Today’s drill, the No Fail Pistol Drill, comes from Chuck Pressburg of Presscheck Consulting. Chuck Pressburg served for 26 years, primarily in Special Operations and Special Missions Units. He retired as a Sergeant Major and now owns a firearms training company. Unfortunately, I have never taken a class with Mr. Pressburg, but friends who have won’t shut up about how great they are.
Until I can find my way into a Presscheck Consulting class, I can practice the No Fail Pistol Drill, which appears to be a part of the No Fail Pistol class. The No Fail Pistol Drill mixes a relatively simple drill with a fairly challenging goal.
The time and accuracy standards are high, but overall, it’s not going to require a ton of ammo, gear, range, or equipment. It requires mastery of the basics of pistol draw, grip, and accuracy more than anything else.
The No Fail Pistol Drill: What You Need
Each run of this drill requires 10 rounds, but bring more because I know you’ll shoot it more than once. You need a handgun (duh) and one magazine. Extra mags will make it easier to run back-to-back drills. You’ll also need a holster and a shot timer.
Your target will be a simple B8, which is cheap, easy to find, and even printable. Logistically, we’ll need ear and eye protection and the dreaded shot timer. Finally, you’ll need 25 yards of range. As you can see, a lot isn’t required to shoot the No Fail Pistol Drill.
I used the new Ruger RXM, with a Defender ST red dot and an Inforce weapon light equipped to the gun. I went with the Safariland 6304RDS, a Level 3 duty rig with SLS and ALS retention devices. The holster is mounted to my Bianchi belt and comes in the uber-sweet chocolate chip desert camo.
I used the Safariland Liberator 2.0 for ear protection and a Club Timer 3 and made sure to bring a good attitude. If you want to make it a little easier for your eyes to see hits, get the B8s that splatter; it just makes life easier.
Shooting the Course of Fire
This might be the shortest part of the article. The No Fail Pistol Drill doesn’t require anything crazy. There is no movement, cover, or reloads, just shots and hits.
The entirety of the drill consists of drawing and firing one shot at 25 yards at a B8. You have 3.5 seconds to make your shot. You repeat this 10 times, and that’s it.
On the B8, you have several rings, but you only need to pay attention to the 9 ring and X ring. Any shots that fall out of the 9 ring equals a failure. Any shot that exceeds 3.5 seconds is a failure. The requirements to pass are strict. You fire 10 rounds, but all 10 must hit within the 9 ring within 3.5 seconds to pass. There is no 80% to pass with the No Fail Pistol drill.
I fired the No Fail Pistol drill with the SLS device defeated and just used the ALS device. I wanted to give myself a little advantage. Sure, I had a fantastic advantage using a red dot, but I’ll take every advantage I can get.
I failed. I failed my first, second, and third attempts. I had both accuracy and time failures, but more accuracy than time. This drill was more challenging than I thought.
What drove me crazy was that every time I missed, I knew it as soon as I pulled the trigger. This tells me I’m rushing shots and I know I can do better. I’m losing the mental game.
How I Plan To Succeed
After running it three times, I was warmed up. I could run the drill until I succeeded and passed, but that meant nothing regarding overall skill. Your best judge of skill is what you do cold. It’s performance on demand.
With that in mind, I focused on what I could do to improve. From my own target, more than half my shots hit where they are supposed to.
I can hit the shots at 25 yards, but I’m messing up somewhere. Slowing down was the objective, and I didn’t care about the time. I still worked to draw and present the gun quickly, but I took my time as soon as the red dot got onto the target.
I didn’t rush the trigger pull or worry about the 3.5-second par time, and I fired when I knew the shot would hit.
This improved my accuracy, and about half the shots were still fired within the acceptable par time. The other half never exceeded four seconds. This improved my accuracy, but I still need to work more.
Besides practice, I noticed a significant improvement in consistency when I switched from the cheapest steel-cased Monarch rounds to some basic Winchester White Box ammo. That made a more considerable difference than I ever thought it would.
Hits Count
Oftentimes, we get stuck playing the speed game. How fast can I put rounds into a torso-sized target? It’s good to remember that effective shots are all that counts. If you can hit within the 9 ring of a B8 at 25 yards, you can make effective hits at handgun ranges.
The No Fail Pistol drill has tough and tight standards with no slack found. Do you know what else has tough and tight standards without any slack? The real world.
