Home > On Training: Dry Fire
Hey all! 6-1 here again with another skill builder style article, containing the now no longer guarded secret to rapid improvement: Dry Fire. It was one of the well guarded secrets of the top tier shooters, but the cat is now out of the bag. If you have serious intent to improve rapidly, this article is for you. This is a practice that should be incorporated as a regular activity in your training routine. Personally, I do it daily.
Dry Fire is the simple act of running your gun without any ammo. This involves charging your firearm and dropping the striker or hammer. You may have heard that this is bad for your gun: It is not. Your firearm will experience far worse stresses in live fire. I’m several thousands of dry pulls into my Canik and a few thousand live rounds with no issues. The same can be said for my ancient 92FS. Editor’s note: For some older guns (revolvers with exposed firing pins) and rimfire guns (most of them), you can damage them with dry fire. As such, I’d recommend snap caps or dummy rounds when doing dry practice with rimfire and old firearms.
Whether or not you’re a C-Class hero, or just an enthusiast looking to get better, this is for you. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of Dry Fire, do note that there will be somewhat notable timing discrepancies between your Dry Fire and Live Fire. Don’t go into it thinking that the times you do dry will be the same as what you do live. The dry times will be faster. Keep this in mind, and strive to try to do your dry training like you would do your live training.
The bare minimum is nothing. Sounds crazy right? You’d be surprised at how many skills you can practice regarding a firearm without one. (Admittedly, it does take a good understanding of the basic mechanics of shooting to benefit from Dry Fire without a gun.) Nevertheless, consider the minimum as just a platform to develop muscle memory on. Now if you’re gunning for drastic improvement, then there are a myriad of tools that can help. These are a few that I prescribe to myself.
What you plan to run with are the basics you need. For match training quite a bit of stuff. I’ve got my belt, holster, gun, dry fire laser, mags, dummy rounds, and timer, all on the belt. For defensive/CCW training, it’s just the holster, gun, and laser. If I have nothing, I’m just using my mind and body, with a heavy focus on bodily mechanics, tension, footwork, and mindset. It really doesn’t take much, but much can be added.
The first tool I want to mention is Dry Fire Lasers. They exist for handguns, rifles, shotguns, and some bolt guns. The most basic models of these platforms will not reset your platform. There do exist pistol variants that are gas powered and provide some recoil along with trigger reset. However, these often require either specialty or modified hardware, and are about as expensive as a real firearm. Rifle platforms are a bit more forgiving and usually have variants that will reset your trigger. Personally, I use the Strikeman laser in my pistol and the Mantis Blackbeard system in my rifle. I’ve had great success with both.
Do note that as a newer shooter still locking in your fundamentals, it can be easy to fall into the habit of relying on the feedback from the laser strike and develop bad habits. Namely, making conscious effort to verify your hits. Unconscious hit verification is something that will come with experience. This is all to say if you do get one, focus on yourself, not the laser.
Many of the companies that offer laser solutions offer software solutions to pair with their hardware. Mantis Academy, Strikeman, and LasrX all offer software and usually printable targets that can be recognized or highlighted as a strike zone with a phone or a camera to provide feedback of where the laser struck. Fortunately, a laser is a laser, and red is red (and green is green). Lasers operate at distinct wavelengths, which is to say that unless there’s something specific to the laser pulse according to the OEM, your laser should work with most software. I personally purchased only the laser from Strikeman, but got the Mantis Academy software and targets. They work together flawlessly. Before that I purchased the LasrX software, and it works with both my Mantis and Strikeman lasers.
Additionally, some folks make hardware style targets, like the VNSH Digital Steel Target (I’m in the process of engineering something similar). These use the aforementioned sensors to detect hits. These will be more stringent than camera detector based software, but behave just fine with respect to dry fire lasers. (For the more technically inclined, I’m using a sensor that peaks around 900nm [red is around 700 nm] and it has no problems at all picking up strikes from my rifle or pistol lasers. They’re both red, so I can’t speak to response of a green laser quite yet, although they’re somewhat rare.)
There are also shot analysis tools that exist to provide trigger control analysis (MantisX). I personally haven’t subscribed to these systems, but will discuss essentially what they’re doing in the analysis section below. While these tools provide a plethora of feedback, it’s still important to keep in mind that the shooting is still the most important part. It can be easy to spend more time fiddling with tools and analysis than shooting. Try to refrain from this!
Dummy rounds contain no primer or powder, and are either reduced or full weight inert rounds. I recommend acquiring some of the weight you plan to shoot. If you have genuine intentions to get better at reloads, dummy rounds are a must. Take it from me: I practiced for over a year reloading with empty magazines, only to find myself somewhat consistently having to tap and rack in the middle of a stage because I didn’t seat my magazine all the way. After about a month of drilling with full mass dummy rounds (I usually run four in the mag I drop and a full mag in the reload itself), I’ve yet to have a reload that I haven’t fully seated under stress.
