Proper Dry Fire Practice

[slepwlkr]

After doing several searches, I've found multiple questions about dry fire drills and what to practice. I'm wondering how do you check that you are properly executing the drills.

In live fire, there is a telltale sign that you have your sites lined up, and you know you executed a good mag change by the times between shots.

I believe that the goal in dry fire is to get your site picture properly, and keep the sites from moving when you drop the hammer during practice draws.

And I know when working on techniques for reloads to increase your time your goal is to get the proper positioning and muscle memory.

But how do I keep from teaching myself bad habits when in my dry fire area.

[TDean]

That's a hard quesion to answer...

If you know that your doing something wrong, don't do it.

If you don't know you're doing something wrong, it's hard to change it.

You might need a higher-level shooter to check out your form.

Do what you know is correct, then leave everything else for future improvement.

[AikiDale]

Having a partner to coach you is the best way to check for improper movement. Failing that if you have a video tape you can check yourself, but be sure to tape from several different angles. Lacking either friends or a video camera allow about 90 percent of your focus to shift to only one part of the movement on each repetition. For example, if you were to dry fire practice draw and fire one, do the whole movement slowly and smoothly and really pay attention to the placement of your left thumb a few times. When that seems correct pay attention to your breathing. or front sight or prepping the trigger, etc. What is your weak hand doing while the strong hand goes for the gun?

There are so many individual movements to perfect, maybe I'll just grab the thing and blast away!

[Duane Thomas]

A full-length mirror is absolutely invaluable for checking your technique. The kicker is that you've got to know what the correct form looks like to critique yourself. That's where the various video tapes from folks like Matt Burkett, Ron Avery and Jerry Barnhart come in. Isn't it cool, you can have the best shooters in the world teach you how to do things, and if you need to hear and see it again, it's just a remote control away.

[eric nielsen]

The tapes Duane mentioned are all great.

For your follow-thru concerns, just change up what you do from time to time. Every technique ends with a clean stop on the spot you'd like to hit. Like sometimes finish draws with dropping the hammer. Sometimes just push out and touch the trigger.

If you practice dry-firing multiple targets, same thing goes. I'll draw on one target, click. Hammer drops. Then I'll draw on one & just prep the trigger, move to the 2nd target, click. For three targets - prep, prep, click. I like to mostly go right to left in practice, cuz I'm already faster going left to right in matches.

Avoid yanking on the trigger twice for every target in dry fire. It sets up your mind with the notion that your sites will recover perfectly while shooting, as fast as you can yank the trigger. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

[slepwlkr]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'm going to try the video taping idea. I think it will be good to look and see what my technique looks like from a third party perspective.

The only thing I worry about is will I want to continue to shoot once I know what I look like while I'm doing it.

After seeing the mention of the video's, which video's/dvd's would anyone suggest as the top one or two to start with?