Comparability of your own runs of the same course over time. | Nothing extra; it is a rescaling of hit factor. | Rangemaster courses of fire |
| Ring scoring out of 100 | Sum the ring values of the hits; 10 rounds on a B-8 gives 100 possible. | Precision, in fine gradations. | Nothing about time unless the course adds a late-shot rule. | The Test (Hackathorn method), Super Test, 5 Yard Roundup |
| Fixed time penalties per zone | Raw time plus a published penalty per zone: Gabe White adds 0.25 s per B/C or -1 hit, 1.0 s per D or -3 hit, 2.0 s per miss. | Fast, accurate shooting; the penalties are calibrated so gaming them does not pay. | Peripheral hits, sharply. | Gabe White Technical Skills Test |
| Virginia count / limited scoring | Fixed round count; no make-up shots are permitted or scored. | Calling your shots the first time. | The habit of spraying an extra round to fix a bad one. | IDPA 5x5 Classifier, ASP 10-round Skill Check |
| 100% accountability | Any hit outside the primary or secondary zone fails the entire course of fire. | Discipline about what an acceptable hit is. | Everything else. Brutal, and deliberately so. | No-Loader Test, Gunsite Pistol Standards |
| Par Factor | Index = total possible points ÷ total par time. Par Factor = 100 ÷ index. Your run: (your points ÷ your time) × Par Factor. 100 means you shot the course exactly to its designed standard. | Tracking your own trend on one course across many runs. | Nothing. John Daub is explicit that Par Factor does not compare difficulty between drills. | Any timed course, as a self-tracking overlay |
| S1, 1 rd from concealment, 2.5 s par: X ring | 10 |
| S2, 4 rd from ready, 2.5 s: 10, 9, 9, 8 | 36 |
| S3, 3 rd strong hand only, 2.5 s: 9, 8, 7 | 24 |
| S4, 2 rd weak hand only, 2.5 s: 8 on time, 9 broken at 2.68 s | 17 |
| Late-hit penalty on that second shot, -5 | -5 |
| Final score, 10 rounds | 82 / 100 |
Below Dyal's 90-point instructor line. The whole deficit lives in the two one-handed strings, which is the finding: build weak-hand-only, not speed.
| Raw time, 6 rounds at 7 yd | 3.35 s |
| Hits: 5 in the A / -0 zone | +0.00 |
| One hit in C / -1, at 0.25 s each | +0.25 |
| Subtotal | 3.60 s |
| Concealment or duty-gear adjustment | -0.25 |
| Scored time vs Dark pin 3.50 s | 3.35 s, made |
Made the Dark pin standard on this drill. The pin itself needs the full four-drill set shot for score, twice each, with the best four of eight attempts counting.
| Points scored on 40 rounds | 172 |
| Total time across all nine strings | 33.5 s |
| Index = 172 ÷ 33.5 | 5.134 |
| Course constant for this test | × 20 |
| Final score | 102.7 |
Lands in Givens' 100 to 124 band, which he labels Advanced. A 125 or better is his Master line. Note that a faster, dirtier run can reach the same number, which is the known weakness of hit-factor scoring as a proficiency test.
Anything you can anticipate, including a person saying "go," compresses your reaction time and inflates the score. Reaction to an unpredictable stimulus is part of what these drills measure.
A fixed delay teaches you to count. Dedicated timers offer a random delay (commonly a 1 to 3 second spread, sometimes fixed plus random); use it every time. The timer on this page uses a random 1.5 to 4.0 second delay.
Generating a start beep and a par beep is trivial and accurate on any device. Detecting gunshots is not.
Indoor bay echo produces phantom shots and gunfire exceeds the microphone's dynamic range, so real shots vanish. Some apps add echo filtering; none of it is trustworthy enough to score a qualification. Use par mode on a phone, buy a dedicated timer to record splits.
Start signal to first shot. The single most-quoted number in defensive shooting, and meaningless unless the concealment garment, holster type and target size are stated with it.
The interval between consecutive shots. Splits diagnose recoil control and vision; a slow first shot with fast splits is a draw problem, not a shooting problem.
A second tone at a set interval. You are trying to fire your last shot before it sounds. This is what makes par-time drills runnable without anyone scoring you.
Daub's exercise: when a par is easy, try to finish at exactly the par time, not under it. It builds cadence control instead of one gear.
This is a par-time generator, not a shot timer: it produces a random-delay start tone, then a tone at each par, with a screen flash for anyone wearing hearing protection. It does not detect shots, because no device using a phone microphone does that reliably next to gunfire. Nothing on this page is hidden behind it; if scripting is off, or you would rather use a real timer, the drill tables below are complete on their own.
Pick a drill, then start. Random delay 1.5 to 4.0 s.
Log status unknown.
| Date | Drill | Time | Pts dn | Vickers | IDPA |
|---|
Courses of fire are procedures and are stated here in this page's own structure. Where a drill has a canonical write-up by its originator, that is the link in the drill name; go there before you argue with anything below. Unless a row says otherwise, assume: standing, facing the target, hands relaxed at sides, gun holstered and concealed the way you actually carry, both hands on the gun, hits scored on the target's primary zone.
| Drill and originator | Dist | Rds | Target | Start position | Course of fire | Par or standard | Scoring | What it measures, and the gear caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A · Cold assessments and minimum competency | ||||||||
| The WizardKen Hackathorn · write-up | 3, 5, 7, 10 yd | 5 | IDPA or equivalent: 8″ body, 4″ head | Concealed, in the way you actually carry. Pocket carry may start with the hand in the pocket on the gun. | 3 yd: 1 head shot, strong hand only. 5 yd: 1 head shot, freestyle. 7 yd: 1 head shot, freestyle. 10 yd: 2 body shots, freestyle. | 2.50 s every string | IDPA rings; you may drop 2 points total. Any head miss or any over-time string fails the drill. Most people just run it pass or fail. | Draw to first acceptable hit on a small zone at four distances. Hackathorn's rule is no gamer rig: shoot it with carry gear, ideally with carry ammunition. |
| 5 Yard RoundupJustin Dyal · SWAT Magazine | 5 yd | 10 | B-8 repair center | String 1 from concealment; strings 2 to 4 from the ready. | S1: draw, 1 shot. S2: 4 shots. S3: 3 shots, strong hand only. S4: 2 shots, weak hand only. | 2.50 s every string | Ring score out of 100. Off the repair center counts as a miss at -10; a late hit is -5. Dyal: 90 good and expected of instructors, 95 very good, 100 clean. | Precision at defensive distance across three grips under one clock. Karl Rehn reads a clean run as roughly IDPA Master or USPSA B territory. |
| Baseline Skills AssessmentTom Givens, Rangemaster · Dec 2020 newsletter | 5, 7, 10 yd | 20 | B-8 repair center, FBI-IP-1 bullseye, or the LTT-1 bullseye | Intended to be shot cold, from concealed carry. | 5 yd: draw, 5 shots freestyle. 5 yd: from ready, 3 shots dominant hand only. 5 yd: from ready, 2 shots non-dominant hand only. 7 yd: start with only 3 rounds loaded, fire 3, empty-gun reload, fire 3. 10 yd: from ready, 4 shots. | 5.0 / 3.0 / 3.0 / 10.0 / 4.0 s | Bullseye rings as printed. 200 possible. | A cold snapshot of everything at once. Givens has shot 197 cold on it; Dave Spaulding's harder variant substitutes a 3×5 card for the bullseye. |
| Minimum Competency Assessment (v3)John Daub, KR Training · compendium | 3, 5, 7, 10 yd | 25 | KRT-2 white and gray only; or IDPA -0 only, IPSC A and B only, RFTS-Q 8″ and 4″ rings only | Your everyday carry gear, ideally your carry ammunition. Start positions rotate: hands at sides, hands in fence, hands on a prop phone (drop it on the signal). | 10 yd: 2 body in 4.0. 7 yd: 3 body in 4.0; then 1 body in 2.5 from fence; 1 body in 2.5 from phone. 5 yd, side-step on every string: 1 body in 2.5 (sides), 1 in 2.5 (fence), 1 in 2.5 (phone), 3 body in 3.5, 2 body plus 1 head in 4.0. 3 yd, side-step on every string: 1 body in 2.0 (sides), 1 in 2.0 (fence), 1 in 2.0 (phone), 3 body in 3.0, 2 body plus 1 head in 3.5. | 2.0 to 4.0 s by string | 1 point per acceptable hit, 0 for anything else including late and unfired shots. 23 of 25 (92%) passes. A safety violation fails the run. | Heavy emphasis on draw to first acceptable hit from realistic start positions. If you cannot make par, drop the side-step and the hand positions first, then add them back. |
| Three Seconds or Less (v6)Karl Rehn, KR Training | 3, 5, 7 yd | 20 | KRT-2 center zone, IDPA with 4″ head circle, IPSC, HC-1 or F.A.S.T. target | Concealed. Loaded either as 9+1 with a 10-round reload, or as four magazines of 4+1, 5, 5, 5 for a snub or revolver setup. | 3 yd: step left, draw, 3 body two-handed; holster, step right, firing hand on gun and support hand on chest, draw, 2 head shots; reload to exactly 5; step right, draw, 3 body; holster, step left, step forward to 2 yd, draw and fire 2 body strong hand only while backing up. Unload, lock the slide, move to 7 yd. 7 yd: magazine in support hand and slide-locked gun in firing hand, insert, rack, 1 body; from ready, 2 head shots; hand on gun with support hand on chest, 2 body strong hand only; reload; face 90 degrees away, turn, draw, 3 body; transfer to support hand, 2 body support hand only. | 3.00 s every string | Count hits. Rehn's tiers: DPS1 pass at 14+ (13 body, 1 head), DPS2 at 16+ (14 body, 2 head), DPS3 at 18+ (15 body, 3 head), 100% at 20 (16 body, 4 head). | The design claim: a trained shooter should be able to do each of these tasks in three seconds or less at 3 to 7 yards. Concealment and movement are built in, so times are not comparable to static open-carry drills. |
