Another month, another drill post—as it should be. This time, we’re diving into the 1-2-3-4-5 Drill, one I picked up at KR Training’s Top 10 Drills class. If you read my after-action report from that class, you might recall the drills are ranked from easy to hard. This one’s number two, so it’s on the simpler side. That said, it’s a multi-string drill that starts just a hair tougher than the NRA Basic Pistol Qualification and ramps up with each string. Let’s break it down.

The Course of Fire

• Target: B-8
• Distance: 5 yards
• Start Position: Ready
• Strings:
  1. Fire 1 round
  2. Fire 2 rounds
  3. Fire 3 rounds
  4. Fire 4 rounds
  5. Fire 5 rounds
• Par Time: 5 seconds per string
• Scoring: 150 possible points based on the rings. Line breaks count. Anything outside the 8-ring is a miss.

Want a visual? Check out this quick YouTube Short of me running the drill.

My thoughts on the Drill

This drill gets progressively harder with each string, but it’s still relatively easy. Solid marksmanship skills should net you all 150 points and a clean run. As your skills sharpen, start tracking X-ring hits. Nailing 150 points is doable, but landing 15 Xs at 5 yards with those generous 5-second par times? That’s no walk in the park. Like any drill, you can crank up the challenge—more on that later—but as designed, competent shooters should ace it.

What makes this drill tick is its focus on core marksmanship fundamentals: sights, trigger, and grip under time pressure. Given its easy difficulty, that’s no surprise. What’s neat is how the focus shifts with each string. The first string is all about sights and trigger—you can hit the 10-ring with a suboptimal grip. The second string adds a slight grip demand but gives ample time to adjust between shots. By the fifth string, your grip has to hold firm through five consecutive shots, putting it front and center over sights and trigger. It’s a solid drill for honing these fundamentals, with a gradual ramp-up in grip emphasis.

Drill Difficulty

To gauge how tough this drill is, I’m leaning on Karl Rehn and John Daub’s methodology from Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training, with some tweaks to estimate difficulty relative to USPSA Grand Master (GM) performance. It takes a bit of math, but it gives us a solid sense of where this drill lands.

Perfect Score (10-Ring Hits)

A perfect score means all hits in the B-8’s 10-ring (5.5” diameter). At 5 yards, that’s like hitting a 7.7” target at 7 yards. For simplicity, I’ll round up to an 8” target, using GM data from Karl and John’s book. This slightly understates the difficulty, as an 8” target is easier than 7.7”, but it keeps things clean. GM performance at 7 yards:

• Hit from ready: 0.85 seconds
• Split time: 0.20 seconds

Here’s the difficulty for each string (par time: 5 seconds):

String	GM Speed	Relative Difficulty
1	0.85s	17% (0.85 ÷ 5)
2	1.05s (0.85 + 0.2)	21%
3	1.25s (0.85 + 2 × 0.2)	25%
4	1.45s (0.85 + 3 × 0.2)	29%
5	1.65s (0.85 + 4 × 0.2)	33%
Total	6.25s	25% (6.25 ÷ 25)

The combined GM speed of 6.25 seconds against the total par time of 25 seconds (5 seconds × 5 strings) yields a 25% relative difficulty. That lands it in the “Easy” category, as outlined in the first post of this series. Feels about right to me. Even with the rounding error, I’d bet the true difficulty tops out at 28%.

15 X-Ring Hits

Now, let’s tackle 15 Xs. The B-8’s X-ring is 3.36” in diameter. Shooting that at 5 yards is like hitting an 8.4” target at 25 yards. I’ll round down to 8” for GM data at 25 yards, which overstates the difficulty slightly. GM performance:

• Hit from ready: 1.30 seconds
• Split time: 0.40 seconds

Here’s the breakdown:

String	GM Speed	Relative Difficulty
1	1.3s	26% (1.3 ÷ 5)
2	1.7s (1.3 + 0.4)	34%
3	2.1s (1.3 + 2 × 0.4)	42%
4	2.5s (1.3 + 3 × 0.4)	50%
5	2.9s (1.3 + 4 × 0.4)	58%
Total	10.5s	42% (10.5 ÷ 25)

A combined GM speed of 10.5 seconds gives a 42% relative difficulty. Since we rounded down, the actual difficulty is likely closer to 40%. Either way, that bumps it into the “Normal” bucket, requiring roughly C-class shooter skills. Achievable, but not a stroll down Easy Street.

Closing Thoughts

By all accounts, the 1-2-3-4-5 Drill is easy, but it can be frustratingly infuriating. Dropping a hit just outside the 10-ring is way too simple—one small error, and bam! You’re in the 9-ring. Those errors creep in when your mind drifts to results instead of staying locked on the shooting process, a common slip for shooters with good enough to clean this drill.

On the flip side, this drill’s rewarding as hell. That first clean run for a budding shooter? Pure magic, flooding the brain with feel-good chemicals. It’s mildly euphoric, no joke. So, don’t brush off the 1-2-3-4-5 Drill like some old toy. Set it up and give it a whirl. Shoot it clean? Awesome—now chase 15 Xs. Got that down? Push the distance to 7 yards, then 10, 15, or even 25. I’m not saying run this drill every range trip. Just keep it in your toolbox and pull it out now and then to mix things up.