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Dry firing at home


aahunt03

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The constant tension on the tendons for gripping and pulling is rough on old joints and bodies like I have. Young guys should be able to do it all you want, old guys be careful.

I've found that dry-firing doesn't hurt my joints; it's drawing quickly, against the clock, that hurts my joints. Working transitions on the move is challenging but not damaging.
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Dry fire works. You need to have a training plan so you are not just going through the motions.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to get out of B class. I bought Anderson's 1st book R&R. I did the drills nightly and shot once a week. It was harder to get to A then it was M. I was surprised when the GM card showed up.

I have purchased all of Steve's books. I have Ben's stuff. Mike Seeklander too. They all offer structure to your training. They all go about things a little differently. They are all good resources. I use drill from all three of them.

The hard part is identifying your weakness and sorting through the information out there so you can come up with plan that works for you.

You have to pay attention to what your are doing. Why are you doing it ? What is the purpose of the drill?. You have to grip the gun like you would if you were shooting.

You can have someone watch you do the drills. They don't even need to be a shooter. You can explain to them what you are trying to do, demonstrate the technique, and them critique you. Its easy a non shooter can tell you if you are doing things correctly.

Once you have all of this sorted out the only thing left is for you to do the work.

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"Last thing was that a 'rush rush rush before the darn timer beeps again' attitude was 100% not what I needed to enable me to attempt to run a smooth stage with good accuracy."

This demonstrates what I call "taking training to the match." The rushing, trying and hurrying that yields speed gains is not the correct mentality for the match. It doesn't so much reveal a problem with training as it shows a need to differentiate between speed mode training and match mode shooting.

If we do something (anything) in training to find a speed gain, that something needs to be repeated until it is normal. Then that level of speed for that activity is available to us in match mode, where we simply shoot at the speed of sight. No choice is necessary between speed and accuracy if we shoot what we see. In fact, you'll find yourself shooting faster that you thought you could at a match in that environment. But you won't realize it until later, either from your score or from someone else pointing it out to you.

It's easy to do, but it's difficult to trust.

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"In Steve's book he says (paraphrasing) that you need to be honest with yourself when obtaining a site picture: did you really see a clear alpha when you released the shot?"

I've come to learn that it doesn't so much matter if you throw a mike in dry fire... it only matters if you throw a mike and don't know it.

I have no issue whatsoever with dry fire in speed mode, where all I care about is what is required of my body to perform X in X amount of time. Again, if I do that for 5 minutes and can then do it on demand, I can then devote my attention away from my body and back into calling the shots.

The key is defining success. What are you trying to accomplish? If you're seeking to dry fire perfect alphas, then make sure you do that.

If you're seeking to improve speed, make sure you do that.

Attempting (I almost typed "trying", a big no-no here) to do both at the same time will be counter productive.

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"It appears to me that everyone's ultimate problem is trigger control (defined as not disrupting the sight picture when firing). Maybe just because that certainly is my major failure point. I can dry fire holding the gun on target until h freezes over and then go the range and flinch ever so slightly just as the explosion occurs. I'm beginning to think I'll never conquer it because it doesn't occur every time, just when it counts most.



Good thread. I really agree with everyone. That's a new experience. Maybe I'll also have a miracle and hold the gun steady!"



It's not possible for a human being to hold a handgun completely still.


It is possible to achieve an acceptable sight picture and fire the gun without causing it to become unacceptable.


It's even cooler to stay with the sight picture AS the gun fires to make everything went OK.


You can actually score the target from the sight picture that way.


:)



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"I went from "B" class to Master class in a year following Steve Anderson's dry fire recommendations from his first book. I had his book for a few years, but until I took a class from him, it didn't come together. I wish I had at least taken his Facetime Tuneup as soon as I bought his book."

The new book has a written version of the full dry fire tune-up that goes into great detail about the first 12 drills in R and R. Those are the core gunhandling skills/drills that produce GM gunhandling.

I've gotten better at explaining it. :)

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"Yeah, I was wondering if another dinosaur would bring that up. The constant tension on the tendons for gripping and pulling is rough on old joints and bodies like I have. Young guys should be able to do it all you want, old guys be careful."

