I've been playing around with a different way of practicing transitions in dry fire lately and I'm enjoying it a lot, so I thought I'd make a post about it and see if it makes dry fire more interesting for anyone else.

Previously, my normal method would be to set up an array of 3 to 5 scaled targets, paper and steel on a wall. The heights and horizontal spacing of the targets were varied, as they will vary at a match. Then I'll set a par time to draw and transition through the array left to right, and do that a few times. Then I'd switch to right to left for a few runs, then back to left to right, and so on. This worked but can get pretty boring and potentially frustrating if I made the same mistake repeatedly while working the array shooting the same order.

What I'm doing right now is setting up a slightly bigger array, say 6-8 targets. The heights and horizontal spacing will still be varied, but I do set them up so that the transition between the outermost targets is wide enough to justify turning my head on the transition (say, 50-70 degrees). I will pick 3 targets in a row as the array to shoot, and dry fire those. For the next run, I will pick a new order of 3, going in the same direction, starting with the 2nd target in the previous array. So as I go, I'll keep shooting new orders until the order "wraps around". When I get back to the first order I shot, I will switch directions and start going right to left. This process keeps it varied and also works in different angles of transition. Since I'm not hitting the exact same order over and over, I find it easier to move on from a bad run instead of repeating it over and over and getting frustrated. If you're interested in random practice vs blocked practice this may also be of interest to you. See image below if my description of the process isn't clear.

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No idea if I'm the first person to do something like this (doubt it) but I'm enjoying it and I wanted to share.