by jshuberg on Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:35 am
I'd highly recommend taking a tactical class from an instructor when starting with holster work. If you try teaching yourself chances are you're going to develop a bad habit that could potentially take you years to rid yourself of. Bill's has advanced and tactical classes that cover holster work, low light, movement, etc but they are wrapped up for the summer. They do offer one-on-one's there, and there are a number of other local instructors that also offer instruction on holster work.
It may seem trivial, but an incorrect draw could potentially add as much as an extra second to getting your first shot off, not to mention potential safety issues. It's like every other aspect of shooting, you can immediately tell which shooters have been properly trained from the ones who have taught themselves. Once you have the basic mechanics down, dry fire practice will develop the muscle memory necessary to do it correctly at speed. Studies have shown it takes ~2300 iterations to fully program the subconscious how to perform an action without conscious thought.
Ultimately, you want everything involved in the operation of the weapon, from the draw to shooting to clearing malfunctions to be performed correctly without thinking. This leaves your conscious mind to focus on the target, not on weapons manipulation. If you train yourself incorrectly though, it's significantly more difficult to 'un-train' and 're-train' yourself than it would have been to get it right in the first place.
If you already have training in proper draw technique, dry fire should still be your primary way to practice. For live fire, if the range you go to won't let you draw from the holster, you can get away with just practicing the draw from position 3, bringing the support hand up to the weapon and punching out to position 4. While not ideal, you'll still be able to practice rapid sight acquisition in the draw stroke and the ability to get the first round on target at or during the transition to position 4.
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