Handgun Drills for Improving Your Accuracy

You’ve just purchased your first handgun. Whether you bought it for defense, competition, or just some fun on the range, the most important thing you can do is practice, practice, practice. Hitting the range and training with your new handgun is important in order to become familiar with the firearm and to improve your skills. Let’s go over some handgun drills to help improve your accuracy so you’re the best prepared you can be with your firearm!

The Basic Bullseye Drill

The Bullseye Drill is one of the basic handgun drills that applies to many types of handguns. It is a fundamental accuracy exercise that focuses on aiming at a single, clear target at a specific distance. This target can be a paper bullseye target, or an object like a steel plate, bottle, can, or other object. The goal with this drill is to practice your shooting fundamentals like proper sight picture and trigger control to achieve precise, accurate groups. 

How to shoot the drill

• Set up a target at a manageable and comfortable distance. Don’t shoot farther than you can reliably hit the target. A good distance for handguns is around 7 yards.

• Align your front and rear sights on the center of the target, and squeeze the trigger with slow, deliberate shots.

• Keep your shooting hand steady, breathing controlled, and avoid jerking the trigger.

Tips for Success

• Take your time with each shot. Focus on accurate and precise shot placement, rather than speed.

• Focus on a smooth, consistent trigger pull. 

• Pay attention to your stance and grip for stability. Keep your feet shoulder width apart, lean forward slightly, and push your arms straight out in front of your chest with your elbows locked.

Evaluating Your Performance

• Look for consistent shot placement around the center of the target. With proper sight alignment and good trigger control, your groups should be precise and accurate.

• If your shots are grouped too far off-center, reassess your sight alignment, grip, and trigger pull technique. 

  • If you’re having trouble getting consistent, accurate hits in the center of the target, consider getting a pistol correction target. These targets have sections around the bullseye that will indicate potential issues with trigger pull, grip, and sight alignment based on where you are hitting on the target.

This drill is an excellent choice for a basic day of target practice or training, and it is good for practicing with all handguns. The Savage 1911 can be especially enjoyable to shoot with this drill, with its larger frame making it a comfortable choice for target shooting. 

The Dot Torture Drill

The Dot Torture Drill is one of the most popular handgun drills. It's designed to test your ability to make precise shots under stress by shooting at various targets that are located within a grid pattern. Rather than focusing on one target for multiple shots, this drill requires the shooter to move between targets and practice maintaining a consistent sight picture and proper technique across targets. 

How To Shoot the Drill

• Print a dot target with 10-12 small dots placed at different spots on the paper.

• From a standard distance (7 yards), shoot one shot at each dot in sequence. Try to maintain consistent accuracy and precision with each shot. 

• Each dot must be hit, and you can customize this handgun drill to add reloads or time limits to increase difficulty.

Tips for Success

• Keep your movements smooth and avoid rushing shots. Remember the old adage “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. 

• Focus on proper trigger control to prevent over-travel or jerking. Moving too fast can not only affect your sight alignment, but lead to speeding up your trigger squeeze. Make sure your squeezes are slow and controlled, not fast and snappy.

• Maintain focus on each dot and take the time to align your sights for each shot. 

Evaluating Your Performance

• If you are missing the dots consistently, evaluate your sight alignment and trigger control. Maintaining your focus and breathing is also important to this drill, as speeding yourself up too much can result in poor technique and missed shots. 

• If you’re finding it too easy to hit the dots, consider switching it up! Add a time limit to the drill, or add in different challenges like reloads, a specific shooting order, or increase the distance you’re shooting at. 

 The Failure Drill (Mozambique Drill)

The Failure Drill, also referred to as the Mozambique Drill, is a one of the standard handgun drills that is used among shooters training for defensive use of their handguns. It is a quick, three shot drill that focuses on facing a potential threat with defensive use of your handgun. 

How to Shoot the Drill

• Start with your handgun in a low-ready position or holstered, with a large target 7 to 10 yards away.

• Draw your handgun and fire two shots at the center of the target, followed quickly by one shot further up the target. 

• After shooting your three shots, return the handgun to your holster or low-ready position. The drill can be repeated multiple times on the same or different targets. 

Tips for Success

• Maintain a firm grip and keep your body balanced to absorb recoil. Keep your feet shoulder width apart, with your arms pressed out in front of your and elbows locked to provide the most stable shooting position. 