| Basic Self Defense Handgun Skills TestClaude Werner | 3, 5, 7 yd | 18 (15 for a 5-shot revolver) | IALEFI-Q. Werner's stated substitutes: an IDPA or USPSA target with the -3 / C zone visually eliminated, or three sheets of paper stacked. | No holster work and no time limit, deliberately: the test is designed to be runnable by any gun owner on any indoor range, including people without a carry permit. React to any signal the proctor can produce. | 3 yd, dominant hand only, from high compressed ready: 1 round, return to ready; 2 rounds, return; 3 rounds (revolvers 2). Unload and case. 5 yd, both hands: from low ready 2 rounds, go to high compressed ready; 1 round, stay on target; 3 rounds (revolvers 2). Unload and case. 7 yd, both hands: aimed in, 1 round, to high compressed ready; 2 rounds, to low ready; 3 rounds (revolvers 2). Unload and case. | None, by design | Every round must be inside the silhouette, preferably in the large circle. Bullet nose inside the outline counts. | The floor below the floor: can you make the gun work and hit at all, under a start signal, without a holster or a clock. Werner derived the string structure from the shooting tasks in Givens' incident set. |
| Ed Head's CHL Practice DrillEd Head, Gunsite · Shooting Illustrated | 3, 5, 10 yd | 20 | 8″ circle with a 3×5 head box (a F.A.S.T. target works); USPSA or IDPA also work. Two targets needed for two strings. | Carry gear, from concealment. | 3 yd: draw, 2 rounds strong hand only, in 2 s; repeat. 3 yd: draw, 2 body and 1 head in 3 s; repeat. 5 yd: draw, 2 body on each of 2 targets (4 rounds) in 4 s. 10 yd: from low ready, 2 body in 4 s. 10 yd: from low ready, 2 body on each of 2 targets in 5 s. | 2.0 / 3.0 / 4.0 / 5.0 s | Pass or fail. | One of the few short standards that includes target transitions. Written for carry gear from concealment, so do not compare it to open-carry times. |
| B · Accuracy under a clock | ||||||||
| Dot TortureDavid Blinder · pistol-training.com | 3 yd to start | 50 | The Dot Torture target: ten 2″ dots. Download it from the originator; it is copyrighted and it doubles as the instruction sheet. | Holstered. Most dots are shot from the draw; dot 8 is from ready or retention. | Dot 1: draw, 5 shots for one group. Dot 2: draw, 1 shot, holster, four more times. Dots 3 and 4: draw, 1 on each, holster, three more times (8 rounds). Dot 5: draw, 5 shots strong hand only. Dots 6 and 7: draw, 2 on each, holster, four more times (16 rounds). Dot 8: 5 shots weak hand only. Dots 9 and 10: draw, 1 on dot 9, speed reload, 1 on dot 10, holster, three more times (6 rounds). | No time limit. Your score is the distance | 50 of 50 inside the dots or you have not passed at that distance. Clean it, then move the target back (5 yd, then 7 yd) or add a total time limit. | Trigger control and one-handed work with nowhere to hide. Because there is no clock, this is the drill that exposes what speed has been covering up. |
| The TestKen Hackathorn; Larry Vickers scores it differently | 10 yd | 10 | B-8 repair center | Standard version from a ready position of your choice. Tougher version from the holster. Half-and-half version: 5 yd, 10 rounds, 5 s, from ready. | One string: 10 rounds. | 10.00 s | Hackathorn method: ring score out of 100; 80% passes, 90% is good, 95% is excellent. Vickers method: record the raw time, add 1 s for any shot out of the black but on the B-8, add 3 s for a shot off the paper; under 10 s total passes. | Recoil control at a real distance. The two scoring methods reward different things, so always say which one produced the number. |
| Super TestWayne Dobbs and Darryl Bolke, Hardwired Tactical Shooting | 15, 10, 5 yd | 30 | B-8 repair center | Semi-auto, all strings from the low ready. | 15 yd: 10 rounds. 10 yd: 10 rounds. 5 yd: 10 rounds. | 15.0 / 10.0 / 5.0 s | Ring score out of 300. Shots over the par count as misses at -10. Goal is 270 (90%). | Precision across three distances with a shrinking time budget. Ready-position start, so it excludes the draw entirely. |
| Advanced Super Test, Langdon timesDobbs and Bolke; par times added by Ernest Langdon | 15, 10, 5 yd | 30 | B-8 repair center | From the holster (that is what makes it Advanced). | Same three strings as the Super Test. | 7.5 / 5.0 / 3.5 s | Ring score out of 300; 270 remains the goal. | Half the time budget plus a draw. This is the version that separates skilled from very good. |
| 5x5 and 5^5Gila Hayes; the repeat requirement added by Claude Werner | 5 yd | 5 per run | 5″ circle | Original is from the ready. Common escalations: from the holster, then from concealment, then moving on the draw. | 5 rounds into the 5″ circle. For 5^5, do it five times in a row, clean. | 5.00 s per run | No misses. 100% clean or the run does not count. | Consistency, not a single lucky run. Werner has called 5^5 a black-belt test, and reports instructors who dismissed it until they gave it to advanced students. A 6^6 variant (6 rounds, 6″ circle, 6 yd, 6 s, six times) exists with genuinely contested authorship. |
| Walk-Back DrillLearned from Todd Louis Green | 3 yd, then back | 5 or 6 per stage | 3×5 index card | No prescribed start; aimed in is fine. The point is accuracy, not speed. | Striker-fired guns shoot 5 rounds per stage; a DA/SA gun shoots three pairs (6 rounds) so every stage includes a double-action and a single-action press. Start at 3 yd. All hits on the card, step to 5 yd. All hits, step to 7 yd, then 1 yard at a time. | None | Your score is the farthest distance at which you kept every round on the card. Depending on gun and ammunition you may hit mechanical limits past 15 yd. | Pure mechanical accuracy, and it finds the exact yard line where your fundamentals quit. Costs almost nothing in rounds. |
| 5/5/5 Playing Card TestTom Givens, Rangemaster | 5 yd | 5 | 3×5 index card, vertical (Givens has used a playing card) | From the ready first, then from the holster and concealment for the harder version. | 5 rounds into the card. | 5.00 s | All five on the card or you did not do it. In the Rangemaster September 2020 newsletter Givens named his own goals: 2.0 to 2.5 s from ready, 3.0 to 3.5 s from the holster. | Precision at speed on a head-box-sized zone. The card is the whole difficulty; nothing else about the drill is hard. |
| C · Speed and recoil control | ||||||||
| Bill DrillBill Wilson; named by Rob Leatham | 7 yd | 6 | USPSA metric or IDPA | Holstered, hands in the surrender position. | Draw and fire 6 rounds, all in the A zone or -0 zone. | Published standards disagree. Bill Wilson: 3.0 s from open carry as a good-shooter goal. Brian Enos: 2.0 s from competition gear as a Master benchmark, and Enos has also described 2.0 s as Wilson's original par. Rehn and Daub publish 5.0 s in their book as a defensive standard. Gabe White's pin times give a fourth reference set. | As fast as you can shoot it clean. Any shot outside the zone invalidates the time; some scorers instead add 1 s per shot outside. | Recoil control, grip and visual processing. The disagreement above is the useful content: the gear and the population differ, so quote which standard you are using or the number is noise. |
| Bill Drill 2Bill Wilson | 7 yd | 15 | IDPA target specifically | Holstered, hands at surrender. | Five strings from the draw: 1 shot, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5. | 10.00 s total, as the goal | Standard Vickers: sum the five string times, add 0.5 s per point down. | Isolates how much of your Bill Drill time is the draw versus the splits, because the draw is repeated five times inside one score. |
| El PresidenteJeff Cooper | 10 yd | 12 | Three USPSA or IDPA targets, one meter apart | Facing away from the targets, hands in surrender, holstered. | Turn, draw, 2 rounds on each of the three targets, reload, 2 more on each. | 10.00 s clean has been the reference standard since the 1970s | Cooper's version: all 12 inside the acceptable zone within the par. Modern competition scores it Comstock; on a clean run with 60 points available, time = 60 ÷ hit factor, so a hit factor of 10 is a 6.0-second run. | Turning, transitions and a reload in one package. Published times are usually shot with competition gear from open carry; add time for concealment before comparing. |
| Failure Drill (Mozambique)Traditional; popularized by Jeff Cooper | 7 yd | 15 (5 runs of 3) | USPSA or IDPA target | Holstered, hands at surrender. | Draw, 2 to the body, 1 to the head. Record the time. Repeat five times. | See the ladder: Gabe White publishes 2.90 / 2.25 / 1.70 s for Dark, Light and Turbo on this exact drill at 7 yd | Record each run. Head shot must be in the head zone; a head shot that lands in the body counts as a miss under Gabe White's rules. | Transition from a large zone to a small one under time. Five repetitions turn one lucky run into data. |
| Technical Skills TestGabe White · pin standards | 7 yd, all four drills | 11 per set | USPSA metric or IDPA with a 4″ circle or 3×5 card added to the head | Hands at sides, hands at high torso, or hands at surrender. No extra shots allowed. | Four drills: Bill Drill (6 body). Failure to Stop (2 body, 1 head). Immediate Incapacitation (2 head). Split Bill Drill (4 body, 2 head). | Dark 3.50 / 2.90 / 3.00 / 4.70 s. Light 2.50 / 2.25 / 2.50 / 3.50 s. Turbo 2.00 / 1.70 / 2.00 / 2.60 s. | Score is time plus penalties: 0.25 s per B/C or -1 hit, 1.0 s per D or -3 hit, 2.0 s per miss. A head shot landing in the body counts as a miss; a body shot landing in the head is scored as a hit. | The most carefully gear-normalized standard on this page. Times as published assume open-carried, non-retention gear; concealment or duty gear (SLS plus ALS minimum) earns a 0.25 s subtraction on every drill. For an award, each drill is shot for score twice and the best four of the eight attempts count. |
| D · Manipulation: reloads, malfunctions, the full chain | ||||||||
