Earnest Langdon’s All Hands Drill

I spend about 90% of my time shooting a handgun, shooting with both hands. It is, after all, the best way to shoot the gun. However, it is necessary to be reasonably skilled with shooting the gun one-handed. I may need to operate a flashlight or move someone with the other hand and be able to shoot at the same time. I may end up injured and unable to use one hand or the other. If I shoot competitively, I may be forced to use one hand or the other because of stage requirements. All this to say, it is a good idea to be able to shoot one-handed.

Earnest Langdon has a drill that he calls the All Hands Drill. It is an 18-round drill, shot as one continuous string of fire with two reloads and a couple of transitions from one hand to the other mixed in. Any target with an 8” circle will do (literally, there are tons of them), placed at 7 yards.

The Gist

The start position is meant to be holstered, but we all don’t live in an outdoor range world where draws are allowed. If your range doesn’t allow you to draw, just start from a low ready or a compressed ready—something like that. You will need three 6-round magazines. On the start, signal draw and fire six freestyle (read: both hands), slide lock reload, and switch to strong hand only for the next six rounds. Another slide lock reload and switch to weak hand only for the last six rounds.

The Standard

The goal is to keep all 18 rounds inside the 8” circle while going as quickly as possible. This means we really need to pay attention to the sights and make sure we use the proper amount of visual patience (this is not my strong suit). There is no par time associated with the drill that I am aware of. Just do what you can do. For a benchmark, I have seen Earnest pull it off in just under 11 seconds. Personally, I think anything around 15 seconds is pretty respectable. The draw, the two reloads, and the hand transitions will eat up quite a bit of time.

How To Make It Harder

If this drill is easy peasy at seven yards for you, nothing says you have to shoot it at seven yards. Bump it back to 10 yards if you want the medium difficulty mode, 15 yards for hard, and 25 yards for legendary. I will stick with seven yards, for now, thanks.

Coming Up With a Par Time

Once you have shot it a couple of times and gathered a little data on how long it takes you to shoot the drill clean, average those times out and start trying to trim it down. Essentially, create your own par time. It will help you set goals, push for more skill, and track performance over time.

Do Work

Since this only requires six rounds before a reload, it should be pretty doable with pretty much any gun. If you aren’t familiar with how to safely transition the handgun from one hand to the other, be sure to seek out some good instruction on that process first.

If you give it a run or two, drop us a note in the comments and let us know how you did.