Mike Viogt makes four A-zone hits in less than a second. With practice, someday you, too, can be like Mike.

The drill, distilled to a range session, is simple: five pepper poppers at 10 yards. Can you draw and hit all the poppers before someone could have extricated a submachine gun from a plumbers bag and load it? Generally, three seconds is a good time, four is marginal. If you can do a clean Bill Drill on demand, a Dozier Drill is a piece of cake.

The movement drill comes from Robbie Leatham, developed and tuned by me. (No, I'm not going to name it after myself.) A decade ago I heard Robbie remark: "The fastest shooter through a course isn't the fast runner but the one who arrives ready to shoot." That is, you can sprint to a box or shooting position, but if when you get there you have to slam to a halt, bring your arms up and aim, then fire, you've lost time.

So I practice getting to a box or corner ready to shoot. I'll start a couple of steps away. As I step in the box or to the corner, I'm already raising the handgun, getting lined up on the target. The idea is that as soon as my feet are good to go, I shoot. On really close targets, as soon as my trailing foot is off the ground, I'm on-target and shooting. On targets farther away than a few yards, I bring my trailing foot into the box or underneath me and as soon as I set it down, I'm shooting.

How does this help the defensive shooter? By keeping you ahead in the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop. You don't want to be caught flat-footed when trouble starts.

The last drill I will name after myself: The Sweeney Drill is multi-faceted. Stand a steel plate or gong up at distance, and shoot at it standing. 50 yards is good, 100 is better. Learn your natural point of aim, a comfortable stance and trigger control. Add stress by shooting against friends.

Scoring is simple: maximum continuous hits out of 10 shots. Ties broken by totals. Hit five, miss one, hit the next four, you score is five, your tie-breaker is nine. If the next guy shoots six straight then misses the rest, he beat you. Shooting on a steel plate at 100 yards for score and soft drinks in the clubhouse afterwards makes head shots at 10 yards seem easy.

Some of you may shoot primarily on ranges where rapid-fire shooting is frowned upon or prohibited outright. How do you practice any of these without getting yelled at? Shoot one-handed. You really should practice strong and weak hand anyway, so why not?

If the range will let you (and the angles permit) a strong-hand-only El Pres (without the turn) is really good practice and unlikely to run afoul of the rapid-fire rules on ranges. Make "par" 12 or 14 seconds, and have fun.

Or a strong hand- or weak hand-only Bill Drill, no draw and expanded to four seconds. The other drills you simply can't do indoors except for the group shooting.

These drills alone won't make you a well-rounded shooter, but they do contain the basic building blocks that you'll need to advance. If in your practice session you work on these drills, you'll be in better shape should you decide to take a training class or participate in shooting competitions.

The Barnhart drill follows the pattern indicated by the orange flagging. It teaches how transition from location to target size and back again.