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dry firing


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How valid is "dry-firing" with a dime on the front sight???

I have been working on this and it really seems to help my "live firing"

This helps my trigger control.

Does anybody else do this???

Love this new forum, and the fact that we can all learn from the "sage" himself--

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Yes, this is one of the drills I do most often.  I don't know about everyone else, but I do the drill all double action. My best right now is 20x strong hand, 7x weak.  Compared to some, that might not be much, but I am a newbie when it comes to pistolcraft.

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I think the dime thing is a good idea, I used to do it quite a bit, long ago. My only caution is: once you have the fundamentals down on how to release the shot WITH THE GUN EMPTY, don't fall into the trap of thinking that by continuing to practice the same thing you will continue improving your ACTUAL SHOOTING. Further, shooting slowfire groups offhand at 25 or 50 yards is great practice (I do it all the time), but better still (later in your training), impose a reasonable time limit, and learn to shoot those same groups. And then, apply that to high-speed match shooting, calling your shots with precision at warp drive. It's fun stuff.

Brian

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The dime draws your attention away from the trigger press and focuses it on keeping the coin balanced. The trigger press becomes incedental, something you are doing as the coin is balanced. In the same way that the trigger press is incedental to keeping the gun aligned on target. Watch the sights as you press the trigger, don't see the sights then pull the trigger. When I'm shooting my best I don't recall ever pulling the trigger. The sights acquire the target and as they hover for that moment the gun fires driven by visual focus with no thought towards pressing the trigger. The coin drill points you in this direction. But it is a basic drill After you can accomplish it easily it is time to move on. The only time I ever do it anymore is when demonstating it to students and because I know how much I can get away with with the coin balanced I can actually pull the trigger in different ways (press, slap, etc.) and still achieve the same result. But now I'm anticipating what the coin will do and the drill becomes pointless. Now is the time to shoot groups and let the bullets tell you the story.

Pat

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Pat & Brian,

I am glad that you guys are back at it, keeping everything in perspective.  I am not sure if you know how much your contributions help all of us with a desire to improve...

Thanks, & keep up the great work,

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Thanks for all the help, it makes alot of sense!!!

I can shoot groups very well,

but alas I fell into the trap of trying to shoot all the bullets into the same hole all the time.

Shooting has to come from a sub-conscious level.

The "dime trick" makes me focus on the sight picture (front sight) and let my visual skills shoot for me.

Are there any other dry firing drills that help as much as the dime????

I am eager to learn.

I don't want to fall into a "dime on the front sight is the answer" mode, but it seems to really help alot..

I would love to know about other dry-fire exercises.

Danke

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If I might elaborate on how I use the dime drill...

When I place the dime on my front sight, I line the sights up as I would to a target and actually aim at something (light switch cover, wall art, spider, etc.) .  Anyway, what my focus is in that drill is keeping a rock solid sight picture (the dime really dissapears) and a neutral trigger engement.  This, to me, has paid off in spades at the range.

For what its worth...

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Ricardo,

I've never used a timer for practice at home - I think it installs bad habits. We do enough rushing at the range. Concentrate your at home practice to improving just your physical techniques.

Use the mirror to see if you are doing any unnecessary lifting of your head or shoulders during the draw. Basically, neither should move (much). To get the feel for this, extend the gun in your shooting position and then re-holster WITHOUT MOVING YOUR HEAD OR SHOULDERS. This is your starting postion.

be

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  • 2 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...

I have been dry firing every morning religiously for almost a year and it is very easy to get bored. First off, I assume you are using a timer with decreasing par times. If not, that's a place to start.

I practice my draw from hands at sides, surrender, turning, transfer to weak hand, to kneeling, prone, sitting at a table, and around a barricade. I practice reloads and reloads to weak hand, as well as reloads to kneeling and prone.

If these aren't keeping you busy, then I guess you can invent your own. I also have Jerry Barnhart's dry fire tape and it is kind of fun to race the Burner from time to time.

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Quote: from Shooter Grrl on 7:40 pm on Aug. 24, 2001

How about some VERY specific dry fire drills for me to practice?  I get bored easily, and can only stand so much draw and "pull" twice!!!!

