Dry Fire Practice Video

[ChrisMcCracken]

Since setting up a dry fire arena in my basement, I've completed my basic wish list for gear and started practicing. I posted a ~5min video on youtube comprised of several reps of a number of skills: draw from surrender, draw from relaxed, reload, el prez... I thought I would post a number of each to give a better picture of what my performance is like, flubs and all and to post how I'm practicing. Please take a look and offer up whatever you think might help!

I've also posted a picture of my dry fire area so you know what I'm aiming at in the video.

[g34]

On the draw you have too much upper body movement. Have your head in the position you will be shooting from before you start your draw.

On the reloads, grab the magazine so that your index finger is either touching or is very close to the nose of the bullet. This will give you more control of the magazine. Also, make sure you practice your reloads with the other magazines on your belt and not just the first one.

Another thing is if you are not using dummy bullets make sure you get some. There is a huge difference in the feel of the gun and magazines when they are loaded.

Hopefully some of the more experienced shooters will chime in, but those are my observations.

-Kevin

[Duane Thomas]

Initial thoughts:

You've got a lot of "dwell time" on first hand contact to the gun, i.e. you're taking a lot of time to acquire the grip, therefore you're losing a lot of time between first hand contact to the gun and the time the gun begins to move out of the holster. Focus on lightly gripping the gun in the holster, and beginning the "draw" portion of the draw as soon as your hand completely encases the gun. It helps, at least for me, to start, to learn the technique, to focus on where and when the middle knuckle of the middle finger hits the underside of the trigger guard, make that my index point, and signal that as soon as I feel that I should begin upward movement out of the holster.

Your support hand grip is really inconsistent. Sometimes you've got the heels of your hands mated after the draw, sometimes there's a significant gap between the heels of the hands. The amount of bend to the support hand wrist also seems to vary from draw to draw. Work on consistency in this area.

You're also losing a lot of time once you have the gun aimed in but before you drop the hammer. Practicing taking out the slack and prepping the trigger as the gun is moving toward the target. That way you can apply that last little bit of pressure to drop the hammer as soon as the gun stops moving.

On the reload you're doing what we call "monkey fisting," i.e. you're grabbing the bottom of the mag in your fist. You'll get much better directional control of the magazine if you place your left index finger along the front of the magazine and "point" the magazine into the well. A little trick to speed up the process of acquiring the correct grip on the magazine is to make it a point that, as soon as the hand leaves the gun butt and moves toward the mag, to have your hand be in the shape it needs to be to wrap around the mag body. In other words, you've already got the thumb and middle through little finger curved to wrap around the mag, the index finger extended to go along the front of the mag tube, as the hand is moving toward the mag. Therefore you won't have to move your hand into the shape once it gets there.

[fasteddy]

1. There is lots of upper body movement during your draw and your both hands too straight forward

2. watch out your reload your gun is to far from your eye level sight and your left hand grab of the magazine is not right thats why your having trouble putting it in.

Suggestion :

1. upper body should not move during your draw it should be just your hands and shoulder squared to the target. both arms sligthly bent for better recoil control..weak hands pressure should be 60/40 over right hand.

2. bring your gun little bit closer to your body roughly eye level so you could see the inside of the magazine well..then your left hand should be grabbing the magazine base pad touching the heel of your palm and using your pointer finger to guide the magazine to the magwell..then there you go..!

Try this and see what you think!

Edited April 15, 2009 by fasteddy

[Aristotle]

I agree with the draw, there's a lot of movement here, try to clean it up and minimize it a little bit. Only thing that should move is your gun to your face box.

On the reload, your support hand is slow getting to the mag. Your support hand should be halfway to the mag pouch by the time you hit the button, your losing time here.

Your twisting the gun as you eject your mag, you are slowing the time that mag is ejected from the gun , it falls fastest when your mag is vertical to the ground. You can see that it actually falls sideways at times.

On the reload, you should index the gun higher so you don't need to twist the gun so much. This is a good technique when I am striffing from left to right to control my muzzle, but on a standing reload I try and index the gun higher so my gun does not twist so much, because you have to twist the gun back, and that is a lose in time.

My drills usually consist of sets of ten. Try more repetition with drills.

Add some dummy rounds to your mags, it will feel different. Dry fire as time allows, there is no short cut to clean technique, just hardwork.

Good luck!

[Duane Thomas]

On the turning draw, you have your head and body basically locked into a unit as you turn. Try moving the head first, snap it around and visually acquire the aiming point on the first target. You'll find not only does your body turn much faster (where the head goes the body wants to follow) but you'll speed up target acquisition, as well.

