The El Presidente in 60 seconds (BLUF)

• What it is: Face uprange at 10 yards, turn on the beep, draw, fire two rounds on each of three targets, reload, and fire two more on each — 12 rounds total against the clock.
• Who made it: Jeff Cooper, who built it to gauge pistol proficiency for a South American presidential security detail — hence “El Presidente,” or “El Prez” for short.
• It’s still a live classifier: El Prez is USPSA classifier CM 99-11 — a 12-round, 60-point, Virginia Count course. Shoot it at a match and it moves your classification.
• What’s a good time? The classic benchmark is a clean run in 10 seconds (all 12 in the A-zone). But USPSA scores it on hit factor, and for a clean run the conversion is dead simple: 60 ÷ your hit factor = your time. A 10 hit factor is 6.0 seconds with all twelve in the A-zone — roughly Grandmaster pace in the optics divisions.
• Why it’s the decathlon of drills: One run tests your turn, draw, target transitions, splits, a full reload, and recoil control — no single skill can hide.
• Train it anywhere: The turn, draw, transitions and reload are all pattern skills. Run par-time reps with an airsoft pistol or dry fire on a free Airsoft Shot Timer app between range trips.

Ask a room full of shooters to name one pistol drill and more of them will say “El Presidente” than anything else. It’s been on range programs for fifty years, it shows up in USPSA classifiers, and it’s the first thing a lot of instructors reach for when they want to see whether a new student can actually run a gun rather than just shoot groups off a bench. If the Bill Drill is the honest test of your grip, the El Prez is the honest test of everything else.

The Bill Drill in 60 seconds (BLUF)

• What it is: Draw and fire six rounds into the A-zone of one target at seven yards, as fast as you can keep them all in. That’s the whole drill.
• Why it’s brutal: Six shots leaves nowhere to hide. A bad grip, a slow draw, or flinching all show up instantly in your hits and your times.
• What’s a good time? From an open holster: roughly 4.5s for a new shooter, sub-3s for a solid club shooter, sub-2s for someone who can genuinely shoot. From concealment, add roughly half a second to every one of those — a clean sub-2 from concealment is genuinely rare, not a weekend goal.
• How fast is the record? Around 1.1 seconds for six A-zone hits, with a draw near 0.40s. It’s a legitimate number and a terrible training target — see below for why.
• The two levers: Your draw (first shot) and your splits (time between shots). A shot timer breaks both out for you so you know which one to fix.
• Train it anywhere: You don’t need live fire to build the pattern. An airsoft pistol or a dry-fire rep with a par time on a free Airsoft Shot Timer app trains the exact same draw-and-run mechanics.

If you’ve ever watched someone at the range draw and rip six shots into a single target in about two seconds, you’ve probably seen a Bill Drill without knowing its name. To a bystander it looks like a John Wick impression. To anyone who trains seriously, it’s one of the most revealing tests in shooting — because there is absolutely nothing to it, and that’s exactly why it’s so hard to fake.