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One thing I've noticed doing weapons training is most people's poor use of cover.
They tend to kinda sorta go to a knee near cover and kinda sorta maybe obscure a little bit of their body in doing so.
Habits.
Habits can be good, like brushing your teeth. Other habits can be bad, like smoking crack LOL.
Not using cover well would definitely go under smoking crack in the bad habit category.
So I purposely built some really small pieces of simulated "cover" for my range.
Why? Cause I wanted to see how these would be used differently from the classic big 55 gallon barrel you see used as quasi "cover" at ranges.
Well, the small cover wasn't used much differently at first.
But, I submit unto you, sometimes we lack "proper motivation."
It's tough to use really small cover like this. You have to be able to get your body really small, tuck your arms and legs in as best you can. Often times, conventional "prone" shooting styles don't help you out much here and you have to experiment to find the best mix of getting behind cover while also being able to get your shots off.
I forget the name of it, but their is a modified prone position wherein you don't raise up on your elbows. The arms from the elbows down are left on the ground. This cuts your profile down drastically.
Getting 100 yard hits on steel this way "under pressure" was not a problem.
Now, how do you test good use of cover?
Well, if I had a group of people I had trained with for years, and if I trusted them explicitly, and if they had the experience and I had the confidence in them, I might consider doing the following drill-
With the pieces of quasi cover spaced apart- NOT like you see in the pic!!! Spaced about 10 yards apart but more or less the same distance from the target, you could have a shooter at each piece of cover. Each shooter would use an opposite side of the individual piece of cover. In other words, as you were facing them, the guy on the right hand side piece of cover would be shooting off the far right hand side of his cover and vice versa for the left hand side piece of cover.
Then if you had a semi auto airsoft rifle, appropriate safety gear, etc. you could have someone between the two shooters at cover, but forward (closer to the target) by about 15 yards. The object of that person would be to shoot the airsoft BB's at any/all parts of the body exposed while the two shooters shoot at the target (further down range).
This could help facilitate several things including proper use of cover, the want to return fire while their is some "incoming" rounds, i.e, not just ball up and hide and general team confidence building.
Definitely not Day 1 stuff. Definitely not something to do with "some dudes" you just met. Requires the utmost of safety and control.
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