You do a better job keeping the gun high during the reload than many people, but still you're dropping the gun way lower than it needs to go.

[sfpmb]

You put it out there. Give alittle more info. Have you been shooting a while? Is this your progress after one month, 6 months. etc.? Any evaluation, and video has always helped me. But the real feedback is going to come on the range, talking to a better shooter about tecnique. Some one can tell you, but standard adult learning principles states you will pick up something new faster and correctly if you are shown and then do.

[ChrisMcCracken]

Thanks guys. You've given me some things to work on. Some of you mentioned dummy rounds. I have the mag in the gun empty so it falls free realistically. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th mags have dummy rounds. I do practice reloads from other mags, just didn't want the video being too long for its purpose. I'm currently unclassified but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm D or C class, having only started competition in the last 2 years and without a lot of time to dedicate to it. I'm trying to put in the time now but want to make sure I'm practicing the right things and not drilling in bad habits. I've not really had a mentor or anyone to coach me in person, so the feedback is much appreciated.

Oh, ignore the shirt. Its an old concert t-shirt that I worked EMS for in college, maybe 2001(?).

Is there a different video angle that would be more useful for future posts?

Edited April 15, 2009 by Erucolindon

[scorch]

bend your knees slightly and move your weight forward some. Like you were going to sit in a chair. When start to sit down you bend your knees but your weight is forward so you don't plop into the chair. Look at photo of the GM's they ALL bend their knees. more stable stance.

[Aristotle]

Static practice will help engrain good fundamentals and form. But to translate that to better match score, do more dynmic drills. You can accomplish that in even limited space. I like, draw, shoot two distant objects, then reload as I move to another box. I use black duct tape that I use to tape to the ground. You can also create PVC shooter boxes fairly cheap/easily. Box drills are best in areas of not a lot of room.

Also, get a timer. Do some par time, and delayed time drills. Your camera angle is fine. Keep at it.

Edited April 15, 2009 by Aristotle

[Duane Thomas]

Your twisting the gun as you eject your mag, you are slowing the time that mag is ejected from the gun , it falls fastest when your mag is vertical to the ground. You can see that it actually falls sideways at times.

I actually prefer to turn the gun first, then punch the mag button. That way, by the time the spare mag makes it to the gun, I've already had the gun immobile and in position to accept it for, comparatively, a long time. This seems to work better for me than having both hands moving, relative to each other, at the same time.

[MemphisMechanic]

Try something simple, given all the comments about excessive movement during the draw: Draw the gun, but don't dryfire it or take it off safe, so you won't need to fiddle with it. Freeze your shoulders, head, hips, and legs. Everything. Moving only your arms, holster the gun.

Now draw it. Didn't that feel better?

If your hips, shoulders, and head are moving on the draw, you weren't ready when you drew the gun. And your hips and head are both moving. Those two are huge - your balance changes with your torso/hips shifting, and moving your head makes you align the sights with a moving target on the draw.

The stance you are in when you fire your first shot, is the one you should be in at the beep.

Edited April 19, 2009 by MemphisMechanic

[Filishooter]

I'll try pick something else out that hasn't been talked about since everyone pretty much nailed the technical points already.

Intensity and attitude. While I'm not advocating going so fast as to not get the technique down, you don't want to be so casual that you are just going through the motions. There is a difference between relaxed and sedate....on a couple reloads when your looking the mag into the gun you looked bored, too comfortable. Following your eyes through the transitions, they looked slow, I'm not saying YOU are slow but your eyes in relation to your movement are slow. In some cases your body started moving before your eyes moved! You need to speed up your vision and make it sharp and crisp.

What I like to do is pretend I'm on tape and "play it back" at half speed or quarter speed to get the technique down and build fluidity. But eventually I need to start pushing things until the machine breaks down, I need to feel uncomfortable. If you can focus your training a little better you can cut your sessions down or get more out of the same amount of dryfire time.

[trevoro]

One reason your upper body is moving so much is that you are reaching for the gun with your right hand and following it with your left. Use the left to balance the movement of the right. They should both move at the same time. I've found that it works to control the speed of my draw with my left hand. If I'm going for a fast draw, I get the left hand moving fast consciously. The right hand will follow. No matter which hand you move consciously, their motion needs to balance out or your whole upper body will be swinging instead.

[badassmcgraff]

Get the matt burkett videos, it will cover a lot of your issues.

[ChrisMcCracken]

Get the matt burkett videos, it will cover a lot of your issues.

