Like many people these days I have implemented a more dedicated dry fire program to augment my live fire training. In this process, I have discovered a few positives and a few negatives about dry fire effectiveness.

Does Dry Fire Really Work

First, let me tell you about my experiment. I dry fire a lot already, but to be honest I haven’t thought to evaluate whether it has a positive effect on my live fire performance. It became obvious I would need a means to validate my belief dry fire is helpful. I have talked about dry fire in the past and I know it is heavily recommended to many shooters of various skill. The real question is has anyone done anything to provide tangible results on this recommendation. How do we know it really does produce results.

What About Those With Skills Already

My approach was pretty simple, but not easy. As I mentioned, I currently dry fire practice a lot. What is a lot, how do I define a lot. It averages about 100 minutes a week. Family and travel can impact my weekly quota, but in general its really close. One could argue that I already perform too significant an amount of dry fire to evaluate whether it has a good or bad effect. This could be true, but one other element to consider is sustainment. Does dry fire work at sustaining current skill level. Is is an effective replacement to live fire training for the maintenance required to sustain your skills. With an already establish routine I can say it did make it somewhat easier, but I still needed a method to measure and track my progress.

A Battery of Tests To Evaluate Dry Fire

There are a few commercially available dry fire tools you can purchase. Many of them claim to be the answer to your shooting problems, but at best they are only one piece of the puzzle. The question is how big a piece of the puzzle. This question will revolve around your perceived return on investment for dry fire effectiveness. For this experiment I purchased the Mantis X dry fire module. Then I needed a means to measure live fire performance. I could have picked a single shooting drill, but to do so would have been too narrow in scope. Both for this experiment and in real life. No single shooting drill is an adequate measurement of overall skill. Instead, I used a battery of drills to test and evaluate on a much broader scale. I shot them all cold and recorded the scores before I started. I took all of them, seven in total and averaged them for my overall score. Having so many measurements seemed good, but it also opened the door to a single poor performance having a negative effect on the overall score. But, isn’t that why I’m dry firing in the beginning.

Breaking Down My Experiment

In an effort not to jade my live fire results, I did not practice the selected tests during dry fire. Aside from it being very hard to do this, I did not want to show bias to these drills. I have been conducting this little experiment for a while now. Here are some initial observations. I say initial because I don’t think I’m ready to complete this experiment. I feel like more time is needed to gain any useful information. However, here is what I can tell you now. Yes, it does help. I started out establishing my baselines then put my professional development on the back burner.  I wanted any live fire training to be evaluated for this experiment. That was harder than expected for a lot of reasons. Performing demonstrations in classes is live fire practice, however I do it in a manner than is not 100% authentic. Meaning, I explain the drill as I’m shooting the drill or illustrate high points for students. Then there was the aspect of worrying I would let my skills degrade too much. Since I had no idea if this would work, did I want to risk loosing too much of my skill set. I feel and the results show I’m at the very minimum breaking even.

Dry Fire Observations

After the baselines, I took a hiatus on my professional development for six months. The only live fire I completed was for this experiment. I then performed dry fire only for the first three months. This gave me a chance to let the dry fire routine get established and what I hoped was enough time to allow my live fire skills to be more authentically evaluated. The last three months I went to the range to retest my baselines. My score for the first month was a 3% decrease from my baselines. Then the second and third month I saw 5% and 4% increases respectively. Not the huge numbers I was expecting, but it does lend credibility to my notion as a valuable tool for sustainment. I’m thinking I will do another three months of live fire retesting then take the final three months off and perform dry fire only. See if there is anything significant to report.

Overall, I’m happy with these results and while 5% may not be a huge return on my investment it is at least safeguarding my investment. I will look forward to seeing the results at the end of another six months.

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The Pain Is Real

In this time where ammunition available is difficult for some, impossible for others it becomes even more important we adhere to standards. When I started teaching in the private sector over 20 years ago I was amazed at how much push back there was regarding standards. People did not like them, didn’t want them in their training and pushed back in not so subtle ways. Some don’t believe me, but I literally had one department threaten to withhold payment unless we passed all their people. After a discussion on the importance of standards and how valuable this information was to them as a department they eventually came around. I will never forget the conversation nor my surprise I was having it in the first place.

Let It Be A Lesson

While less likely today, there are still plenty who shriek away from performance based training. Instead of discovering for themselves, they choosing to believe their skill passes muster. With all the recent scientific discussion about D&K and cognitive dissonance it has helped overcome something I have been facing for years. The simple fact most are not as good as they think they are that is totally okay. We need to get past that. Instead of looking at it through winner or looser lens, you need to look at through the winner & lesson lens. Everything is a lesson if you let it be a lesson.