| F.A.S.T.Todd Louis Green · pistol-training.com | 7 yd | 6 | 3×5 card horizontal for the head, 8″ plate for the body | Holstered and concealed, or in duty condition with all retention devices active. Facing downrange, relaxed, hands at sides. Gun loaded with 2 rounds (1+1), reload available. | Draw, 2 rounds at the 3×5 card, slide-lock reload, 4 rounds at the 8″ plate. | Rating tiers, not a par: 10 s or more Novice, under 10 s Intermediate, under 7 s Advanced, under 5 s Expert | Total elapsed time. Misses are counted against you by the drill's own convention; the tiers assume a clean run. | Precision, then a mandatory reload, then speed on a large zone, in one continuous string. Published gear adjustments: subtract 0.5 s for a retention holster with flap magazine pouches; add 0.5 s for an open-top retention holster with no concealment. |
| 99 DrillJodyH · pistol-training.com | 7, 10, 15 yd | 99 | 4×6 card standard; 3×5 card for the advanced version | Holstered, concealed, hands relaxed at sides. | 7 yd: draw and fire 3 rounds, ten times (30 rounds). 7 yd: draw, 1 round, reload, 2 rounds, ten times (30 rounds). 10 yd: draw, 3 rounds, ten times (30 rounds). 15 yd: draw, 3 rounds, three times (9 rounds). | 2.5 / 5.0 / 3.5 / 5.0 s | Every shot must break before the par; a shot after the par counts as a miss. | Draw to first acceptable hit, repeated enough times that luck cannot carry you, plus a mental endurance component. Daub notes the first string decomposes to roughly a 1.5 s concealment draw with 0.5 s splits, and that a reliable cold 1.5 s concealment draw to an A zone at 7 yd is widely treated as the acceptable standard. |
| 3M Test, August 2021 versionTom Givens, Rangemaster | 5 yd | 10 live plus 1 dummy | RFTS-Q, IALEFI-Q or IDPA: 8″ chest circle and 4″ head circle | Holstered, from concealment. Intended to be shot cold. Load 1 in the chamber, then 6 live and 1 dummy in the magazine with the dummy third, fourth or fifth (never top or bottom). One reload of at least 3 rounds on the belt. | Side-step, draw and fire into the chest circle until the induced malfunction. Side-step, clear it. Continue firing at the chest until the gun runs empty. Side-step, reload. Fire 2 to the chest and 1 to the head. | 15 s general, 12 s for proficient shooters, 9 s for instructors | Pass or fail, clean and inside the time. Any round outside a ring fails. You must move on the draw, on the malfunction and on the reload; failing to move is a procedural and therefore a failure. | Marksmanship, movement and manipulations in one string, with an unpredictable malfunction. The single best-value drill on the page for round count against skills covered. |
| Handgun Core Skills TestTom Givens, Rangemaster · Sept 2020 newsletter version | 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 25 yd | 40 | IALEFI-QP scored 5/3/0, RFTS-Q 5/3/0, or IDPA with 4″ head circle scored 5/2/0 | From concealment. Givens has insisted on concealment for apples-to-apples comparison with other standards. | 3 yd: side-step, draw, 4 rounds. 5 yd: side-step, draw, 4 chest and 1 head. 5 yd: start with gun in dominant hand only, 4 rounds. 5 yd: start with gun in non-dominant hand only, 5 rounds. 7 yd: draw, 6 rounds. 7 yd: from ready with only 3 (2+1) loaded, fire 3, reload, fire 3. 10 yd: draw, 3 rounds. 15 yd: draw, 4 rounds. 25 yd: draw, 3 rounds. | No string pars; the clock runs on every string and total time is the denominator | Comstock. Points ÷ total time = index; index × 20 = score. Par score is 100. Givens: 80 to 100 very good, 100 to 124 advanced, 125 and up master. | The broadest single course of fire here, and the cleanest example of hit-factor scoring producing a gradient instead of a pass or fail. |
| E · One-handed and injured shooter | ||||||||
| Handgun Disability CourseTom Givens, Rangemaster | 5, 7, 10 yd | 50 | IALEFI-QP, RFTS-Q, IDPA or equivalent | From the holster except where the string starts at ready. Assumes a partner or a range that allows induced malfunctions. | 5 yd: draw, 4 rounds dominant hand only in 3 s; repeat. 5 yd: start with the gun in the non-dominant hand, 3 rounds in 3 s; repeat. 5 yd: draw, 3 body and 2 head, dominant hand only, in 6 s; repeat. 5 yd: start on both knees with the gun grounded; pick it up and fire 4 rounds non-dominant hand only in 5 s. 7 yd: at ready, non-dominant hand only, 3 rounds loaded; fire 3, reload, fire 3, non-dominant throughout, in 20 s. 10 yd: at ready with a stovepipe in place; clear and fire 3 in 8 s; repeat. 10 yd: at ready with a double feed in place; go to kneeling, clear it, fire 2 in 10 s; repeat. | 3.0 to 20.0 s by string | 250 possible; 200 (80%) passes. The write-up Daub holds does not state a zone value scheme; he suggests 5/3/0. | The skills almost nothing else tests: one-handed manipulation, grounded-gun recovery, and clearing a genuine double feed under a clock. These are above minimum competency, and most of the underlying work can be trained dry. |
| 3456 DrillAndy J. Anderson | 5 yd | 12 | 6″ circle, or the inner center-of-mass circle on a Q-PT | Strings 1, 2 and 4 from concealment; string 3 from the ready. | S1: draw, 3 rounds two-handed. S2: draw, 3 rounds strong hand only. S3: from ready, 3 rounds weak hand only. S4: draw, 3 rounds two-handed. Record each string's time. | Tiers on total time: Basic 18 s, Intermediate 15 s, Advanced 11 s, Expert under 11 s | Sum the four string times, then add 1 s for every shot outside the 6″ circle. | A low-round-count check that weights two-handed work twice while still testing both single-hand grips. Anderson's design logic: if you can hold a 6″ circle at 5 yd you can hold an 8″ chest zone at 5 to 10 yd. |
| Short Combat Accuracy Test (SCAT)Tom Givens, Rangemaster · Feb 2021 newsletter | 5, 7, 10 yd | 20 | RFTS-Q or IALEFI-QP silhouette | From a concealed carry setup. | 5 yd: draw, 4 to the chest. 5 yd: from ready, 1 to the head; repeat. 5 yd: from ready, 3 rounds dominant hand only. 5 yd: from ready, 3 rounds non-dominant hand only. 7 yd: draw, 4 to the chest. 10 yd: draw, 4 to the chest. | No string pars; time every string and total them | Center chest ring or head ring 10 points, secondary chest ring 6, all other hits 2, below the belt line 0. 200 possible. Points ÷ total time = index; index × 12.5 = score. Givens: 100 to 125 competent, 125.1 to 140 advanced, above 140.1 very high skill. Worked example from Givens: 184 points ÷ 22.3 s = 8.25, ×12.5 = 103.1. | Low round count with heavy one-handed content and a graded scale rather than a gate. Good quarterly cold test if you dislike pass-fail. |
| F · Movement, turning and transitions | ||||||||
| Modified Chuck Taylor Basic Live Fire DrillKarl Rehn, after Chuck Taylor's 1982 drill | 1, 3, 7, 10, 15 yd | 30 | Gunsite Option target; IDPA with 4″ head circle or KRT-2 in a pinch | Holstered, hands clasped at shoulder height or at the sides. Recommended from concealment once the movement is smooth. | 1 yd: both hands touching the target's shoulders, draw, 2 rounds in 1.5 s; repeat. 3 yd: hands at sides, draw, 2 rounds in 1.5 s; repeat. 7 yd: face right, turn, draw, 1 round in 1.5 s; repeat. 7 yd: face left, same, twice. 7 yd: draw, 2 chest in 2.0 s, back to ready, pause 2 s, 1 head in 2.0 s; repeat. 7 yd: with 1 in the gun and 1 in the magazine, draw, 2 chest, reload, 2 chest, in 6.0 s. 10 yd: draw, 2 chest in 2.0 s; repeat. 15 yd: draw, 2 chest in 3.0 s; repeat. | 1.5 to 6.0 s by string | Target scored 5/3/1; 150 possible. | Turning to an off-axis threat, which almost no modern standard tests. Caveat from Rehn and Daub: this era's pars were timed by a human with a stopwatch and a whistle, so the effective times were more generous than they read. |
| Gunsite 250 School DrillGunsite Academy | 3, 7, 10, 15, 25 yd | 10 | Gunsite Option target; IDPA with 8″ body and 4″ head works | All school drills start holstered. Concealment is optional in the 350 class, not the 250. | 3 yd: draw, 1 head shot in 1.5 s; repeat. 7 yd: draw, 2 body in 1.5 s. 10 yd: draw, 2 body in 2.0 s. 15 yd: draw, kneel, 2 body in 3.5 s. 25 yd: draw, prone, 2 body in 7.0 s. (An updated version replaces the 25-yard prone string with a 3-yard 2-shot body string in 1.5 s.) | 1.5 / 1.5 / 2.0 / 3.5 / 7.0 s | 50 possible. Head and chest rings 5 points; on the paper but outside the rings 2 points, except that two head misses score 0. Gunsite's Jay Tuttle: scoring in the mid to high 30s today is doing pretty well. | The historical benchmark, and a lesson in why old published times look fast: whistle starts and turning-target hiss added grace periods that modern electronic turners do not. |
| 16x16x16 DrillKR Training | 16 ft | 16 | KRT-1 (numbered shapes) | Gun concealed, hands relaxed at sides. Split 16 rounds unevenly across two magazines, one in the gun and one on the belt, and vary the split so you cannot predict the reload. | On the signal, engage each numbered shape with the number of rounds printed on it: shapes marked 1 get one round, 2 get two, 3 get three, triangle A gets three, triangle B gets one. Any order. Reload when the gun runs dry and keep going. | 16.00 s | Base score is your time; add 1 s per miss and 1 s per procedural (wrong round count on a shape). Under 16 s is good; under 12 s is excellent. | Target discrimination, transitions, and a reload you did not schedule. The uneven magazine split is the point; a predicted reload is not a reload test. |
| G · Qualifications used as benchmarks | ||||||||
