The reality of using firearms for lawful self defense is that when you need them you are not going to have time to get ready. You are going to have to perform at an elevated level, with no preparation, or you might not win. Not winning, in that context, creates really bad outcomes.

Violent attacks, whether perpetrated against a private person or an armed professional like a peace officer, come without warning. They are nothing like the exercises that you fired when you took your carry license class if that class even included live fire. An armed professional will not have time to set up in their favorite gunfighter crouch, prep their holster and wait for the whistle like they do when they fire for qualification.

To be able to resist an armed attack at a necessary skill level requires work. And it requires putting your skills to the test periodically under as much constraint as you can safely muster. This is why I like to collect drills and exercises that I can shoot periodically, and run students through, which evaluate available skills on demand. Those are the skills that save lives, and the life we save may indeed be our own.

I prefer to use exercises that can be fired with either a pistol or a revolver as I teach, and use, both  An exercise that a student can step on to the range with their carry gun in their carry gear, that tests and reinforces skill while surfacing areas of improvement is my goal. I wrote an article for the Snub Noir blog a few years back on low round count, high training value drills as part of my continuing pursuit of such tests. It’s worth a read if for no other reason than to add to your own collection of worthwhile exercises.

One example of such a test was designed in the 1970s by the late Mike Waidelich for his then employer, the Bakersfield Police Department. They still use it today, with some modification, and Karl Rehn wrote on it in his blog earlier this year. I like to fire that exercise at least a couple times a year.

For this week’s range session, I decided to start with the ASP 10 Round Skill Test. Designed by John Correia of Active Self Protection this 10 round exercise looks deceptively easy on paper. But firing it cold, and at speed, is where the learning lives. I had not fired in a full week, and at last week’s session I ran just 25 rounds so one could say that what ever on demand skill I had would be put to the test.

I had fired the exercise three times on a range session several weeks ago to get a feel for it. I did not try to push speed and my average times per stage were 2.19, 2.04, 2.79, 4.33, with clean scores on a USPSA target. For today’s cold run, using an M&P9 Compact from concealment I picked up the pace a bit. The times per stage were 2.00, 1.94, 2.54 and 3.31, all below the previous averages. The video below from our You Tube channel documents.

I dropped 2 points with a marginal C zone hit on one of the two head shots, otherwise everything was solidly in the A zones for a raw score of 48 points. Dividing the points by the total time of 9.79 seconds gave a result of 4.90. Multiplying that by 12.5 yielded a final score of 61.28.  In all a satisfying performance for me, and indicative that I have cold skills that I can count on if I have to. But those skills are perishable, and they need to be polished periodically or they will disappear.

A final thought… the Flatfoot Solutions BBA target is a winner. My friend Nick has designed a particularly useful target that checks a lot of boxes for me and should for other trainers. The only quibble I have is that the scoring overlay is too visible for my taste but given the audience and the drills it was created for the target is just fine. It is available from Qualification Targets Inc.