My advice for a new shooter who wants to advance quickly
Every Saturday morning, ranges across the country are full of shooters burning through hundreds of rounds. I see dozens of them right here at Clark Brothers. It’s also something a lot of our students comment on after completing the Pistol Intro Series with us and carry on their training with CFI.
Some leave convinced they had a great practice session – But did they actually practice?
Maybe… Maybe not.
There’s an important distinction that separates shooters who improve steadily from those who plateau for years:
Shooting and practicing are not the same thing. Pulling the trigger a lot of times does not magically, by osmosis, imbue a new shooter with John Wick skills.
The difference isn’t how many rounds you fire. It isn’t how long you’re at the range. It isn’t even how hard you try.
The difference is whether every repetition has a purpose. Quick side not here – this is for those who want to improve their shooting and that’s honestly not everyone. Some folks are content with just being safe, coming out to the range to make something go boom and put a hole in some paper and that’s totally fine but that person should save themselves a couple minutes and not bother reading on. What follows is what I would tell MYSELF starting out, someone who wanted to get better at shooting ASAP.
Activity Doesn’t Equal Improvement
Imagine someone who wants to get stronger. They go into a gym, bounce from machine to machine, couple reps on each then call it a day.
Was that better than sitting on the couch eating cheetos? Absolutely. Would anyone call that an efficient strength program? Absolutely not.
But that’s how a lot of shooters approach the range.
They shoot a couple magazines at 7 yards, maybe push some speed with a bill drill or 2, finish up with a few slow fire bullseye groups, then pack up and go home.
Nothing about that session was necessarily bad.
But very little of it was intentional.
Without a goal, it’s difficult to know whether you improved.
Every Repetition Should Answer a Question
The easiest way to improve your training is to stop asking:
“What should I shoot today?”
Instead ask:
“What am I trying to improve today?”
That’s a completely different mindset.
Maybe today’s goal is building a more consistent grip.
Maybe it’s seeing the sights lift during recoil.
Maybe it’s transitioning your eyes before the gun.
Once you know the skill you’re training, every repetition becomes feedback. We aren’t just firing rounds, we’re getting feedback.
One Skill Beats Five Skills
One of the biggest mistakes intermediate shooters make is trying to fix everything at once.
Grip.
Trigger.
Draw.
Reloads.
Transitions.
Vision.
Movement.
Footwork.
Accuracy.
Speed.
That’s too much for your brain to process simultaneously.
Instead, narrow your focus – Choose one skill, then spend the majority of your session reinforcing that one thing.
I usually find my students’ other skills improve as a side effect.
A better grip makes recoil management easier.
Better vision improves transitions.
Getting off the trigger quickly and aiming to take out the slack before the sights return to target make follow up shots more accurate.
A smoother draw improves first-shot consistency… The progress compounds.
Have an Objective Measure
Imagine practicing basketball free throws without counting how many you make, totally fine if you’re just a guy who likes to shoot hoops for fun, an insane approach for someone looking to improve their basketball skills as fast as possible. Always use measurable standards whenever possible.
Examples include:
- Draw-to-first-shot time
- Split times (how long between your shots)
- Transition times
- Target points
- Overall drill time
- Hit factor (if you’re someone pursuing competition)
- Number of acceptable hits
A shot timer is super helpful if you’re measuring speed – it’s why you see us use one in nearly every lesson we run after a handgun intro class, but you don’t need one if you’re just starting out. Giving yourself a mental countdown to execute a shot or a part of a drill works well too and then simply count hits vs misses. (We’ll talk about calling shots and being accountable for our misses coming up soon)
Stop Chasing Personal Records
I see some of my best students fall into this trap all the time. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating a personal best.
The problem is building your entire practice around trying to beat yesterday’s fastest run. If you push beyond your current ability every repetition, you’ll often reinforce poor technique. I say again – if your only goal is to shave .7 seconds off your personal best every time you will end up compensating with sloppy technique.
I am not saying we don’t push speed. Sometimes exactly what we need to bust through a barrier is to go a lot faster than we’re currently comfortable. But when the only goal is “do it faster” we substitute the means for the end and lose track of the building blocks to get there. I try and think like a long term investor.
Small, consistent gains outperform occasional big wins with bad fundamentals. A shooter who improves one percent every week will become dramatically better over time.
Consistency beats “hero runs”. It’s easier to avoid this trap if you stay focused on the process and the individual skills instead of constantly trying to run big long complicated fun run & gun drills.
The Most Valuable Tool Isn’t Ammunition
If you asked most shooters what they need more of, they’d probably say ammunition.
I’d say it’s attention. I can burn through 300 rounds while my mind wanders, or I can fire 50 carefully planned rounds while evaluating every repetition. The second version usually improves much faster because that version is engaged. Every shot has a purpose and every result is checked out to teach me something.
Learn From Every Miss
Lots of shooters react to a miss by immediately firing again. This might be what you need to do if you’re shooting a 6 shot string of fire and you missed shot #2. If you’re warming up or just shooting 1 or 2 shots at a time, don’t just blow past it and keep shooting!
That second shot might rob you of valuable information.
Instead, pause.
