Increased Split Times Using Dry Fire Trigger

[DDTSGM]

Iposted this on M4C and didn't get response, should have posted here first.

I just bought a laptop to use with a LASR app

I'm using a Glock 17/22 with a dry-fire reset trigger. It is not a 17R, its one that I copied from one of the first reset triggers for Glocks on one of our force simulators).

Problem is that my splits are about .03 to .06 slower than live-fire - .23 to .27 and I usually go around .19 -.20 on the range going to reset, not fully out.

This is my first time timing myself on the reset trigger that requires me to go full out, it feels like the trigger isn't returning fast enough, or, on the other hand maybe I'm just getting old.

Does anyone else using a dry fire trigger in an actual glock have this problem?

[YVK]

My gut feeling, seeing this thread be empty on two different sites, is that nobody else uses that app to be able to relate.

[Medusa]

I use the app but with hammer fired berettas. My splits with CoolFire are about what they are irl, pretty much exact. I’ve never measured irl da splits because they are not dao berettas. In general my dao splits are about .1 to .08 slower.

I didn’t post because i don’t use glocks.

[spinmove_]

I definitely have 0 experience with that app. I would just not use it as it’s probably not giving you any benefit in dryfire and you could be using your time better doing dryfire in other ways.

I would strongly recommend picking up either Ben Stoeger’s DryFire Reloaded book or Steve Anderson’s Refinement and Repetition book and getting to work that way. Or heck, buy both. Both are on Amazon through the link at the top for $27/piece or less. They’re far and away more valuable and useful than your laser training device.

[spinmove_]

As a side note, split times are rather high hanging fruit of you’re looking at improving speed unless you’re splitting at 0.50 seconds or slower. If you’re splitting at 0.20 or better, you’ve got lots of other low hanging fruit you could improve on.

[Medusa]

I definitely have 0 experience with that app. I would just not use it as it’s probably not giving you any benefit in dryfire and you could be using your time better doing dryfire in other ways.

I would strongly recommend picking up either Ben Stoeger’s DryFire Reloaded book or Steve Anderson’s Refinement and Repetition book and getting to work that way. Or heck, buy both. Both are on Amazon through the link at the top for $27/piece or less. They’re far and away more valuable and useful than your laser training device.

respectfully, what ? Why would he give up the program or gain no dry fire benefit because his resetting trigger is, maybe, slow? One can use Stoeger’s books with the app, or one can do some non tracked dry fire and some that is tracked, so...

[spinmove_]

respectfully, what ? Why would he give up the program or gain no dry fire benefit because his resetting trigger is, maybe, slow? One can use Stoeger’s books with the app, or one can do some non tracked dry fire and some that is tracked, so...

Because it’s not necessary nor is it really helping as much as they might think. They’re free to do whatever they want with what they’ve spent their money on, so if they want to continue using it, go nuts I suppose.

There’s no tool that you can use in dryfire that will perfectly replicate live fire apart from simply doing live fire. There’s a time and place for everything. Use dryfire to really work on the valuable things you can do in that space and not worry about replicating the things you can only do in live fire in dryfire.

If you want to work on getting better splits, do the doubles drill in live fire. You’ll find that grip is far and away the thing that dictates that more than the action of your trigger. If you wanna get better splits while not spending money on ammo...well, let’s just say the ammo cost is totally worth it in that context and you’re far better off worrying about getting faster in other aspects of shooting than improving split times.

[Medusa]

How familiar are you with the app or his resetting trigger? How much have you used either ?

no one is saying don’t do live fire. But to dismiss an entire facet of training (get rid of LASR, you’re getting no benefit) on the evidence the op has provided seems arbitrary and condescending. There’s literally no reason you can’t use a dry fire book with LASR.

I still shoot a lot of ammo, 20,000 rounds last year, but I get a benefit from LASR and it has its place. It seems odd to suggest he abandon LASR when his issue seems to be the reset on his resetting trigger. But hey, go nuts I suppose.

[spinmove_]

How familiar are you with the app or his resetting trigger? How much have you used either ?

no one is saying don’t do live fire. But to dismiss an entire facet of training (get rid of LASR, you’re getting no benefit) on the evidence the op has provided seems arbitrary and condescending. There’s literally no reason you can’t use a dry fire book with LASR.

I still shoot a lot of ammo, 20,000 rounds last year, but I get a benefit from LASR and it has its place. It seems odd to suggest he abandon LASR when his issue seems to be the reset on his resetting trigger. But hey, go nuts I suppose.

I’m not being condescending, or at least that wasn’t my intention.

I’ve also stated that I haven’t used the LASR, and fully admitted that I have no experience with it. I also don’t see any USPSA GMs or Ms using it, recommending it, advocating it, or anything. That’s usually a clue. I also stated that if he really wanted to continue using it, that he was fully free to do so, hence the “go nuts”.

