This week’s Power Drills is especially unique, as it is our first rifle and pistol drill that we are covering. This is the Baer Solutions Standards Drill, which is no walk in the park, as it stresses a bunch of skills.
The Baer Solutions Standards Drill is fairly easy to explain, but hard to shoot. This drill is shot at three, five, or seven meters for pistol, or five, seven, or ten meters for rifle. The drill is also typically shot cold, so no warming up beforehand. After you’ve set up your target, load three magazines, one with ten rounds, the second with three rounds, and the third to full capacity. Put the ten round magazine in the gun, and load the firearm. The three round mag, and the full magazine go into pouches, or into pockets. From here, move to your desired distance.
At buzzer beep, either shoulder your rifle, or draw your pistol, and begin the course of fire. Starting with either the left or right side, fire five rounds into the rectangle, then transition to the other rectangle, and fire five more rounds. After these ten rounds, your gun should move to slide or bolt lock. At this point, perform a slide/bolt lock reload, using your magazine loaded with three rounds. The last three rounds are fired into the circle at the center of the target. The gun should lock open again, reload it again, using the full magazine. Once the gun is ready, assess the area, and the drill is finished. An optimal run is clean, and under nine seconds.
For this drill, you’ll need a shot timer, a holster (if shooting the drill with a handgun), and the Baer Solutions Standards target. You’re also gonna need to pack two spare magazines, for a total of three rifle or pistol magazines, so don’t forget some mag carriers either. The Pocket Pro II is still on sale right now, so buy one if you haven’t!
The Baer Solutions Standards Drill does many things well. It makes you do a hard transition, from lightning fast, to a slower, deliberate rate of fire after the reload. It’s kinda like a dragster tossing out the chute after it hits top speed. With the difference in size from the rectangles to the circular target, you can’t maintain that same rate of fire. The reload is a good “breather moment”, and while you can’t slow down for it, it acts as a divider between the lightning phase, and the slower phase.
The reload here needs to be on point. With a par time of nine seconds, a flubbed reload will kill a run. I find that people either spend not nearly enough time on reloads, or no time at all. With properly indexed mags, and a lot of dryfire repetitions, quick reloads will follow.
This drill also does a good job of making you think about your height over bore. Height over bore is the difference between the point of aim, and the point of impact, caused by distance to the target, and difference between optic and bore of the gun. At the closer distances of the Baer Drill, you’ll absolutely need to account for height over bore, making you really think. The last three rounds are the hardest, not only because the target is smaller, but rather because you need to make sure that your close range hold over is spot on. It’s real easy to fudge your hold over, and have those last three rounds hit low.
The Baer Solutions Standards Drill is a fantastic speed drill, that makes you focus on a few specific skills, such as target transitions, reloads, and holdovers. It’s printable on regular 8.5″x11″ paper, so it’s easy to repeatably shoot, so a set of Baer targets always accompanies me to the range. Get the range bag loaded up, print out some targets, and give the Baer Solutions Standards Drill a go!
We found this drill from Baer Solutions. Check out their website here.
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