While I have argued with Jljones many times I also always listen to him when he preaches gun techniques usually. For some dumb reason I always read about the bump drill and never really paid attention. I listened to the prep stuff and the drills etc. But not the bump drill.

So, I was playing on the internet and for some reason explored what it was. Simplest drill ever and I have been doing it for a week now in dry fire. Took it to range and went live.

Very nice drill. Instant improvement. I'm sold. I promise I won't argue any more! (fingers crossed)

Thank you! I’m glad it’s working for you.

-Bruce

What is, the bump drill? I think I missed it

We (OpSpec Training) teach the Bump Drill as one of our core skills during the Practical Fundamentals class. It's also brought up in many of our other programs.

Come join us for a class! We'll be in Colorado in early February, and have plenty of other classes on the schedule. Jerry wants to hit the road...

Here is a video Bruce did a couple of years ago.



And here is the "old school" version shot more than 10 years ago.

Yep, it was the video with Bruce that I watched. If you haven’t tried it, give it a whirl.

This is something like the third or fourth time I've come across these videos and this drill, but I keep forgetting to try it when I dry fire or get to the range. I'm going to have to leave this thread up in a separate tab to remind me as this drill just makes sense.

I learned it in Practical Fundamentals. I use it in most of my classes.

Want a cheap thrill?

Grab a S&W 317 revolver and some snap caps and dry fire the Bump Drill at home for 20 minutes every night over two weeks ( Thanks for the education and cameraderie, Mr. Gray!)with the superlative single action trigger and the the ... um ... challenging DA trigger.

When you've got that down, go to the indoor range with that 317 revolver, a pack of 50 ft NRA A-36 rifle targets, and Shoot The Dots at 12 to 15 feet.

Five shots per bull, as slow as you wish.


When you can put 5/5 shots in each of the 12 bullseyes with none in the white SA, try it DA.

Hint: take lots of standard or sub velocity ammo and targets.

When you have achieved this, do the bump drills with your carry handgun or highly engineered match handgun, and then go shoot your IDPA, USPSA, Steel Challenge, ICore, Bullseye, or league match, or weekend training course.

Bet you do better than ever. The skills bleed over into rifle/carbine operation, too.

Hi! It’s neat to see these older videos. Thanks Steve!

I like your advice, RichardC. I’ve missed all you guys. ❤️

-Bruce

For years I've been struggling with my accuracy. I've owned handguns for quite a while, but I haven't been able to practice all that frequently, and it's been extremely demoralizing to take brand new shooters to the range, only to see them shoot better than me with my own guns.

This year my wife became interested in shooting seriously for the first time, and that re-kindled my own interest. I started to do a lot of dry fire training, sometimes just by itself, sometimes using various tools (MantisX or a laser) to try and diagnose problems. I've been to one class years ago (not a particularly good one) and wanted to try another, but time and money (or the lack thereof) kept getting in the way.

Dry fire practice definitely helped with trigger control, and I'd seen some improvement in live fire over the last couple of months as well, but recoil management was still an issue. I started looking around for advice on where to go from there, and a few threads on the bump drill trickled into my consciousness, including this one. I found the more recent video first, and started working it into my dry fire practice, which showed a tiny bit of improvement, but didn't really think to do that during live fire for some reason, and was shooting better but still having the same issues. Last week at the range I was better, but still all over the place: 8-10" groups at 5 yards, most of the shots hitting low as I my subconscious anticipated the recoil while my conscious mind tried and failed stop doing that.

The second video linked above (the one ~10 years old) was what finally made everything click. I incorporated the drill into my live fire practice yesterday and shot literally the best group of my life! I shot four strings of 10 rounds each, and other than two early fliers, my worst group was about 5" and my best put all ten rounds into a ragged hole just over 2" across!

Granted, for most of the folks on this forum that's probably par for the course at this short range, but for me it was darn near miraculous. I'm definitely a convert!

The next step is to increase the distance a bit, and it will take me a while to be able to speed this up to any kind of practical shooting, but it's such a relief to have found something that finally works for me. Seeing this kind of improvement makes me far more enthusiastic about continuing my training as well, now that I'm not feeling like a complete failure every time I go shooting.

I have had many reasons to be thankful to Bruce and Grayguns over the years. The SRT and upgraded trigger I recently installed certainly made my P226 run beautifully, and his excellent armorer's video gave me the confidence to do the installation work myself, among many other bits of tinkering I've done in the past. But having a smooth action and clean break, while making it more fun to shoot, didn't magically make me a better shooter. The bump drill did that, and gave me one more reason to say "Thank you!" to Bruce and the members of OpSpec Training for making sharing these videos and putting me back on the right track.

Going to try it, thanks

Learned it this weekend here MP47 Trainingand it was instantly transformative to my trigger control. Loved it.

This looks familiar.......

FWIW, the Bump Drill is a staple in my dry fire program to this day. I hit it two or three times per week. Thanks for the thread, Pedropcola.