Dryfire options

[Hawkeyemm]

So I am aware of the DFAT training aid.

However, I have a 20 yard long unfinished basement that I can utilize. I’m just wondering if there is a better way of utilizing my space considering DFAT is meant for something like 12 feet.

Any good ideas are appreciated.

 

[gunsnjeeps]

Start with dry firing. Do it just like you are shooting normally. If you want feed back devices there are three i have seen in price order; Mantis X, Top Shot, SCATT. I've looked at Top Shot but you need about 18 yards between target and firearm. A friend lent me his Mantis but I didn't get to play with it. The Mantis is an Inertial unit that doesn't have a range requirement because it checks firearm movement.

 

[acudaowner]

I have a small dinky apartment and this seems to work pretty well so far for pistols i want to try the target system they have and place them around a room

Dry Fire Training System & Training Aids for Home & Range | Mantis X

MantisX is a revolutionary shooting analysis system that helps shooters of all levels to improve their shooting more rapidly.

mantisx.com

I love dry firing the rifle at the range after shooting a group 5 to 10 shots or so I would love to do it at home as well but lack enough room to do so .
nothing will guarantees you will be a great shooter if i can in 3 min find thousands of articles from top shooters saying dry firing does help work on fundamentals ,and trigger control there might be something to it that is beneficial what i liked as a non pro shooter was it showed me things I did that i did not perceive with my eyes till I saw them on a display . Either way its your choice to dry fire or not to dry fire , good luck what ever you decide to do .

only a few out of all those online , but if its good enough for him who am I to say it don't work .

Top 10 Reasons Dry Fire Beats Live Fire Practice

This process of watching the instructor with the intent of copying him and then repeating what you see takes advantage of one of the most powerful learning hacks in the brain…mirror neurons…and it’s just one of almost a dozen accelerated learning techniques that are embedded in the training.

sofrep.com

 

[...]

dry fire will not make you a better shooter....if it did anything, every jim-bob clicking their guns for hours a day would be Master lever shooters.....but they arent.

something with feedback (like mantis or scatt) are better......but personally for the cost of a laser unit, i would just get a pellet gun, and get actual trigger time.

 

[Dthomas3523]

Dry firing helps develop things like consistent trigger finger placement, getting into position and getting the consistent placements of hands, rifle, body, etc etc.

There are times when more feedback is needed and times when it is not. Dryfire is just another tool in the training box. And you’ll almost never find any high level shooter that says it doesn’t help. Nor will you find any high level instructor tell you otherwise.

 

[Hawkeyemm]

Thanks for the feed back, everyone. I guess I should have clarified that I’m not a total stranger to dryfire. I many many hours of dryfire and thousand and thousand of trigger pulls with a pistol. I don’t doubt it’s efficacy.
I am simply wondering what would simulate best, if anything, a sight picture at distance. And considering I have more indoor room than most, if there was a best option that would best fit my situation.

 

[aprocast]

dry fire will not make you a better shooter....if it did anything, every jim-bob clicking their guns for hours a day would be Master lever shooters.....but they arent.

Wrong, practicing technique is a critical part of training

 

[308pirate]

dry fire will not make you a better shooter.....

Dry fire, DONE CORRECTLY, will make you a better shooter. Can you progress by doing live fire only? Sure you can. It will take you far longer and cost you a hell of a lot more than if you had learned how to train with dry fire and included that skill in the mix. In other words, it's stupid to rely only on live fire for training.

And no, you don't need cheesy gimmicks like mantis X or whatever.

Maybe you should ask Ben Stoeger if dry fire is worthless......

 

[308pirate]

Thanks for the feed back, everyone. I guess I should have clarified that I’m not a total stranger to dryfire. I many many hours of dryfire and thousand and thousand of trigger pulls with a pistol. I don’t doubt it’s efficacy.
I am simply wondering what would simulate best, if anything, a sight picture at distance. And considering I have more indoor room than most, if there was a best option that would best fit my situation.

I understood your question from the start so let me take a stab at the answer.

I too, have a basement where I can setup dry fire targets at much longer distances than 10 - 15 feet. More like 10 - 12 yards. Up until now I haven't needed any optical changes to my rifle scopes since both of my LR scopes focus to 10 meters or slightly less (SWFAs will do that). My other scope without parallax adjustment can focus in close by reducing magnification.

