This has to be one of the best examples of muscle memory that I have ever seen and plan to post a video of myself doing the drill in the featured video as well.
I’m sure we’ve all seen the videos of instructors shooting an AR-15 extremely fast at three stationary targets in the 1,2,3,4,5 sequence, and it looks pretty impressive. As cool as it looks and sounds, I find a few issues with some of the videos I’ve seen in the past. The first issue being, the drill has everything to do with speed and not accuracy. Speed can be a good thing at times, but if you’re shooting a million rounds a second and don’t hit what you intend to hit, what is the point. The second falls in line with the first issue. Just simply hitting the IPSC target should not satisfy the shooter. Sure, you did it extremely fast, but the hits on paper were nothing more than a “flesh wound”.
Having both speed and accuracy is a great tool to have in your toolbox, but it takes lots of time and practice. The good thing is that you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on ammo! Getting a skill like this comes with hours and hours of DRY FIRE! Dry fire isn’t the coolest thing in the world, and nothing to write home about, but it does and will pay off in the long run, I guarantee it. Dry fire does a lot for us, one of the most beneficial things that I have come to find is muscle memory. If you’re ever on the range and you find yourself “looking for the sights”, you need to dry fire. What I mean by “looking for the sights” is taking that split second or half a second to adjust your head, move your head to align the sights, etc. Once you raise your rifle, pistol or shotgun, your sights should “naturally” fall into place at what you intend on shooting with no searching whatsoever.
Take the time with all of your weapon systems and dry fire them starting from a no threat stance. Place a target 10 feet away on a door or wall. Once you raise the weapon, take note of where the sights lay, without having to adjust your head, the weapon and sights should come to you, not the other way around. Continuing the repetition correctly until it is burned into your mind and becomes muscle memory is the end goal. Once it is burned into your mind, continue to do it until your brain explodes! It is a perishable skill.