Chad Reilly, absolutept.com cure my shooter's elbow in 10 days. Don't wait until you get it, be pro-active and start his three exercises immediately if not sooner. They make a great cool down after an intense DF session.

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"I went from "B" class to Master class in a year following Steve Anderson's dry fire recommendations from his first book. I had his book for a few years, but until I took a class from him, it didn't come together. I wish I had at least taken his Facetime Tuneup as soon as I bought his book."

Steve: do you have any classes coming up in the Atlanta area? Thx, JR

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I am a relatively new shooter (competition anyway) and I have found that the more time that passes between live fire sessions, the more disciplined you need to be with proper grip pressure and an honest sight picture during dry fire.. because the one thing that is missing is recoil. The more time you spend in dry fire (without live fire sessions mixed in), bad habits of a weaker/less disciplined grip and lazy sight picture, etc. seem to creep in and those bad habits rear their ugly face during live fire or a match. I think this is because you don't have the constant reminder of a gun going off 2 feet from your face, and the feedback of bullet holes in targets.

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"I went from "B" class to Master class in a year following Steve Anderson's dry fire recommendations from his first book. I had his book for a few years, but until I took a class from him, it didn't come together. I wish I had at least taken his Facetime Tuneup as soon as I bought his book."

The new book has a written version of the full dry fire tune-up that goes into great detail about the first 12 drills in R and R. Those are the core gunhandling skills/drills that produce GM gunhandling.

I've gotten better at explaining it. :)

Thanks Steve. Reading it now!

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I absolutely love dry firing at the house, especially when I am just laying around on the couch. I will spend a couple hours every night dry firing and working reloads. The only drills I have from a book is Mike Seeklander's which are really good, in my opinion.

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Using 'real' grip pressure is extremely important in dry fire and will make a huge difference in live fire training. Since you should be training at a 5:1 ratio in trigger pulls from dry to live fire if you use real grip pressure during dry fire you will develop the correct neural pathways much quicker than you could believe possible ...

Remember, conventional wisdom says it takes about 10,000 hrs to be world class at something ... The good news is your brain doesn't care if it's live or dry fire ...

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The number one issue I see shooters have in dry fire is their time investment in practicing things that usually have the least impact to their match performance. For example, most people dry fire draws and reloads when those two things usually don't have to be rocket fast during a normal field course. If you can draw the gun and fire an accurate shot within 1.5 seconds and perform a shot to shot reload within 1.5 seconds that is usually "Fast Enough" for most of the field course stages that are shot at a GM level.

For the average A class and below shooter the majority of their match performance failures are associated with ineffective movement through a stage. They don't run when they need to run, they don't have the gun up ready to shoot BEFORE they get into the shooting position, they don't enter the shooting positions smoothly so they can shoot as they settle into the position, and they usually stand up after they get into the shooting position. This is just a short list of common issues A class and below shooters have but all of them cost these shooters significant amount of time on every single stage they shoot. When you are giving away multiple seconds of time in poor movement skills on a stage, who cares if you lose a quarter or half a second on your draw or reload?

Use any large field course as an example data point to break down which skills are most important to "Fix". How many times do you draw the gun directly to the first target to engage? Usually you are forced to take one or more steps to get into the first shooting position which is at least 1.5 seconds of movement needed BEFORE you can even start shooting. So how important is that rocket fast draw for that kind of stage? How many times do you get tasked with performing a flat footed standing reload during a field course? NEVER if you are breaking down the stage properly. Usually you have one or more steps to complete your reload before getting into the next shooting position which usually equals 1.5 or more seconds of movement time. So how important is that rocket fast reload?

I don't like to poo on anyone parade, but if you really want to improve your USPSA match stage performance you need to focus your training on the skills that are leveraged most. Smooth, aggressive, and efficient movement through shooting positions within a stage is leveraged the most in USPSA style field course stages. THESE skills are what you should be beating the crap out of in dry fire, not stationary one shot draws or reloads.

Edited by CHA-LEE
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  • 5 weeks later...