I just ordered a new scope (4-16X) that has a min parallax setting of 50 yards. I've seen the DFATs and such and cringe at the price for what is basically a stopped down aperture. Being an engineer, I figured I can solve the problem myself. NOT being an optical engineer, I asked one what's the best way to go about it. He told me to start with an stopped down aperture with a diameter that's 25% of the objective lens diameter, and then adjust from there. I'll be looking at some flexible, dark plastics to make the apertures and just use masking tape to put them over the objective. Then fine tune from there.

 

[Hawkeyemm]

Pirate, appreciate the response and doing the research for me

 

[Hawkeyemm]

As I have no reputation around here I didn’t want to start a war about the efficacy of dry fire. I do know that it helped my pistol. But that’s just my experience. And lots of people Who are a lot better than me. But I thank you guys for jumping on that response for me. Lol

 

[Dthomas3523]

As I have no reputation around here I didn’t want to start a war about the efficacy of dry fire. I do know that it helped my pistol. But that’s just my experience. And lots of people Who are a lot better than me. But I thank you guys for jumping on that response for me. Lol

It’s another tool. Speaking for pistol specifically, it helped me with a lot of things. But, I still had a flinch when my mind thought there was a possibility of recoil. What fixed that was about 3,000 rnds over time with a buddy randomly loading a dummy or any empty chamber. I had no idea when it would not recoil.

Nothing is a one size fixes all. Every other game or sport the serious players break down their practice into small things to isolate weaknesses. For someone reason this gets overlooked with firearm games.

 

[phlegethon]

I've seen the DFATs and such and cringe at the price for what is basically a stopped down aperture.

The DFAT is not just an aperture, it is also a lens. I have heard from others who've tried just using an aperture and said it didn't work. I find the DFAT worthwhile (I think we always tend to undervalue training stuff and overvalue gun accessories and reloading equipment!).

 

[...]

Dry firing helps develop things like consistent trigger finger placement, getting into position and getting the consistent placements of hands, rifle, body, etc etc.

There are times when more feedback is needed and times when it is not. Dryfire is just another tool in the training box. And you’ll almost never find any high level shooter that says it doesn’t help. Nor will you find any high level instructor tell you otherwise.

you wont find high level shooters/ instructors telling you otherwise because dryfire doesnt hurt anything.....its not going to make you a worse shooter.....so theres no down side to saying "yeah go dry fire for a few hours a day"

but how many of those high level shooters/ instructors are actually doing it themselves....really?......because i dont know a single high level shooter that sits around for hours a day doing dry fire practice.

if you are bored and just want to click your gun while watching john wick 3.....sure dry fire away.

if you want to actually improve shooting ability, and presumably want to do it on the cheap.....a .22 or a pellet gun will make you a SIGNIFICANTLY better shooter than just dry fire alone.

 

[308pirate]

..because i dont know a single high level shooter that sits around for hours a day doing dry fire practice.

You then

A) Don't know any high level shooters

and

B) Don't know what you're talking about. Evidence:

if you are bored and just want to click your gun

I was going to try to educate you but I won't because it appears it will be a giant waste of time.

Hint: a significant portion of my handgun dry fire training doesn't even involve pressing the trigger at all now that my DA trigger manipulation is solid.

 

[308pirate]

I have heard from others who've tried just using an aperture and said it didn't work.

Without knowing what they did and how they did it, I'm not going to put stock on the second hand accounts of others. For all we know, they had no clue how to size the aperture correctly and so their experiment failed.

I asked Koshkin, so I'm pretty sure I have a solid starting point.

 

[...]

You then

A) Don't know any high level shooters

and

B) Don't know what you're talking about. Evidence:


I was going to try to educate you but I won't because it appears it will be a giant waste of time.

Hint: a significant portion of my handgun dry fire training doesn't even involve pressing the trigger at all now that my DA trigger manipulation is solid.

quantifiably....how much better has your shooting gotten since youve started dry fire training?

 

[308pirate]

quantifiably....how much better has your shooting gotten since youve started dry fire training?

