Concealed Carry Drawstroke Development

What a Drawstroke Has to Solve

A concealed carry drawstroke is the sequence that takes a pistol from a holstered, concealed state to a sighted, accurate shot on target. It is not the same problem as drawing from an open competition rig. The shooter has to defeat a garment, build a clean grip on a pistol that is partially or fully hidden, clear the holster, and present to the target without putting a finger in the trigger guard until the muzzle is committed. Every step has to work in clothing the shooter actually wears, from a t-shirt to a button-down to a jacket.

Lucas, when discussing what makes a holster work for this, puts accessibility first: “as I go to grip the weapon I’m not scraping past a holster, I’m not scraping past my pants — I’m just going straight to the grip to build that good dominant hand grip on the gun.” That priority drives everything downstream. If the master grip is wrong at the holster, it stays wrong all the way to the shot.

Building the Master Grip in the Holster

The first measurable phase of the drawstroke is the grip established before the gun moves. A weak, high, or canted grip taken in the holster cannot be fixed in the air without time-consuming regripping. Holster design matters here: the Sidecar and similar AIWB designs were built specifically so the shooter can get a full firing grip on the pistol while it is still in the holster. As Lucas describes the original design intent: “having a full grip you can actually get on and actually grab the handgun and actually draw.”

A few things have to happen in that fraction of a second:

• The web of the shooting hand seats high on the beavertail with no air gap.
• The middle, ring, and little fingers wrap the front strap without contacting the trigger or trigger guard.
• The thumb stays high and indexed, not curled down toward the trigger.
• The support hand is already moving to the centerline of the body, hand flat against the torso, ready to meet the gun.

Holster ride height and clip position are part of this. An AIWB holster that rides too deep — where “the grip is sitting below your belt line” in deep-concealment configurations — costs the shooter access. Lucas notes that some deep-concealment designs sacrifice “a lot” for that concealment, and the drawstroke is what gets sacrificed.

Defeating the Garment

The garment is the variable most shooters under-train. A closed-front cover garment (t-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket) requires a sweep with the support hand or a two-handed lift before the shooting hand can reach the grip. An open-front garment requires a sweep behind the holstered pistol so the cloth clears past the muzzle.

Two failure modes recur:

1. Insufficient clearance. The shooter lifts the garment just enough to start the grip, the cloth falls back across the holster, and the draw stalls. The fix is to lift higher than feels necessary and drive the elbow back hard.
2. Reholstering with the garment in the way. A shirt tail or jacket hem riding into the holster mouth on reholster is one of the documented mechanisms for unintended discharges. As Lucas puts it, “defeat the garment properly or the garment will defeat you.” The sweat guard on a properly designed AIWB holster helps, but it is “an indexing point” for the muzzle on reholster, not a guarantee — “if you lift your shirt more than this far then your shirt could potentially go on the other side of the sweat guard.”

The practical drill is to dry-fire the draw repeatedly with the actual cover garments worn day to day, not just a range t-shirt.

Clearing the Holster and Rotating to Target

Once the master grip is locked, the gun is pulled straight up out of the holster until the muzzle clears the holster mouth. AIWB makes this short — the gun does not have to travel as far as from a 4 o’clock or shoulder rig. Lucas notes that AIWB tends to give the best balance of “accessibility and speed, comfort and concealability,” even though strong-side hip carry can be more comfortable in absolute terms.

After the muzzle clears:

• The pistol rotates from vertical to horizontal so the muzzle points at the threat.
• The trigger finger stays clearly indexed on the slide or frame, off the trigger and outside the guard.
• The support hand meets the firing hand at the centerline near the sternum.

This is the moment when most negligent discharges happen on the draw. Lucas is direct: “as soon as the gun has actually cleared the holster, that’s generally when people shoot themselves.” The cause is almost never the holster — it is the trigger finger going into the trigger guard early, often because the shooter is rushing to “make the beep.” Discipline here is not optional.

Extension, Sight Picture, Trigger Press

From the centerline join, the gun is driven straight out to full or near-full extension. The eyes should be on the target, then transition to the sights (or red dot) as the pistol enters the visual field. With an iron-sighted pistol this means picking up the front sight as it crosses into view. With a pistol-mounted optic like the Delta Point Pro setup Lucas uses on his Glock 19, it means finding the dot — which, with a good draw, presents in the window without searching.

The trigger finger moves from the index point to the trigger only as the sights settle on an acceptable sight picture for the distance and target. At three to seven yards on a torso target, that acceptable picture is forgiving. At twenty-five yards or on a partial target, it is not.

Training the Drawstroke

A drawstroke is built in dry fire and confirmed in live fire. Productive practice isolates the sub-skills before chaining them:

• Grip-only reps. Cover garment on, hand to grip, pause, confirm grip is correct, return.
• Draw to ready. Full draw to a low-ready or compressed-ready position, no shot. Confirms the gun clears cleanly and the support hand joins correctly.
• Draw to first shot, paper. Lucas describes most of his range work as “basic fundamental drills… just shooting paper… isolating down to certain things.” Accuracy on a defined target at a defined distance is the metric, not just time.
• Draw under a par time. Once the mechanics are clean, a shot timer adds the pressure that exposes flaws. Targets like the TRT-2 or a simple 8-inch circle give a clear hit/no-hit standard.
• Draw integrated into a stage. Periodically, the drawstroke is run as one element inside a longer sequence — multiple targets, movement, reloads. Lucas describes building “a USPSA style stage where I’m kind of having to work on everything all at once” specifically to test whether the isolated skills hold up under load.

Common Errors

A few errors come up repeatedly and are worth checking on video:

• Reaching for the gun before the garment is fully cleared, jamming the hand into cloth.
• Taking a high or weak grip in the holster and trying to fix it during extension.
• Dipping the muzzle below the belt line on rotation, which sweeps the support-side leg.
• Putting the finger on the trigger as the gun rotates rather than after the muzzle is committed downrange.
• Punching the gun out so hard the sights overshoot and have to settle back, costing time on the first shot.

The drawstroke is one motion, but it rewards being disassembled, drilled in pieces, and rebuilt. The shooter who can consistently produce a clean grip, a clean clearance, and a clean first sighted shot from concealment has solved most of what concealed carry actually demands of the gun.