The F.A.S.T. Drill in 60 seconds (BLUF)

• What it is: Six rounds at 7 yards on one target — a 3×5 inch card in the head and an 8-inch circle in the body. Draw with exactly two rounds in the gun, fire two at the card, reload from slide lock, fire four at the circle.
• Why it hurts: The hardest shots come first and cold, then the gun runs dry on purpose. A slide-lock reload tears your grip apart, and you have to rebuild it while the clock runs.
• Ratings: 10+ seconds Novice · under 10 Intermediate · under 7 Advanced · under 5 Expert.
• Penalties are the whole game: every miss on the 3×5 card adds 2.00 seconds; every miss on the 8-inch circle adds 1.00 second. A 4.84-second run with two dropped body shots scores 7.34 — a Novice-to-Advanced fall from one bad grip.
• The coin: A clean sub-5.00 run, done in front of an authorized instructor, twice. Since 2007 exactly 26 people have earned one. There is also a “half pin” for a clean sub-7.00.
• Train it anywhere: Load two BBs in a GBB airsoft pistol and the slide locks back for real. With a free shot timer app you get the same draw, the same reload, and the same honest number — without burning 600 rounds finding out.

Most shooting drills flatter you. You pick the distance, you pick the pace, and you stop when the group looks good. The F.A.S.T. does the opposite: it hands you a small target, an empty gun, and a stopwatch, and then it tells everyone in earshot exactly where you actually are. Ernest Langdon — the man Todd Green authorized to carry on as arbiter of the F.A.S.T. Coin — puts it bluntly in his own classes: “It is a test specifically. It’s not something you practice.”

How Fast Is a Pistol Reload? Average vs Good

The honest answer almost nobody gives you: a typical shooter with a belt-mounted magazine pouch runs about 2.5 to 3 seconds from the shot that empties the gun to the shot that follows the reload. That number is not a target, it is a description — it is roughly what you get when someone who shoots a few times a year drops a magazine, finds a fresh one, and gets back on the sights. The widely repeated “under 3 seconds is a pretty good benchmark” you will find on carry forums is describing the same population, and in the competition-shooting corners of the internet people practising deliberately report averaging around 2.5 seconds from belt to shot.