DRYFIRE IS THE WAY
What if I told you there was a way that you could drastically improve your shooting skills from the comfort and privacy of your own home and all it would cost you is fifteen minutes a day of your time? No need for ammunition, travel, gas, range fees, or gun cleaning. It’s called dryfire and it is one of the single most effective things you can do to improve your skillset as a shooter regardless of your experience level. Whether you are brand new to shooting, a weekend enthusiast, a law enforcement officer, military service member, or a nationally ranked competitive shooter, dryfiring is a training method that is used to simulate everything a person would do during live-fire training with the exception of recoil management.
Most people who have been shooting for any significant amount of time have heard of the term “dryfire”. The thought and image that usually comes to mind upon hearing the term is that of aiming an unloaded and safe firearm at a target while slowly squeezing the trigger while attempting to not move the sights off target once the trigger is pulled all the way to the rear. Although trigger control is one element of dryfire training it is only the very beginning. Dryfire can and is used with all different types of firearms including pistols, rifles, carbines, and shotguns.
The United States Marine Corps, who has the highest service rifle qualification standards in the U.S. military, believe in dryfire training so much that they have their recruits spend an entire six-day period “snapping in” during what is known as grass week. During this time U.S. Marine recruits spend hours a day going through the exact same motions, weapons handling techniques, shooting positions, and sequences of fire as they do the following week on the rifle range during live-fire qualification.
Ben Stoeger, who is an eleven-time national champion and world champion in practical pistol shooting USPSA production division achieved the classification of Grand Master within his first six short months of competitive shooting all while firing less than five thousand rounds of ammunition in his entire life. Just to put this into perspective most serious competitive shooters shoot a minimum of ten thousand rounds a year and train for many years before reaching the rank of Grand Master, if they ever reach it. Ben credits his almost instant success to the vast amount of dryfire he performed leading up to his first few matches.
Let’s take pistol shooting for instance. If we break down the basic elements of pistol marksmanship to stance, draw, trigger control, target transitions, reloads, and mobility we can train each one of these fundamental elements without the need for live ammunition. The benefit to this is that when you go to the range to live-fire you can use your time and ammunition to work on the few things you are unable to practice in live fire such as recoil management, sight re-acquisition, and getting comfortable moving around with a loaded gun. This now allows you to maximize your resources to train as affectively as possible.