How much practice do most GMs do?

[Jake Di Vita]

We just went through this in another forum about dryfire! Bottom line, if your gun isn't going bang and recoiling, you aren't learning as much as you think.

I don't know where or how you guys came up with that conclusion but you may want to rethink it.

[badchad]

I dryfire every day, except when I am hurt, or I am forcing myself to take a break from it.

On average how long per day?

[Ben Stoeger]

I dryfire every day, except when I am hurt, or I am forcing myself to take a break from it.

On average how long per day?

Between 20 minutes and 2 hours

Generally a bit over an hour.

[badchad]

Between 20 minutes and 2 hours

Generally a bit over an hour.

Thanks.

[spook]

We just went through this in another forum about dryfire! Bottom line, if your gun isn't going bang and recoiling, you aren't learning as much as you think.

I don't know where or how you guys came up with that conclusion but you may want to rethink it.

Hehe, I think you guys both have a point.

There's no denying that dryfire will help you become faster and it does have benefits. You can train things like draws, transitions, reloads etc. ad nauseum.

But too much dryfire, or more accurate, a huge imbalance between dryfire and live fire has a negative result on (my) live fire.

Too much dry fire will result in creating two different "realms" of gun handling. At least, that's my experience.

EDIT: It's easy to lose the big picture when you dry fire a lot. You dry fire to help you live fire. Not just to become better in dry firing.

Edited March 18, 2008 by spook

[Mick]

Shooting is more than dry firing too.....

I like to shoot.

Mick, I saw your posts about dryfire on the other site. The optimum would be all practice livefire.

However, assuming you have limited time/resources to livefire, what is the most productive use of your live rounds, i.e., the drill(s) that would maximize your use of the rounds.

Would it be a three-target 2 on each drill, then maybe a reload and again 2 on each drill, and then strong/weak hand? If you have no time/ammo do any other live fire drill, would this be the one you would do?

I have a drill that is very similar to what Max does. I do a "triple Bill drill" from 15, 10, and 7 yards on one target. I do it on an indoor range where the lighting is low and hit factors of 12.xx are about as good as it gets. In the sunlight you can do better. Then as you mentioned, do it with 3 targets and 2 rounds each from the same distances but the HF will be a bit lower. Get in some reload and one hand shooting and you've got a good start. 200 rounds and an hour can get a good start. Figure 3 of each drill for 108 rounds, that leaves plenty for some reload and one hand drills but I don't do the one hand stuff often anymore unless I know it's coming or just need it. You can do the draw practice and a reload practice with dryfire but drawing to a 15 yard 10" plate or head shot is also good for trigger control with live fire.

When we shot the DTR Champ. stage 12 lit only by Tiki torches, it was good to have some muscle memory for the front sight on the first shot AND the second shot. I think the dry fire will get the gun right for the first shot but to get that muscle memory for the second should take live fire.

I'm not sure why I should rethink it...I've spent twenty years teaching at 2 police Academys where some Chiefs won't spend money on ammo and mine does. At the A/M/GM level there are some things you can do with dryfire because you have ALREADY learned the proper technique and feel the difference. That is why you see allot of us in the safe are at the beginning of the match doing a couple draw/dry fires. When you take less experienced folks that haven't shot much there is minimal gain until you learn the mental aspect of recoil control and how to physically control the gun.

Since I started training in '88 we have looked at this closely. Some students dryfired for two days while others shot the first day in our 10 day training. What a difference. The dryfiring folks never learned to fight anticipation and gain the correct mental state until they did live fire. Essentially we had to waste a couple days to prove this. Getting folks to pull the trigger without pushing the gun wrong is hard at first and they don't realize how much of a mental game it is until they fire a live round. Speaking with other Academy instructors where they don't have a good budget tells allot. I hosted a small agency one Sunday and their gun stuff SUCKED! Their annual ammo budget is $3000 for 26 Officers. HECK, my budget for .40 ammo alone is more than that!

My advantage for PD stuff is our budget. We try to keep 250,000 rounds in the armory at all times. In 2000 we had 500,000 pistol rounds in there and I shot 1000 rounds every Tuesday afternoon for "Instructor development".

Some of the younger guys may argue these points but I only offer the following....I got a GM card when I 45 years old and my eyes were starting to fail and my legs were getting slow. That's life.

If I had started when I was in my 20s it would be different. I got into USPSA when I was 39 years old and fought like hell to get up there (uphill!) I knew from my training I needed to shoot a bunch to keep up or get ahead .

