Dry fire practice

What kind of dry fire practice do you do and how often? Looking for tips for myself. I basically have never done it. I only either go to the range or out to the desert and shoot live. How does dry fire practice help?

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I’ve been advised many times by fast/good shooters at USPSA to dry fire

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Yes! Dry practice helps in an unimaginable way. I can hardly put it in to words. Try just magazine drills an hour a day for a week. Time your self the first time. After a week and you see the seconds melt right off the clock!
Building neurological muscle memory is so very helpful.

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Awareness is something that can be practiced and even kind of a game. A few weeks ago my wife and I were in a fast food joint and she sat facing the door. I usually like that position but she was there first. She carries and I know her to be alert. After awhile where I sat started to bug me and we started to talk about it. Then I realized that without really noticing it I knew roughly how many people were in the room. Based partly on my scan when we walked in and the fact I’d been unconsciously watching the reflection in the window behind her and had quickly assessed the threat level of those who had come in.
So sometimes even when you think you may have dropped your guard… maybe you haven’t.

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One thing dry fire gives you a chance to observe is how much you move the muzzle and which direction when you press the trigger. This makes it easier to see without the recoil. That way you can work on your grip and trigger press to make it perfectly steady in your muscle memory.

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Great point. Did this myself recently to compare my 1911s to my striker fired guns. I do see movement with the striker fired guns that I don’t with the 1911s. The long take up is what I need to work on.

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@58Marine, yes that is something I have been working on too. I do keep my head on a swivel, especially when carrying, but I’ve been trying to take it a little further by trying to recall the description of what’s going on. Like, what people are wearing, what color cars, etc. I test myself and am surprised how often I get it wrong. Like you see red, but can’t recall if it was a shirt, a hat, or what.

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@EQuinn I can not stress enough the importance of dry fire practice. When I first started out with my pistol, I shot 1 eye closed. I was slow and extremely inaccurate. Clumsy at best. I ended up finding the sirt training pistol. Now I shoot a glock, and the sirt is modeled after the g17, so it fit in my holster and even took my spare magazines. I used this for a winter almost every day. The next time I went out to the range I was able to shoot both eyes open without thinking about it. Accuracy was improved. Trigger control was improved. Speed from holster was improved. If you do not want to spend the money on this, dry fire will work with what you have but racking the slide after every trigger break could cause poor habits with muscle memory.

For rifle SIRT makes a bolt for the AR15 with an auto resetting trigger. For bolt action I just use snap caps. During a recent F class match, most the guys with the best scores would setup and use part of their prep time to dry fire before shooting sighters. The guy I was scoring shot 598/600. He did VERY well. He was always dry firing before. A couple times he did it while waiting on the flags to agree.

Another system I got that works with the SIRT is a program called LASR. This has helped me with draw time, and engaging multiple targets. Works off a webcam. Links bellow. I have used the SIRT for over 5 years and LASR for 1 year, so let me know if you have questions.

https://nextleveltraining.com/

http://lasrapp.com/store/

ALSO! Recoil: This system helped me ignore it. I though it would cause issues when firing live rounds…like negative issues. Nope. None!

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This is something I learned while deployed- look from right to left. We read from left to right so we tend to scan and go. When you observe from right to left you slow down by a few thousands of a second, you observe more, and you have an extra tenth to log that info or make a decision.

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Good info, thanks.

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This is a cool system because you can use it with dry fire and live fire.

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Wow. Watched the vids on the website. Looks pretty cool. Have you actually used one? I’m interested but prefer user feedback over marketing babble.
I’ll check out reviews as well.

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I haven’t. I’ve watched some videos on youtube. We are are new to shooting and we can’t afford to buy gadgets and take classes so we are taking classes.

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I’ve seen that one. The ASP guy advertises it. It’s not cheap though.

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Actually compared to other dry fire systems it is very reasonable. Been doing a little research :grinning:

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It’s $150. I’ve been watching a number of videos on YouTube just now. What’s super cool is the both dry and live fire options. Works on rifles as well.
Think it’s time to tap into the “Ammo box o’ loose change.”

We need this. Not a want a real need.

(Thinks to self…) Yeah… that’s the ticket.

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Okay buy it then- if there’s enough change :wink:

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