A quality day on the range is always beneficial. Whether practicing drills for time, marksmanship, skill-building, or dynamic movements; quality trigger time is guaranteed to improve your skills as a shooter whether it is for personal defense, professional, or recreational enjoyment. Personally, I make a concerted effort to spend at least one day on the range a week – even if it’s for a brief session. Spending time with a shooting partner improves that experience.
While many of my range sessions are spent alone on my own time, I’ve found the best range days have been amongst friends and coworkers. For many, a shared range day means spreading the enjoyment of shooting to others who may not be as familiar or well-versed in the field. Sharing these range days with novice shooters often results in an introduction to a lifelong interest in shooting as well as a new ambassador to shooting and firearms ownership. However, sharing a range day with a friend or co-worker goes far beyond expanding shared interests.
A range partner, or partners, can have numerous advantages for improving the average range day. In recent years, I’ve enjoyed the shared experiences of training with coworkers and friends for scheduled or impromptu range days. Those training days have benefited all of us in the form of making us more competent and knowledgeable students of the firearm. Thus, it’s worth discussing the benefits and advantages of spending a day on the range with compatriots over spending a day alone.
Having a Shooting Partner is Having Accountability
When practicing skills on and off the range, it’s hard at times to remain on track with a structured shooting regimen. It’s very easy to burn through a couple of hundred rounds without focusing on the reasoning behind pressing the trigger. With a range partner (or partners), there is a level of accountability that accompanies having someone alongside you. A few months ago, three peers and I engaged in a study on the importance of dry fire. During that study, we agreed to conduct 50 quality repetitions of dry fire daily. Since we all work together, we occasionally do the drills together, but normally hold each other accountable through a group text when we complete them. Some days, I would forget to complete the drills but was quickly reminded by a peer sending a text to our group that their repetitions were finished for the day.
By having a range partner, accountability can be improved on and off the range. You and your partner hold each other to a standard so rounds down range are sent with purpose. Furthermore, you know what the other should focus on and can remind them to focus on certain skills.
The Astute Observer
In a previous lifetime, I played competitive baseball in college. During that time, specialized positions were assigned coaches to train, instruct, and evaluate players during practice and games. As a pitcher, my performance was regularly observed and evaluated by a dedicated pitching coach. That coach frequently provided feedback in areas requiring improvement. This is the role of the “astute observer”.
In shooting, a dedicated coach is ideal as they know what to look for and how to address it. Few of us have the wherewithal to finance a dedicated shooting coach for our improvement. However, a training partner can serve that role by observing your shooting performance. If you’re pulling shots while shooting, it can be hard to diagnose from your perspective. When training with peers, it becomes significantly easier to do so. In our practice and training sessions, my peers and I have diagnosed and addressed issues with shooting mechanics. We identified these issues because a non-participant in the drill observed them during training. We’ve even gone so far as to use cell phone cameras with the slow-motion feature to capture and analyze our technique.
The role of an observer in shooting is highly beneficial. As mentioned earlier, working with a partner holds you accountable and vice versa. In addition, their observation of your technique can help address issues that would have otherwise gone unaddressed and unresolved. Training is useless if all it does is reinforce bad technique. An engaged and observant training partner helps to mitigate those issues and resolve them before they become an ingrained habit.
A shooting partner encourages creativity
A training partner expands the knowledge base from one brain to two or more. I regularly find drills to challenge and expand our capabilities. Furthermore, I expect them to do the same. Range days with cohorts often expand my drill repertoire while adding to the proverbial toolbox of firearm knowledge. We challenge each other by offering our input to one another during a training day.
Beyond just challenging each other with drills, a quality training partner can provide input on how they’ve previously addressed their shooting issues. As a shooter who is still expanding their knowledge, I’ve sought to share the drills, techniques, and experiences that have brought me success. A good shooting partner should do the same by sharing that knowledge to help accelerate their partner’s success. Not every solution in shooting is one-size-fits-all. However, sharing your knowledge, and your partner doing so as well, can help resolve problems a shooter may be struggling to resolve. As the saying goes, knowledge is power, and sharing it amongst shooting partners increases knowledge and creativity in resolving performance issues while improving performance.
A shooting partner will push you to improve
Many years ago, I worked at a major sporting goods retailer. After a shift, I took the time to go into the range to practice some trigger time. The range safety officer took interest in me, a fellow left-hander, as I shot through 100 rounds of ammunition. We got to chatting and, since then, have entered into a lifelong friendship and partnership as shooting buddies. We both have similar shooting backgrounds and skills and frequently push each other to failure as well as new personal records during our range trips.
A shooting partner is good but one that motivates you to push yourself is worth their weight in gold. During a recent range outing, we conducted a basic shooting drill with manageable par times to set a baseline for us. We determined a par time for each shooter and shot the drill with acceptable results. Some of us shot it faster than others. Later in the range session, we changed it up by removing the par time and making it a competition to beat the best time. The inclusion of a competitive component pushed each of us to perform faster and more accurately than many of us thought we were previously capable of doing. We are more motivated by peer pressure and the prospect of friendly razzing from a poor performance.
There are numerous benefits to a shooting partner and this list doesn’t cover every nuanced aspect of those benefits. Beyond performance and skill-building, we build lifelong relationships by spending time with others on the range. When enjoying that time with peers, remember what everyone’s purpose on the range is – whether for recreation, defense, or competition. Maintain a focus on purpose-driven shooting and skill-building. Hold each other accountable to aspire to the next level of skills. Whether novice, intermediate, expert, or master; everyone benefits from spending time on the range with a friend, coworker, or peer.