| FBI Pistol Qualification, January 2019FBI course of fire; corroborated across the KR Training compendium and independent write-ups | 3, 5, 7, 15, 25 yd | 50 | QIT-99 bottle silhouette. Tougher substitutes: RFTS-Q scored 5/4/2, or an IDPA target counting only -0 hits. | All strings fired from concealed carry. | 3 yd: draw, 3 rounds strong hand only, switch hands, 3 rounds weak hand only, in 6 s. 5 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 3 s. 5 yd: from ready, 3 rounds in 2 s. 5 yd: from ready, 6 rounds in 4 s. 7 yd: draw, 5 rounds in 5 s. 7 yd: from ready with only 4 (3+1) loaded, fire 4, empty-gun reload, fire 4, in 8 s. 7 yd: from ready, 5 rounds in 4 s. 15 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 6 s. 15 yd: from ready, 3 rounds in 5 s. 25 yd: draw, 4 rounds standing and 4 kneeling, in 20 s. | 2.0 to 20.0 s by string; 63 s of par time total | 2 points per hit inside the bottle, 100 possible. 80% for agents, 90% for instructors. | The most widely shot benchmark in the country and a genuinely balanced course of fire. It replaced the 2013 60-round version. Note that it is a law enforcement standard: it is shot from concealment, but the population and mission differ from a private carrier's. |
| FBI Pistol Qualification, January 2013Predecessor course; retained for historical comparison | 3, 5, 7, 15, 25 yd | 60 | QIT-99 bottle silhouette | All strings fired from concealed carry. | 3 yd: draw, 3 rounds strong hand only in 3 s; repeat; then draw, 3 strong hand, switch, 3 weak hand, in 8 s. 5 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 3 s, four times. 7 yd: draw, 4 rounds in 4 s; repeat; then with 4 (3+1) loaded, draw, fire 4, empty-gun reload, fire 4, in 8 s. 15 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 6 s; repeat; draw, 4 rounds in 8 s. 25 yd: move to cover, 3 standing and 2 kneeling, in 15 s; repeat. | 3.0 to 15.0 s by string; 92 s total | 1 point per bottle hit, 60 possible. 48 (80%) for agents, 54 (90%) for instructors. | Useful only as a comparison: 60 rounds and far more generous par time budget per shot than the 2019 course. If someone quotes an FBI qual score, ask which one. |
| BATFE Handgun QualificationBATFE course of fire, as recorded in the KR Training compendium | 3, 7, 15, 25 yd | 48 | BATFE target scored 2/1/0; an IDPA target scored 2/0/0 is an approximate and tougher substitute | From the holster and concealment unless a string says otherwise. Hands at sides or in interview position. | 3 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 3 s; draw, 3 rounds two-handed then 3 weak hand only in 7 s; draw, 2 head shots in 3 s; draw, 4 rounds in 3 s. 7 yd: with 3 (2+1) loaded, from ready, fire 3, slide-lock reload, fire 3, in 8 s; draw, 2 chest and 1 head in 5 s, twice; from ready, 1 head shot in 2 s, twice; start with an empty chamber and slide closed, attempt to fire, tap-rack, fire 5, in 7 s. 15 yd: with 3 (2+1) loaded, from ready, fire 3, drop to kneeling, slide-lock reload, fire 3, in 12 s; from kneeling at ready, 3 rounds in 5 s, twice. 25 yd: draw, 2 rounds in 8 s. | 2.0 to 12.0 s by string; 75 s total | 96 possible points. | Includes a genuine malfunction string with an empty chamber and closed slide, which most quals skip. Same caveat as the FBI course: agency standard, agency population. |
| Texas License to Carry testTexas DPS · shown as the state-qualification floor | 3, 7, 15 yd | 50 | B-27 | From a low ready position. No draw, and no concealment, anywhere in the course. | 3 yd (20 rds): 1 shot in 2 s, five times; 2 shots in 3 s, five times; 5 shots in 10 s. 7 yd (20 rds): 5 shots in 10 s; 2 shots in 4 s; 3 shots in 6 s; 1 shot in 3 s, five times; 5 shots in 15 s. 15 yd (10 rds): 2 shots in 6 s; 3 shots in 9 s; 5 shots in 15 s. | 2.0 to 15.0 s by string | 250 possible on B-27 zones. 175 (70%) for students, 225 (90%) for instructors. | This is the point of including it: a state carry qualification never asks you to draw, never asks you to draw from concealment, and uses a very large target. Passing it is a legal event, not a proficiency claim. Daub's fix, if you want it to mean something: shoot it from concealment on an IDPA or KRT-2 target, clean. |
| IDPA 5x5 ClassifierOriginated as Bill Wilson's 5x5 Skill Test · official IDPA stage description | 10 yd | 25 | Standard IDPA target with 4″ head circle, shoulder set at 5 feet | Holstered, hands at sides. Cover garment optional under IDPA rules; note that on the shot-timer results below. | S1: draw, 5 shots freestyle. S2: draw, 5 shots strong hand only. S3: start with only 5 rounds loaded, draw, 5 shots, emergency reload, 5 more shots freestyle. S4: draw, 4 body and 1 head, freestyle. | No par; the sum of the four string times is the score | IDPA competition scoring: limited (no make-up shots); raw time plus 1 s per point down, 5 s per miss, 3 s per procedural, then compared against IDPA's division time brackets. Bill Wilson's original ranking used Vickers scoring at 0.5 s per point down: 15 s or under Grandmaster, 20 s Master, 25 s Expert, 32 s Sharpshooter, 41 s Marksman, 50 s Novice, over 50 s not proficient enough to carry. | Draw, one-handed shooting, a slide-lock reload and a head shot in 25 rounds. IDPA's own classification brackets differ by division and are periodically recalibrated, so read the current table from IDPA rather than any secondary write-up, including this one. |
| Gunsite Pistol StandardsGunsite Academy · Rangemaster Sept 2020 Drill of the Month | 3, 7, 10, 15, 25 yd | 15 | RFTS-Q or IDPA. Only the 8″ chest ring and the head ring count. | From the holster, open carry, except the reload stage which starts from ready. | 3 yd: draw, 1 head shot in 1.5 s. 3 yd: draw, 2 body in 1.5 s. 7 yd: draw, 2 body in 1.5 s. 10 yd: draw, 2 body in 2.0 s. 10 yd: from ready, 2 body, reload, 2 body, in 5.0 s. 15 yd: draw, 2 body in 3.5 s. 25 yd: draw, 2 body in 7.0 s. | 1.5 to 7.0 s by string | Pass or fail with 100% accountability: 14 body hits and 1 head hit inside the rings, or you failed. | A compact 15-round pass-fail gate spanning contact-ish distance to 25 yards. Shot open carry as written; running it from concealment at the same pars is the harder version. |
| H · Carry-specific hardware: snubs, backup guns, pocket carry | ||||||||
| Snub Super TestWayne Dobbs and Darryl Bolke, Hardwired Tactical Shooting | 10, 5, 3 yd | 15 | B-8 repair center | Five-shot snub, all strings from the low ready. The Advanced version draws from a concealment holster; from a pocket holster, start with the grip established in the pocket. | 10 yd: 5 shots two-handed. 5 yd: 5 shots two-handed. 3 yd: 5 shots strong hand only. | 8.0 / 5.0 / 3.0 s. With a very light gun (under about 15 oz), the 3-yard string may be shot two-handed in 3.5 s. | Ring score out of 150. Hardwired publishes no official goal; Daub's working read is that 90% (135) is tough but workable and 80% (120) is realistic with very light guns. | The honest measure of what a small revolver actually does at distance. If your backup gun or non-permissive-environment gun is a snub, this is the number that matters, not your score with the duty pistol. |
| Snub Assessment Drill (SAD)Greg Ellifritz; hit-factor scoring added by Tom Givens · Rangemaster April 2021 newsletter | 5 yd | 10 | B-8, B-8 repair center, FBI-IP1 bullseye or the LTT-1 bullseye | Five or six-shot revolver with a barrel no longer than 2.5″. All strings from the ready; time each string. | S1: 2 rounds non-dominant hand only. S2: 3 rounds dominant hand only. S3: 5 rounds two-handed. | No par; total your three string times | Only the 8, 9, 10 and X rings score; everything else is 0. 100 possible. Points ÷ total time = index; index × 8 = score. Par is 100. Givens' worked examples: 90 points in 9.8 s scores 73.5; 95 in 8.1 s scores 93.8; 100 in 8.0 s scores exactly 100. | Ten rounds, three grips, a graded scale, and it will humble almost anyone with a lightweight snub. Givens named it for what it does to people. |
| No-Loader TestLee Weems, First Person Safety | 3, 5, 7, 10 yd | 25 | 8″ circle containing a vertical 3×5 box, e.g. FPS-1 body or a Handgun Combatives chest cavity target | Concealment strongly suggested, or duty gear. Pocket strings may start with the hand in the pocket on the revolver; ankle strings may start kneeling. Vary hand positions between holstered strings. Ready means gun in hand, muzzle not covering the target. | 3 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 3 s; from ready, 2 rounds in 1.5 s, then load and holster; draw, 3 rounds strong hand only in 3 s; from ready, 2 rounds in 2 s, load and holster. 5 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 3 s; from ready, 2 rounds in 1.5 s, load and holster. 7 yd: on command draw to ready and give a verbal command, then on the beep fire 3 rounds in 3 s; from ready, fire 2, manually reload with only 2 rounds, fire 2, all in 15 s, then load 3 and holster. 10 yd: draw, 3 rounds in 5 s. | 1.5 to 15.0 s by string | 100% accountability: any shot outside the primary or secondary zone fails the whole course, as does any over-time string. To pass with distinction, 20 of 25 must be in the primary zone. Shot individually on a timer. The +P version adds a 3×3 head box and sends the third shot of every three-shot string there. | Written on the premise that the problem does not shrink because you brought a five-shot gun. Includes a partial reload from a speed strip and a verbal command, both rare in published standards. |
| Spencer Keepers' TestSpencer Keepers, Keepers Concealment | 7 yd | 3 | 3×5 index card, horizontal | From concealment. | Draw and fire 3 rounds into the card. | Keepers: 3.0 s makes you a pretty salty shooter; 2.5 s is really good | All three on the card or you did not do it. | Three rounds, one skill: draw to a small zone with a controlled pair behind it. The cheapest meaningful cold check on the page. |