I watched his first video this week and have been digesting it and integrating it into practice. I'll have to post another video sometime next week. Many things made much more sense after him going over it, from setup of mags and holster to the steps of a reload. I feel about 100x more solid after locking down the rest of my body and bringing the gun to my line of sight instead of trying to meet it in the middle. I've had to slow my reloads down to integrate that pause before insertion but it has dramatically increased my consistancy. I'm working on getting the same grip using the technique of rolling my left hand into place and wedging my index under the trigger guard. Its a little hard as my 1911 has a smooth surface there. I may add some skate tape to appropriate places.

I really can't recommend his video enough. I'm going to have to look for his other ones eventually. Wish I had found these sooner.

[fasteddy]

Good..! now your paying attention.. good luck and keep dry firing!

[ChrisMcCracken]

As promised, I've taken a couple videos.

Draws:

Reloads:

Tell me what you see. What am I doing right? What could I do more efficiently?

[MemphisMechanic]

You can shave a huge amount of time off the draw, simply by moving from the holster to full extension more quickly. I'd guess .25-.50 sec.

Go grab the camera, and do a couple of your normal draws. Then do a couple more with no regard to sight picture: Once both hands are on the gun, shove it out there like you are stabbing someone with a pistol-mounted bayonet. Throw a punch with the gun as the fist.

You'll see the difference instantly on playback. Now figure out how to throw the gun out there FAST, but decelerate *just* enough that the sights don't jounce, without slowing the whole speed back down to your current speed.

On the reload, do it higher and don't roll the gun to the side so much. Here's a comparison.

I froze Travis Tomasie in the middle of a 0.75ish reload (from this video), and froze your video in the middle of one of your worst reloads, because it accentuated the technique difference.

Let's try this: Critique the differences for me first. Then I'll tell you what I saw... and just maybe someone better than me can teach us BOTH something. This place is chock-full of GMs, after all.

I should mention that you share two of my worst habits in both videos: Standing too upright, without enough forward weight bias (bend knees, nose over toes)... and fully extending your arms until the elbows lock. Try to change these now, because I know very well how much they suck to try and change once they're habits.

Edited May 3, 2009 by MemphisMechanic

[ChrisMcCracken]

On the reload, do it higher and don't roll the gun to the side so much. Here's a comparison.

I froze Travis Tomasie in the middle of a 0.75ish reload (from this video), and froze your video in the middle of one of your worst reloads, because it accentuated the technique difference.

Let's try this: Critique the differences for me first. Then I'll tell you what I saw... and just maybe someone better than me can teach us BOTH something. This place is chock-full of GMs, after all.

I should mention that you share two of my worst habits in both videos: Standing too upright, without enough forward weight bias (bend knees, nose over toes)... and fully extending your arms until the elbows lock. Try to change these now, because I know very well how much they suck to try and change once they're habits.

Memphis,

Thanks for the feed back and for fetching an example to compare. I notice a number of things different between the two. TT has his gun about 2-4" higher than I do. It is rolled more so that the gun points left rather than up. His arms are essentially mirrors of each other, both elbows at some angle. It's hard to gauge how close the gun is to his face, given difference in camera angle and difference in arm length. My arms are always a little more awkward than most, as they are very long for my height.

With regard to arm extension. I've heard others say that its best to have a little bend at the elbow. Locked they can't absorb any recoil.

[ChrisMcCracken]

Bump for further review and feedback.

[little_kahuna]

There is a lot of good info/advice on this thread. To get something exactly right, i start by (going into analysis mode...) breaking it into steps.

The reload:

step 1. drop expended mag, index on new mag

step 2. present/align new mag up to (not in) the magwell about 5-7" in front of your face, in line with your natural field of vision (as if your were lookting at the next target)

step 3. completely (hearing/feeling the click) insert rapidly

step 4. roll your support hand from base of mag into firing grip while extending directly onto your next target.

That's about how i do it.

When i began practicing, i did it literally in steps, with a few seconds of pause, or vocal announcement between steps. "Step 1!" (executing step 1), etc.

The trick is pausing on step 2, then making sure that your position is aligned with your next target. You dont want to execute a reload then have to transition, you can trasition from your last target onto your next during step 1. During step 2-4, if you were suddenly to just have a loaded gun, you should be directly indexed on your next target.

If there is a place to get more intense or to ramp up, it would be Step 3-4. After practicing it in steps, visibly stopping between each step, step 3 and 4 will be the first to be blended together. After the mag is aligned and even just 10% inserted, you can just ram throught that step and roll right into your firing grip. Execute step 1, 3, and 4 with verve!

If you do it like robo-cop, mechanically, in steps, mastering each peice, you can easily blend them together into one fluid motion, but if any part of the action is imperfect/flawed, it does not blend with the other steps.