I started in USPSA at the very bottom of C class scoring barely over 40% in classifiers in March 2019 and by July I was in B class with a 65% classifier average. And I'm nowhere near as religious about it as some others are.

You really are not clued in as to what one can accomplished with correct dry fire as part of a training plan if you don't know that Ben Stoeger, Hwansik Kim, Mike Seeklander, Steve Anderson are all Grand Masters who got to where they are by including DF in their training.

You can go to youtube and watch dry fire videos by Ben Stoeger from over 10 years ago.

 

[Hawkeyemm]

As the OP of this thread I’m going to take back ownership of it and fast forward to the hook.

Is dry fire effective? There is too much anecdotal evidence from shooters across many skill levels and disciplines to dismiss it. Is it the end all be all sure fired way to become great? No.

Is live fire a more productive way to improve? 95% of the time. For dealing with flinches etc. dry fire might be better. (And for the record, inserting a dummy round in a live mag, by definition, is a form dry fire.)

The bridge between the two, small caliber trainers and pellet guns

I think that wraps it up. If the mods want to lock this up, they can. We’re through here.

 

[aprocast]

As the OP of this thread I’m going to take back ownership of it and fast forward to the hook.


We’re through here.

HaHa, this is the internet, you don’t own nothing

 

[308pirate]

There is zero, absolutely none, need to fire one single round in live fire to practice the shit out of the following handgun skills

• reloads
• malfunction clearance
• trigger control
• sight picture and index
• draws
• target transitions
• strong hand grip
• transition from strong to weak hand
• shooting on the move (about 90% of it can be learned without firing a shot)
• entering positions quickly
• leaving positions quickly
• unloaded starts

And likely a half dozen that I'm forgetting now

Now, all that needs to also be done in live fire to see if what you've been doing in dry fire is solid under recoil but the point of it is that you can speed the hell out of your plan-learn-do-check-act cycle by doing the work in dry fire then confirming it in live fire.

If you've never been taught how to do this correctly (either in training or by reading how tos) and/or if you are not honest in your discipline to practice correctly this will seem like total bullshit to you. If you know, you know.

Hell, I used to use a shit ton of dry fire when I competed in NRA highpower. Made master in that, even.

 

[Dthomas3523]

you wont find high level shooters/ instructors telling you otherwise because dryfire doesnt hurt anything.....its not going to make you a worse shooter.....so theres no down side to saying "yeah go dry fire for a few hours a day"

but how many of those high level shooters/ instructors are actually doing it themselves....really?......because i dont know a single high level shooter that sits around for hours a day doing dry fire practice.

if you are bored and just want to click your gun while watching john wick 3.....sure dry fire away.

if you want to actually improve shooting ability, and presumably want to do it on the cheap.....a .22 or a pellet gun will make you a SIGNIFICANTLY better shooter than just dry fire alone.

You should get out more. If you don’t know any doing it, you don’t know many top shooters.

You’re absolutely wrong here. There is no question about it.

 

[Dthomas3523]

quantifiably....how much better has your shooting gotten since youve started dry fire training?

Went from low pack to upper pack shooter in club matches last year. Literally with 90% dryfire. Now placing in top pack at regional 1 day events. Still 90% dryfire.

 

[Hawkeyemm]

Is it possible this guy is just trolling?

 

[Moe Ron]

For a guy with absolutely no training is there a good checklist for practicing.
I see a lot of correlation to other things I do.
Golf-You can be at the range just practicing mistakes.
Guitar- If you can’t play it slow you can’t play it fast

 

[Hawkeyemm]

For a guy with absolutely no training is there a good checklist for practicing.
I see a lot of correlation to other things I do.
Golf-You can be at the range just practicing mistakes.
Guitar- If you can’t play it slow you can’t play it fast

Be 100% honest about your sight picture.
With dry fire you are firing imaginary shots. It’s very easy to imagine that the sights didn’t move at trigger break. Or “they didn’t move THAT much”. Or say it was still on target even though they moved a little. So be honest. You’re only cheating yourself if you take the easy way out. That’s my 2 cents.

 

[308pirate]

Is it possible this guy is just trolling?

Unfortunately no

 

[OutThere]

Every Service Team member I’ve ever talked to told me that they dry fire. A lot.