I’ll continue to reiterate my main point since you keep completely missing that, which is, splits aren’t the speed gain that he should be chasing. If splits aren’t the speed gain that he should be chasing, then there’s a good chance the LASR is a moot point as there’s far better low hanging fruit to improve upon.

[Medusa]

I’m not being condescending, or at least that wasn’t my intention.

I’ve also stated that I haven’t used the LASR, and fully admitted that I have no experience with it. I also don’t see any USPSA GMs or Ms using it, recommending it, advocating it, or anything. That’s usually a clue. I also stated that if he really wanted to continue using it, that he was fully free to do so, hence the “go nuts”.

I’ll continue to reiterate my main point since you keep completely missing that, which is, splits aren’t the speed gain that he should be chasing. If splits aren’t the speed gain that he should be chasing, then there’s a good chance the LASR is a moot point as there’s far better low hanging fruit to improve upon.

The point you’re missing is he asked a narrow question about a narrow problem. Your “solution” was a suggestion to discard the app, something he didn’t even complain about.

I also don’t believe that what GM or M class shooters do or don’t do is the be all end all of training. I regularly take instruction from a GM and an M class shooter, but I also do other stuff that helps me. The M class shooter remarked on my improvement, and I can see it in drill times and results, so. Sometimes things can help lower class competitors that maybe the higher class ones don’t need. I don’t know. I just work at it.

the same has been my experience in other sports. Anyone’s mileage may vary.

[HopetonBrown]

I also don’t see any USPSA GMs or Ms using it, recommending it, advocating it, or anything. That’s usually a clue.

That's my experience as well. Plenty of random people on gun forums extoll the virtues of various types of lasers for dry fire, whether a cheap bore sight unit, mantis x or whatever. But I don't actually know of anyone in real life or virtual who's burning it down because of them. But I am aware of many folks who attribute gains to the dry fire books of Stoeger, Anderson and Seeklander.

[spinmove_]

That's my experience as well. Plenty of random people on gun forums extoll the virtues of various types of lasers for dry fire, whether a cheap bore sight unit, mantis x or whatever. But I don't actually know of anyone in real life or virtual who's burning it down because of them. But I am aware of many folks who attribute gains to the dry fire books of Stoeger, Anderson and Seeklander.

The MantisX is about the only one of those tools that I could see being ultimately useful in some regards. In general, you don’t really need any of those tools in order to get measurably better in dryfire. Like, at all. Stoeger, Anderson, and Seeklander all answer questions all the time on whether these tools are helpful or not and the answer is always one of two things:

1.) No, it’s almost no help or isn’t actually useful

2.) I’ve never used it because I just haven’t or it’s obviously not going to provide a benefit.

If you want to get all LASR’y with your bad self, I’m not here to stop you. I literally couldn’t care less. I’m just saying that it’s probably nowhere near as beneficial per dollar spent on it than other far more valuable resources like ammo or books or even a class.

[Medusa]

Turns out you can do all of these. It isn’t zero sum. Also, while I don’t personally care who uses it as long as I get a benefit in my own training, seeklander and some others use CoolFire.

reminder. OP never said he needed lasr to get better. He never said splits are his only concern. Never said it’s either LASR or live fire. He just wanted to know about splits on his resetting trigger.

[HopetonBrown]

seeklander and some others *are paid to* use CoolFire.

[Medusa]

I dgaf who uses what, and I didn’t make an argument from authority here. Others did.

i use what I think will benefit me. I use lasr and CoolFire because they are benefitting me, along with shooting matches and getting instruction. Others are free to do the same, or not. I just think it’s lame to jump in a thread and opine about things that aren’t responsive to the op’s concern.

Also, I don’t dig the altered quote of mine without indicating alteration.

seeklander gets paid to sell his dryfire book. So does Stoeger. They also make money from classes. So what? Use what works for you. Discard the rest.


Herp derp i misquote people and don’t indicate the edit
{altered by Medusa, he didn’t actually say this, just illustrating a point}

[Medusa]

consolidated

[TicTacticalTimmy]

I also found my times with LASR and another similar app to be slower than ny normal dry fire times. I think this is due to the frame rate of the camera. If a camera has a frame rate of 20 fps, it will likely be .05s off. I also get a lot of failures to pick up the laser shot, which lead to me just giving up on using the apps in my practice. I have a feeling it has to do with how your phones camera is set up or the camera hardware.

[Alpha Sierra]

That's my experience as well. Plenty of random people on gun forums extoll the virtues of various types of lasers for dry fire, whether a cheap bore sight unit, mantis x or whatever. But I don't actually know of anyone in real life or virtual who's burning it down because of them. But I am aware of many folks who attribute gains to the dry fire books of Stoeger, Anderson and Seeklander.