The draw. There is always a place to trim out movement. Lets define the steps first.

Step 1. Keeping both hands on the same horizontal plane, achieve a perfect firing grip on the pistol while it's in the holser with your strong hand.

Step 2. Draw your gun straight up, visibly clearing the holster, up to the plane of extension. (the muzzle is still pointed down at this point)

Step 3. (From the strong side view) Rotate the gun 90 degrees counter-clockwise, pointing the muzzle towards your targets.

Step 4. Join both hands in a firing grip on the handgun in front of your chest. (near/above nipple level)

Step 5. Extend directly out, aligning your sights and taking out any slack in your trigger (prepping)

I think you could improve step 3 and 4. The execution is essentially correct, but they are in the wrong position. They are happening too low. Bring the gun way up, almost under your chin, so than when you extend on step 5, you dont have to move the gun up hardly at all. The vector of the gun from step 3 to 5 is about a 20 degree incline. It should be almost straight out from 3-5. Sorry if this is confusing lol.

Bring the gun higher on step 3, so that during step 4 and 5 you can extend directly (almost straight) out to your target. You'll see your sights sooner, which means you can shoot sooner.

There's more, but everyone has basically covered it. Re-read these posts.

Do it mechanically perfect. Once that is achieved, then you may begin to blend actions to become one fluid motion.

At first you'll look like a robot, then later, you'll look like a robot with grease... but you'll still be a robot.

Way to put yourself out there to improve. I admire the determination.

[Jay870]

Just one quick tip on your reload practice... insert the magazine the same way every single time, even when "making ready". You are sort of "wasting" a bunch of insertions when you are recovering your mags from the box to set up for your next run. Every time you insert a mag get set up as if you are at the "pause" point of a normal belt reload, then perform the magazine insertion. It has really helped me become more consistent on reloads with my non-magwell Production gun (Glock).

[MemphisMechanic]

Okay, here's the other stuff I noticed, that it looks like you might've missed.

1. You're craning your neck to look into the magwell. This is because the gun is rolled completely on its side, and and the gun is low. Pull it back annoyingly close to your face, keep the muzzle lower and gun higher (like Tomasie) and only turn the gun about 45-degrees to the side - juuuust where you begin to see the far side of the mag opening. That's what you need to see.

2. The gun isn't lined up to receive the incoming mag. Angus Hobdell is big on this in the 1st 3GM video. Pull a fresh mag off your belt, and hold it up in front of your face with your wrist straight. Make a point of trying to position the gun so that your weak hand has a straight shot into the magwell. Watch only the weak wrist in your video: The slow speed of the mag insertion is mainly because you have to twist the mag in all 3 dimensions.

3. None of the positioning is consistent. Something moves differently every time. Your strong hand wrist doesn't stay straight for the reload, and is at a different angle each time. The gun is at slightly different heights/distances from your face. Do the reload the same every time, and just as someone already mentioned: ALWAYS feed a mag into the gun the same way. I get heckled when I LAMR in IDPA, because I draw the gun strong-hand to full extension, then bring it back and load it just like I'm reloading - I'm not doing it for the 'air gun' practice draw, I'm doing it for consistency's sake with the mag insertion. When I plink in a field with family, I still load the gun up high in front of my face. When I finish a dryfire reload, I reinsert the mag into the gun like a reload, and holster, just like someone already advised you to do.

Here's a video chock full of my reloads. Not perfect, but a bit more solid on technique than your own.

The hatcam hides the bottom half, but you can see exactly where I'm putting the gun for the load. I turn the gun over a little more than I should, and it costs a little bit of time, but it's very consistent. (You even get to watch me tank a stage and shoot the gun dry twice. Oh, and I forgot a load on stage 1, too. I'm no GM, and I'm not above posting my f*** ups. )

Edited May 5, 2009 by MemphisMechanic

[sfpmb]

I have been watching the thread. Alot of great advice and I have some to. You and I have been shooting about the same amount of time. You said 2 years, well me 2 1/2. I divide my time between airsoft and dry fire. One part of a comment sticks out for me "intensity and attitude". You need to bring it up a notch (but stay relaxed). But if you blaze in dry fire you don't know if you are sacrificing the sight picture for a poor shot. Airsoft is a really good controller of speed because you have to hit the target. i.e. You can only go as fast as you can hit. You will find your limits more honestly. From that point you can start dry fire practicing at a speed that you know you can perform accurately. You can then push the envelope from there. I consider airsoft to be a type of dry fire.

video airsoft training

Consider this because it is obvious you want to get better. Its fun too.