Aiming at nothing will give you nothing. In live and dry fire, you absolutely need something to aim at to train your focus and assess your performance. This can be as complex as laser responsive digital targets to as simple as smallish objects that are already where you’re at. At home, if I’m really driving my training, I have USPSA cardboard targets all through my house. If I’m feeling lazy, I’ll sit on the couch, watching TV, aiming for the trinkets on the mantle. If I’m training with Ace in a hotel room, I’ll run down to the lobby and grab post it notes to throw around the room. Anything can be a target if you deem it so, (within the realm of legality of course)! Always follow the rules of firearm safety and do not point at anything that you are not willing (or legally allowed) to destroy.
This is the fun part. This is also where being honest with yourself will pay off the most. I fondly recall my first classifiers involving one handed work and just sh*tting the bed. Shortly after, we had a DOTM involving a lot of one handed work that sparked about 2 weeks of one handed training. The training I put in there resulted in a stage win that was purely one handed. Weeks after, I acquired another stage win in a predominantly one handed stage.
So how do you actually determine what to do? Generally, it’s a great idea to establish a regular routine of dry training. Secondly, it’s also good to warm up with the fundamentals: draw, presentation, first round shot, reloading, etc.(I often start with those and then a few classifier skills, followed by the things I know I need to work on.) More experienced shooters should also start the same way, but with the focus on what you need to work on.
If you need to work on target transitions, set up multiple targets and work that. The same goes for slide lock reloads, shooting on the move, and more. There are a boatload of standard drills to select from. I personally don’t spend a bunch of time looking for drills that somewhat fit what I need to train, as opposed to simply creating a drill containing what I need to work on. Another example: I’m noticing that when my gun starts on a table, I have the tendency to push down hard enough when grabbing it to push my mag release (did it in a stage no less). To alleviate this, I set up drills where the primary focus is to grab the gun off of a surface and not mash the magazine release. Simple!
During execution, it’s vitally important to ask yourself three questions: What did you do? What did you feel? What did you see? Ex: I drew the gun from the holster. It felt like it wasn’t properly gripped, and I saw that I threw a C-zone shot. From there you can begin to rapidly find and address your weak points as well as strengthen the ability to identify them. This line of thought works equally well in live fire.
I would argue that the greatest value in this practice (and any skill based practice), is in carefully analyzing what you’re doing. This doesn’t mean you need to necessarily pour over statistics, but you do need to be critical.
If you’re doing drills that involve accuracy, be mindful of where you’re sights are when your trigger breaks. This helps in confidently calling your shots. If you’re doing reload drills, be mindful of how your execution feels during good and bad reloads. Are you over gassing trying to get the magazine in, or are you throttling back 90% of the way there to really ensure proper entry? If you’re training your dynamic skills, are you getting off and onto the next target efficiently? Are you standing static on an open array or are you taking advantage of shooting on the move and keeping the gun up between positions?
These are the types of questions that will naturally begin to follow the three from the last subsection. As you begin to gain a better understanding of what you’re doing, more questions will come up. It’ll be ones about making something that you do well even better, or improving in a spot that’s lagging behind. It’s a skill in and of itself that will take time to develop. However, as it get sharper, your training will become more pointed, and you’ll improve faster.
One of the mentioned optional tools was dry fire lasers. The software component to these systems (MantisX) can provide insight into how you pull the trigger, and how the gun moves. All that it’s doing is tracking the motion of your gun before, during, and after trigger break. However, a laser can give you a lot of instant feedback during dry practice.
The dry fire laser pulse lasts about 100 ms (0.1 seconds). You can most certainly see the motions of your gun at the moment of trigger break and shortly after in this time. One dead give away of trigger pull consistency using systems like this is the motion of the laser after the shot. If you see a sweeping or erratic pattern on the follow through, you know you’re jerking the trigger. A point reflection means you know you’ve held the gun steady during and after break. If you’re moving and you see a bumpy line towards the next target, you know your motion and stance are not stable. If you see a flat line, you know they are. When using feedback tools in training, it’s vitally important to come to understand what information they can provide you, and how that information can be used to improve.
Long story short, if you have any genuine intention to improve as a shooter, you should be dry firing regularly. Dry fire is the necessary supplement to live fire.
This can be done with as little as the creative mind and your hands. You can also certainly do it with as much kit as you want, sans live ammunition. Dummy rounds, lasers, software, and various other pieces of hardware can provide additional feedback on performance and help guide training. The overall execution of training should include fundamentals, along with pointed training towards areas of weakness. As weakness become strengths, strengths can become weakness, and in this manner you will continually improve. Being aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and how to pick apart your performance. These acknowledgements will be some of the strongest tools you have for improvement. Being honest with yourself through and through will go a long way in figuring out what you need to improve on, how to analyze yourself and your shooting habits, and how to proceed forward.
Thanks for reading, and happy training!
Starting off shooting, I was young and poor, but ambitious. I wanted to get as many meaningful rounds in as possible. Buying and shooting hundreds to over a thousand rounds a month just simply wasn’t feasible. After doing a little bit of digging, I came across the practice of dry fire, and immediately got to work. The gains from this were almost immediate.
While nowadays I’m able to afford ammo, dry fire still finds an extremely valuable and routine place in my training regime. I do it daily, as consitency and targeted practice are key. If you have the intention to continuously increase your skill and you’re not dry firing, you better get to it! Thank me later!
-Devil 6-1