| Active Self Protection 10-round Skill CheckJohn Correia, Active Self Protection | 7 yd | 10 | USPSA/IPSC scored 5/3/1; IALEFI-Q as an alternate | Holstered and concealed (strong-side IWB, AIWB, pocket or ankle), or duty gear with at least Level 2 retention. Hands at sides, in fence, or fig leaf. No grasping the cover garment before the beep. | Stage 1: draw, 1 body shot; repeat. Stage 2: draw, 2 head shots. Stage 3: draw, 6 body shots (a Bill Drill). Record time and points for every string. | Published tiers per stage. Stage 1: 3.0 Beginner, 2.0 Intermediate, 1.4 Advanced, 1.0 Master. Stage 2: 7.0 / 4.0 / 2.5 / 1.5. Stage 3: 12.5 / 5.0 / 3.0 / 2.25. | Virginia count, no make-up shots. 50 points possible. Points ÷ total time = hit factor; hit factor × 12.5 = score. Point tiers: 25 to 49.9 Beginner, 50 to 74.99 Intermediate, 75 to 99.99 Advanced, 100+ Master. | The cleanest published tier set for draw-to-first-hit and Bill Drill times measured from concealment, which is why three of its rows anchor the ladder below. |
| I · Low light | ||||||||
| Three Seconds or Less, Low LightKarl Rehn, KR Training | 3, 5, 7 yd | 20 | KRT-2, or an IPSC/IDPA overlay | Gun concealed. Handheld flashlight, technique of your choice; KR Training's preference is neck index. | 3 yd, no light: step left, draw, 3 body two-handed; then step right, draw, 3 body two-handed. 5 yd, no light: from ready, 4 body dominant hand only; transfer, 3 body non-dominant hand only. 5 yd, with light: illuminate, light off, step left, illuminate, 2 body dominant hand only; repeat stepping right. 7 yd, with light: illuminate on the signal, 1 head shot; repeat twice more. | 3.00 s every string | 5 points per acceptable hit, 0 for a miss. Only IPSC A/C, IDPA -0, or KRT-2 gray and white count. 100 possible; 80 or better passes, and you must have at least 2 head hits. | What a handheld light actually costs you in time and one-handed control. A weapon light removes the hand cost but does not remove the searching problem; shoot the drill both ways and compare the scores rather than arguing about it. |
Drills whose full course of fire depends on a copyrighted target (Dot Torture) are described procedurally here and link to the originator for the target itself. Nothing on this page reproduces a commercial target.
This is the answer to "what is a good draw time?" Read across a row to see where a number sits. The tier names are plain descriptions, not an invented belt system, and the tiers are populated from the tier sets their originators actually published: Active Self Protection's four levels, Gabe White's three pins, Todd Green's four F.A.S.T. ratings, Bill Wilson's six-class 5x5 ranking, and USPSA's classification percentages. A hatched cell means nobody published a standard there. Those gaps are information: they show you which benchmarks have a full ladder behind them and which are a single line in the sand.
Gear assumption for the whole chart: concealed everyday carry gear, an ordinary belt holster and cover garment, no competition rig and no race holster, unless a cell says otherwise. Two exceptions are flagged in place: Gabe White's pin times are published on an open-carry, non-retention basis with a 0.25 s subtraction for concealment or duty gear, and the Brian Enos Bill Drill benchmark assumes competition equipment. A time shot with a race holster and a shooting belt is not the same measurement as a time shot with the gun you actually carry; do not compare them, and do not compare either to a video.
Shoot three things cold, in this order: the Wizard (5 rounds), a Bill Drill (6 rounds), and the 5 Yard Roundup (10 rounds). That is 21 rounds and about ten minutes. The Wizard tells you whether you are competent; the Bill Drill places you on the recoil-control ladder; the Roundup gives you a graded accuracy number to track. Write all three down before you shoot anything else.
The pie-chart "shooting correction" target on the wall of every range, the one that says a low-left group means you are heeling and a high-right group means you are thumbing, is not a diagnostic instrument for a shooter whose errors are unknown. It is widely derided by high-skill shooters and trainers, and instructors have criticized it for decades. Todd Green's write-up on pistol-training.com sets out the conditions under which it says anything at all: one-handed, slow fire, correct handedness chart, perfect sight picture. Outside those conditions it cannot tell whether there is one problem or several overlapping ones, cannot see flinching or blinking, and cannot see your grip or stance. His summary is blunt: it is a sheet of paper and it is not watching you shoot. Karl Rehn has traced the chart's origins, and the one narrow case where instructors still find it useful is double-action revolver shooters stroking the trigger.
The chart's real failure mode is that it gives a confident wrong answer. A shooter with a bad grip, a flinch and a trigger-finger placement problem shoots a low-left group, reads "heeling," works on a thing they were not doing, and gets worse. Use the tests below instead. Every one of them produces evidence rather than an interpretation.
| Symptom on the target or the timer | Most likely cause | The test that confirms it | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group is fine slow, opens badly the moment there is a clock | Grip pressure and recoil management, not marksmanship | Shoot a five-round group slow fire, then a Bill Drill at the same distance, and compare the two groups on the same target | Bill Drill at 80% speed, increasing until the group opens; then live there |
| Consistent low-left group (right-handed shooter) that you cannot explain | Anticipation of recoil, possibly plus trigger-finger placement, possibly plus grip. Usually more than one thing | Ball and dummy. Have someone load a dummy round at a random position in the magazine. If the muzzle dips on the click, you are anticipating. This is the only reliable self-administered test for a flinch | Wall drill for the press; ball and dummy repeated until the click produces no movement; Dot Torture dot 1 |
| First shot slow, splits fast | Draw stroke, not shooting | Timer: run a one-shot draw string ten times, then a six-shot Bill Drill. Compare the draw component to the total | 99 Drill string 1; dry draw repetitions with a par timer |
| First shot fast, first shot misses | Not enough visual confirmation before the press; you are shooting on a timeline instead of on a sight picture | 5 Yard Roundup string 1, or the Wizard, where a single first-shot miss fails the run | The Wizard, shot cold and repeatedly; Spencer Keepers' Test |
| Splits above roughly 0.40 s on an A zone at 7 yd | Grip is not returning the sights; support hand is doing too little | Read the split times off a real timer, not an app. Then shoot the same string one-handed and see how much worse it gets | Bill Drill; grip pressure test below |
| Tight at 3 yd, unacceptably wide at 25 yd slow fire | Sight alignment and trigger press precision, exposed by distance | Ten rounds slow fire on a B-8 at 25 yd, untimed | Walk-Back Drill to find the exact yard line; then The Test and Super Test |
| Strong-hand-only group is much worse than freestyle | The support hand was masking a bad trigger press | Same distance, five rounds two-handed then five strong hand only, on separate targets | 5 Yard Roundup strings 3 and 4; SCAT; Handgun Disability Course |
| Weak-hand-only is a disaster and you had not noticed | It is almost never practiced | Any drill with a weak-hand string: Snub Assessment Drill, 3456, Baseline Skills Assessment | Dry presentations weak hand only; 3456 Drill string 3 |
| Red dot: you present and the dot is not there | Inconsistent presentation, not the optic. The dot is an honest report on where your gun actually points | Dry presentations from concealment to a wall mark; count how many out of ten show the dot immediately | Dry presentation repetitions; keep the irons co-witnessed as a reference until the presentation is consistent |
| Reload fumbles the moment a clock starts | Magazine index, hand path, or a pouch position that only works standing still | F.A.S.T., which isolates the reload between two scored segments; or the FBI 2019 8-second reload string | Dry reloads with a par timer; fix the pouch position before adding speed |
| Hits are good but shots are late | Cadence is not calibrated to the standard; you are shooting at your comfortable speed regardless of par | Set the par at your recorded time, then reduce it in 0.5 s steps until the wheels come off | Any par drill run this way; then "post the par" to build cadence control |
| Head shots string high | Over-driving to the smaller zone: the eyes accept a rougher sight picture than the target allows | Wizard 3, 5 and 7 yd strings; Gabe White Immediate Incapacitation | The Wizard; Playing Card Test; F.A.S.T. first two rounds |
| Hits scatter only on the strings that require movement | Trying to shoot while moving instead of moving then shooting, or moving before the gun is out | 3M Test, which fails you procedurally for not moving on the draw, the malfunction and the reload | 3M Test; Three Seconds or Less, whose side-steps are built in |
| Malfunction clearance is slow or wrong | Untrained tap-rack; the double feed has never been done under time | Have a partner induce a stovepipe and a double feed randomly, or use the Handgun Disability Course strings | 3M Test; Handgun Disability Course; dry malfunction repetitions with dummy rounds |
| Warm scores are good; cold scores are much worse | No cold-testing habit, so your real on-demand skill has never been measured | Shoot a named assessment as the first thing you do, before any warm-up, and log it | Minimum Competency Assessment or the Wizard as a standing cold opener, once per session |
Grip pressure test: shoot a five-shot group at your normal grip, then a second at a deliberately harder support-hand grip, on separate targets, same distance and same speed. If the second group is tighter, your support hand was loafing. Target-focus versus sight-focus test with a dot: shoot the same close string once looking hard at the target and once looking hard at the dot, and compare times and groups.
