5×5 Drill

As I mentioned in the last email newsletter, I hinted at a series of monthly blog posts that I wanted to start this year, but was waiting for a few things to come together. The premise for the series isn’t novel as it’s along the lines of a drill of the month concept where I pick a drill, shoot it, and write about it with the goal of motivating readers like you to go and try it for themselves. The “things that I was waiting to come together” was actually one thing. I wanted to run it past my friend, John Daub, who is the author of the Drills, Qualifications, Standards, & Tests book as I figured I would use it as the source of drills to write about since he’s already done the heavy lifting of compiling a large collection of drills. He gave me his blessing and so here I am writing about the first drill.

Before getting into the drill, I want to preface the series by pointing out that I’m going to prioritize single target drills first. My reasons for this are twofold. First and foremost, single target drills are way easier to set up. Next, they can be set up in virtually any public range which should make these drills accessible to virtually every reader. That’s not to say I won’t cover multitarget drills in future posts. I’m only saying single target drills will have priority initially in this series.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the first drill. The 5×5 Drill.

Course of Fire

Target: 5” Circle (a free target for this drill is available for download as a PDF from Lucky Gunner here)

Scoring: Pass/Fail – All 5 shots must be fired within the par time limit and impact within the target

About the Drill

The original concept of the drill is attributed to Gila Hayes who introduced it in one of her books. Which of her books? I’m not really sure. To be honest, I haven’t read any of them, but I have added them to my future reading list. However, I’ve yet to find any material that attributes this drill to anyone else.

There are a few known variations of this drill. The one that is most prevalent appears to be Claude Werner who suggested that the string of fire be repeated five times to rule out luck. This variation was coined 5^5 (or “5 hat 5”) as a mathematics joke.

Another variation of this drill is the 6^6 drill which consists of 6 shots into a 6” circle from 6 yards in 6 seconds repeated 6 times in a row. 

Other variations change up the start position to increase the drill’s difficulty by starting from the holster, using concealment, or moving while drawing.

My Thoughts on the Drill

The drill seems simple enough and at first glance it seemed relatively easy. However, I was rather surprised when I read Greg Ellifritz’ post about the drill to learn that none of the students in one of his CCW permit class was able to pass the drill when he tested Claude Werner’s claim that many of his students struggled with a drill that Gila Hayes designed to determine basic competence with a pistol. My initial reaction was one of trepidation. What if I couldn’t pass what seemed to be a relatively easy drill? 

I did the only thing I could do to answer that question. I took that trepidation with me to the range and shot the drill. Five times to rule out luck as Claude suggested. Much to my relief, I passed the drill. However, I made some interesting observations.

Subjectively, the drill is easy and it appears to test a basic level of competence. To shoot the drill clean, one has to have developed their core marksmanship fundamentals. Namely grip, trigger, and sights. There is plenty of time to get good five hits assuming those fundamental foundations are present.

Another thing I noticed is that the inclusion of the small yet highly visible aiming reference, that is the red circle in the center of the 5” target, makes this drill noticeably easier. A plain old 5” circle without a center reference would require the shooter to have better visual focus discipline to pass the drill.

Other things that could be done to increase the difficulty of the drill include decreasing the par time or increasing the distance. 

Given I had a relatively easy time passing the drill, I decided to increase the distance incrementally until I failed to get five hits within the time limit. Attempting the drill at 7 yards wasn’t much more difficult than 5 yards. At 10 yards, however, I started taking more time to get a more refined sight picture. I only managed to get 4 good hits at 15 yards before running out of time.

It’s a simple drill, but it’s a good drill.

Drill Difficulty

In chapter 20 of Karl Rehn and John Daub’s book, Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training, Karl presents a methodology for calculating a drill’s difficulty level based on a finite set of drill parameters. This approach, even though it’s an approximation, gives us a more objective approach to a drill’s difficulty level by determining what percentage of a world class champion shooter’s skill a shooter likely has in order to “pass” a drill. I will be attempting to perform this approximation on the drills in this series while using difficulty level inspired from the gaming I did in my younger years as follows (which folks with experience in USPSA competitions will recognize as being close aligned to classification requirements):

• Easy – Up to 40% of USPSA GM (Grand Master) skill level required 
• Normal – 40% to 60% of USPSA GM skill level required
• Hard – 60% to 75% of USPSA GM skill level required
• Expert – Greater than 75% of USPSA GM skill level required

My scaling and interpolation efforts using Karl and Johns methodology yield the following. Passing the 5×5 drill requires 5 shots in 5 seconds into a 5” circle. The 5” circle at 5 yards approximately simulates an 8” circle at 16 yards or a 7.5” circle at 15 yards. Using a bit of rounding, a GM should be able to clean this drill in 2 seconds (assuming 1 second for the first shot from ready and 0.25 second splits for the remaining 4 shots). That gives us a relative difficulty of 40% (2 seconds divided by 5 seconds) making this a normal difficulty drill. 

I suspect it is the drill simplicity combined with it being on the lowest possible end of the normal difficulty spectrum that may lead experienced pistol shooters to assume that this is an easy drill. It’s certainly not hard, but it’s about as difficult as an easy drill can get. 

Closing Thoughts

In my opinion, Gila Hayes was onto something when she designed this drill to determine a basic level of competency. The beauty of this drill is in its simplicity. It’s so simple that its difficulty is deceptive. 

Chris Baker, from Lucky Gunner, reminds us in the episode of his Start Shooting Better series covering the 5×5 Drill that Greg Ellifritz equates passing this drill to achieving a high school diploma in gun fighting where one would benefit from realizing there is much more to learn beyond it. Chris goes on to suggest that this drill can be used as a way to determine whether or not one is able to shoot a specific gun well enough to rely on it for defensive purposes. I believe both assessments are spot on. Passing this drill is an achievement, but it is an early milestone. 

I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that being unable to pass the test means one shouldn’t carry that particular gun. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that having a firearm and the willingness to use are sufficient to successfully survive a self defense incident that justifies the use of deadly force. However, having sufficient competence to support the tool and willingness would be nothing but beneficial.

Go shoot the drill and see how it goes. If you passed, then great. If you didn’t, then go work on those fundamentals until you can. Either way, keep leveling up.

If you do give the 5×5 drill a go, then leave a comment below and let me and other readers know how it went.