If you are serious about improving your firearm skills, dry fire practice is the best way to develop and expand your performance. Without recoil masking your mistakes, you can recognize, diagnose and correct your own shooting errors. But most people want a quick fix. They’d rather spend $5,000 on a shiny new pistol hoping it will help them instead of spending $1,000 on training that will. Firearms training requires effort and commitment, and most people are unwilling to make that investment.
But if you are willing to put in the effort, quality dry fire practice doesn’t really take that much time. Even better, it can be fun and inexpensive. Dry fire practice is about quality, not quantity. Five minutes of quality dry fire practice time 3-4 times per week will greatly improve your skills.
The biggest problem most people have with dry fire practice is without the feedback of seeing downrange results, they get bored. But dry fire practice doesn’t have to be boring. Sure, you can still use sticky notes hung on the wall as targets, but there are some better options that will pique your interest, are more fun and allow you to have more realistic dry practice sessions.
First, let’s review some safety rules for dry fire training:
- Do not use an interior wall that a bullet could pass through.
- Concealable body armor works well as a backstop for dry fire practice.
- Never target anything you aren’t willing to destroy.
- Do not practice if you are tired or your mind is on anything other than practice time.
- Unload your firearm and keep all live ammunition out of your training room.
- Check to make sure your firearm is unloaded before practice. Check again.
Dry fire targets
Several companies make reduced sized targets for dry practice. I got mine from Springer Precision. I have a set of the smallest targets hanging in my office, and I take the larger targets on the road to use before a match or after teaching a class. They’re light, portable and easy to use. Plus, they’re more interesting to use than sticky notes and hotel room light switches. Find your own here
DryFireMag
Now that your targets are more interesting, let’s make your striker-fired pistol give you multiple trigger presses without having to run the slide to reset the striker each time. This is where DryFireMag comes into play. DryFireMag resets the trigger in your striker-fired pistol, so you can do dry practice without racking the slide between trigger presses. Even the weight of a DryFireMag is designed to simulate a partially loaded magazine so it feels right. The DryFireMag’s base plate is blaze orange and has a stamping on the base to make it distinguishable from other magazines.
I’m currently using DryFireMags for my Sig Sauer P320s and Glocks. DryFireMag works with most performance aftermarket triggers, and with the optional Spring Pak, DryFireMag adapts to match your trigger weight and travel. Even my custom Graygun P320 trigger can be matched with the same amount of trigger take-up, travel and reset.
I use my DryFireMags with the targets from Springer Precision to work on my draw from the holster to first trigger press times, target transitions and one-hand shooting. On the range, I use DryFireMag to help fix problems I identify during live-fire training. I’ll set up movement drills on the range, and DryFireMag allows me to concentrate on smooth and efficient movement instead of focusing on where the holes are on the targets. Now, I spend less time getting my sights to settle on target giving me more time to shoot better. Check out DryFireMags here.
Dry Fire King
The next step up for dry practice is brought to you by Dry Fire King. This community-driven project is funded through Patreon memberships and provides members with access to training resources including over 200 USPSA/IPSC stage scenarios with moving targets, USPSA classifiers, rifle training, Steel Challenge stages and more. Dry Fire King is a popular dry fire practice training aid used by IPSC/USPSA/IDPA competitors, but it’s also becoming more widely used by law enforcement officers who are “in-the-know.”
Using DryFireMag with the Dry Fire King videos is an easy, efficient and fun way to get 10-15 minutes of dry fire training several times per week. There are different options to choose from, so you can focus on the skills you need to improve. Moving targets that swing, pop up, and slide across the screen give you the opportunity to work on skills we should be training every time we step on the range. Mix in some strategically placed non-threat targets, and you have challenging stages that will help when you go live-fire.
When you fire up a Dry Fire King training episode, you get the chance to begin each stage on a shot timer with a set par time. Some of the par times are easy, but many of them test even the most advanced shooters. Either way, it gives you realistic and attainable goals. Every stage is run multiple times affording you an opportunity to improve your performance. And each training episode provides several distinct stages mixing different backgrounds, moving targets, non-threats, and target types providing unique challenges to keep it interesting.
Check out how Dry Fire King can improve your skills by going to www.patreon.com/dryfireking. On YouTube, you can check out the Dry Fire King channel for a no-obligation introduction: https://www.youtube.com/@dryfireking.
ACE Virtual Reality Shooting
I’ve been using ACE since the beginning of September. Initially, I was skeptical of a virtual reality (VR) shooting simulator for working on shooting skills. I’m a big proponent of computer simulation and VR for use of force and driving training, but I didn’t think there was value for live-fire from practicing with VR. I was wrong, and I am more than happy to admit it.
In hindsight, simulators are used every day to train police officers, pilots, surgeons and soldiers, so why wouldn’t a VR system help improve shooting performance? To be blunt, the ACE system is amazing. The physics are accurate, and the guns perform like you would expect to see during live-fire.
I don’t consider this system a video game. It’s a training simulator for your shooting. The training options include over a hundred stages taken from major matches, steel challenge, USPSA classifiers and drills from some of the best shooters and instructors. There are drills for accuracy, sight acquisition, target discrimination, threat assessment and transitions. There are even some where you can practice working around vehicles and barricades, as well as shooting at a wide variety of static, reactive and moving targets. Even with all the choices available, they are constantly adding new drills and stages to the system.
One of the most valuable training points of the system is the amount of feedback provided to analyze your performance. ACE functions like a shot timer and range officer at the same time. You can’t time your starts and cheat because the start commands and timing vary. It tracks your hits, misses, split times, transition times, draw time and movement between positions. This gives you the ability to look at your performance following every run to see what you did well, where you could improve, and how to apply it to your next run.
The amount of training that can be done far surpasses traditional dry fire and live-fire repetitions. Most people get bored trying to do an hour of dry fire training, but ACE makes those reps fun, challenging and effective. And unless you have a full-blown ammo sponsor sending you free rounds, most of us can’t afford to shoot thousands of rounds every single month. In less than two months, I’ve fired nearly 12,000 virtual shots. That amount of live fire would be impossible for me to schedule let alone afford. Check out how ACE can make your dry fire training more fun, affordable and effective at https://www.acexr.com/.
Next-level skills
It’s time to take your firearm skills to the next level. More frequent, higher quality dry fire practice is the best way to do it. But dry fire practice doesn’t have to be the same old boring process of yesteryear. Good targets, a magazine that gives you a real trigger press and reset, a way to use video for challenging stages and moving targets, and a virtual reality training system that makes it possible to do “high round count” training can help you do it. Not only will you become a better shooter, but these make firearm training more fun, and no one said it couldn’t be fun!
