Practice Drills That Actually Improve Your Shooting

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December 17, 2026 · Dan Ribacoff, NRA-Certified Instructor

What makes something a drill

Three things separate a drill from casual shooting: a defined standard, a measurable result, and a specific skill being tested.

Firing a magazine at a silhouette is shooting. Firing five rounds at a three-inch circle at seven yards in fifteen seconds, counting hits, and writing the number down is a drill.

The distinction matters because measurement is what produces improvement. Without a score you have no idea whether you are getting better, and you will unconsciously drift toward whatever you are already good at.

The one-hole drill

Setup: three yards, a one-inch dot, five rounds, no time limit.

Standard: all five in one ragged hole.

What it tests: pure trigger control and grip, with distance removed as a variable.

This is the most honest accuracy diagnostic available, and it is humbling. At three yards with unlimited time there are no excuses — every error is mechanical and yours. Shooters who cannot do this at three yards have no business chasing speed at fifteen.

Dot torture

Setup: a standard printed target of ten small circles, three yards, fifty rounds, no time limit.

Standard: 50 out of 50.

What it tests: essentially everything — draw, single shots, strings, strong hand only, support hand only, and reloads.

The most useful single drill in common circulation. It is scored out of fifty, it is repeatable, and it exposes every weakness in a shooter's game in one page. Most competent shooters need several attempts to clean it, and the strong-hand-only and support-hand-only sections are where nearly everyone loses points — which tells you exactly what nobody practises.

The 5x5 drill

Setup: five yards, a five-inch circle, five rounds, five seconds.

Standard: all five hits within the time.

What it tests: the balance of speed and accuracy, and whether your sights are actually returning between shots.

Simple, repeatable and easy to score. Run it four times as a twenty-round assessment and track the total across sessions.

The ball-and-dummy drill

Setup: a partner loads your magazine out of sight, mixing dummy rounds in at random.

What it tests: recoil anticipation.

Not a scored drill but the most important diagnostic in this article. When the gun clicks instead of firing, everyone present sees whether your muzzle dips. It cannot be argued with and it cannot be self-administered, which is precisely why almost nobody does it.

Drills for specific problems

Problem	Drill	Standard
Anticipating recoil	Ball and dummy	No muzzle movement on the dummy
Inconsistent groups	One-hole drill at 3 yards	Five rounds, one hole
Slow, searching sight picture	Dry fire presentations from low ready	Sights aligned on arrival, 100 reps
Second shot off target	Controlled pairs at 5 yards	Both rounds in a 4-inch circle
Weak support hand	Support-hand-only slow fire	5 rounds in 6 inches at 5 yards
Fumbled reloads	Dry reloads with dummy magazines	50 reps, eyes on target not on gun
Freezing on malfunctions	Partner-induced random stoppages	Clear and reassess without stopping to think

Structuring a live-fire session

A hundred rounds, used well, beats three hundred used carelessly. A workable structure:

1. 10 rounds: slow fire at three yards. Warm up mechanics, check grip and trigger.
2. 20 rounds: a scored drill. One-hole or 5x5. Write the score down.
3. 10 rounds: ball and dummy. Check for anticipation.
4. 20 rounds: work the specific problem the first three blocks revealed.
5. 20 rounds: dot torture or a second scored drill for the record.
6. 10 rounds: support-hand and strong-hand only, because nobody practises it.
7. 10 rounds: finish with slow, deliberate, correct shots so the last thing you reinforce is good.

Stop early if your groups start opening. Fatigue-driven practice reinforces faults, and the last thirty rounds of a long session are frequently the most damaging of the week.

Keeping records

Keep a simple log: date, drill, score, what you worked on, what to work on next time. A note on your phone is sufficient.

This does two things. It tells you objectively whether you are improving, which feelings do not reliably report. And it makes the next session purposeful, because you arrive knowing what you are there to fix.

Shooters who keep records improve faster than those who do not, by a margin that is not subtle. It is the cheapest performance improvement available and almost nobody does it.

If your scores have plateaued despite consistent work, that is the moment a lesson is worth most — a plateau nearly always means an invisible mechanical fault, and invisible is exactly what an outside observer fixes in minutes.

Turning this into practice

Fundamentals are not learned by reading, and they are not learned by volume either. They are learned by short, deliberate, corrected repetition. If you take one thing from this article into your week, make it a ten-minute daily dry fire block under a strict safety protocol — no ammunition in the room, firearm verified unloaded twice, a genuine backstop direction.

A workable pattern looks like this. Two minutes building and checking your grip from scratch, twenty repetitions. Three minutes of trigger presses with a spent casing balanced on the front sight, stopping the moment your attention drifts. Three minutes of presentations from a low ready, watching how quickly a clean sight picture appears. Two minutes of reloads or malfunction clearing with dummy rounds. That is the entire session, and it will outperform a monthly training trip.

Then validate at the training facility with a small round count and full attention. Fifty deliberate rounds with a five-shot group fired every ten will tell you more than two hundred fired quickly, and will cost you far less in both ammunition and ingrained bad habits. When your groups start to open up, the session is finished — that is fatigue talking, and rounds fired past that point reinforce faults rather than fixing them.

Train with a certified instructor in South Florida

Reading about shooting is useful. Being watched while you shoot is transformative — because the faults that limit you are, almost by definition, the ones you cannot see yourself. Delray Firearms Training provides private, NRA-certified instruction with Dan Ribacoff throughout Palm Beach County and Broward County, including Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Coral Springs and Weston.

Lessons are one-on-one by default, arranged by appointment seven days a week, and shaped around your experience level rather than a fixed script. Whether you have never fired a shot or you have carried for twenty years and want a specific problem solved, the starting point is a short conversation.

Call 516-315-2809 Request a Time

About the instructor

Dan Ribacoff is an NRA-certified firearms instructor, licensed private investigator and career security professional who has spent decades in investigations, executive protection and private security. He teaches handgun, rifle, carbine, shotgun, concealed carry, home defense and maintenance courses across South Florida. Read more about Dan →

Related reading

• How to Hold a Handgun: The Grip That Fixes Almost Everything
• Trigger Control: Why the Last Quarter-Inch Decides Everything
• Sight Alignment vs. Sight Picture: The Distinction That Fixes Your Accuracy