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Thread: Dry Fire - Negative Effects?

  1. #31
    Rob Leatham has a different approach then Ben, in that he doesn’t typically put on his rig and do formal drills like Stoeger and Anderson. What he does do, is constantly handle his guns, pointing them and pressing the trigger.
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  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    Rob Leatham has a different approach then Ben, in that he doesn’t typically put on his rig and do formal drills like Stoeger and Anderson. What he does do, is constantly handle his guns, pointing them and pressing the trigger.
    Do you mind shedding some light into he presses the trigger when he's "dry firing" for practice? Is he pointing at a target and then pressing with the same speed/force consistent with match speed for the given target? Slow and deliberate to focus on the mechanics without regard to speed? A mix of both, plus other focuses on the trigger press while dry firing?

    I do get the impression that Steve Anderson is a proponent of handling your gun a lot so it's natural, though obviously like you mention he has more structured drills to build that natural kinesthetic connection.
    Last edited by scw2; 02-04-2019 at 09:28 PM.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by gomerpyle View Post
    @YVK, would you be able to offer details on the trigger control dryfire drills that Stoeger and Vickers do in their classes?
    Ben doesn't do it his class. It is a variant of a wall drill except gun is pointed at a specific target. You cannot begin taking out the slack or prep the trigger. You have to grip the gun with realistic tension. The drill is to point the gun, assume the above position, and then at the signal complete your trigger pull before the beep's end. The goal is to do that and not allow the gun to move at all. When all conditions are observed (no gun movement, fast pull, and realistic grip) it is a much harder drill than one would think.

    Vickers has (had, since it's been a decade since my last class so I can't claim contemporary knowledge) you pull the trigger at your pace and start time, then pull it at the command but your one pace, then pull at the command but compete the pull within specific time. If my memory serves, the time was much more liberal than beep's length.
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  4. #34
    Site Supporter taadski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    Rob Leatham has a different approach then Ben, in that he doesn’t typically put on his rig and do formal drills like Stoeger and Anderson. What he does do, is constantly handle his guns, pointing them and pressing the trigger.

    I’d guess Robbie isn’t still attempting to gain/build speed at this point in his career. He’s already very capable of shooting well at the speeds associated with the top tier in the sport.

    I know that when I’m in a phase where I’m training hard to get faster, more structured practice with prescribed drills and definitive par times, etc. is very productive. When I’m in maintenance mode, skill-wise, and working on more match mode/on-demand stuff, I feel like I can do that effectively with less structure like you’re describing.

    FWIW.

  5. #35
    Member GuanoLoco's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alpha Sierra View Post
    I'm pretty sure Stoeger teaches what's in his books, plus his personal coaching (which is worth A LOT). But just to see the kind of drills he teaches I'd pick up one of his books.

    I think @GuanoLoco has been to Stoeger's class
    I think his best drill for trigger control in the latest clss I took was the Doubles Drill at 7,10,15,20 yards.

    Dry Fire is effective - but you have to put in the work to learn to do it well, AND to verify it with an appropriatee level of live fire.

    If you do Dry Fire poorly then yes, it will almost assuredly be counter-productive.

    Stated a different way, efficacy is more a reflection on the Dry Fire practioner more than the act of Dry Fire practice in general.
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  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Port View Post
    Backwards! Everything was backwards today. Shooting, my Glock 42, 43, and 48, I wasn’t doing very well shooting bullseye. Like at all. I got flustered and decided to do shoot Mozambique’s and mag dumps to elevate the stress. What the heck?! Those were all on target!! Beautifully on target. And I shot my 42 (.380) the best to boot! What the...

    I honestly think I’ve been dry firing so much with my 9’s, that I went into my session today holding the firearms way to loosely. I have one of those LaserLytes that I’ve been practicing with quite religiously here lately. I think it’s made me forget to hold on tight.

    What do you think? Does dry firing have any negative effects? Or did I just have a bad day?
    It's really DF can give you a false sense of ability and expected performance so in live fire you expect to perform as fast dry...which you can't. Second part is the root of "see what you need to see" while remembering that seeing isn't just the visual input, but also the awareness of what your about to do and your ability to do it properly. Primarily pulling the trigger without disrupting the sights. DF should support your live fire and provide feedback to apply towards how you train in DF next time.

    FWIW I will say that DF has innoclated me from recoil aversion, flinch, etc. becuase it's the overhwelming bulk of my training it has allowed me to focus on the positive actions I take only....drawing, aiming, pulling the trigger. There is no recoil, sound, flash, sound, so there is no consideration given. I simply draw, aim, trigger, etc. And then in live fire I do the same.
    Last edited by nwhpfan; 02-05-2019 at 05:20 PM.
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  7. #37
    Member GuanoLoco's Avatar
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    When I get in a really honest set of dry fire, then I can go out and hit the same times in live fire, with good accuracy, I know I am "On".

