This week, finally, I made it back to the range. I was able to work a cold AMRAP, a couple bill drills, and some live fire reloads. The rest of the time was spent at 25 yards making a slight tweak to the sights. I ran the a 2 second AMRAP from 5 yards on a folded 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper just like in my 100 round practice session, and was able to get 2 hits under the PAR. My third round was at 2.22 seconds, so I am close. My draw was slower than I would have liked at nearly 1.70 seconds, so I will probably start working the draw some more and try to shave it down to a consistent 1.50. I honestly have not been working the draw much in dry fire and focusing almost exclusively on reloads and it hurt me here.
The splits on the AMRAP, and the splits on the bill drill on the same target at the same distance hovered in the mid 0.20 second range. While not a huge priority, I would like to see those splits drop to right at 0.20 seconds. Physicaly I am in control of the gun, but cannot move the trigger any faster at the moment. Hopefully with time that comes around naturally.
The reload work was a bit disappointing. Even though I have been very deliberate about keeping my eye’s up during dry fire, I was looking down at the revolver during the reloads. This is consistent with what I would normally tell people happens during a reload, humans being task oriented, but I was hoping I could break it with good dry fire practice.
There are two basic schools of thought on reloads, one says lower the revolver to accept the new ammunition because this assist the new ammunition actually properly seating in the individual chambers. The other school of thought says to maintain the revolver in the field of view so that downrange awareness can be maintained. Claude Werner teaches to lower the revolver, Clint Smith teaches to keep it up, both respected guys in their own right. I am undecided as to which technique I think makes more sense. If you want to weigh in, feel free to in the comments.
Priority: Performance 
I’ve thought quite a lot on this problem; 10 solid years of training to reload (1911s and Glocks) while keeping your eyes downrange is hard to break. So I adopted a bit of a hybrid technique; you can point the barrel at the deck, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it at waistline level. I can keep the gun almost perpendicular to the ground, facilitating gravity-assisted reloads, but still keep the gun at chest-level.
Using the universal revolver reload and holding the gun in the strong hand, I’m able to get it chest-high while still keeping it in the vertical orientation (I really don’t know how Clint Smith does it with the gun basically parallel to the ground). This is maybe a little slower, but I think it is a lot more positive as it allows you to take a quick glance at the most critical moment: when aligning bullets with charge-holes (or mags with mag wells).
I certainly don’t claim to be the expert on revolvers or revolver reloads and you may have already settled this issue, but I dont’ think it has to be all or nothing. I totally agree with Werner about getting the gun vertical, and Clint about keeping it in the field of view.
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