Overview
If you’ve ever participated in sports, played in the band or orchestra, or done basically any other activity that requires practice in order to achieve peak performance under pressure, you know that practice isn’t a scheduled time of the day, it’s ANY time you can get to improve at your craft!
When it comes to armed regulation drill, the same principle applies: while learning efficient and correct technique is the start to a solid understanding of rifle handling, solidifying that technique requires a bit of effort outside of practice as well!
A Plan for Success
When it comes to working on rifle movements, we recommend doing a little bit outside of practice each day! It doesn’t have to be much but by spending some intentional, deliberate time outside of your regularly scheduled practices to improve your own abilities, the entire team will improve as a result!
This is especially true for teams who don’t practice every single day (and also true for every aspect of drill, not just rifle manual!)
So what do we actually do…Alright. Here is the general idea:
- Every day, cadets work on each of the rifle movements they’ve learned to that point in the season. At first, it might be just one or two. By the end of the season, it’s all of them.
- We set a designated number of repetitions for each day, again working from lower numbers to higher ones to accommodate our physical growth throughout this process. At the start, it might be five repetitions of each movement each day. By the end of the season, perhaps it’s 25.
- Ideally, cadets work in pairs. This means you may need to do a bit of schedule-review to see who’s available when throughout the school day! Perhaps several cadets are in the same flight/platoon or perhaps a few have lunch during the same period. During the first several repetitions, you and your partner watch one another and provide feedback. After those firs
t repetitions, you work together to push each other’s intensity and precision! - Feedback given should be both corrective AND positive. Let your partner know what to keep doing well as often as you let them know what to improve upon.
Here’s a sample set-list to perform each day:
- Port Arms / Order Arms x15
- Right Shoulder Arms from Order Arms / Order Arms x15
- Left Shoulder Arms from Port Arms / Port Arms x15
- Present Arms from Order Arms / Order Arms x15
- Inspection Arms x15
What to Avoid
There are some things we should AVOID when implementing this system:
- Repetitions should not be enforced with negative consequences. We want to train our cadets to LOVE the process of improving. The best practice is voluntary practice so work to create a culture where everyone sees doing their daily reps as something enjoyable. This is a FAR harder culture to build than threatening the team should they fail to do their reps so be prepared to work and be creative here!
- Repetitions should not be just “going through the motions.” As with any repetitive task, it’s easy to turn off the brain and go into autopilot mode, especially as the season wears on. Work with your team to help them start to see smaller and smaller discrepancies and reward smaller and smaller details being performed with excellence!
The Result
By doing this each and every day, each cadet comes to practice mentally and physically prepared to execute at a higher level than when they left the previous practice. They’ve received individual feedback that would’ve otherwise taken time from a formal practice session.
Team practice time should be just that: time for the team to sync together and work towards big-picture goals.
By working each day on your craft, you’re helping the team by giving back time towards issues that affect the team!