What’s In A Box

As you approach your training in this manner it benefits you during times when supplies are in short demand. You cannot afford to not train and when you do, you must ensure your training brings value. How do we value something, through measuring. Its not a bad idea to ration your ammunition for range sessions during this time. If you are expending 50 rounds or one box then you want to make every round count. You can probably guess what areas you are deficient or weak to focus your training. I know I’m struggling with some precision at distance for time so I choose to spend a portion of my training focused on developing this skill in specific.

A Keen Observers Eye

What a lot of people don’t realize is the box of ammunition even with standards applied will only get you so far. Proper formalized instruction designed to evaluate your skill then sustain or improve your skill is ideal in these times. After completing formalized instruction you can take this information and use it to help design your personal training. There is a lot that can be accomplished with a do it yourself attitude, but if you don’t know what to work on or how it may result in the rounds you fire not producing the intended results. I mean wasted in the sense you either do not know what to work on or improve. If you do know what to work on, you do not know how to improve. I’m afraid there is very little that can replace hands on instruction from a qualified instructor. Someone who can through observation see the shooting errors, then apply corrective strategies to help remedy them and structured training to reinforce the learning loop. Doing so in an efficient manner that makes the most out of the allocated ammunition.

Don’t crawl into a hole with your current training or skill level. Believe it or not, now is the time to sharpen your edge.

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More Than Maintenance

I already dry fire practice on a regular basis, but there wasn’t a set agenda per se. It was organized, but not driven. I used it more as a maintenance mechanism and in this capacity it was great. However, I wanted to take it to a new level so I added some specific goals. One of my goals was to perform 1,000 flawless repetitions within a thirty day period. This wasn’t really that challenging as far as the numbers are concerned, it averages to about 30 repetitions each day. The next goal was to define flawless and for that I started with a reduced target zone. I then needed to set my standard for flawless; which I defined as executed as a first, best sight picture. For the repetition to count it had to break the moment I was at full extension and within the reduced target zone. Then there was the time standard. I started with a generous time standard and each week decreased the time without compromising accuracy. Finally, I performed the dry fire on various platforms and I mean pretty much everything I had in my inventory. Meaning the standard had to be applied to whatever I was holding in my hand. Here is what I learned…

Fabled Lessons Learned

There is no substitute for good technique. With good technique so much is possible. During the first week I noticed there were a lot of “no reps” or no repetitions. These did not count towards my daily allocation because they did not meet the standard. The ratio was higher than I wanted, but I was rolling this program out so I was a little patient. Then, as time went on my ratio of good reps to bad started to improve. I still perform this dry fire program even though I am outside of the 30 day test period, mainly out of curiosity. When I look closely at the root cause for those no reps they generally fell into one of two categories. The first was easier to correct; which was driving the gun to the strike point. The strike point is where you want your round to impact. If I’m aiming for the head, it is a specific feature, like the tip of the nose. Any place else and I ended up correcting; which cost me time and the no rep. The second was trusting my technique. The more I trusted my technique, the less I worried if the sights were good enough for the shot required. In other words, the sights don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be good enough for the shot required.

Mixing Things Up For The Greater Good

These two observations were huge in the beginning. Once these observations were noted I would pay more attention to how well I was executing using these as benchmarks. It got to the point where it was boring. I’m not going to lie, within the first 10 days I was starting to question whether this was worth the 30-day effort. That is where I introduced different platforms into the mix with the same standards. Doing this I observed two more thoughts. As I got a little too comfortable I would loose focus. It wasn’t my technique was bad, it was my brain was no longer engaged. The price you pay for the attention spay of a Belgian Malinois. The new platforms forced me to lock in my focus. Then, the new platforms allowed me to see things differently. Regardless of the fire control system I was able to bend them to my will. My ratio of no reps at this point was consistent with the original platform; which is so weird given the novelty in my hand.

Yes, there are very few things more dangerous than a bored frogman, but I enjoyed this little experiment. I will post some more observations in another month or so.

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The Case for Automaticity

It is very difficult to replace live fire with anything else and expect the same results live fire offers. There were plenty of times while deployed practice and training would take a back seat to mission planning and actions on the objective. There was a high level of skill develop designed for this exact type of environment. Where you move from the theoretical to the practical. What I learned is the hard work I and many of my teammates put into during training would carry the day. It also helped to understand the importance of automaticity. Developing one’s skills to the point they are automated or reflexive.

