Love this. Actually did a lot of the same thing dry, just never tried it live.I'd suggest Larry Vickers' command fire trigger drill as part of your journey. It's one of several trigger drills of his that I use and one I find the most useful for training to fire a shot at what I term "operational speed", meaning the pace at which you deliver a shot for real. This drill isolates the trigger press function and tests your ability to press in a compressed time frame. Per Larry, it is what Jeff Cooper meant by the term "compressed surprise break".
You need a timer and a smallish target for the distance you're working at. I use the X ring of a B8 bull to seven yards, the ten ring to 15 yards, the black (9 and 10 rings) to 25 yards and an 8" plate to 50 yards. Set your timer to 0.35 seconds when you first start this work and work down to 0.25 seconds for your standard of performance. You can mix dummy rounds in if you wish or not (but it sure keeps you honest to do so). If alone, set a delay and then get the gun aimed in as perfectly as possible and slack out the trigger but do not "cheat" into the actual press. On the beep, fire a center hit in the time frame you're working on. You must fire as SOON AS YOU HEAR the beginning of the beep (which is normally about 0.3 seconds in duration). The hit must be in the zone you declared. That means if I fire a 10 at five yards, it's a stone cold MISS, because the X ring is my zone (and at three yards I require the X itself to be struck).
If you blow a shot from grip or trigger errors, download the gun and execute 10 perfect trigger presses and start over. You should get to the 0.25 or less zone with center hits with work and when you have, you realize that once you've aligned sights and slacked the trigger, you're less than a quarter second from delivering at hit at whatever distance you're working. After you feel good about yourself, go back and do it strong hand only....and then support hand only. At the point you've mastered this, you have also mastered trigger and grip control.
You should see good sights and spend your mental energy on maintaining perfect grip (meaning it doesn't increase with the pressing of the trigger) and a smooth and well paced trigger press. If you can do this drill well and consistently, you're a good fundamental shooter. I use it a lot on all levels of shooters and find it illuminating and often frustrating. My favorite way to run it now is at 50 yards on a plate rack. Some days I'm smug and some days the range air is blue from the profanities!
Wayne, I assume you do this with both trigger modes on a DA/SA, correct?