    When I started dry fire, my live fire was never close to my dry fire times.

    Why?

    I didn't have enough experience going back and forth between the two to know when my dry fire was too fast & insufficiently honest relative to my live fire capabilities. Now I have a fair idea of how hard I can push in dry fire, and when I can replicate that same performance in live fire, I am ecstatic.
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  8. #38
    The R in F.A.R.T RevolverRob's Avatar
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    I am a 95% dryfire practice guy. I don't have time to do much more than maintain skills and dryfire is my key tool for maintenance. For me - I've dry pressed the trigger on my guns probably 100,000+ times in the past 10-years and live fired less than 20,000 rounds in that time. Prior to that, I was shooting 500 rounds a week in competition for five years (that's about 25k a year compared to now about 2k a year). When I compare my accuracy past and present at 25 yards on a B6, my draw to first shot times, and my Bill Drills over that time (the only three drills I've consistently done in that time), I'm within 7% of my peak from my competition days.

    I never do more than 15 minutes of dryfire in a session and never more than one session a day. I vary the time of day, lighting, and target selection and alternate between my actual guns and an airsoft trainer that replicates the feel, but not trigger press, of my live guns.

    Sometimes I work exclusively one aspect of my mechanics if I feel they have weakened and sometimes I vary the drills. I never follow a fixed routine, because I prefer to problem solve and change things up, allowing my mind to be flexible with the gun.

    I think the last part is really critical to my skill maintenance. Why? Because flexibility is necessary for problem solving and importantly, it allows me to not focus on a singular metric for success. Cheating the trigger press and the sight picture are the two biggest failings in dryfire I've seen and they come most readily, when the person knows precisely the drill they are going to do ahead of time and the timing of it. In other words, they start pushing themselves to achieve certain timer metrics and won't discipline themselves beyond that.

    For me dryfire aims to maintain familiarity and build reps drawing and removing safeties and with clean press and sight picture. If you can't call your shots without seeing the bullet hole in the target, you're not yet confident or familiar enough with your gun. I know exactly where the bad and good bullets go. I know when I've hit the target or when I've missed. I do occasionally confirm it with a Laserlyte cartridge and live fire, of course, but the sights over target when I press the trigger are all the feedback I need.

    While I do believe we should push ourselves in terms of speed when dry firing, I think the most important aspect is understanding what a good and bad sight picture looks like with a good and bad trigger press. You do need some live fire to know for sure what is good and bad - but you can always practice bad stuff, to see what it looks like.

    Sometimes I push myself well past my capability in speed or precision during dryfire to deliberately fuck up. Sometimes I'll do it five or six times in a row, to get a sense of what my fuck up looks like. I like to make mistakes, when the stakes are low, so that I can get a sense of what mistakes look like as they happen. Sometimes I even deliberately practice bad things to build up muscle memory and then fix the broken mechanic. Why would I do such a thing? Sometimes in order to make gains, we must break down and re-establish basics and remind ourselves why we do certain things the way we do them. And sometimes we just need to remind ourselves what good and bad look like and that we have the ability to fix broken things.

    That's my rambling thoughts on dryfire for today.

  9. #39
    Site Supporter miller_man's Avatar
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    Most of my best gains in the last year have come through dry fire and been fairly significant for me

    - but I'm starting to understand most of it is coming from LEARNING, learning to PAY MORE ATTENTION and WHAT TO PAY ATTENTION TO.

    That said, it is easy to go down wrong paths in dry fire, not know it and unfortunately spend a good amount of time there - don't ask how I know.
    The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.

    Humbly improving with CZ's.

  10. #40
    Sometimes you have to dry fire for reasons other than practice such as disassembly. My personal policy is to always look at the sights when I dry fire no matter what. That way I am aware of where the muzzle is pointed. Usually I aim at the floor where it meets the corner of the room. If God forbid, a round somehow made it into the chamber it will hit enough lumber to stop it, or at least go into the crawlspace under the house. Outdoors I aim at the base of a large tree.

    The reason that I started this practice is that I witnessed an accident at the range some years back. A man removed the empty magazine from an old Star model B and pulled the slide back and forth several times to make sure that there was not one in the chamber. He then pulled the trigger and BAM! No one was hit but is shook us all up. After a while we found out why. The extractor hook was broken and did not pull the round out of the chamber.

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