Skill is built dry and confirmed live. The published minimums from serious instructors converge on a similar shape: short frequent dry sessions, a modest live session once or twice a month with a plan, and a cold test you actually record. What follows is a schedule you can hold to, not the maximum anyone could do.
| Element | Cadence | Session content | Why this and not more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dry practice, draw stroke | 10 to 15 min, 3 to 4 times a week | 25 to 40 presentations from concealment to a wall mark, on a par timer. Vary start position: hands at sides, fence, hands on a phone. | The draw is the highest-leverage skill and it costs nothing. Past roughly 15 minutes attention degrades and you start grooving sloppy repetitions. |
| Dry practice, trigger control | Inside the same session | 20 to 30 wall-drill presses, sights or dot on a mark, watching for any movement at the break. | The one skill that transfers directly to every drill on this page. |
| Dry practice, manipulation | 1 of every 3 sessions | 15 reloads and 15 malfunction clearances with dummy rounds. | These are pure mechanics. Live fire adds nothing to them except cost. |
| Dry practice, one-handed | 1 of every 3 sessions | 10 presentations and 10 presses each hand, plus belt or heel racking one-handed. | The strings that expose everyone in the drill library, and they are free to train. |
| Live fire session | 1 to 2 times a month, ~100 rounds | See the allocation below. | Confirms what dry practice built. Live fire without a dry-practice base mostly buys noise. |
| Cold assessment | Every live session, first thing | One named drill, shot cold, scored and logged before anything else. | The single highest-signal habit on this page. A cold number is the only honest measure of on-demand skill. |
| Quarterly benchmark | 4 times a year | A full-length assessment: FBI 2019 qual, Rangemaster Core Skills, or the Minimum Competency Assessment, shot with carry ammunition. | Long courses of fire catch what short ones miss, and carry ammunition confirms point of impact and reliability. |
| Carry-ammunition rotation | Twice a year | Shoot the ammunition you have been carrying rather than throwing it away; replace with fresh. | You learn your carry load's recoil and point of impact, and you confirm it feeds, at no marginal cost. |
| Formal instruction | At least once a year | A one or two-day class with a competent instructor who will watch you shoot. | The only reliable fix for problems you cannot see. Everything else on this page is self-diagnosis, which has a ceiling. |
| Log review | Monthly, 5 minutes | Read the last six entries; find the limiting factor that repeats. | Without review the log is a diary. With review it is a training plan. |
| Block | Rounds | What you shoot | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold assessment | 5 to 25 | The Wizard (5), 5 Yard Roundup (10), or the Minimum Competency Assessment (25) | Before anything else. Score it, write it down. |
| Accuracy block | 20 | The Test (10) plus a Walk-Back or a slow-fire B-8 group (10) | Untimed or generously timed. This is where precision gets rebuilt. |
| Speed and recoil | 18 to 24 | Three to four Bill Drills, all scored | Stop when the group opens; grooving misses is worse than stopping. |
| Manipulation | 12 to 18 | Two or three F.A.S.T. runs, or the 3M Test | Reload and malfunction under a clock, once a session. |
| One-handed | 10 to 12 | 3456 Drill (12), or the one-handed strings of the Baseline Assessment | Both hands, every session, no exceptions. |
| Distance | 6 to 10 | 15 and 25-yard strings from a qualification course | Cheap insurance against the outlier distances in the incident data. |
| Carry ammunition | 5 to 10 | The last string of the session, fired with your actual carry load | Confirms feed reliability and shows you the point-of-impact shift from your practice load. |
Round counts total 76 to 119 depending on which cold assessment you pick. Cut the distance block first when short; cut the cold assessment never.
| Practice ammunition, 24 sessions × 100 rds | 2,400 rds |
| 9mm practice FMJ, blended at $0.21/rd (Sept 2026: remanufactured bulk ran about $192 per 1,000, new-brass Winchester about $270 per 1,000) | $504 |
| Carry ammunition: 4 quarterly benchmarks × 25 rds, plus 2 rotations × 20 rds = 140 rds at $0.75/rd (premium 9mm JHP ran $0.55 to $1.00/rd, Sept 2026) | $105 |
| Range fees, 24 visits at an assumed $20 per visit (this is an assumption, not a national figure; yours may be $0 on public land or $35 in a city) | $480 |
| Targets: B-8 repair centers and cardboard silhouettes | $40 |
| One two-day class (advertised 2026 tuition for two-day defensive pistol courses spans roughly $450 to $1,500; taking the low end) | $450 |
| Annual total | $1,579 |
Per session that is about $41 of ammunition and range time, plus the class. Dry practice adds nothing to this line.
| Dry practice, 4 sessions a week × 50 weeks | $0 |
| Laser cartridge or equivalent dry-fire tool, one-time, amortized | $40 |
| Live fire, 1 session a month × 50 rds = 600 rds at $0.21/rd | $126 |
| Carry ammunition, 2 quarterly benchmarks × 25 rds = 50 rds at $0.75/rd | $38 |
| Range fees, 12 visits at the same assumed $20 | $240 |
| Targets, printed KRT-2 and paper plates | $15 |
| Annual total, no formal class | $459 |
Under this program the 50-round live session is: 5-round cold Wizard, 12-round 3456 Drill, three Bill Drills, one F.A.S.T., and 9 rounds of carry ammunition. Ammunition prices are dated September 2026 and move fast; re-price before you plan a year.
Dry practice is where most of the skill on this page gets built, and it is also where people shoot their own walls, televisions and legs. The failure mode is boringly consistent: the session ends, the gun gets loaded, and then there is one more repetition. Treat the following as a procedure, not advice.
Not in a drawer, not in a magazine on the dresser, not in a pocket. Carry ammunition and loaded magazines go to a different room before the gun is unloaded. Physical separation creates the mental separation that keeps live and dry from mixing.
Drop the magazine, lock the slide, look into the chamber, then put a finger in the chamber. Set the magazine down out of reach. Then do the whole check again. A revolver gets the cylinder swung out, looked at, and felt.
"This gun is unloaded and this is a dry practice session." A verbal marker is a cheap ritual that gives your brain a state change to hang the rules on.
An interior wall is not a backstop. A brick or concrete exterior wall, a loaded bookcase of dense books, a cast-iron bathtub, or a chest freezer will stop a common handgun round; drywall and a stud will not. Pick the direction before you start and do not change it mid-session.
A drawcord, a shirt hem, a jacket toggle or a piece of the cover garment folded into the holster mouth is the mechanism behind a large share of appendix-carry self-inflicted wounds. Look at the holster mouth before every reholster.
There is no timer running on the reholster and there never will be. If you cannot see the holster, take it off the belt, holster the gun in your hand, and put it back on.
"Session over." Then leave the room before you reload. The reload happens somewhere else, and once the gun is loaded the session is not reopened for any reason.
The "one more rep after you reload" impulse is the single most common dry-practice negligent discharge. If you think of one more thing to work, write it on the list for tomorrow.
Set a timer for 15 minutes. Fatigue degrades attention before it degrades technique, and attention is the safety system.
Every rule above is designed to overlap another one. The goal is a system where several independent things must go wrong at once before an error becomes a discharge, because human beings make mistakes.
| Tool | What it measures | What it cannot do | Rough cost band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated shot timer | Reliable start beeps, par beeps, and real shot detection with splits when you take it to the range | Nothing indoors during dry practice beyond par beeps; a striker click is at the edge of what most units detect | Roughly $60 to $200 depending on model |
| Phone par-timer app | Start delay and par tones, accurately | Shot detection next to gunfire. Indoor echo makes phantom shots; muzzle blast exceeds the microphone's range and eats real ones | Free to a few dollars |
| Laser training cartridge | Where the muzzle actually pointed at the moment the striker fell | Recoil, grip under recoil, or anything after the first shot. It also requires racking the slide between repetitions on most pistols | Roughly $30 to $60 |
| Laser training pistol (SIRT type) | Trigger take-up and break separately, with no need to rack between repetitions, using a gun that cannot chamber a round | Your actual trigger, your actual holster fit, and recoil. It is a training aid, not your carry gun | Roughly $200 to $450 |
| Barrel block or chamber flag | Nothing, but it makes the gun's condition visible to you and anyone else in the house | Substitute for the unload procedure. It is a second layer, not the first | Under $20 |
| Inert blue gun or dummy gun | Holster work, garment clearing, retention and entangled-distance practice with zero discharge risk | Trigger work of any kind | Roughly $40 to $90 |
Prices are category ranges as of September 2026 and are given to set expectations, not as recommendations. No product on this page is endorsed.
