If you're going to beat another slide like a rented mule with dry snapping, I'd strongly suggest you get another duplicate pistol. Pick one for your daily carry use and use the other for dry snapping and training. It's a total PITA to break a duty/carry gun and it's truly one of the times when the saying "one is none and two is one" applies.Originally Posted by Moonshot
Regional Government Sales Manager for Aimpoint, Inc. USA
Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)
Would the Dryfire clicker magazine feel real enough and spare the gun?
Code Name: JET STREAM
Before I bought the Glock I looked into the SIRT a bit. Ended up getting the poor mans version Laserlyte pistol. I broke the trigger return on it after a few weeks. They replaced it under warranty and I still have it but it's a pretty poor skill builder, weight, slickness of grip, weird long squishy trigger that cuts up your finger if you're doing hundreds of trigger presses daily. I'm sure the SIRT is a more quality unit but I'm not sure it will hold up well enough or be similar enough to a proper pistol. I even went so far as to install a Hogue rubber grip on both the Laserlyte and Glock in order to make the grips more identical. My grip MUCH improved though when I pulled off the Hogue, started using chalk and just devoted a lot of time to the actual Glock grip.
I'm happy to share my dryfire routine but it's a bit non-standard and I'm down the rabbit hole of some off beat combat sports theory. Since I'm still an unclassified shooter and basically a suck shooter who's just a new try hard at the moment this might sound weirdly laughable to most on here but here goes....
My dryfire practice has been evolving a fair amount every few months but below is a good example of how it looks currently. Please keep in mind I am NOT saying that people should do this, that I know better, or that this is even the most efficient way to spend all of these hours. I can say that I actively enjoy training this way, have been seeing good improvements, and enjoy the combination of concentration, physical activity, and overthinking the endless details. In the course of an hour dryfire session my heart rate (as measured by a Garmin watch) ranges from 100-150 with the bulk of it in the 130ish range.
About a quarter of my time is devoted to what I think of as "poor mans red dot training". I'm running the stock Glock steel sights. Sharpied the rear white line. Put a pink dot in the front site. Using a laser cartridge and a pure target focus on scaled USPSA targets I work on doing the iron sight equivalent of "bring the dot to where you're looking" Mentally "the trigger presses itself" when the pink dot is in the A zone. If I've done it right, the red laser dot appears right where I've been looking on top of the pink front site dot. Functionally I spend this time thinking "I have a red dot, it turns on when I press the trigger correctly" and just look at the A zones pinned up all over the dryfire room. I have a small pinhead tack in the center of some of the A zones to give myself very precise points to focus on but use "clean A zones" as well to keep from relying on the pinhead tacks.
Most of this part of drilling is me trying to build a process of "I look where I want the bullets to go, the sights go there on their own, they line themselves up on their own, the trigger presses itself, the dot appears when I've done it right like the visual equivalent of the ding when shooting steel".
What I like about this is exactly what I used to read was the problem with laser cartridges. It keeps my focus on the target on NOT on a hard front sight focus. This has really helped stretch my target focus out from 5-12 yards into the 15-25 yard range where I used to have to revert to a hard front sight focus to get consistent hits. I feel pretty comfortable letting my subconscious handle sight alignment on its own through blurry peripheral vision now and just look at the targets all the time.
The other effect of this has been that I am constantly establishing my grip at speed. All the downsides of the rack, click, rack, click method still apply I'm sure but what it has helped immensely for me is evolving a consistent grip. I spend a lot of time focusing on mental cues like, "roll your support palm into the pocket" or "drumstick that support thumb". As I've played with the details of grip pressure while presenting, I've slowly had to clean up the sights less and less. After what I think of as phase one, sights were close right at press out and just needed a tenth of a second to clean themselves up at 12-15 yards. This was probably a tenth faster on every single shot I was taking at this point. After phase 2 I started seeing the top of the slide staying more level as it moves to the target and picking up the (pretend) "dot" much sooner. Post is typically centered much more cleanly in the notch now on its own and I'm another tenth faster breaking every single shot than I was in the last phase.
