Took another class today. Did an exercise where two shooters on the line shot drew from holster and shot at steel at 7ish yards, maybe 10. Winer stayed and looser got to go to the back of the line.

When I was on, I'd get 1.65 first shot and hit. When I wasn't, it was 2.x or even worse, I'd have a great time and outright miss. Same exercise but moving from one target to another, my first shot sucks and miss but my second was dead on.

Are there any tips or tricks to improve speed and accuracy of the first shot?

Keep shooting/practicing that drill.

Buy a shot timer and practice it at the range as much as you can.

I’m no expert….

I’ve been shooting for about 30 years and a big city cop for 28

I work hard for years focusing on accuracy and I still retain a lot of that but I didn’t focus as much as I should on speed. I regret that.

A few years ago my training buddy introduced me to the teachings of Ben Stoeger.

Long story short he’s a very accomplished competitive shooter that routinely gets contracted to teach the top tier military units

I’d recommend a couple things that have significantly changed my skills in the last 4-5 years


Buy Ben’s books and watch his video content

Dry fire often.

Learn to shoot your vision and stop over confirmation

I look at good shooting as a journey not a destination… the work never ends

Smooth is fast! practice...practice...practice!

first step is learn to eliminate unnecessary movement.  Most people trying to be fast end up dropping their head, hunching their shoulders and trying to draw the pistol.  Only move your arms to the pistol and present up to the eye.  

Once you get good at doing less - then start going faster - push faster to presentation than you think is responsible and chase par times in DRYFIRE focusing on what you can see and correcting each rep with where the wheels fall off.

But the short answer is mindful, disciplined practice.

All good advice.  I'm no expert either, but I work at it.

Pushing the envelope will get you there speed wise.  The excercise you mentioned sounds like a good path, as said above, get a timet and do it on your own, alot.

Film yourself drawing and shooting fast, analyze, looking for wasted motion that can be eliminated.

What position are you drawing from?  AIWB is fastest for me.

Diligent dryfire will get you there too.

Study this:  great training excercise for just this purpose:

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?55365-See-what-you-need-to-see-training

One of my students: Concealed Draw at 20 yards on 8 inch plate

The first thing to think about is dryfire.  Things like fundamentals of marksmanship and gun handling are built on dryfire.

If you have an airsoft replica, that adds something, as you can practice in your garage or backyard and there is more feedback than simple dry drills.

Bill Rogers book and Pistol video are also strong recommendations.  He explains his methods to a reasonable level of detail.

You want to be working in a place where you succeed at least 50% of the time, but not 80-100% of the time.  That is your sweet spot.  You have to be pushing outside your comfort zone.  Make things easier or harder to get in your sweet spot.  Recognize it takes time to build skill.

Shooting falling steel can complicate your sight focus.  There is a tendency to focus on the target, which can be a problem for iron sight shooters.  Be very aware of your focus when shooting steel.

When teaching/training newbs (not saying you’re a newb), I tell them that it’s possible to break down the individual parts of speed/combat shooting into specific components that can all be worked on individually/separately, without ever firing live ammo. There are really only 2 parts that REQUIRE live ammo training.

The parts you want to work on are the draw and presentation, which again, can be trained repeatedly at home, without needing live ammo.

When training at home, obviously check, doublecheck and triple check that the firearm is unloaded.

Set up the way you normally carry, and practice drawing the firearm, and the presentation, smooth push to the target. Drill this repeatedly 100-200 times every day, until you can get to the point where your muscle memory instinctively points the gun at the target every time, and you don’t need to make fine adjustments in alignment.

THIS is the muscle memory you’re training your body for; instinctively grabbing the pistol the same way (because differences in your grip will mess up your alignment), and the movement of the presentation to the target.

When newbs first try a red dot, you’ll easily see the difference between those who’ve drilled presentation vs those who haven’t. When you’ve drilled presentation a few thousand times, your alignment will be on, and the dot will be in view. People who don’t do presentation drills will have to make fine adjustments hunting for the dot.

The components that can be separately trained are:

- rapid trigger pull. A lot of gun owners who never compete, never seem to train this one. When I see them at the range, they’re only practicing precision/target style shooting with the slow squeeze. When they try doing rapid trigger pulls after watching me doing speed drills, they yank the gun WAY off target when they try pulling the trigger quickly. A laser trainer module can help with this. Most of the laser modules produce a ~0.2 second burst/dot. It’s long enough, that when you practice on a white wall, movement of the gun at the trigger pull, makes a line/zig, instead of a dot. Train until you can pull the trigger quickly, without upsetting the gun.

- draw (the draw, especially for concealed carry vs open/competition holster carry, requires practice, to ensure you can instinctively get clothing out of the way, and again, get a repeatable grip on the pistol as you draw it

- the presentation, as you present the pistol to the target. Most people train the draw and presentation together, to make it a fluid movement. Again, drill, drill, drill this movement to the point where your pistol always presents to the target in alignment, from muscle memory, so the sights/dot are on the target without needing to make corrections

- target transitions. Another part that can be trained without live ammo. Helps to use something like a trainer pistol, laser module, or something like a DryFireMag, so you can train the fast trigger pull alongside the target transitions.

The two parts that require live ammo, are:

- recoil control/mitigation. No trainer, even the CO2 blowback models, simulates the recoil of live fire. In order to be able to accurately fire multiple shots rapidly, you need to train with live ammo, both to ensure your grip helps mitigate the recoil, and learn your timing of how quickly your pistol gets back on target for the next shot.

- malfunction drills. While you can drill tap, rack, bang repeatedly, with an unloaded firearm, to train the muscle memory to instinctively perform those actions quickly, and smoothly (and you should, since you can get infinite repetitions for free), the other part of malfunction drills is reaction time. The difference between a competition shooter who pulls the trigger, and pauses when the gun doesn’t fire, goes, “Huh?”, THEN begins a malfunction drill, vs the guys you see, who immediately perform a malfunction drill when they pull the trigger and don’t get the expected bang.

To train malfunction drill reaction times, load up multiple mags with live ammo, AND add a dummy round or two in each mag, at different places in the mag. Mix up the mags, then train your drills. If you’ve never trained malfunction drill reaction times, the first time the gun goes click, instead of bang, you’re going to pause and go, “Huh?”, before doing the malfunction drill. As you do this particular type of training more, that pause will be shorter and shorter (at which point, you can stop loading dummy rounds in each mag, and only load one in every few mags, to maintain that immediate reaction to a malfunction).

Thanks everyone! All great advice! I'll start implementing some.of the advice and see if I can get a bit better...

Dry fire, practice over and over.

Focus on a small spot on the target your shooting, develop an aiming scheme that benefits your vision capabilities, practice to see your sights faster, and develop that trigger press timing sequence to your interpretation of an acceptable sight picture. During the process of developing your technique, ensure to validate your performance so it can withstand the rigors of stress. Don’t worry much about the outcome, your developed performance if done correctly you’ll see the gains of your success.

Practice being smooth.  No wasted movement, no jerkiness.  Dry fire.  Draw from concealment, dry fire.  Do it until you can't do any more and start again.  Keep.going until it's muscle memory. Draw. Present. Fire.  It takes time to learn. More time to develop.muscle memory...