Equipment is in scope here only where it changes a measurement. Nothing below is a buying guide, and no brand is recommended. The test for whether a piece of gear matters is simple: shoot the same drill twice, once with each configuration, and read the scores.
| Variable | How it changes the measurement | How to test it on yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Holster mouth rigidity | A holster whose mouth collapses when the gun leaves it forces a two-handed, eyes-down reholster and makes one-handed reholstering unsafe. It does not slow the draw much; it slows and endangers everything after. | Draw, then try to reholster one-handed while looking at the holster. If the mouth is closed, that is the finding. |
| Belt stiffness | The most under-rated variable on this list. A soft belt lets the holster move with the gun during the draw, which turns a clean draw into a wrestle and adds inconsistency string to string. | Run ten timed draws with your normal belt and ten with a stiff purpose-built belt. Compare the spread of the times, not just the fastest. |
| Retention level | Published standards quantify this. F.A.S.T. subtracts 0.5 s for a retention holster with flap magazine pouches and adds 0.5 s for an open-top retention holster with no concealment. Gabe White gives a flat 0.25 s subtraction for concealment or duty gear (SLS plus ALS minimum). | Use the published adjustment rather than inventing one, and state it whenever you quote the time. |
| Carry position, appendix versus strong side | Both work; the draw paths differ and so does the garment-clearing problem. One suggestive data point: in the Rangemaster TacCon 2021 shoot-off, of the 24 finalists, the overwhelming majority were carrying appendix (Karl Rehn's count was roughly six strong-side, the rest appendix). | Shoot the same 10-round drill from each position on separate days, cold. That is the only comparison worth anything, because it is your body. |
| Ride height and cant | Changes where your hand meets the gun and how much the garment has to be lifted. Small changes here move the draw time more than most people expect, and inconsistency here is worse than a suboptimal setting. | Timed draws before and after a change, ten each. Then leave it alone. |
| Cover garment: open-front | Cleared with a sweep of the strong hand (strong-side) or both hands (appendix). Fastest to clear, most likely to blow open in wind. | Ten timed draws in the garment you actually wear today, not the one you own. |
| Cover garment: closed-front | Requires a lift, usually with the support hand, which means the support hand is not building the grip while the strong hand draws. Reliably slower, and it is what most people wear in summer. | Same ten draws in a t-shirt. Expect a real difference and train the version you wear most. |
| Pocket carry | Slowest draw of the common modes and it usually cannot be done seated in a car. Several drills accommodate it explicitly: the Wizard, the No-Loader Test and the ASP Skill Check allow starting with the hand in the pocket on the gun. | Shoot the Wizard both ways: hand in pocket at the start, and hands at sides. |
| Iron sights | Two focal planes to reconcile. No battery, no lens, nothing to fail. For shooters with thousands of rounds on irons, the measured advantage of switching is small. | Baseline: The Test at 10 yd and a Bill Drill at 7 yd, both scored. |
| Pistol red dot: the upside | One focal plane and a target-focused aiming reference. Sage Dynamics' multi-year study reported that novice through moderately advanced shooters improved accuracy on both standard tests and force-on-force, with force-on-force complete misses falling from about 41% (irons) to about 27% (dot), and roughly triple the center-of-mass hits. | Same two baseline drills with each sighting system, on separate days, cold. |
| Pistol red dot: the honest costs | The dot-finding problem during the learning phase, a lens that fogs, rains and mud, a battery with a service life, and a mount that must be checked. The same study found little appreciable advantage for shooters with very large iron-sight round counts. | Track how many of ten dry presentations show the dot immediately. Until that is ten of ten, the optic is costing you time. |
| Astigmatism | Turns a dot into a starburst or a comma for some shooters, which degrades precision at distance. It is individual and it is not a defect in the optic. | Look through a dot before buying one. If it starbursts, try a larger dot, a different emitter, or stay on irons. |
| Trigger | Changes where in the press the shot breaks, which changes your anticipation pattern. A different trigger does not fix a flinch; it relocates it. | Ball and dummy, before and after any trigger change. |
| Grip texture and frame size | Determines whether the gun returns to the same place after recoil. Shows up in splits, not in slow-fire groups. | Compare split times on Bill Drills, not group size. |
| Magazines and how many | Reload drills need magazines that drop free and seat under pressure. A magazine that works when you ease it in and fails when you slam it will fail exactly on the clock. | Run the F.A.S.T. reload with every magazine you own. Retire the ones that hesitate; they are practice magazines now. |
| Carry load versus practice load | Different recoil impulse and often a different point of impact. This is the reason the last string of every session is fired with carry ammunition, and the reason to run a full assessment with it a few times a year. | Shoot five rounds of practice ammunition and five of carry ammunition at the same aiming point at 15 yd on a B-8. Measure the group centers. |
Every drill in this library measures shooting. Shooting is the part of carrying a gun that is easiest to measure and, on most days, the least likely to matter. These are the rest of it.
| Skill | Why it belongs in a proficiency page | How to build it | Rough time to competence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carry-position consistency | Your draw stroke is trained to one position. Moving the gun between appendix, strong side, a pocket and a bag means you have trained one draw and will attempt four. | Pick one primary position and one contingency position and keep them. Practice both, and know the times for each. | Immediate decision, weeks of repetition |
| Reholstering discipline | Reholstering is the single most dangerous thing a carrier does routinely, and it is entirely unhurried. Rushed reholstering with clothing in the holster is the appendix-carry injury mechanism. | Every reholster, every time, slowly, with eyes on the holster mouth and the finger clearly off the trigger. | One session to learn, forever to maintain |
| Garment management and printing | The gun stays concealed while you reach, sit, bend and climb stairs, or you have a different problem entirely. | Wear the rig at home for a full day. Sit in the car. Reach a high shelf. Have someone tell you what they can see. | A few days of wearing it |
| Drawing from seated and from a vehicle | A large fraction of ordinary life is spent seated, and a seat belt plus a center console defeats most draw strokes trained standing. | Dry practice in a parked car and in a chair, with the same safety protocol as any dry session. | Several dry sessions |
| Retention and entangled distance | Standing square at 7 yards does not cover the closest and most common civilian distance problem. Two of Givens' incidents were at contact distance, and LEOKA data puts about half of officer firearm deaths inside five feet. | Formal instruction with an inert training gun. This is not a solo skill and it is not a live-fire skill. | A dedicated class, then periodic reps |
| Verbal commands and the pre-draw decision | Most defensive gun uses are resolved without a shot. The words come before the gun, and they are trained almost nowhere. The No-Loader Test is one of the few standards that puts a verbal command inside the course of fire. | Say the command out loud during dry practice and during the No-Loader Test string. It feels absurd and that is why nobody does it. | Weeks, mostly overcoming self-consciousness |
| Movement off the line of attack | A lateral step on the draw is built into Three Seconds or Less, the 3M Test, the Rangemaster quals and the Minimum Competency Assessment. Givens teaches the side-step as effective mainly at the very start of the problem. | Take the step in dry practice until it is part of the draw rather than an extra task. | Weeks of dry repetitions |
| Backdrop awareness | Every round that misses goes somewhere. This is the skill no paper target teaches because paper never has a family behind it. | Practice looking past the target as part of the post-string scan. In classes, ask what is behind every target on the range. | A habit, built over months |
| Target discrimination and shoot / no-shoot | Deciding is the hard part. The 16x16x16 drill's numbered shapes are a crude but real proxy: you must read the target before you engage it. | 16x16x16, then force-on-force or image-based decision training with an instructor. | A class; then ongoing |
| Post-incident actions | What you do in the first minutes shapes everything that follows. Deliberately out of scope here; it is legal and procedural content, not skill content. | Take a use-of-force class from a qualified instructor and read your state's statutes. One line, and then this page moves on. | A class |
| Bleeding control | A carrier is far more likely to encounter a car wreck, a kitchen accident or an industrial injury than a gunfight. A tourniquet in the bag with no training on it is a prop. | Take a Stop the Bleed or equivalent class; carry a tourniquet, pressure dressing and gloves; practice one-handed application on yourself. | A half-day class, then periodic practice |
| Tourniquet conversion and prolonged care | Most short bleeding-control classes teach application and stop there. If your evacuation time is long, application is only the first half of the problem. | Ask about it explicitly when you choose a class. This page links the gap rather than becoming a medical cheat sheet. | A second, longer class |
Almost every published defensive standard assumes concealment, and no state qualification includes it. If your only practice is from an open range holster, your times are not the times.
A warm score describes your best day. Cold scores are the only measure of on-demand skill, and they are usually a full tier worse. Shoot cold first, every session.
Untimed accuracy is a real skill and a poor predictor of defensive competence. Without a clock you cannot tell a solid shooter from a slow one.
A fast miss is a miss with a receipt. Every drill here has an accuracy rule for exactly this reason; using the clock alone will make you faster at missing.
The incident data clusters at 3 to 7 yards, but Givens has outliers at 15, 17 and 22. A 15 and 25-yard block costs six to ten rounds a session.
A different holster, a different belt, no cover garment, and often a bigger gun. That configuration produces numbers that belong to a person who does not exist.
Every measurable variable in section 10 is worth less than a hundred dry draws a week. Fix the reps first; then see whether the gear still matters.
A carry qualification is a legal event. Many, including the Texas LTC test, have no draw at all and use a very large target. Passing it means you are licensed, not that you are competent.
Without a log you have a collection of anecdotes about days you shot well. The log is what turns a session into data.
The video was probably shot with a competition holster, no cover garment, a known start signal, and after warm-up. Compare against a published standard that states its gear assumption instead.
Strong-hand-only and weak-hand-only strings appear in almost every serious standard here and they are where scores collapse. They are also free to train dry.
Both are pure mechanics that degrade instantly under time pressure. F.A.S.T. and the 3M Test exist to expose exactly this.
If a drill produces no number, it cannot show improvement or decline. Theatrical drills feel like training and function as entertainment.
Dry practice with no clock builds a comfortable, unmeasured speed. Set a par, and reduce it in 0.5-second steps until technique breaks.
There is no timer on the reholster, ever. This is the mistake with the worst consequence-to-benefit ratio on the list.
One line per drill, per session. The columns exist because each one changes the meaning of the score: a 3.1-second Bill Drill warm, from an open range holster, with practice ammunition is a different fact from the same number cold, concealed, with carry ammunition. Print this page and the drill card together; two sheets live in the ammunition can.
| Date | Cold or warm | Drill | Gun / holster / garment | Ammunition | Raw time(s) | Points down | Final score | Tier | Limiting factor, one line |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-05 | Cold | 5 Yard Roundup | Compact 9mm / AIWB kydex / t-shirt | 115 gr FMJ | within par | see rings | 82 / 100 | below Skilled | Weak-hand string: 2 low hits and one late |
The first row is a filled example. Everything below it is yours.
Any single score contains a large amount of luck. Compare the median of your last three runs of a drill against the median of the three before that.
Never average them. They measure different things, and mixing them hides the only number that matters.
Three sessions with no movement on a drill means the drill has stopped teaching you. Either the limiting factor is elsewhere, or you need a coach's eye.