• While speed is important, focus on bringing your handgun up and maintaining a good sight picture. Press the trigger with a firm, steady squeeze to maintain accuracy. 

• Maintain your sight alignment between shots. It can be easy to throw the front of your handgun up and lose the front sight in your sight picture. Make sure you move your arm and shoulders up to engage the top target, rather than just snapping your wrists upward towards the target. 

Evaluating Your Performance

• The Failure Drill is designed to simulate firing under stressful conditions. If your shots aren’t quite as accurate and precise as normal, don’t sweat it! This advanced handgun drill takes plenty of practice to master, so keep practicing to improve your performance. 

• If you want to add extra stress to the drill, consider running some sprints or doing other cardio exercises (unarmed or with an unloaded handgun) beforehand to elevate your heart rate and add an extra challenge. 

The Failure Drill is ideal for practicing with your concealed carry firearm. The Stance XR is the perfect choice for a day at the range spent practicing this drill and other defensive handgun drills.

The El Presidente Drill

The El Presidente Drill is also one of the most popular handgun drills for defensive shooting. This drill focuses on maintaining accuracy while shooting fast. It requires the shooter to engage multiple targets from behind cover or a shooting position, which helps serve to simulate a real-world defensive shooting scenario.

How to Shoot the Drill

• Set up three targets at a distance of 7-10 yards, arranged in a line. For an extra challenge, you can stagger the targets at different distances or use different sized targets.

• Start facing away from the targets with your hands up and your handgun holstered. 

• On the signal, turn, draw your handgun, engage each target with two shots, then perform a reload and re-engage each target with two more shots.

Tips for Success

• Practice smooth, steady reloads. If you need to, you can start out watching your magazine go into your handgun’s grip, much like you would a baseball going into your glove. This can help you develop confidence and the muscle memory to where you will be able to guide the magazine into the grip without having to watch. 

• Maintain focus on target transitions, ensuring your sights are aligned before pulling the trigger.

• Practice this drill from a variety of angles and shooting positions. There are a variety of ways to mix up the drill, such as adding more targets, varying your target size, and shooting behind and around a variety of barriers. 

Evaluating Your Performance

• Pay close attention to how your shots perform when shooting off-balance and in awkward positions. If you aren’t shooting as accurately and precisely as you expect to, try shooting more from these positions to get more comfortable and accurate. 

• Pay attention to your time between shots, but prioritize shooting accurately to minimize collateral damage to anything behind your targets. 

 The Ball and Dummy Drill

The Ball and Dummy is one of the staple handgun drills that is a standard part of training for many shooters. This drill trains the shooter proper trigger control by exposing and correcting trigger flinch from recoil anticipation and surprise shots. It is an especially useful drill for new handgun shooters who may be getting used to shooting and are not completely comfortable yet. 

How to Shoot the Drill

• Load your handgun with a combination of snap caps (dummy ammo) and live ammunition. Ideally, you should have another person load the magazine and handgun for you so that you don’t know the order of the live and dummy ammunition. 

• Fire at a target with a slow, controlled firing sequence until your handgun is empty. When you encounter a snap cap, rack the slide to clear the round and load the next round into the chamber. 

Tips for Success

• Focus on squeezing the trigger with consistent pressure every time, even when the handgun doesn’t fire. Try to keep your stance steady and fundamentals the same as if you were shooting normal target practice. 

• If you find yourself flinching throughout the drill, try to relax, take some deep breaths, and focus only on the target and your trigger pull rather than focusing on the potential recoil. 

• Keep your shooting posture consistent to help minimize flinching.

Evaluating Your Performance 

• This is one of the easiest drills to see where you need to improve, because you can physically see when you flinch your shot. It also helps to have another person there to watch your shot and confirm your flinch and suggest corrections. 

• Successful performance in this drill will result in little to no flinch on the snap cap shots, and maintaining a consistent form and accurate, precise shots when shooting live ammunition.

Whether you’re out enjoying some time on the range, practicing for a competitive shooting event, or keeping your shooting skills sharp to feel confident in your everyday carry, more practice with handgun drills means more accurate shooting. After all, practice makes perfect, so head out to the range with these handgun drills in mind to keep your skills sharp and improve your overall shooting fundamentals!