
Getting on Target Faster

Use Drills, ‘Athlete’ Mindset to shave milliseconds off bringing a Firearm into Play
I once was at an open enrollment carbine class with Kyle Defoor, a Navy special mission unit combat veteran, when one of the students asked how we compared to other people Defoor worked with.
His response planted a seed that I have worked on ever since. To paraphrase, Defoor said if you compare strictly targets, our class was on par with people of his former unit. The difference, however, was the time to get on target, movements and manipulations. He made the class understand that the operators are “warrior athletes” who are on par with any professional athlete. This means they have made their movements second nature with speed and efficiency combined with hours of dedicated training and practice.
While most of us are not on a path to becoming operators, when it comes to weapons handling, competition and defense, this mindset is important to apply. Over the years as I have talked about this with thousands of students, something has become a pattern.
Most people have a very elevated view of what an athlete is. An athlete is simply someone who is proficient at a sport. If you understand the rules, can perform the tasks, and are safe, you are an athlete under that definition. The next thing is that if applying the word “athlete” to yourself makes you feel uncomfortable, it tells you exactly where to put the most work. This is what is holding you back.

THE FOCUS OF this article is on manipulations and time, exactly where Defoor told us to look. Both in
competition and defense, the time it takes to get the firearm into play and on target is vital. Your scores – or your life – depend on it. To demonstrate this, I like to use a simple rifle drill. From the low ready position, you have one second to engage a 6-inch target at 10 yards. This is quite a simple drill that can be done dry or live to the same effect. To get the hit we must do things in a specific order and that takes time. I will reiterate the two truths: properly point the firearm and fire it without disturbing the aim.

From the low ready, on the command we must raise the rifle enough to aim and hold the aim long enough to press the trigger in less than one second. First, let us look at the reaction time. Aaron Cowan of Sage Dynamics did some research and found that “visual response to stimulus is slower due to more mental processing via the thalamus to the appropriate parts of the brain than audible.” This means
a visual cue will result in a slower reaction time than an audible one.
Going with an average of 170 to 250 milliseconds (1,000 milliseconds per second) for reaction time, that
leaves us around 750 milliseconds to drive the firearm into position, aim and fire. This is where you can really begin to do work. It is not just about fast movement on the rifle; it’s about controlled fast movement of the rifle. Let us say it takes you 500 milliseconds to drive the rifle into position, a full half-second. We are now three-quarters of a second (750 milliseconds) into our one-second time.
That only leaves us 250 milliseconds to aim and press the trigger. That is not a lot of time to mentally process the sight picture, adjust and shoot. This is why you will see people launch rounds off the target because to meet the time, they skipped aiming and launched on thoughts and prayers. This is a work set one. The genuine answer is not to buy a trigger or new handguard; the answer is to cut into those 500 milliseconds to get the rifle on target. Keep in mind, this is just breaking the shot at the one second mark.
The reaction time is hard programmed but can be worked on. The speed and efficiency of the
presentation, however, can be fixed very easily with focused reps. If your fitness is lacking or the rifle is heavy, this will take some work. The good news is that it is a dry-fire routine and will only cost you time. You are looking to be able to drive the rifle directly into a good firing position in the shortest time possible. Let us say that you do the work and take that time from 500 milliseconds to 300. Now we are only 550 milliseconds into the shot, but the sights have landed exactly where they need to be.
Now our aiming cycle is significantly shorter to confirm the desired point of aim, or POA, for the
desired point of impact, or POI. Keep in mind that for a rifle zeroed at a further range, there will be a height over-bore offset that you will have to account for. We can either spend more time to perfect the aim for a perfect shot or press the trigger to get well below our par time of one second.
In competition, that 200 milliseconds across multiple stages can add up. If your match has 10 stages, without putting in the effort, you are handing your competitors two full seconds for the day. In a defense scenario, that 200 milliseconds could determine how you get home.

ALL THE TEXT above talked about a single drill. Target transitions are another place where time is lost, so we will complete the same drill but add a second target and 500 milliseconds for a total of 1,500. Now we must do all the above, then move the rifle to another target, aim and fire.
I will give you the credit for doing the work and our first shot will fire at 750 milliseconds. That leaves us 750 milliseconds to drive the rifle to the left or right. A simple rule that helps is “eyes, then rifle.” Your eyes go to target two first, then you drive the rifle to the aiming point. The same things affect that movement time as before. The tendency when going fast is to swing the rifle past the target and come back to it. This is referred to as overdriving. We added too much gas or did not start slowing the swing down in time to get the rifle stopped efficiently on the target. This burns time rapidly but is something we can work on again with dedicated repetitions. This could be another spot where you lose 200 milliseconds.
Most matches have many target transitions. For instance, the Quantified Performance stage, Midrange
Quantifier (40-second average stage time), has three positions and seven target transitions. If we give away 200 milliseconds per transition, we are behind 1.5 seconds without taking anything else into account. More tactically oriented matches might have 10 transitions per stage.
All we worked on today was driving the rifle. We did not spend any time on getting into position, malfunctions or other positions. These are all areas, like Kyle Defoor said, where warrior athletes are outperforming most. We assumed that your rounds landed true, and you did not have to make up shots. A holstered pistol was also not discussed. All these things come into play and in the case of a defensive shot, are vital. More of us should take on an athlete mentality and do the work necessary to earn that title.
Editor’s note: Ash Hess is a highly seasoned combat veteran of 22 years with four combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, totaling 52 months. His military training includes the US Army Master Marksman Trainer course, as well as rifle marksman instructor, urban combat leaders’, senior leaders’, army basic instructor, high-angle marksman and unit armor courses. He also wrote TC3-22.9, the Army’s
marksmanship manual.