[Double Naught Spy]

High heart rate and winded shooting is a very good drill. I figure that if I am ever in a self defense shooting, there will likely be running involved, such as to gain distance from the bad guy, to cover, or to some sort of safe location. The question will be whether or not it is before or after the shooting has occurred.

While it is a good drill, is should be approached incrementally if you haven't done it before. Sort of like running with scissors, there are some inherent dangers in the practice. So building up distance or exertion is a good thing to do so that you become accustomed to knowing what expect about your body and trying to multitask. I have seen folks stumble (me), trip, or even draw a pistol that subsequently went flying down range.

Where I used to shoot, if nobody else was at the range, we would set up targets in 3 different shooting bays. We would then start a the last bay, sprint to the first, shoot the targets in the first bay, reholster and run to the second bay, shoot and resholster, and run to the 3rd bay and shoot. We did this with a timer and with an RO running with the shooter. The next set would have the shooter as RO and the RO as the shooter.

We learned several things. ...
Fat guy run and shoot isn't fun for the fat guys
Heart rate/pulse muzzle jump gets more and more pronounced after more exertion and as the shooter tires.
Relative to speed, marksmanship, and distance to target, if shooter speed and distance to target are maintained, then marksmanship suffers with high heart rate exertion. If speed is not a factor and the shooter can take time to shoot, then marksmanship won't suffer nearly as much. If speed is retained and distance to target decreased, marksmanship will improve.

We would shoot at varied distances. For shorter range shooting of 5-7 yards, getting shots on target usually was not a problem, but group size sucked and things like double taps would be quite a distance apart between the two shots. At 15 yards, shots were all over the place. It was not uncommon that with shooting multiple targets with double taps at 15 yards and trying to maintain speed, it was not uncommon for one or both shots to have missed a target.

Now add shooting on the move. When shooting on the move in individual ranges as we sprinted through the drill, we had targets set up in each range to be shot while on the move at walking speed. This added another dimension of difficulty to the process as the shooter dealt with heart rate/pulse muzzle bounce and gun bounce from trying to aim and shoot while moving.

I know, that all sounds rather pitiful. Since then, we have worked through some of the issues as the drills have been repeated.

Several years ago, there was a program called, "The Commish" about a police commisioner. There was an officer-involved shooting and some question about how well the officer might have been able to shoot after a long run. So he had his officers all run the distance into a shooting bay where they were to then draw and fire. The shooting was so bad that it was funy to watch. Knowing what I know now, what I saw as funny to watch was actually a very real and very serious potential problem faced by those shooting in self defense. The goofs shown in the program were not all that different than those we experienced.