How should I best use range time to improve handgun accuracy?

Its not the amount of lead that you sling downrange that counts, its the practice. I would start the grip and training with the trigger. You can get decent accuracy when you learn how to "break a trigger". The more effort you put into training with the trigger in mind the smaller your shot groups get. The biggest difference that you can ever make is trigger control. It will put you well out in front of the rest of the pack as the saying goes.

The key is to research, attend classes in your area when you can and get lots of practice. Speed comes naturally from lots of practice. If you practice being an accurate shot, you will automatically develop a good rate of speed and become a responsible quick draw or reactive shooter. Practice and time are what you need.

As you've read above, trigger press is the most important aspect of accurate shooting at any speed (after the four safety rules). If you want to keep your press honest, you will need to do ball and dummy drills. Have a third party load a mag with a proportion of 5 dummies to every live round, scattered randomly (live round goes in first so it shoots last). Have them load the pistol. Don't look at the ejection port as you clear the dummies, so you don't know hat's coming up next. Once you learn to press correctly after a live round you will make real progress. The dummy round will show you, unequivocally. Bonus is you will make a lot of progress with relatively little live ammo.

I found that it also helped a lot to have some measurement with which I could judge my progress. Various drills or competition stages that can be shot at each range session. An end of day test if you will. Shoot it with your last 10 rounds. Here are a couple of items that I used.

Obviously, if precision is your game you can shoot the NRA Bullseye course of fire. Or at least one stage of it.
GSSF indoor league, 10 shots 15 seconds 25yds on a D1 target. Start closer at first.
NRA Distinguished Marksmanship program. The early stages are simple, but towards the end they get harder.
IDPA 5x5. Even if you start from a low ready. You can do just one of the strings of fire as a weekly progress report.
Bianchi Cup practical stages. Even if you only do the 10 and 15yds ones indoors (or get the AP2 half sized target)
Falling Plates. Indoors use obviously one 8" paper targer. The NRA D1 will do. Can you do 6 shots 6 seconds at 10yds?

I'm not a dot torture fan. I don't think it's as good a measure as the above "practical" shooting competition stages.

alfsauve said:

I'm not a dot torture fan. I don't think it's as good a measure as the above "practical" shooting competition stages.

Click to expand...

If you want to create a lifelong trigger puncher, put them under time pressure before they learn the proper press. Bad idea.

Archer said:

If you want to create a lifelong trigger puncher, put them under time pressure before they learn the proper press. Bad idea.

Click to expand...

another pointer: stay smooth. don't let the clock, or anything else but you, control your shooting.

luck,

murf

murf said:

another pointer: stay smooth. don't let the clock, or anything else but you, control your shooting.

luck,

murf

Click to expand...

Exactly, but too many people let time pressure interfere with their correct press. This can become a very difficult, if not impossible problem to overcome should this be established early in the development of the shooter.

Of course you develop good technique without pressure first. Not suggesting otherwise. The drills/stages are still a good measurements of progress whether you time them or not. And if you're going to pursue one of those shooting sports a good way to become familiar with the drills.

Now, that said. At some point all shooting, whether target, competition, or hunting has pressure. Time pressure usually. IHMSA-2 minutes, GSSF 15 seconds, Bullseye 10 seconds & hunting-till the animal moves away. So once the proper base skills are established then adding time pressure is the next step. Always good to drop back to un-timed practice periodically to reaffirm the basics.