Ask yourself:
- Where were the sights when the shot broke? – If you don’t know THAT’S DATA TOO! That tells you you aren’t aiming and processing your sights all the way through the shot – BOOM, you just found your focus for the day – “Infinite aiming” – no matter what the gun does or where you are in the shot sequence look to stay connected to your whole sight package and always processing what it’s telling you.
- What did I actually see? – Were my sights adequate based on the size of the target I was trying to hit. *BONUS – did I OVER confirm the sights, did I ask for more precision and perfection than the target demanded thus losing speed and increasing my chance of “anticipation”
- Was my grip changing?
- Did I rush the trigger?
- Did I call the shot correctly? (more info on this in the coming weeks)
- What told me it was time to shoot? Did I respond to my sights or did something else like nerves or my mental timer tell me I needed to shoot?
Elite shooters aren’t better because they never miss.
They’re better because every miss becomes data.
Every mistake has a lesson attached to it—if we’re willing to look.
Dry Fire Is Practice
One reason dry fire is so effective is that it removes distractions.
Without recoil or the pressure of seeing holes appear in the target, you’re free to focus entirely on movement, vision, and consistency.
A ten-minute dry-fire session with a specific goal is usually more productive than an hour of unfocused live fire.
That’s because improvement happens through quality repetitions—not noisy ones.
Live fire confirms.
Dry fire builds.
We need both. **SIDE NOTE: Don’t neglect a proper grip in dry fire. It’s such an easy trap to get into to be lazy with our grip on the gun when we know it isn’t going to go bang. Grip it just like you would on the live range. It’s good reps and will more accurately show you where the inefficiencies you should be addressing in dry fire are going to come up!
Build a Simple Training Plan
You don’t need a complicated spreadsheet or dozens of drills.
You need a plan.
A productive range session might look like this:
Warm-up (10 rounds)
Confirm zero and fundamentals. Are my shots staying inside the A or B box at 7 yards? Good.
Primary skill (70 rounds)
Work on one specific skill with deliberate repetitions. Want some good simple drills that will work on any specific skill? Reach out to the CFI team and we’ll be happy to send some your way! cl*****@**********fi.com or you can youtube “*skillnamehere* pistol drills on a *yourtypeofrangehere* range” i.e: “grip pistol drills on an indoor range” and see what comes up.
Validation (30 rounds)
Run a drill that tests whether the skill transferred under a little more pressure. These will typically be longer strings of fire with a time component if you’re able.
Review
Before leaving the range, answer three questions:
- What improved today?
- What still needs work?
- What will I train next session?
That’s it.
Simple.
Repeatable.
Effective.
Common Mistakes
Mistake #1: Practicing Whatever Feels Fun
Enjoy your range time. But don’t confuse entertainment with improvement. Just like with food, exercise, saving money, you name it – the “most fun” thing isn’t always the thing working us towards improvement, but improving has a high quality fun all its own.
Mistake #2: Changing Drills Every Five Minutes
Progress comes from enough quality repetitions to identify patterns.
Constantly switching drills makes that difficult. As dull as it might seem, any drill I run usually gets 10+ reps before I really dig into deep evaluation and consider switching (unless it’s a very high round count drill then at least 20 rounds)
Mistake #3: Vague Corrections
“SLOW DOWN!” is a great example. Might not be bad information but it needs to be coupled with an actual correction. Often times going too fast makes it difficult for us to execute the skills needed to make a shot properly. But just going slower doesn’t fix anything in and of itself. If you’re missing your follow up shots and you decide you’re going to try and slow down make sure it’s for a purpose:
Example 1: “I’m going to slow down because at this distance I need to be really accountable with my sights and I’m shooting too fast to get the information I need from my sights to make an acceptable shot. So I’m going to slow down and make sure for EVERY shot I see my 3 sights settled and steady on the target before I break the next shot”
Example 2: “I’m going to slow down because running the trigger this hard is causing me to grip the rest of my hand to try and move the trigger so fast and it’s driving my sights off target while I shoot, it’s putting way too much tension in my shooting hand. I’ll slow down just a bit to focus on isolating that trigger finger so it can move fast without activating the rest of the muscles in my shooting hand and then speed back up”
Mistake #4: Never Measuring Performance
Without objective feedback, improvement becomes guesswork.
Measure something.
Anything.
Just be consistent.
Mistake #5: Leaving Without a Lesson
Every range session should answer a question.
If you can’t identify what you learned, it’s worth asking whether you were truly practicing.
Key Takeaways
Remember these four ideas:
- Shooting isn’t automatically practice.
- Every repetition should have a purpose.
- Focus on improving one skill at a time.
- Measure your performance so you know whether you’re improving.
Final Thoughts
There’s a saying you’ll hear in many disciplines:
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect Practice makes perfect.
If you’re repeating poor habits, you’ll become exceptionally good at performing them. Every time you add stress or speed your brain will default back into those bad habits, that’s how the brain works. They become very hard to undo.
That’s why intentional practice matters.
The goal isn’t to fire more rounds than everyone else.
The goal is to make every round teach you something.
The next time you head to the range, don’t ask yourself,
“How many rounds am I going to shoot?”
Instead, ask,
“What am I going to learn today?”
That one question can transform an ordinary range session into one that actually moves your performance forward.
-Chris