+3

[Alpha Sierra]

Trying to speed up splits when there's no recoil to speak of is a colossal waste of dry fire time.

Dry fire isn't the time to work on your splits. Yeah, some dry fire drills ask/suggest you simulate pressing the trigger. Getting fast splits isn't the point of those drills.

Working on splits at all is not even that productive unless you've harvested all the low hanging fruit that we all have.

[Medusa]

I also found my times with LASR and another similar app to be slower than ny normal dry fire times. I think this is due to the frame rate of the camera. If a camera has a frame rate of 20 fps, it will likely be .05s off. I also get a lot of failures to pick up the laser shot, which lead to me just giving up on using the apps in my practice. I have a feeling it has to do with how your phones camera is set up or the camera hardware.


I use a dedicated camera with a high fps and a gaming laptop so it’ll work with recoil devices.

[DDTSGM]

I also found my times with LASR and another similar app to be slower than ny normal dry fire times. I think this is due to the frame rate of the camera. If a camera has a frame rate of 20 fps, it will likely be .05s off. I also get a lot of failures to pick up the laser shot, which lead to me just giving up on using the apps in my practice. I have a feeling it has to do with how your phones camera is set up or the camera hardware.

Had not thought of the frame rate impacting that, thanks. Using a laptop. I'm looking to find a better camera, even though I don't have particular trouble with missed shots.

Thanks!

[Medusa]

Had not thought of the frame rate impacting that, thanks. Using a laptop. I'm looking to find a better camera, even though I don't have particular trouble with missed shots.

Thanks!
Did you try the one sold either by LASR or Laser Ammo? Seems to be the same camera. That’s the one I use. Or is that the one you feel is too slow ? It has a high frame rate setting at least on LASR Classic.

[DDTSGM]

The MantisX is about the only one of those tools that I could see being ultimately useful in some regards. In general, you don’t really need any of those tools in order to get measurably better in dryfire. Like, at all. Stoeger, Anderson, and Seeklander all answer questions all the time on whether these tools are helpful or not and the answer is always one of two things:

1.) No, it’s almost no help or isn’t actually useful

2.) I’ve never used it because I just haven’t or it’s obviously not going to provide a benefit.

If you want to get all LASR’y with your bad self, I’m not here to stop you. I literally couldn’t care less. I’m just saying that it’s probably nowhere near as beneficial per dollar spent on it than other far more valuable resources like ammo or books or even a class.


Turns out you can do all of these. It isn’t zero sum. Also, while I don’t personally care who uses it as long as I get a benefit in my own training, seeklander and some others use CoolFire.

reminder. OP never said he needed lasr to get better. He never said splits are his only concern. Never said it’s either LASR or live fire. He just wanted to know about splits on his resetting trigger.

Spinmove and Medusa - sorry to get an argument going.

I'm pretty comfortable with using computer applications for training, I was in charge of the use-of-force simulator program at our state's academy for over 30 years (I'm an old fart). Our first simulator (FATS Gen1) used revolvers an Speer plastic cases with primers to activate the laser, the next system we got (ICAT) used DA/SA pistols in DA only, and Glocks with a dry-fire trigger. We went with 17R's on our third system (FATS Gen 2).

The systems I described above were not terribly useful for 'marksmanship' training unless you were wanting to hone your DA stroke w/o recoil. For the last 15 years though, I had four systems with either FATS tethered recoil systems or their non-thered recoil systems(maybe licensed by Dvorak?) and Dvorak recoil systems on Ti machines.

These systems systems were extremely useful for the whole gamut of firearms training with the exception of reload and clearance drills. The lasers on these pistols and rifles stayed zeroed, unlike insert lasers which tend to wander a bit.

So I'm kinds versed in these things and firearms training in general, although my background is not from the hose three or four on the target and the best two count school of thought.

I'm pretty sure that I'm outrunning the spring on my reset trigger, on the other hand my wife isn't to that point yet. We've been working on speeding multiple target transition times, her more so than me. I will probably jump to a cool fire setup next month.

I have the original Stoeger books, but haven't bought any of the 'reloadeds.'

Thanks.

[EricM]

If someone said that during live fire they never checked their targets and they never used a shot timer for anything but a starting beep and par time, I suspect most here would say that person could get more value out of their training by confirming that their hits matched how they called their shots, and also that there is some useful data when you break down a complex drill to look at the times for draws, transitions, reloads, etc. Yet when discussing something like LASR, which allows you to review the location of each hit and time of each shot in dry fire (among other benefits), it's interesting to me how often that is dismissed as a useless gimmick.