The number one issue I see shooters have in dry fire is their time investment in practicing things that usually have the least impact to their match performance. For example, most people dry fire draws and reloads when those two things usually don't have to be rocket fast during a normal field course. If you can draw the gun and fire an accurate shot within 1.5 seconds and perform a shot to shot reload within 1.5 seconds that is usually "Fast Enough" for most of the field course stages that are shot at a GM level.

For the average A class and below shooter the majority of their match performance failures are associated with ineffective movement through a stage. They don't run when they need to run, they don't have the gun up ready to shoot BEFORE they get into the shooting position, they don't enter the shooting positions smoothly so they can shoot as they settle into the position, and they usually stand up after they get into the shooting position. This is just a short list of common issues A class and below shooters have but all of them cost these shooters significant amount of time on every single stage they shoot. When you are giving away multiple seconds of time in poor movement skills on a stage, who cares if you lose a quarter or half a second on your draw or reload?

Use any large field course as an example data point to break down which skills are most important to "Fix". How many times do you draw the gun directly to the first target to engage? Usually you are forced to take one or more steps to get into the first shooting position which is at least 1.5 seconds of movement needed BEFORE you can even start shooting. So how important is that rocket fast draw for that kind of stage? How many times do you get tasked with performing a flat footed standing reload during a field course? NEVER if you are breaking down the stage properly. Usually you have one or more steps to complete your reload before getting into the next shooting position which usually equals 1.5 or more seconds of movement time. So how important is that rocket fast reload?

I don't like to poo on anyone parade, but if you really want to improve your USPSA match stage performance you need to focus your training on the skills that are leveraged most. Smooth, aggressive, and efficient movement through shooting positions within a stage is leveraged the most in USPSA style field course stages. THESE skills are what you should be beating the crap out of in dry fire, not stationary one shot draws or reloads.

How does one apply what you mentioned into a dry fire practice at home? These are skills in which I need improvement. I totally understand what you mean by drawing, reloading in a static position. But with limited space, how could beginners break down movements into smaller drills that would be beneficial to our learning?

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How does one apply what you mentioned into a dry fire practice at home? These are skills in which I need improvement. I totally understand what you mean by drawing, reloading in a static position. But with limited space, how could beginners break down movements into smaller drills that would be beneficial to our learning?

Ben Stoeger has already figured out exactly how to do what you are asking.

Save yourself time and frustration and just buy his dry fire and skills & drills books (they are complements of each other). Make a plan based on them and go.

If efficiency is the name game in practical shooting, then why waste time trying to figure out a dry fire plan to work on when a GM has already done it for you?

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If all we have to do is buy books then why have a forum?

Maybe you prefer to have a dry fire practice regimen explained to you by complete strangers with no way to know if they have the experience to back up what they say.

I, on the other hand, prefer my sources be a little more verifiable.

Information is typically worth what you pay for.

Edited by elguapo
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USPSA shooting requires you to do a few things, and rewards you for for doing them quickly and accurately. At the risk of over-simplification, this is what's required:

Handle the gun safely and quickly

Fire an accurate shot under any condition, including while moving

Move to a new area or new position quickly and fire an accurate shot

These things can be practiced extensively in dry fire with very limited space with a little creativity.

After you get really good at a standing draw (under a second par time at 10 yards) you could start a few feet from a doorway and practice drawing while moving to that doorway. Make that drill repeatable so you can put a par time on it to track your progress, of course...

You could also set your par time at 20 seconds and require yourself to call every shot of your entire dry fire array while moving, with mandated make-up shots for anything worse than a charlie...

One thing I've always done is to design a drill around my trouble spots after each match. If I miss a far shot on steel after an aggressive run, guess what I'll be doing at the next practice session. That's a one round drill for a VERY specific action. It's always best to repeat specific skills as isolated as possible. The smaller the skill, the bigger the improvement.

Have you ever shot a big field course over and over in practice? That's not a great way to get better, unless you're practicing match mode shooting very specifically... You'd be better off to set up your field course, run it once to record your hit factor, then break it down and run each position as a drill. Do that until improvements are maxxed out or plateaued, then return to match mode and run the whole thing to gauge improvement.

What went wrong at the last match? Design a very specific dry fire drill around it, and pretty soon it'll be a strength.

There are, of course, some books that help you with that. :)

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