Once you have the winning mindset along with understanding other dynamics around kinesthesiology and sports psychology, it’s time to practice. To the range!
However, you might be under the impression that the only way to get good at shooting guns is going to the range and shooting lots of rounds. It’s not the only way.
Almost every experienced marksman will tell you that dry-fire practice is essential to improving your skill set. Dry-fire practice is practicing without any live ammunition. Dry-firing is cheap, as you don’t need any ammo or any special equipment. While there are many dry-firing accessories, such as snap caps and laser trainers, they are not required for dry-firing.
Dry-firing is particularly useful for practicing the five critical skills we reviewed earlier in the book: 1) aiming (sight picture plus sight alignment) 2) breathing control 3) hold control 4) trigger control and 5) follow-through. One primary thing I always focus on is trying to keep the front sight still while slowly squeezing the trigger. Remember, the average person requires 300–500 repetitions to learn a single fine motor skill.
Setting Up for a Dry-Fire Practice
There are certain procedures to keep in mind when setting up for a dry-fire practice:
Assuming you’ll be dry-firing in your home, make sure you close any blinds or curtains that face any streets. You don’t want someone seeing you practice and calling out of concern.
Final Safety Tips
Before starting your dry-fire practice:
A dry-fire session can be as short or as long as you’re productive, but most people dry-fire for 5–15 minutes. Try and narrow your focus to one specific objective, such as trapping your trigger. Or if you’re working on sight alignment, try transitioning to different targets so you get used to refreshing with each shot.
If you have a semiauto pistol, you’ll need to rack the slide after each shot. If you have an empty magazine in the gun, many pistols will go to slide lock if you pull the slide all the way back, but here’s a fun tip: You can usually reset the trigger by just pulling the slide back an inch or so. You’ll need to experiment with your particular pistol to see where the reset point is located, but it should only take a few racks to find it.
There are also a number of laser systems for dry-fire practice. Some systems are full-replica versions of your gun with installed lasers. You can practice your fundamentals at home or other locations without having to go to a live-fire range. I like to practice transitioning from light switches to the microwave door to other objects at varying distances. Focusing on trigger control is a great use of lasers, as the laser will jump if you have any erratic movements.
The SiRT pistol by Next Level Training does not shoot live ammunition. It fires a laser when the trigger is pressed. The SiRT pistol is an excellent dry-fire option that I use all the time at home.
Some laser systems are a barrel insert you can insert into your real gun, which will make the gun inert. This can be useful if you want to get more hands on time with your actual pistol.
There are laser-targeting systems as well that will light up or produce a sound when you shoot them with a laser.
Dry-fire practice is absolutely essential if you want to improve your marksmanship. Not only will dry-fire practice save you money, but it will give you the increased flexibility of being able to practice at home or other locations on your own schedule.