What is Dry Fire practice?

[JMIS]

How do you go about dry fire practice? What is the correct way?

[StephensOutdoors]

There are all sorts of techniques and drills for dry fire practice. Do a forum search here on Dry Fire Practice. One of my favorites is 15 minute Dry Fire I'm sure others will chime in sooner or later, but first thing to address is safety. Here's a good quick synopsis or breakdown of what's needed for dry fire practice & guidelines for dry fire practice from some literature given to me at a training class. ALWAYS maintain a strict safety operating guideline:

What's needed:

1. Safe Area - Ideally a backstop capable of stopping a round. Like a non-exposed basement wall or significant dirt pile or other backstop

2. Inert Training rounds or dummy rounds that are easily identifiable as inert rounds and look distinctly different than live rounds.

3. Training mags can be usefull and increase safety like the CRTC mags

4. An electronic timer with a random start and PAR timer is an excellent training tool to help boost and keep track of progress

Guidelines:

1. CLEAR your gun. Double check, triple check, & quadruple check that your gun & ALL your mags are clear, empty, & free of live ammo. Check your training area for any live ammo and remove ALL live ammo from that area

2. Place any live ammunition in a container and put it in another room, building, or lockable storage.

3. Check your gun & magazines again for any live ammo to ensure they are clear. And then make sure your entire work area where you are conducting dry fire is clear of all and any live ammo.

4. Place target(s) in a safe direction & conduct your practice.

5. If you get disturbed, disrupted, or distracted from your training session in any way, start over again with #1 before you start again.

6. When finished with practice ... clear & store all training rounds. Audibly tell yourself, "Practice is over, I'm now going live, I will not do any more practice". Once you are finished, that's it, no more practice.

7. Finish putting training aides away & place the weapon in the condition you wish it to be in. IF this is a CCW, home defense gun, or a duty piece it is recommended that you complete another task such as watching TV, eating, washing the car, or something before you put live rounds in the mag or the gun again to make sure you are out of training mode.

[JMIS]

Thanks for the info on guidelines I should of been more specific like timers, target size and dummy rounds

[Sarge]

Thanks for the info on guidelines I should of been more specific like timers, target size and dummy rounds

I have heard of one of the big time shooters just using light switches, outlets, cups on the kitchen counter, etc for targets. Walks through the house like its a COF. It seems to have served him pretty well.

[TCKev]

I'm not big time but I've done the ole light switch and outlet practice myself.

Edited January 14, 2011 by TCKev

[Kyle O]

Oh, I've just got to....

I use my wife's pictures on the wall

Her pictures of plants and paintings of fruit & stuff. What did you think I meant?

[anilson]

Steve Andersons book will help anyone with dryfire. I just got it and cant belive how well the drills work.

Thanks Steve

[G-ManBart]

It really depends on how much room you have. If you have a large basement, garage, etc, you can use full size targets to dry fire on. If not, go here http://www.shootersplus.com/printable_targets and print out some of these (you can change the size to simulate different distances), then you can put them on walls or doors to dry fire on. You can also make round plates (I use paper plate centers, some colored black) to give you a different view, and simulate the center of a pepper popper, or plate rack.

Definitely consider the Steve Anderson books....great way to improve quickly. You'll want to work on draws (standard, surrender and turning), reloads (use dummy rounds to make the mags weigh about what they normally do), and target transitions for the basics. Eventually, you may want to set up marks on the ground to simulate a box or shooting area, and practice entries and exits. Walls can be used to simulate shooting around barriers...that sort of thing. You can be as creative as you want...try to come up with ways to simulate what you see at matches, and it's going to help. R,

[JMIS]

Thank you for all the great info everyone

[Panic Flinch]

I had trouble holding steady when trying to shoot 3 inch groups at 25 yards for static bullseye shooting. Had movement from my hands that I wanted to improve on. I practiced and practiced and was able to acually get better at holding steady. Something that I just thought you were either good at with natural ability, or that you were just one of the people in the world who could not hold a steady hand. Well, I was able to eventually...after practicing hours and days, keep my sights almost bench rest steady on the target at 25 yards. Yes...I know it's all in the trigger. But when my sights were not moving, it really allowed me to have a great trigger pull. I saw a direct result of dry firing to my x ring shots at 25 yards. Good luck....G