I recently attended a carbine and pistol course and we did advancing on the target and shooting with the carbine. In a nutshell, I need more work in this area. Most of my carbine shooting is from a stationary position and I’m ok there but the advancing on target part pretty much sucked. Can you guys offer any specific suggestions that would help me with my accuracy? I’m trying to tighten up my group and become more consistent with my shot placement.
Watch the Todd Jarrett video ‘shooting on the move’, it’s pretty good. Foot work on pistol and carbine is the same.
maintain a steady heel to toe walk and tighten up your abs and upper body as much as needed to keep on targett…
Hey Thanks for that link. I just watch in amazment. Outstanding manipulation
skills.
Shooting on the move with a long gun is much harder to do than with a pistol. Even with applying the groucho walk, it’s not natural with a long gun.
Thanks so much for that link!!! I wish I’d seen it before the course. Now excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the floor:eek: .
+1 Just add timing and rhythm to it. 
Todd is very skilled and good at explaining what goes on. He’s a great guy to shoot with, he’s WAY down to earth and gives a ton of free advice and instruction.
I too usually don’t do too well in classes with shooting and moving with a long-gun (pistol shooting and moving I usually can do no problem). Even in 3gun competition I stop/pause just for a second to make the shots and then run balls to the wall to the next target array.
As Todd says “always be going somewhere”, after 3yrs of competition shooting I’m still learning this one although I am pretty good at it. The bigger the stage the better I do against the other competitors. It’s the fast and low round count stages where I do worse.
That’s funny you mention that because my buddy that teaches the CF guys in Afghanistan gave me the exact same tip yesterday. Thanks for all the advice guys. I’ll be putting it to use as soon as I can get back to the range. “Must get better, must get better”.
The opening scene in Todd Jarrett’s videos showed him shooting the IPSC steel on the half run barely a couple feet from those targets. I wondered what kind of ammo he was using to avoid bullet splatters. We normally shoot steel from a minimum of 10 yds, using normal full power ammo (lead or jacketed).
Get a cheap visible laser and put it on your carbine. Put up paper plates thruout your house. Practice walking with the weapon and keeping the vlas on target.
Yup. I had to watch that twice to see he is shooting them at a forward angle so the splatter is headed across the range at a 45 degree angle I think. He says later in another video he is shooting a .40. The boy is good!
Todd uses Winchester Frangible ammo which uses a unique nylon, tungsten and copper composite bullets by DFA which are 100% lead free.
Great stuff! he had a segment on the show demoing it… he had a full auto M4 and put 30rds on a steel plate at about 2 feet away!
The thing that has helped me the most both in doing it myself as well as teaching/coaching people to shoot on the move is to “shoot from the waist up; move from the waist down.”
Like a lot of things in life, it’s not really complicated. It’s simple. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s simple.
Learning to move without your upper body bobbing and weaving too much is something you can do without your gun/carbine. The trick with the partially filled water bottle (Mat Burkett’s drill) held like your gun while you moving around, trying to keep the water level works pretty well. You can do the same thing inside with a flashlight or laser and watch how much the light moves on the wall as you move.
Most people can advance, withdraw, and move toward their strong side pretty well after a little practice. Moving toward the support side a bit more challenging if you don’t choose to walk backwards, but you can adapt.
LAV does a great job teaching shooting on the move. SAM is right that shooting a rifle accurately on the move is much harder than pistol. The “groucho” heel to toe and toe to heel system works. There’s more to stabilizing the platform than just your lower extremities which LAV teaches also. I don’t think I’m buying into the balance beam deal for anything other than games like USPSA and IDPA. Which is what that video is about. There’s other lateral movement methods also that Todd doesn’t address, like the crab walk which is harder to learn but a valid method to know and practice since the world isn’t flat and your environment has a lot to do with dictating what will and won’t work while shooting on the move. Hackathorn’s box/square drill is a great drill for shaking those out on the range. Also good is the Mexican Defense drill. Both are designed for pistols but you could increase the range and run them with a rifle.
The terrain was undulating and caused me to throw shots at times when I thought I was settled then all of a sudden my foots drops into a 5" depression. It’d be different if it was flat and level like a road but I guess that’s the cool part about learning how to do it. What’s this crab walk?
Crab walk is lateral movement where your feet meet in the middle at each step. No crossing over. I find it unnatural but see the advantage when, as a right handed shooter moving left and shooting right you don’t have to torque at the waist like if you were stepping left, feet forward and twisting to the right to shoot.
Combat glide.
MoJo…been working on more moving as well. Agree with everything that Todd Jarret points out, but have found that IF I make the shot while one foot is in the air, I get better hits then trying to get the shot off with one or the other foot hitting the ground and disturbing my sight picture.
Interested to see what others that are more informed have to say about this, or if they have had the same experience.
Tack
I find when shooting on the move its best if I shoot when my forward foots heel is touching down - I then have two points of contact resulting in more stability.