Next time you see Todd ask him how much he shoots live fire a year. I heard it easily exceeds 50,000

rounds a year!!!!

Edited March 18, 2008 by Mick

[Flexmoney]

I could use some more live fire. I know my grip and control has gone down hill. Moreso that I've been shooting Production...where minor doesn't force me to be as sharp with it.

I shot a mix of ammo in the match this last weekend...some of it was my Major 9 ammo. I was laughing at myself as I shot...regripping the gun from time to time.

[Jake Di Vita]

I'm not saying live fire isn't necessary (more at the GM level than anywhere else though), but saying you aren't learning as much as you think you are dry firing simply isn't true - and anyone that has some a serious amount of dry fire knows that.

Your example is after 2 days....of course that's how it's going to work. It takes more than 2 days to work stuff out through dry firing.

In my case I spend 8 months dry firing for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did very little live fire because I couldn't afford it. I think it worked out just fine for me. There's also no way I ever would have come close to a 3 second el prez if all I had done is shot them in live fire...you simply just can't get the reps out of it that you can in dry fire. I shot the el prez maybe 20 or so times live fire.

Ditto with reloading and draws. I've done hundreds of thousands of reps in dry fire - with a measurable improvement as well. Yeah in the best of both worlds I'd love to shoot 100,000 rounds a year....at the GM level you do need live fire to be competitive.....but I always recommend to my students a mix of about 80% dry fire to 20% live fire while they are improving.

[Micah]

I would like to know how mutch time and how GM's do mental practice? Maybe someone can post here about it? It would be very interesting.

Ramas, although I am merely a M, I think about shooting all day, and when I go to sleep, my shooting plays on the backs of my eyelids. I am constantly looking at video of myself looking for places to improve, and constantly watching the video of our top shooters taking note of how they do it.

[Mick]

"I'm not saying live fire isn't necessary (more at the GM level than anywhere else though), but saying you aren't learning as much as you think you are dry firing simply isn't true - and anyone that has some a serious amount of dry fire knows that."

Well I'll continue to disagree based on 20 years of watching people learn to shoot and doing whatever I can to make them shoot better as their lives could depend on it.

Jake, you can say what your experience is and be your own example but I'm talking thousands of folks and several professional trainers over 20 years. I think with that experience I can positively say what I have seen to be true. Dry firing is not learning to shoot as much as you think it is....!

Anyone with a serious amount of training will know that....

We spend very little time dry firing because it does NOT yield the training we need. That didn't just come from no where, it came from a regimented training program where the recruits shoot as much as is possible and often shoot 5000 rounds in training if we get the chance. We offer free ammo if they will come back and train more but it rarely happens so we train as efficiently as possible for those 10 days.

Need proof? I'm sure I can go back and pull records from the various Academy programs and find what worked vs what didn't and where it was but the bottom line for a large amount of instructors in these two counties and over 60 agencies is that dryfire gives you very little for the effort compared to live fire...

If you want to learn to shoot, shoot the gun.

If you want to learn a trigger reset or draw, dryfire but it still comes back to

making bullets fly down range to become a shooter!

[Jake Di Vita]

Ever consider maybe they weren't dry firing correctly?

[mike cyrwus]

"I'm not saying live fire isn't necessary (more at the GM level than anywhere else though), but saying you aren't learning as much as you think you are dry firing simply isn't true - and anyone that has some a serious amount of dry fire knows that."

Well I'll continue to disagree based on 20 years of watching people learn to shoot and doing whatever I can to make them shoot better as their lives could depend on it.

Jake, you can say what your experience is and be your own example but I'm talking thousands of folks and several professional trainers over 20 years. I think with that experience I can positively say what I have seen to be true. Dry firing is not learning to shoot as much as you think it is....!

Anyone with a serious amount of training will know that....

We spend very little time dry firing because it does NOT yield the training we need. That didn't just come from no where, it came from a regimented training program where the recruits shoot as much as is possible and often shoot 5000 rounds in training if we get the chance. We offer free ammo if they will come back and train more but it rarely happens so we train as efficiently as possible for those 10 days.

Need proof? I'm sure I can go back and pull records from the various Academy programs and find what worked vs what didn't and where it was but the bottom line for a large amount of instructors in these two counties and over 60 agencies is that dryfire gives you very little for the effort compared to live fire...

