Legendary trainer Dave Spaulding recently posted about a new drill he had received from Ken Hackathorn (inventor of “The Test” aka 10-10-10, the Wizard Drill and many other widely known and used pistol standards).
Half Cup Drill
Stage 1. 3 yards. On signal draw and fire 1 head shot in 2.0 seconds….STRONG hand only.
Stage 2. 5 yards. On signal, draw and fire one head shot in 2.0 seconds freestyle (both hands).
Stage 3. 5 yards. On signal, draw and fire 2 rounds to the body, 1 round to the head (failure or Mozambique Drill). 3.0 seconds
Stage 4. 7 yards. Start centered up on silhouette, Place a marker one yard to the left and right of the start position. (line marker paint is ideal). On signal move while drawing to the outboard of the either left or right line and fire 1 round, move to opposite line fire 1 round, move back to opposite line fire 1 round and again move to opposite line and fire last shot. 4 rounds total. Time his 10.0 seconds.
Stage 5. 10 yards. Draw and fire 1 head shot in 3.0 seconds.
Stage 6 10 yards. Start with only 2 rounds in the weapon. On signal, draw and fire 2 rounds to slide lock, perform an emergency reload and fire 2 more rounds. Time is 7.0 seconds.
Stage 7. 10 yards. On signal, draw and fire 1 round STRONG hand only to the chest, switch to WEAK hand and fire 1round. Time is 5.0 seconds.
Stage 8. 15 yards. On signal, draw and fire 2 rounds in 3.5 seconds.
Stage 9. 25 yards. On signal, draw and fire 2 rounds in 5.0 seconds.
Commentary from Ken:
“I recommend using the IDPA Silhouette. Easy to source. Note for scoring purposes only shots in the 3” head circle and 8” chest circle are scored……any shots out of these circles are misses ( -5 points.) 75 points or higher to Pass, below 75 is a fail.
I recommend starting with 12 rounds loaded in the gun if capacity allows, spare magazine of 8 rounds. Stage 4 I give credit to you (Spaulding). Movement should be part of any qual especially at distances where it really matters.
Next time you go to the range give this one a try. I know that times on Stage 4 and 7 are one second longer than you would probably use, but remember you are not the normal copper or private sector Joe.
Why the name ‘Half Cup? If you fail, your cup is only half full. If you pass it is only half empty.”
Demo Video
Last week I went to the A-Zone and shot the drill. I used a shot up IDPA target but the drills on the video were cold, first takes. I canted the gun a lot on that first strong hand head shot at 3 yards, and pulled it outside the head circle. That was my only miss giving me a possible 95/100 on this 20 round drill.
Drill Difficulty Estimate
How difficult is the Half Cup drill? I went back to the chart in our Strategies and Standards book
As KR Training assistant instructor Uncle Zo and I have looked at more courses of fire, particularly ones we’ve shot in classes and at matches, we have determined that the “100%” times, particularly for distances past 10 yards, need some adjustment to more realistically evaluate handgun skill. Many of the times were derived from shot by shot analysis of the high hit factors on USPSA classifiers, where the “hero or zero” approach can lead to some faster-than-repeatably fast times.
3 yards draw and fire 1 head shot strong hand only. A 3 yard head shot is basically equivalent difficulty to a 7 yard body shot, and taking one hand off the gun slows things down a bit more. So the original formula indicate 1.3 sec as a fast par from concealment two handed, and 1.5 sec par for concealment at 15 yards. I’m gonna use 1.5 sec for this one and rate that first string as 75% of our 100% standard.
5 yards draw and fire 1 head shot 2 handed. Again working from concealment 1.3 sec. The standard for Gabe White’s Turbo pin tests is 1.5 sec (open carry) for a 7 yard head shot with .25 allowed for concealment. So call this one 1.5 sec again so 75% of 100% standard.
5 yards 2 body 1 head. Gabe’s Turbo pin time for this drill at 7 yards is 1.7 with .25 added for concealment, so 1.95. Using our standards it would be 1.25 draw + 0.20 split + 0.5 transition so 1.75 for 5 yards. Using 1.75 makes this one 58%, using 1.95 bumps it to 65%.
7 yards with movement: We don’t have data in the table for “time to move 2 steps and acquire new target” or for “draw with 1 big side step”. 10 seconds would be 2.5 seconds per shot. 8 seconds would be 2 seconds, 6 seconds would be 1.5 sec per shot. Rough estimate of this one is 60%.
10 yards one head shot. A 10 yard head shot is roughly the same as a 20 yard body shot, and our table shows 1.8 as the 100% time. The Modern Samurai Project “black belt” time for a 25 yard body shot is 1.5 sec. Using 1.5 sec as max time makes the test’s 3 second par a 50% drill, using 1.8 makes it 60%.
10 yards 2 empty gun reload 2, 7 seconds. Ben Stoeger’s Four Aces (2 speed reload 2 at 7 yards) has a 2.6 sec 100% time. Add .25 for concealment, another 0.25 for slide lock vs speed load, another 0.25 for drawing the mag from concealment and the max par becomes 3.35. Maybe add another 0.15 for the target distance difference from 7 to 10 yards and that gets us to 3.5 seconds making this one a 50% difficulty string.
10 yards, one strong hand only, transfer, one weak hand only. 5 seconds. That gives 2.5 seconds for shot 1 and 2.5 sec to transfer and fire shot 2. Because it’s 10 yards and one handed everything slows down compared to 7 yard two handed shooting times. The closest analog might be one of the strings of the Greybeard Actual 3-4-5 drill, where you get 3.45 seconds to do the same kind of thing, on a 3″ circle at 5 yards. Matt gives .25 for concealment, so 3.70 is a pretty good estimate of a 100% time. That would give this string a difficulty level of around 75%.
15 yards draw and fire 2 rounds in 3.5 seconds. The chart from our book says 2 seconds – 1.5 sec draw and 0.5 split, giving this string a 57% difficulty level.
25 yards draw and fire 2 rounds in 5 seconds. Our book chart says 1.8 + 0.6 = 2.4 seconds. This shooter ran 25, 40 and 50 yard bill drills (but did not shoot them clean) in this video
His 25 yard time was under 3 seconds, indicating that a clean par might be slower. Using the rule that a good Bill Drill par time should be 2x the estimated draw speed gives us 3.6 seconds for 6 shots, or 1.8 sec for the first shot and another 1.8 for the remaining 5, or a split time of 0.36 sec between each.
Calculating 100% times for drills past 15 yards based on data for closer drills seems to be non linear (it doesn’t scale easily). I’m going to use 3.0 seconds as the 100% time to call this one a 60% difficulty string.
That makes the cumulative difficulty of this drill somewhere in the 60-70% range. That means a USPSA B class shooter or IDPA Master or similar level shooter should be able to shoot at least 90% points on it, from concealment with a carry sized gun. For someone working from open carry with a non-retention holster and a full sized pistol, the difficulty level should be cut by 10%.
Using the Half Cup Drill
I like short, low round count multi string drills that test a wide spectrum of skills. They allow quick isolation of weak spots. This would be a great drill to shoot as the first task of a practice session, tracking performance on each string (looking at hits or scoring the target each string), so that the next phase of the practice session could be used improving performance on the strings the shooter didn’t pass.
As Ken points out in his commentary, even if you pass the drill, your cup is still only “Half Full”. There’s always work to do to be more consistent, particularly on cold drills, faster and more accurate.