"Slow draw," "wide splits," "weak hand low." Written between strings, that one line is worth more than the score next to it.
A time from a new holster is a new baseline. Mark it in the log, or you will spend a month confused about a trend that is really a hardware change.
The timer above stores runs in this browser only. Copy it out regularly; clearing site data deletes it, and it never leaves your device.
Permit requirements, reciprocity, carry restrictions and use-of-force rules are state-specific, change often, and are not covered here. Verify the current rules for your own state and any state you travel through, with that state's own authority.
For a worked example of what a state permit process actually involves, see the Colorado concealed handgun permit walkthrough at Colorado Firearms Watch. Colorado's process, as that page describes it, requires an in-person class from a sheriff-verified instructor with at least eight hours of instruction including a live-fire exercise and a written competency exam, with the training certificate dated within a year of application. Applicants apply through their county (or city and county) sheriff, who makes the decision; the Colorado Bureau of Investigation runs fingerprint and name-based background checks and charges $52.50 in state fees on a new application, with county administrative fees on top and varying by jurisdiction. The sheriff has 90 days after receiving the required materials, or three business days after federal background-check results arrive, whichever is later. Permits run five years, and renewals may be filed in the 120 days before expiration, typically with a refresher certificate dated within six months. Every one of those numbers is Colorado's; yours will differ.
Note what that process does and does not establish: it verifies that you attended a class and passed a competency exam. It is a legal threshold, not a proficiency ladder. That distinction is the reason this page exists.
Formal instruction is the thing this page cannot substitute for. Everything here is self-measurement, and self-measurement has a ceiling: you cannot see your own grip, your own trigger press or your own presentation. Budget at least one class a year with an instructor who will watch you shoot and tell you something you did not know.
Ammunition and equipment prices in sections 8 and 9 are September 2026 retail observations from ammunition price trackers and vendor listings, quoted as ranges because they move fast. Range fees and class tuition are stated as assumptions with their basis, not as national averages.
All strings from concealment with everyday carry gear unless noted. Par times in seconds. Score it, log it on page 2.
| Drill | Dist | Rds | Target | Start | Course of fire | Par | Standard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold assessments | |||||||
| The Wizard | 3/5/7/10 | 5 | 8″ body, 4″ head | Concealed | 1 head SHO; 1 head; 1 head; 2 body | 2.5 each | Pass/fail, max 2 pts down |
| 5 Yard Roundup | 5 | 10 | B-8 | S1 concealed, rest ready | 1; 4; 3 SHO; 2 WHO | 2.5 each | 90 good, 95 v.good, 100 clean |
| Baseline Skills | 5/7/10 | 20 | B-8 | Concealed, cold | 5; 3 SHO; 2 WHO; 3+reload+3; 4 | 5/3/3/10/4 | Ring score /200 |
| Min Competency Assessment | 3/5/7/10 | 25 | KRT-2 or IDPA -0 | Concealed; sides/fence/phone; side-step | 14 strings, mostly 1 to 3 rounds | 2.0 to 4.0 | 23/25 acceptable hits |
| Three Seconds or Less | 3/5/7 | 20 | KRT-2 / IDPA | Concealed, movement | 10 strings incl. reload, SHO, WHO, turn | 3.0 each | 14/16/18/20 hit tiers |
| Ed Head CHL Drill | 3/5/10 | 20 | 8″ + 3x5 | Concealed | 2 SHO x2; 2+1 head x2; transitions | 2/3/4/5 | Pass/fail |
| Accuracy under a clock | |||||||
| Dot Torture | 3 to start | 50 | Dot Torture target | Holstered | 10 dots, see originator's target | None | 50/50 clean, then move back |
| The Test | 10 | 10 | B-8 | Ready (holster = harder) | 10 rounds | 10.0 | 80 pass / 90 good / 95 excellent |
| Super Test | 15/10/5 | 30 | B-8 | Low ready | 10 rounds each distance | 15/10/5 | 270/300 |
| Adv. Super Test (Langdon) | 15/10/5 | 30 | B-8 | Holster | 10 rounds each distance | 7.5/5/3.5 | 270/300 |
| 5x5 / 5^5 | 5 | 5 per run | 5″ circle | Ready or holster | 5 rounds; 5^5 = five clean runs | 5.0 | No misses |
| Playing Card Test | 5 | 5 | 3x5 card | Ready or concealed | 5 rounds | 5.0 | All 5 on the card |
| Walk-Back | 3 and back | 5 or 6 | 3x5 card | Any | All hits, then step back | None | Farthest clean distance |
| Speed and recoil | |||||||
| Bill Drill | 7 | 6 | A / -0 zone | Holster, surrender | 6 rounds | 3.0 Wilson open; 2.0 Enos comp; 5.0 KRT | Clean or it does not count |
| Failure Drill | 7 | 3 x5 runs | Body + head | Holster, surrender | 2 body, 1 head | 2.90 / 2.25 / 1.70 (GW pins) | Head shot in the head zone |
| El Presidente | 10 | 12 | 3 targets, 1 m apart | Facing away, surrender | Turn, 2 each, reload, 2 each | 10.0 clean | Comstock in competition |
| Gabe White TST | 7 | 11 per set | USPSA/IDPA + head box | Sides / high torso / surrender | Bill; Failure; 2 head; 4 body 2 head | Dark 3.50/2.90/3.00/4.70; Light 2.50/2.25/2.50/3.50; Turbo 2.00/1.70/2.00/2.60 | +0.25 C, +1.0 D, +2.0 miss; -0.25 concealed |
| Manipulation, movement, one-handed | |||||||
| F.A.S.T. | 7 | 6 | 3x5 head, 8″ body | Concealed, 2 rds loaded | 2 head, slide-lock reload, 4 body | Tiers, not par | 10+ / <10 / <7 / <5 |
| 99 Drill | 7/10/15 | 99 | 4x6 card (3x5 adv.) | Concealed | 3 x10; 1+reload+2 x10; 3 x10; 3 x3 | 2.5/5.0/3.5/5.0 | Late = miss |
| 3M Test | 5 | 10 + dummy | 8″ + 4″ head | Concealed, dummy loaded | Move, draw, malfunction, move, reload, 2 body 1 head | 15 / 12 / 9 | Clean; must move 3x |
| Rangemaster Core Skills | 3 to 25 | 40 | IALEFI-QP / RFTS-Q / IDPA | Concealed | 9 strings | Time all strings | Index x20; 100 par, 125 master |
| 3456 Drill | 5 | 12 | 6″ circle | Concealed (S3 ready) | 3 freestyle; 3 SHO; 3 WHO; 3 freestyle | Total time | 18 / 15 / 11 / under 11 |
| SCAT | 5/7/10 | 20 | RFTS-Q / IALEFI-QP | Concealed | 4; 1 head x2; 3 SHO; 3 WHO; 4; 4 | Time all strings | Index x12.5; 100+ competent |
| 16x16x16 | 16 ft | 16 | KRT-1 | Concealed, split mags | Engage numbered shapes, reload as needed | 16.0 | +1 s per miss or procedural |
| Qualifications and hardware | |||||||
| FBI Qual, Jan 2019 | 3 to 25 | 50 | QIT-99 | Concealed | 10 strings incl. reload and kneeling | 63 s total par | 80% agent, 90% instructor |
| BATFE Qual | 3 to 25 | 48 | BATFE 2/1/0 | Concealed | 14 strings incl. tap-rack and kneeling | 75 s total par | 96 points possible |
| Gunsite Pistol Standards | 3 to 25 | 15 | 8″ + head ring | Holster, open carry | 7 strings incl. reload | 1.5 to 7.0 | 100% accountability |
| IDPA 5x5 Classifier | 10 | 25 | IDPA, 4″ head | Holster, garment optional | 5; 5 SHO; 5+reload+5; 4 body 1 head | Sum of times | Vickers: 15 GM / 20 M / 25 EX / 32 SS |
| Snub Super Test | 10/5/3 | 15 | B-8 | Low ready, 5-shot snub | 5; 5; 5 SHO | 8/5/3 | 120 to 135 of 150 |
| Snub Assessment Drill | 5 | 10 | B-8, 8-ring and in | Ready, snub | 2 WHO; 3 SHO; 5 freestyle | Sum of times | Index x8; par 100 |
| No-Loader Test | 3/5/7/10 | 25 | 8″ with 3x5 box | Concealed, revolver | 9 strings incl. verbal command and partial reload | 1.5 to 15.0 | 100% accountability; 20/25 primary for distinction |
| Keepers' Test | 7 | 3 | 3x5 horizontal | Concealed | 3 rounds | 3.0 salty; 2.5 very good | All 3 on the card |
| ASP 10-round Skill Check | 7 | 10 | USPSA 5/3/1 | Concealed | 1 body x2; 2 head; 6 body | S1 3.0/2.0/1.4/1.0; S2 7.0/4.0/2.5/1.5; S3 12.5/5.0/3.0/2.25 | Hit factor x12.5 |
| 3 Seconds or Less, low light | 3/5/7 | 20 | KRT-2 | Concealed + handheld light | 9 strings, light on 5 | 3.0 each | 80/100, min 2 head hits |
SHO = strong hand only. WHO = weak hand only. GW = Gabe White pin times, published open-carry basis with a 0.25 s subtraction for concealment or duty gear. Full specifications, sources and scoring rules: cheatsheets.davidveksler.com/ccw-proficiency-drills.html
Date ____________ Range ____________________ Gun / holster / garment ______________________________ Ammunition ______________ Weather / light ______________
| Drill | Cold? | Raw time(s) per string | Pts down | Penalties | Final score | Tier | Limiting factor, one line |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scoring reminders. Vickers: time + 0.5 s per point down. IDPA: time + 1.0 s per point down, +5 s per miss, +3 s per procedural. Hit factor: points divided by time. Rangemaster scaling: Core Skills index x20, SCAT x12.5, Snub Assessment x8; par is 100. 5 Yard Roundup: miss -10, late hit -5. Never average a cold run with a warm one.