Consistency is Still King

While you can achieve a high level of skill through live fire, if you do not have deep war coffers to draw on it might be unrealistic to see this skill level developed quickly. It is hard to expect these skills to be developed as quickly as they can when they are the only reason you are breathing air. Putting all that aside, what can you do in the interim to help improve your skill overall while at the same time minimize any atrophy of live fire skill. The biggest gains will come when any of these tips are consistently applied. The two biggest areas are going to dry fire and visualizations.

Focus On the Good

Dry fire to me is not a cure all. It does not solve every problem. In fact,  it can make them worse. You want to be careful not to practice the wrong thing, to avoid the challenges of undoing all your wrong down the road. Dry fire is an area you can work on non-shooting skills. Skills, such as your draw stroke, reloads, malfunctions and positions. Each of these subjects is considered an essential skill for hand gunning so taking the time to practice and practice in all sorts of conditions is a perfect way to spend your down time away from the range. At some point, you can even combine these together to improve the benefit. Activity such as drawing then assuming a traditional position such as kneeling. Or, practicing your reloads from a seated position. There are several activities you can perform in this condition. The only pitfall to avoid is moving outside of your true skill level. Meaning, don’t be blasting through these drills knowing when you go live you will slow things down. The biggest mistake I see with dry fire is when your dry fire does not support your live fire. You can see it when the two speeds are so different.

Thinking Through the Problem

Visualization is another great tool you can take advantage of without any props what so ever. The best way to take advantage of this tool is not through building scenarios, but in isolating your technique and solving problems. For instances, how will you draw your handgun when belted in your vehicle. Or, you are talking on the phone the moment you are attacked. Visualizing how you would solve these problems would be incredibly valuable. Most of the time, folks will use this technique in a broader sense. Break it down, use it more in an isolated manner. One where you isolate a skill and put it through various settings to see how it would work. When you get really dialed in you can now start to throw yourself curve balls such as subtle changes you need to react to or think how you would react. It is even better when you can bring people into the activity. Whether family members or friends it can benefit them regardless of their skill level.

Don’t let the excuse of being on lock down keep you from training. Adapt to your new surroundings, they are only temporary.

"To hell with circumstances, I create opportunities" Bruce Lee

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What is it???

Understanding the “why” you flinch is as important as understanding how it affects your shooting. When you flinch it is your body instinctively reacting to pain, fear or surprise. For a new shooter, the discharge of a firearm can not only be intimidating, but solicit many of these responses. When your body responds it will sympathetically react; typically it does so in the form of contracting the major muscle groups in the upper body. In this process you can expect the tightening of the body to “pull” the gun downward. This is why I associate flinching with an emotional response and not a physical response we see typical of anticipation.

What’s the problem

Many in the shooting world think flinching can be overcome by firing more rounds, increased exposure to the stimuli in order to inoculate you. I do not agree, in fact, some students could be doing themselves more harm than good. You cannot expect the problem to be solved when it is not being addressed. Continuing to fire rounds without creating a coping mechanism is only burying the flinch deeper into your subconscious. What you end up doing is creating an almost resistant flinch that can only be accommodated for and not corrected. A typical accommodation is to adjust your point of aim to achieve the desired point of impact, a sub-optimal response.

More dry fire lies…

Some will suggest the flinch can be corrected with dry fire, or the integration of dry fire and live fire together. I have made my comments on dry fire in the past and nothing has changed since. However, the combination of dry & live fire give hope to some. To me it reaffirms the problem of not addressing the issue. Typically the combination is set as a ratio, in our classes we use a 5:1 or sometimes a 10:1 or for every 5 dry fire repetitions your fire a single round. I truly love these drills and find them the most advantageous, but they are still flawed. They are flawed because no matter how clever we package the drill, it is still dry fire.

No getting around it

What I mean is the student knows even during the dry fire there is no round to be fired and therefore move without concern for their final product. However, the moment the load a round into the chamber, they shift away from the dry fire methods they were practicing only moments ago. You can see it clearly, the time it takes to process through the dry fire versus the time it takes to fire the one live round. The only way you will see progress is if you ensure the practice sessions are identical. If one is different from the other the value will be diminished.

They must be the same

In other words, you must use the exact same technique regardless of whether you are firing a live round or not. This is the best technique, yet one rarely employed. Shooting is a complex set of micro tasks and the best suggestion I can offer is when you can precisely execute each micro task then you will generate a hit. If a micro task is not performed to standard it will either affect other micro tasks affecting the hit or it alone will affect the hit. How you go through each of these micro tasks will depend on your skill level and experience. Some can process quickly while others will need to take more time, the standard of performance should be the reduction of flinching and even anticipation by making the two identical.

While you can never eradicate a flinch, you can reduce it’s potential of occurrence. It’s negative effects on your performance or your ability to get the hit.

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