If you want to learn to shoot, shoot the gun.

If you want to learn a trigger reset or draw, dryfire but it still comes back to

making bullets fly down range to become a shooter!

Going from an A or B shooter to a GM is all about the little things; lots of little things.

sight acquisition, transitions, draws, movement can all be done without going bang.

This topic is about uspsa/ipsc GM training, not academy training and tactics.

[Mick]

Not lately...I don't think we were ALL wrong....

I'll go a little further.

I had a sharp young guy in his late 30s assigned to me a year back. I recognized right off he had good skills so I asked about his training. Turns out he is Army and a Capt with 2 tours in Iraq.

I'm always looking for good training info so I picked his brain. They pretty much don't dry fire at all for shooting at real people. They shoot ALLOT of ammo getting ready.

He's headed back in July and I hope he lives through this one as he's been shot up and blown up already in his HUMVEE. I asked about his unit getting ready for this deployment. They got a few pallets of ammo to retrain for everything from their pistols to the .50 Barretts and the 40 mm HE rounds they use. It turns out that they do as we do, heavy emphasis on structured shooting with live rounds and safe gun handling although he admitted he rarely found their loaded M4s with the safety on while bouncing around the HUMVEE. He pretty much substantiated what an older Navy SEAL (Viet Nam era) and Phil Singleton (SAS trooper from the 1980 Libyan embassy raid) told me before I started shooting the game we play on the weekends. Learn to shoot under duress and on the move, speed is life.

I never saw or heard of MR. SINGLETON dry firing his MP5 to learn how to shoot it. I had an MP5 for 17 years and shot the barrel nearly smooth but could give you 2" a 30 rounds burst at 7 yards.

I saw MR. SINGLETON do that one handed with an MP5K and was very humbled!

The older Navy guy said they shot so much ammo he had no idea how many rounds they shot, they just got a new gun when they needed it.

He never dry fired.....

This topic is about being the best shooter you can be whether or not you become a GM.

I started shooting this game because I recognized my training was incomplete at best and there was a whole lot more out there. I won't get any better, I'm on the downhill slide. There is too much to overcome from age and injuries but I can maintain allot by continuing to shoot! I didn't mention tactics.

I'm refering only to pulling the trigger and hitting the target with accuracy and speed...

Edited March 18, 2008 by Mick

[Mick]

"Going from an A or B shooter to a GM is all about the little things; lots of little things.

sight acquisition, transitions, draws, movement can all be done without going bang."

If you think you're going to accurately learn how to put bullets on a target while moving ( I mean really moving!) from dryfire you should reconsider. Not many folks move well AND hit well.

I'm sure Jake has a movie of himself doing this. Watch how he controls the gun's recoil with his feet moving and the gun is bouncing. Some folks have natural talent and it comes together well. I just shot the DTR RO match and all of the stages had movement where you could engage on the move.

It's tough to learn that from dry fire!

[badchad]

In my case I spend 8 months dry firing for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did very little live fire because I couldn't afford it. I think it worked out just fine for me. There's also no way I ever would have come close to a 3 second el prez if all I had done is shot them in live fire...you simply just can't get the reps out of it that you can in dry fire. I shot the el prez maybe 20 or so times live fire.

Jake is 4 hours per day, everyday, what you used to do or what you do now? If it's what you used to do, looking back, would you change anything, and what is you training like now? Thanks.

[dogdoc]

[in my case I spend 8 months dry firing for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did very little live fire because I couldn't afford it. I think it worked out just fine for me. There's also no way I ever would have come close to a 3 second el prez if all I had done is shot them in live fire...you simply just can't get the reps out of it that you can in dry fire. I shot the el prez maybe 20 or so times live fire.

Jake, 4 hrs a day is insane. I found dry fire to be brain numbingly boring. When I was working hard at it I would dry fire twice a day for about 30-40 minutes each time. But, I shot 3-4 club matches a month. I'm a firm believer that shooting matches is also important. My opinion would be that shooting 300 rounds in practice would equal 120 rounds at a club match.

Someone also stated what dry firing helps improve. Draw, sight alignment at the draw and reloads work great. I don't think you learn much about transitions because the gun is not recoiling, and it is hard to simulate movement and shooting accurately with no recoil.

Mick, you may not have had you GM card until 39, but as an M you were competitive with any GM at the time!! It was just a card that said M at that time!!

