Draw Efficiency with the Marionette Principle

Pertaining to the use of the pistol, efficiency of movement separates high performers from casual shooters.  This is not unique to shooting; all high-end athletes focus on making their movement efficient.  In particular, I want to speak to movement in the draw from concealment, as this is a skillset that is rife with excess movement for most shooters. 

There are, actually, quite a few individual movements required to draw a gun, and especially so from concealment. While not particularly complicated in explanation, developing a good draw stroke takes a lot of work.  Explaining how to swing a golf club correctly is fairly straight forward, but how does that work out for most of us?  With the draw stroke, the addition of a cover garment over the weapon greatly adds to the complexity of the task.  For this reason, a concealed draw is an entirely different animal than drawing from an open competition rig.  Either draw, however, demands efficiency of movement, as moving more than necessary reduces efficiency and makes the process slower. 

One particular pattern that is common is excessive movement of the head, as most shooters tend to rock to the side when drawing from either strong side hip of appendix position.  I see this in myself when looking at older videos of me shooting.  There are a lot of shooters who move their head quite a lot on the draw that are still good performers, but I think everyone, of any level, can benefit from holding their head more stationary.  The reason: If you move your head, then you must re-align your eye position with the gun rather than just present the sighting system in front of your stationary eye.  This reduces efficiency of movement.

Watch the video below where I explain my “marionette” analogy:

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