Drill of the month

The late Jeff Cooper is considered the dean of modern handgunning, and popularized the idea that, “Hey, maybe we should hold onto the gun with two hands.” He started Gunsite (the American Pistol Institute), which for many years was the preeminent private firearms training facility in the country, if not the world. I think it still is, but I don’t want to get involved in that argument. I’m biased because I had the privilege of taking part of my military instructor training from Col. Cooper himself.
Prior to starting Gunsite, Cooper was a Marine who served in the Pacific in World War II. He saw a little action, and after the war did a little work for the OSS/CIA in the same area. About fifty years or so ago Cooper was hired to train the bodyguards of the president of a Latin American country. He developed a shooting drill he named “El Presidente” to not just help train those bodyguards but measure their skill level.
El Presidente
The El Presidente is probably the classic test of pistol skill. While the speed loading requirement can be faulted, anyone who does well on it is probably a pretty good handgunner.
Three IPSC “option” targets are placed 3 feet apart, 7 to 10 yards from the shooter. The shooter starts with his back to the targets and on signal, pivots and engages each target twice, reloads, and engages each target two more times. Score is hit value minus 10 points per miss, divided by the time in seconds. Par time is 10 seconds with all center hits. This course is designed to be shot from a condition of concealed carry.
For a very useful modification, try replacing the second set of pairs (after the reload) with single head shots to emphasize precision using the same time frame for par.

See “Trigger Time: Drill of the Month” page