I tested this out for a while by going to the outdoor range, setting up three targets and doing the same type of dryfire for about an hour on them. Every 10 minutes or so I would allow myself a single live fire round for confirmation. If the round landed where I was seeing the dot in dryfire I went back to training dry. If it didn't, I spent 5 minutes "fixing" my dryfire and checked again until I could confirm it three time in a row. I did this twice a week for a few weeks to make sure I was happy with what I was getting out of this dryfire method. In an hour of dryfiring at the range I used fewer than 10 rounds for these trips. Longest "string" I fired was 4 rounds. Normally I would use a single live round to check my index and then go back to practicing the index in dryfire.
Side note: Although I've replaced the end caps on those laser cartridges a few times, and unscrew them by a few threads to make the striker contact surface backs up closer to the striker as it bangs up the endcap striking surface over time, I'm not sure it this has been too little to really cushion the impact to the breach face despite the fact that the striker has to hit the endcap to trigger the laser.
Probably a good half of my dryfire time is draws and reloads. Despite the "that's not a good use of time camp" I've seen several other benefits beyond just "cool scoop draw bro, you should totally post that 0.78 on the 'grams!" All the previous index work shows me what I can do at my current skill level with what I think of as a "LET'S GO!!!" great grip (term stolen from Joel Park). Working from the draw shows me what I can do with what I think of as a "working grip". All the interims of "good enough", "you better fix that when you run to the next position", or "fricken botched you better be smooth on the trigger and it's going to take at least a 0.3 to return" or "you better Vogel up that support hand torque you're way low on the beavertail" More importantly, it's helped me slowly merge the two together so that I'm always subconsciously always trying to improve to establish a more perfect grip even when I'm trying to beat the 0.8 par timer. Lately I use the par timer only occasionally to check things I've been working on to make sure I'm actually getting faster. Again, although not as good as doubles in live fire to ascertain grip, a laser cartridge here helps ensure them I'm actually shooting alphas and not just whipping the gun around the room pretending to be fast and really settling momentarily in the A zones.
My dryfire sessions are not currently very strictly structured. I'll do half speed draws. Draws of just the scoop fast and then coast through the rest of the draw at half speed. Generally focusing on just parts of the motion that I want to refine. Some days I'll start with the gun out of holster already and send a 20 minutes working on the motion over and over again deciding if i want my hands to meet late near my sternum after I scoop at speed for a more symmetrical press out where i can pick up the (fake) dot earlier or if i want to reach across with my support hand to meet the gun as soon as it leaves the holster to get that two handed grip as soon as possible.
I'll set up small shooting boxes around the room and work on drawing while moving to the box getting that first shot off. 1-3 steps while drawing has been a big focus lately but I'm doing a few dozen each stationary draws, surrender draws, turning draws, move left , move right etc. The action of the draw and the feedback from the laser is fun and motivating, but it's building skills like getting the gun up when moving into position, keeping my knees bent ALL the time, leaving immediately after breaking the shot, constantly keeping the 180 in mind while moving and gun handling....
I take random breaks and keep notes in a notebook I leave out next to my dryfire gear. Sometimes it's only a couple lines for a session, sometimes a whole pages or two gets scribbled up and sketched on. Normally it's weird mental cues like "picture a roller coaster track, your gun rides that track, accelerate it FAST, it can only follow the track" or things like "slap the front of the mag pouch" or "don't slap, PLUCK the mag out". I don't always scan back and read, the action of stopping to write it down helps fix the detail a bit better in my mind typically. And the mental or visual cues of the day tend to evolve and change over time.
Typically I'm alternating between reloads with AZoom snap caps, draws, and indexes in a session. After 30 reloads I go back to some draws and indexes for a bit, reload the snap caps, indexes, some draws, 30 more reloads. Reloads I've been working on stationary from slide lock to start. Press out out to sight picture, as soon as the trigger would normally press itself I snap to the mag button right when the dot would normally appear, and reload to a trigger press on the A zone. Once I get a rhythm there I work on reloading and moving. Randomly I'll switch to Burket reloads and move around the room doing those. 4 times through ends up being 120 reloads, (sometimes I just do 30 reloads if it's a half hour session, sometimes 200 if it's an hour session and I'm feeling a rhythm. Lately I've noticed that if I try to reload on Waltz time 12,3 with press out being one, mag button 2, and trigger press 3, forcing it to Waltz time speeds up the insertion since there is too much to accomplish in that short downbeat time). My music theory is cr@p hopefully you get the idea though.