[Jake Di Vita]

Mick I still disagree with you, but it's obvious that neither one of us is going to change the others mind so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

badchad,

That is what I did. It got to the point where that along with everything else I had to do just became too much. My body was so physically exhausted after 8 months that I literally slept for 36 hours straight through.

Looking back I would have changed a lot of things. My technique evolved considerably throughout those 8 months just from the desire to improve everything as much as possible. Although I'm still a big advocate of the belief that nothing can replace hard work.

My training for shooting right now has stalled for several reasons. Most of the shooting training I'm doing is limited to visualization now. I've been focusing most of my time and effort on getting in the absolute best shape as possible mentally, physically, and spiritually.

What's up Adam, haven't heard from you in forever. How ya been?

Yeah 4 hours a day was insane...I just really wanted it bad and that was the only way I could practice. I eventually had to make games out of it so it would keep my focus where it belonged.

I do think you can improve transitions in dry fire though mainly because the most important aspect of effective transitioning is learning to snap your eyes accurately and quickly to the center of the next target and being able to stop the gun directly on that point without over or under shooting it.

[Mick]

Mick, you may not have had you GM card until 39, but as an M you were competitive with any GM at the time!! It was just a card that said M at that time!!

thanks Adam!

I think maybe there ought to be a defining moment here.

When Jake says he is dryfiring to get his 3 second El PREZ I don't think he means the trigger pulling part. I believe he is refering to the turn, draw, pull the trigger once (engage the targets), reload, and engage the targets again. That high amount repetition would definitely help when he goes to make the live fire actions. So I'll admit that when I say dryfire I mean pulling the trigger and learning to manage the gun's movement when Jake means all of the associated actions as well.

I would seperate the two as dry fire (pulling the trigger) and technique ie...going through the motions of a drill without pulling the trigger the right number of times but doing the reloads etc.....

But then I am so old school, I was likely taught the term "dry firing" in the 70s!

Where were y'all then???? I HAD to carry a revolver back then!!!

Edited March 18, 2008 by Mick

[Ben Stoeger]

Jake, you can say what your experience is and be your own example but I'm talking thousands of folks and several professional trainers over 20 years. I think with that experience I can positively say what I have seen to be true. Dry firing is not learning to shoot as much as you think it is....!

Anyone with a serious amount of training will know that....

Mick.. With all due respect:

I have learned a lot dryfiring. You can learn a lot dryfiring. Every single serious shooter I know does dryfire in some capacity AND learns from it.

If you actually spent 20 years training people and did not figure this out, then I am not sure I can straighten you out on this forum.

[Flexmoney]

Does anybody need straightening out? Different perspectives are appreciated.

[Ben Stoeger]

Does anybody need straightening out?

No, not really. I should have put a =) after my post.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Ben Stoeger

[Ron Ankeny]

I shoot a lot, because I enjoy shooting. But back when I had a wild hair to get an M card in all divisions, I was changing platforms like most folks change their socks. Let's face it, stand and deliver classifier skills have a lot to do with the draw, breaking the first shot, and reloads. All of that can be done with dry fire. At one time I was going back and forth between a CZ75, a single stack, and a revolver on a weekly basis. A few hours of dry fire is what it took to go from a singe stack to the revolver, etc. After the dry firing, it only took a few rounds to get used to the impulse of the gun to get ready to crank out a cassifier in the 95% range. Yeah, you can't learn it all from dry fire, but it's amazing how well dry fire works for some things...and some people.

FWIW, dry fire can go a long way towards training the eyes to do those smoking transitions. I found that out when I started shooting Steel Challenge. Snap the eyes, move the gun, snap the eyes, move the gun. No need for any loud noise.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Ron Ankeny

[Flexmoney]

Snap the eyes, move the gun, snap the eyes, move the gun. No need for any loud noise.

If you can snap the eyes fast enough for them to make loud noises...THEN you are on to something. lol

[Chris Keen]

All this talk about dry-fire .................. when it seems to me this thread started out simply asking how much practice. And why the desire to perfect the "stand and deliver" classifiers, when that is NOT what wins matches ? Dry-fire will help get you started but it's live-fire that will keep your skills sharp. And testing your mental skills with "shooting challenges" at the local matches are what help you win again and again.

[eerw]

Dryfire is a great way to work out movements with repetition or unlearn bad habits and livefire is the way to verify on paper and timer that the skill is ready for primetime..

how much..will depend on the the shooter and what he/she is able to learn from each..