What's your favorite transition dry fire drill?

[seeds76]

What's your favorite transition dry fire drill(s)? I'm having some trouble finding a variety of them. Thanks.

[beltjones]

It depends, are these moving transitions, or just multiple targets in the same array?

[seeds76]

It depends, are these moving transitions, or just multiple targets in the same array?

Multiple targets in the same array.

[dsb45acp]

Try "Front Sight Forward" from Steve Anderson's Dry Fire Drills.

[Steve Anderson]

There are two main types of transitions... close and far.

Of course, there are also far to near, near to far, close paper to far steel, etc.

Hmmm.

There are many types of transitions.

Regardless of how many transition types there may or may not be, you need to start with one of them.

The key is to move the eyes first, then the gun.

Snap the eyes/head, then bring the gun over. It would break down as follows:

Call the last shot on T1, snap the eyes/head to T2, confirm an acceptable sight picture, call the shot on T2.

The aforementioned drill is good because the targets are a little farther apart...

[Corey]

I've noticed that in dryfire, I sometimes move the eyes and the gun at the same time (thats bad). I've recently put 2 targets in adjacent corners of my dryfire area and i step forward until the angle is at least 90 degrees, if not more. Then I work on a draw to one target and 2 "shots", then a transition to the other and then back and forth for about 12-16 shots. Then I re-holster and do it the other way. With a transition this large I make sure to get my eyes/head moving first and I can feel myself speed up as I go along. After a couple rounds I'll back up and do some drills with the targets I have all on the same wall and I think it helps. Getting the eyes moving is something I still have to think about a little bit, but with enough practice it should kick in automatically.

[seeds76]

Thanks everyone. Good stuff...

[pjb45]

Steve good see back.

I have four target stands in my backyard . Each has a no shoot on it. They are at various distances from my shooting position. They are a good distance apart from each other.

This set up offers me a wide variety of drills. I really try to re-enforce the eyes first then gun moves routine.

[DoubleA]

+1

I'm a big fan of not dryfiring the same transition drill more than once every couple of weeks. I really focus on making the gun follow the eye after picking a spot on the target, and not having the same array often ensures my progress has nothing to do with muscle memory as far as target aquisition goes. I'd rather be able to shoot any array at a decent and consistent speed than just burn down an el presidente at Mach 3.

[DonovanM]

I'd start with a simple El Presidente, with an apparent target area just a little bit bigger than your front sight to really make sure you crisp up your transitions and you don't shoot until you have the right shot.

I've ran variations of this, changing the target size and spacing, since I started shooting and it's helped immensely. It also works really well for SHO and WHO practice, and there's even some classifiers set up exactly this way. It really gets interesting once you push the spacing out further and further.

[Chromepulse]

I'm no Master class shooter (yet ) but I'll share somethings that have helped me.

When I practice dry-fire transitions I look at the target, move the gun to where I'm looking, change my focus to the front sight, then look at the next target and repeat.

I find there are 2 main things that slow me down:

1. I can move the gun faster than I can move my eyes/change focus from target->front sight

2. I waste time/movement moving the gun to where I'm looking, by over or under swinging when I try to go fast, or on irregularly spaced targets.

So there is a visual/eyespeed issue, and a hand-eye coordination issue.

To try to overcome this I go in my bathroom where we have a wallpaper with lots of tiny irregular dots. I'll pick a color and just transition from dot to dot in a random pattern for a few minutes. This forces me to be very precise and prevents me from getting into a rut with target spacing.

Another thing I will do is get a good sight picture with no target, and smoothly move my gun back and forth in increasing arcs, maintaining my sight picture and being extra aware of how my body adjusts to keep the sight picture. I've found this helps on wide splits like steel challenge, as I can look way over and bring my gun to bear with sights lined up.