Working on everything else in between running those two G19 mags dry from snap caps typically builds out an hour session pretty well for me.
What I like about reloads mostly is the skills its been building beyond reloading the gun. Once when trying to take video of my reload mechanics I ended up with a double feed. Clearing the double feed and getting another snap cap chambered and a trigger press to the Alpha just happened all on its own with no thinking or evaluating. It looked on vid like I'd planned to demo a malfunction drill. Oddly enough, reloads really helped fix my grip in some ways too. Having to get on the mag button all the time ended up more properly squaring my hand to the back of the grip. It looks the same to an outside observer but my hand was off by a 1/4" towards my strong side before and I can "feel" it better now. About this time my live fire splits dropped from mid to high 0.2's to low 0.2's (yep I'm still a suck slow new guy. Please don't take my lengthy post here to assume otherwise.) I attribute this the better recoil management from a more proper grip.
Transitions I mainly train as a bit of an afterthought (I know, but I should spend all my wasted reload and flashy scoop draw time on transitions instead. Oh well.) When I do scaled 25 yard dryfire draws I work on a transition to the headbox immediately after the dot appears. I'll do stretches where I either start on one target and transition to another to break the shot, or where I break the shot and transition off to another immediately when the dot appears. Or take 2 steps to the next box immediately after the dot appears.
On my current schedule (just before the gun broke), 4 days per week I was doing an hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings with some 2-5 minute drills done in a few times between. On the other days it was typically two very short sessions of between 5-15 minutes each. I make a point of every time I remove the holster to put the gun back in the safe I unload and do at least 5 minutes of dryfire. No exceptions.
Mainly my dryfire centers around, draws, reloads, and index. And doing everything all over again while moving. Transition work gets tacked on randomly into bits of drills but it's pretty easy to rack up a few hundred transitions even when it's not a focus.
With me being poor combined with the current ammo shortage, my training goals have been to establish a micro skill in dryfire at home then practice it in dryfire on the outdoor range. Then when I'm absolutely sure I've "got it", I use just enough ammo to "check". Can I run to that box and put 2 in the target from 15, transition to the target 10 feet to its left and put in two more alphas? Did I do it just like I practiced in dryfire 100 times? if it's 3A 1C, that's enough ammo, go back to dryfire and do it a ton more times to really burn the program in.
Generally, I combine that method with treating dryfire like shadowboxing. Would it be better to hit mitts with a good coach than shadowbox? Absolutely. But intermediate guys who shadowbox obsessively get better than their peers who don't shadowbox. So I try to treat some of dryfire the same way. Warm up, move around, visualize, ingrain the movement over and over again until it's closer to perfect.
Obviously I'm far from those goals and nowhere near where many on this board have been for some time. But you did ask what my dryfire regimen looks like so there it is. Time will tell just how crazed or ill informed I am I suppose.
*edited for spelling and grammar errors*
Last edited by NoTacTravis; 01-29-2021 at 03:40 PM.
Very true. That's been my plan for some time but it there has always been something else sapping my annual shooting budget. Moving forward I plan to correct this,
I’ve had a gen4 17 dedicated for dry fire for 5-6 years now. I can’t even imagine how many trigger presses are on the gun. I dry fire 2-5 times a week, every week. I keep a dedicated copy of several guns for dry fire, not just for mechanical wear issues but also because it gives me some peace of mind for safety to keep dry fire guns separate from live guns and ammo.
I keep waiting for the thing to fall apart but it keeps chugging along. The trigger is fantastic though 😎
Are there warning signs to look for or is this type of failure just instantaneously catastrophic?
How thin is the breechface area?
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