(Y'all should be happy to know I LOOKED for these before posting - See, I can learn

K


I can get bored with straight draw and fire dryfire drills too. Mix it up by doing your draw and fire or reloads while working on footwork...Play with leaving and entering boxes. You'll need some space for this but not alot. You just want to work on the basics of movement. This is how I learned alot about how the body moves. where the balance is when you are moving, entering, leaving etc. Do all your motions slowly (slow motion...get it ) See what happens. Pay attention to your body 'feels'. Are you off balance at any point? how can you perform the movement without losing balance or control..I recently shot a match where on one stage I set up in position very badly, I was off balance while trying to shoot 3 8" plates, it took me almost a whole mag (10 rnds) to knock them down because I was fighting to stay balanced at the same time.  

Think of situations you have encountered in matches, particularily ones that caused problems, and work them out dry.

Something else to try is next time you set up a practice stage at your home range, especally a field course, shoot it once live, get a score, work through the various drills on the stage, different ways to enter or leave positions, different target orders etc. Work them out using par time on your timer, eg set a par time to move from a to b so that you are just making the time while seeing what you need to hit the targets...don't just tap the trigger twice as if they were at 5 yds when they are at 20 yds...now try something different and see if you are aove or below that par time. Do this working your way throught the whole stage  until you have figured out what should be the most efficient way to do the stage. (did I mention this is all dry fire after the initial scoring run )

Now go back and shoot the course for score again. How does it compare to your first run? Apply the same idea to working things out dry at home. Look at a movement or skill set you want to work on, then experiment. See where it takes you.

Pat

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  • 4 months later...

i heard that bruce lee was asked what his training shedule was and he basically answered that he was always training,

i mention this because i saw that BE says TGO will handle his gun a lot, not doing drills but just handling them,

i have done this and i notice an improvement, i can pick up the gun with a proper shooting grip easier now than i could just a few weeks ago

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  • 8 months later...

Hi I don't know if this is the place to ask this. Can dry firing do damage to you gun? Can you just pull back the hammer or do you have to pull back the slide and do you have a dummy round in the gun. Just got a new STI and I don’t want to damage it.

       Thanks Chris

(Edited by Chris40 at 8:43 am on Oct. 8, 2002)

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Chris40,

No worries on damaging the STI with dry firing.  As long as you don't encorporate any bad habits like .. dropping your gun on concrete, you'll be fine ;)

I've fired all my SV's on empty chambers 1000's of time with no ill effects!

BradC

A46143

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Back to the dime-on-the-sight thing for a moment:

One of my mentors had me set a 9mm (or .40S&W) empty shell (vertically) atop the sight and do dry-fire trigger pulls. This was entirely intended to observe (and purge) any bad habit of flinching and/or jerking. It certainly helped get rid of that. I don't do this exercise as much as I used to, though, because I can now control this gross movement error better...  Now I concentrate more on watching for small movements in sight alignment during trigger squeeze.

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  • 1 month later...

Has anyone or is anyone using the LaserBlaster dry fire laser if so is it a good tool?

My understanding of the LaserBlaster is it is a laser that gets put in the bore of the gun with a sleeve so you can use it from the holster. My concern about using the device is will it make you focus more on the red dot flash than the front sight?

Thanks

bkeeler

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I came upon a very similar device long ago and would probably have bought it if it wasn't SO EXPENSIVE.  I figured it will help me analyze my muzzle wobble when doing movement drills or the last phase of my draw so I can make corrections.  But once I get the wobble to a minimum I'm not sure if the laser would still help me aside from programming myself to look at the target (and find the red dot) instead of my sights. Just my 2c's. :)

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The Lazer-blaster thingy is a waste of time and didn't help me at all, seriously..

A dime, silver dollar, empty cartridge,etc. on the slide, front sight or whatever really does work.

How, you may ask?

Try slapping the trigger, (ala' TGO), jerking the trigger,mashing the trigger,etc. and try to keep that dime etc. on the front sight.

This will let you know what you can get away with as far as trigger control is concerned as during a match.

With all the variables (stress, adrenaline, etc) while shooting a match, this little exercise lets me know what I can get away with during a match, still hit the A zone, while still getting something that resembles trigger control..

In a nut shell it all boils down to moving your index finger without moving the rest of your hand and using your eyes to do the rest...

bird (still learning to fly)....

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