{"id":3917,"date":"2015-07-17T14:39:22","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T18:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/?p=3917"},"modified":"2018-01-23T12:06:36","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T17:06:36","slug":"the-drawstroke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/the-drawstroke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Concealed Carry Draw Stroke"},"content":{"rendered":"<div> <div>If you&#8217;re trying to elevate your range sessions from casual plinking to more serious skill development for practical self-defense, there&#8217;s not a better place to start than learning a solid draw stroke. I put together a quick video this week breaking down the basics of a four-step draw stroke for concealed carry (assuming you carry on your belt or waistline).<\/div> <h3><strong>Video: The Four-Step Concealed Carry Draw Stroke<\/strong><\/h3> <p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8rsR2E-kUFA?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p> <h3><strong>The Draw Stroke in Context<\/strong><\/h3> <p>I believe the draw stroke is the\u00a0most important physical\u00a0skill you can learn for self-defense, but it doesn&#8217;t do you much good if you can&#8217;t put it into some kind of real world context.\u00a0The typical violent attack happens unexpectedly at conversational distance with one, or <em>maybe<\/em> two attackers. So once you have the fundamentals down for basic gun handling and marksmanship, and then a good draw stroke, the second most important self-defense skill you can practice is following\u00a0the\u00a0draw stroke with\u00a0multiple accurate rapid shots at close range.<\/p> <p>Now in reality, you might not have to actually fire after you draw, so we have to\u00a0sometimes practice drawing the gun straight to a low ready position. For obvious reasons, it could be problematic if we were to develop an automatic\u00a0reflex where we have to\u00a0fire every time the gun comes out of the holster.<\/p> <p>But for those scenarios that <em>do<\/em> require shots to be fired in self-defense,\u00a0most of them don&#8217;t involve technically difficult feats of marksmanship or complex gun manipulations. It can be fun to practice the coolguy tactical ninja stuff, and eventually it&#8217;s good to push yourself and work in progressively more difficult drills and maybe even get into some competition shooting. But it&#8217;s possible to focus too much on the so-called &#8220;advanced&#8221; technical skills\u00a0at the expense of being really proficient with the simple gun handling and shooting skills that get people out of 90% of the lethal force encounters that actually happen to non-uniformed citizens.<\/p> <p>If you&#8217;re being attacked and you actually realize what&#8217;s going on, and are able to react before it&#8217;s too late &#8212; <em>that&#8217;s<\/em> the hard part of the fight. Proper mindset, awareness, and conflict avoidance are more likely to get us out of a jam than a one-handed reload with retention. But when you&#8217;ve reached the point in a conflict\u00a0where\u00a0the gun has come out of the holster, the shooting part will probably be really easy <em>if<\/em>\u00a0you&#8217;ve put in a little practice and skill maintenance.<\/p><p><\/p> <\/div> <p>So to put the draw stroke into context at the range, start off with some straightforward shooting exercises. Place\u00a0the target at around 10 feet and practice drawing and shooting multiple rounds into the upper chest area. The &#8220;center mass&#8221; target areas can vary considerably in size depending on what target you&#8217;re using, but when I&#8217;m done shooting a drill, I always like to see a nice,\u00a0tight group that I can cover with one hand.\u00a0Don&#8217;t always shoot\u00a0the same number of rounds, change it up a little bit &#8212; anywhere from one to five rounds per repetition. Throw in some head shots here and there. Try moving the target to 15 feet for some of the exercises.\u00a0Before you go to the range, write up a plan to follow with a few exercises like these. You can make a decent practice session with just one 50 round box, or you can really drill in some repetitions with a few hundred rounds.<\/p> <p>As we&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/five-ways-improve-defensive-shooting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mentioned here before<\/a>, a shot timer is really helpful when developing a training plan. That way you can pick a couple of drills that you run once or twice every range session. Record your time and accuracy so you can track your progress over time. It&#8217;s really helpful to be able to see when you&#8217;re getting better.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/concealed-carry-tips-three-essential-shooting-drills\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here are a few drills<\/a> to get you started.<\/p> <p>When you\u00a0get some speed an consistency down with one target at close range, you can start adding other elements. Do a quick side step during the draw stroke to get out of the attacker&#8217;s line of site, and then fire a couple of shots. You can also start with your body facing at different angles to the target, or move the target so it&#8217;s not directly in front of you.\u00a0Or you can even add a second target at a different angle.<\/p> <p>Then you can make it\u00a0progressively more complex and start working the other skills &#8212; the target transitions and reloads and one handed shooting. But I think of all of these other skills as being\u00a0anchored around a solid draw stroke\u00a0that I\u00a0know I can do quickly and reliably from any position.\u00a0I put\u00a0a priority on the draw stroke, and being able to get quick, accurate hits at close range, on demand, before getting too preoccupied\u00a0with the stuff that&#8217;s just far\u00a0less likely to be useful in the real world.<\/p> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re trying to elevate your range sessions from casual plinking to more serious skill development for practical self-defense, there&#8217;s &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/the-drawstroke\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47,28,21,17,108,58],"class_list":["post-3917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-toolbox","tag-concealed-carry","tag-education","tag-handguns","tag-self-defense","tag-technique","tag-training"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Basics of a Concealed Carry Draw Stroke<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chris from the Lucky Gunner team lays out some basics to help you learn an efficient and effective concealed carry draw stroke in this post.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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