The F.A.S.T. drill, short for Fundamentals, Accuracy, and Speed Test, is a six-round pistol standard fired at 7 yards: from concealment, draw and put two rounds into a 3x5 index card, reload from slide lock, and fire four rounds into an 8-inch circle. The pistol is loaded with exactly two rounds so the slide locks back after the head shots and forces a reload mid-string, chaining a precision problem, an emergency reload, and a speed problem into a single scored run.
The drill is deliberately hard because it refuses to let you be good at only one thing. The 3x5 card demands the tight, patient sight picture of a slow-fire accuracy drill, and then the 8-inch circle rewards aggressive speed, with a slide-lock reload separating the two. Score is raw time plus penalties, so a fast run wrecked by a single dropped head shot is often slower on paper than a controlled clean run. It measures the whole chain, not any one link.
Timer runs prep and par beeps for each step.
Two-sheet Mozambique target: true-size 3x5 head box that tapes 12" above an 8" chest circle. Covers the failure drill and F.A.S.T. scoring zones.
Set a 3x5 card as the head box with an 8-inch circle centered about a foot below it. Load the pistol with exactly two rounds, holster from concealment at 7 yards, and stage a spare magazine on your belt. On the beep, draw and fire two rounds into the card, reload from slide lock, and fire four rounds into the circle.
Draw on the beep, land both rounds in the 3x5 card, reload as the slide locks back, and drive four clean hits into the 8-inch circle. Set a 7-second par; a clean run inside it earns the Advanced rating and is a realistic working goal once you can complete the drill without penalties.
Cue: Two precise, reload, four fast. Do not outrun the card; the head box, not the circle, is where the time is won or lost.
Take the raw time from the beep to the sixth shot, then add penalties: two seconds for each hit outside the 3x5 card and one second for each hit outside the 8-inch circle. The final score is raw time plus penalties. Log the number and repeat for a full session.
Score raw time from the beep to the sixth shot, then add penalties: two seconds for every hit outside the 3x5 head card and one second for every hit outside the 8-inch circle. The final score is raw time plus penalties, so accuracy failures show up directly on the clock rather than as a simple fail.
A rating only counts on a clean run, meaning all six hits inside their zones with zero penalties added. The head box is weighted double on purpose; the drill is built to punish shooters who rush the two hard shots to chase a fast overall time.
| Level | Standard | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | Clean run 10.0s or slower | Todd Green's Novice band. Getting all six accountable hits, even slowly, is the first milestone. |
| Intermediate | Clean run under 10.0s | Green's Intermediate rating; the reload and the head-box precision are both landing under pressure. |
| Advanced | Clean run under 7.0s | Green's Advanced rating; a fast concealed draw, a clean slide-lock reload, and no dropped hits. |
| Master | Clean run under 5.00s | Green's Expert rating and F.A.S.T. Coin territory, which requires a clean sub-5 run twice in a row; the record is 3.56s by Dave Sevigny. |
The F.A.S.T. was designed by Todd Louis Green, founder of the training site pistol-training.com, as a compact standard he could run in every class: quick to set up with an index card and a paper plate, fast to shoot, and revealing about a shooter's balance of speed and precision. Green built the scoring around penalties rather than a pass or fail cutoff so the same course of fire measures a new shooter and an expert on one scale, weighting the harder head-box hits at two seconds each and the body hits at one second each.
Green tied the drill to a challenge coin that became its signature. Earning a F.A.S.T. Coin requires shooting a clean run under five seconds twice in a row, demonstrated in front of an instructor at a pistol-training.com class; Green himself carried Coin number 00. The published record on his FASTest page is a 3.56 second run by Dave Sevigny. Green passed away in 2016 after a long fight with cancer, and the drill has been carried on since as one of the most widely referenced pistol standards in defensive and competitive training.
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CNC-machined aluminum 9mm dummy rounds for dry fire, function testing, and reload reps that cushion the firing pin on every press.
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Comparing timers first? The shot timer guide ranks the current field, and the dry fire practice guide covers the training aids that make at-home reps productive. Need the target? Print it free from the printable targets library.
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