But back to the OP...Dan, do I understand that the design of your reset trigger mechanism requires the trigger to be fully released in order for the trigger bar to reengage the striker? That additional distance could certainly be a factor. Also, you mentioned it feels like the trigger isn't returning fast enough. In live fire, the striker spring acts to push the trigger bar forward, both when pulling the trigger to fire a shot and when letting off the trigger in reset. With a reset trigger in dry fire, at least the design I am familiar with, the striker spring acts against the trigger bar when firing a shot just as in live fire, but a separate spring is required to push the trigger bar forward after the shot, as without the slide cycling the striker will remain in the forward position. This separate spring typically produces a lighter reset, as if it was strong enough to produce a normal reset, it would cause the trigger pull weight to be abnormally heavy (when firing a shot with the reset trigger, the trigger bar must work against both the striker spring and the reset spring). Perhaps you could experiment with using a lighter striker spring and heavier reset spring, but at some point the striker spring could become too light to set off the laser.

To be honest, I never gave any thought to my splits when I used LASR -- without recoil I didn't see much value in paying attention to them, so my focus was on draws, reloads, and transitions. But I went back through some of my saved runs and I did see a number of splits under .20, so I know the software is capable of tracking them. The framerate suggestion made above is a good one. Another thing I would look at is the resolution setting for the camera in LASR. It's been a couple years since I used LASR -- life changes have meant the closest I've been to any kind of shooting has been reading this forum -- but it really needed quite a bit of processing power. The camera resolution setting, along with the number and size of target areas, has a big impact on the amount of CPU it requires to keep up. Try a command fire drill -- sights on target, finger on the trigger with the slack out, fire at the start of the beep...put it on repeat mode for 10 times or so to get an average. If that number in LASR seems high, I'd lower your camera resolution (while keeping the framerate up) and/or simplify your target zones and see if it changes.

Another thing you could do would be to record a video to verify that LASR is properly processing what your laser is actually doing. Of course, that would require that you are using a visible laser, or that your camera picks up IR. Most cell phones and digital cameras can record at least 60fps, some can do 120 or 240fps or higher...set it to the highest framerate, use a tripod or have your wife film the target while LASR is timing also, and pull the trigger rapidly. You could then examine the video frame by frame to see whether LASR's interpretation matches up with the raw data. (If you don't have access to video software to do that, PM me and I'd be happy to help.)

[DDTSGM]

But back to the OP...Dan, do I understand that the design of your reset trigger mechanism requires the trigger to be fully released in order for the trigger bar to reengage the striker? That additional distance could certainly be a factor. Also, you mentioned it feels like the trigger isn't returning fast enough. In live fire, the striker spring acts to push the trigger bar forward, both when pulling the trigger to fire a shot and when letting off the trigger in reset. With a reset trigger in dry fire, at least the design I am familiar with, the striker spring acts against the trigger bar when firing a shot just as in live fire, but a separate spring is required to push the trigger bar forward after the shot, as without the slide cycling the striker will remain in the forward position. This separate spring typically produces a lighter reset, as if it was strong enough to produce a normal reset, it would cause the trigger pull weight to be abnormally heavy (when firing a shot with the reset trigger, the trigger bar must work against both the striker spring and the reset spring). Perhaps you could experiment with using a lighter striker spring and heavier reset spring, but at some point the striker spring could become too light to set off the laser.

Yes, that is pretty much what I have, and yes it does increase the triggers weight quite a bit if I use a stronger one. It simply isn't returning fast enough.


The framerate suggestion made above is a good one. Another thing I would look at is the resolution setting for the camera in LASR. It's been a couple years since I used LASR -- life changes have meant the closest I've been to any kind of shooting has been reading this forum -- but it really needed quite a bit of processing power. The camera resolution setting, along with the number and size of target areas, has a big impact on the amount of CPU it requires to keep up. Try a command fire drill -- sights on target, finger on the trigger with the slack out, fire at the start of the beep...put it on repeat mode for 10 times or so to get an average. If that number in LASR seems high, I'd lower your camera resolution (while keeping the framerate up) and/or simplify your target zones and see if it changes.

Another thing you could do would be to record a video to verify that LASR is properly processing what your laser is actually doing. Of course, that would require that you are using a visible laser, or that your camera picks up IR. Most cell phones and digital cameras can record at least 60fps, some can do 120 or 240fps or higher...set it to the highest framerate, use a tripod or have your wife film the target while LASR is timing also, and pull the trigger rapidly. You could then examine the video frame by frame to see whether LASR's interpretation matches up with the raw data. (If you don't have access to video software to do that, PM me and I'd be happy to help.)

I'm going to call LASR first thing Monday morning. I did not want to use my phone as ultimately I'm going with a recoil system and they said that their phone app wouldn't handle that. I bought the LENOVA Thinkbook they recommended and took their advice about the camera - any webcam will do. Going to talk to them seriously about cameras to see if they can recommend one that isn't autofocus and has some zoom.