MAKE DRY-FIRE GREAT AGAIN: Your Silver Bullet to Mastery

Ready to elevate your shooting game? This week on the Pearl Snap Tactical Podcast, we promise you'll discover the true power of dry fire training. We're breaking down the essentials to help you improve speed, accuracy, and fundamentals. We'll explore advanced techniques and the concept of micro sessions, all while emphasizing the crucial role of safety. Whether you're military, law enforcement, or a dedicated civilian, this episode is packed with tips to take your skills to the next level.

We'll share insights on structuring a dry fire routine that ensures consistent progress, likening your practice to a well-planned workout. Learn how short, focused sessions can fit seamlessly into a busy lifestyle and help maintain high concentration levels. Plus, we'll guide you on validating your skills with live fire practice, discussing methods like driving the gun to your eyes for better sight alignment. From basic reloads to advanced weapon manipulation, we're here to help you maximize your investment in dry fire training and become a more effective shooter. Tune in for practical advice and expert guidance that will make a tangible difference in your self-protection journey.

Resources:
Practical Shooting, Brian Enos

Stay in the Fight!! Warriors Guide to the Combat Pistol, by SGM (Ret) Kyle Lamb

Chapters

• 0:02 Making Dry Fire Training Great
• 8:17 Developing a Successful Dry Fire Routine
• 19:44 Maximizing Dry Fire Training Investments

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pearl Snap Tactical Podcast, and this week we are running on a campaign to make drop fire training great again. That's right, you know. Drop fire training is an essential practice for anyone who's serious about improving their shooting skills. So, whether you're in the military, law enforcement or a civilian that's committed to your own self-protection, dry fire is something you must incorporate into your training regimen. So in this episode, we're going to cover what you need to know about dry fire training and, in particular, looking at basics and even some advanced techniques that can help you level up your skill set. So we're going to cover how dry fire can help you increase your speed and accuracy and hone your shooting fundamentals. We're going to talk about the power of micro session training. We're going to look at the critical piece that most shooters are missing they're failing to incorporate into their training regimen altogether, and much, much more. So, believe me, if you're looking to level up your skills with your EDC, you do not want to miss this one. So lock and load, because Pearl Snap Tactical is starting right now. What's up, gang? It's the pearl snap tactical podcast, the show that shares tools and tips to make you faster, stronger and harder to kill. I'm your host, mark, and today we're gonna make dry fire great again. But before we do that, let's jump into some housekeeping right.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Quick, guys, if you like what we're doing, if you get value out of this show, then we're going to ask something of you. We're going to ask you to do your part to reciprocate, and that's by supporting the show. There's always all kinds of ways you can support the show. Hey, here's one. How about liking the show, subscribing so you don't miss another episode leaving a fire? Five star review. Just like our boy, brad mon that's his moniker, brand mon. He left five stars. He said great content and great guys really enjoy listening and learning. Thank you, brad mon, appreciate that. And also, we got a shout out from Sergeant Coffee. Attention, sergeant Coffee. He gave us five stars and he said he left a comment. He said love it, extremely knowledgeable. Glad I got turned on to this podcast. Hey, sergeant Coffee, we're glad you found us too. Man, I'm glad you found it valuable. So if you want to be like brad mon or sergeant coffee, leave a five-star review and a and a five and some comments on whatever platform you're listening to, and we'll share it with the show. We'll give you a shout out. Also, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. And if you would, the show is free to you but it's not free to make. We do have some overhead associated with it. So if you'd like to help keep the lights on, you can click the link in the show notes below to buy me a coffee. You can make a donation there. It's much appreciated.

Speaker 1: 3:22

I'm telling you everything. Every little bit helps in this day and age. All right, that's enough of that. Now let's get into some other stuff. Um, let's, let's talk about dry fire, right? So I'm not going to get into all the benefits of fire, dry fire training and stuff like that. We've already covered that in other episodes that you can reference to. But I'll give you a quick down and dirty on what it is and let's just get into. Uh, I got five things that will help you make dry fire great again in your life.

Speaker 1: 3:55

But first let's define what dry fire training is. Simply put, dry fire training just involves practicing your shooting skills with your weapon, but but without live ammunition. I think most people know that, but just in case someone's new to this space or to the shooting discipline. That's what it is. It's good for all kinds of things. You can work on your draw. You can work on your aiming, your trigger control, weapon manipulation all that stuff without really even leaving your home and without firing a shot. Right, you can practice all of that. Drop fire is a safe and effective way to improve your shooting fundamentals and build I hate to use that phrase muscle memory, but I think most people know what I mean when I say that and also increase your proficiency.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Yep, so, before we get into the tips and tricks, there's a safety disclaimer always, and I have to go over this because, believe it or not, I had a buddy of mine uh, that was a us marshal, that who's retired now, but he just told me he's man. You would not believe how many hotel rooms have had to get a TV replaced by a federal agency from an agent who was overnighting there. I'll just leave it at that. You can figure out what they were doing. Okay, so, uh and so if, if professionals, like we're all human beings, even the, even the professionals are human beings, and so you give it enough time, you can get complacent and make a mistake. So that's why I'm going over this.

Speaker 1: 5:36

This is some critical safety features. So always ensure that your firearms unloaded, like, check it, make sure you look down the chamber, make sure you remove the magazine. Just give it a check right before you start. Check it, recheck it then, um, like I said, double check your chamber. Remove any ammunition from your training area. Me personally, I don't even train when I'm at home doing my drop fire. I don't even want to be in a room where there's live ammo. I just completely remove it from the equation. So there's a recommendation there and then focus on a safe direction for your, your practice, and what I mean by that is I personally, like when I'm aiming, I like to aim it at a load bearing, preferably an exterior wall, like I got brick house and so I pick a wall that's an exterior wall that I can aim through. So if, for some reason, something catastrophic happened, I know I've got some kind of backstop other than glass or drywall or stuff like that. So, anyway, that is your safety brief, folks, so let's get on into it.

Speaker 1: 6:40

So everyone that I know that is serious about shooting that I've ever come across in my career and I've been doing this for a minute incorporates dry fire on some level in their training regimen full stop. I've trained with military guys that were special operations and conventional units, the line units, swat officers and police officers that I've trained with or that I know they do it. And as far as civilians, everyone I know that's either in competitive shooting or are just white, hot on the gun that just train for defensive purposes and because they like it, they do dry firing. If they're any good at all, they do some dry fire training. I'm sure there's some kind of anomaly savant out there that doesn't. That might be really good, but I'm just telling you, the statistics don't lie, the numbers don't lie.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Everyone who's serious about this has a dry fire regimen right, regimen right. So let. Why big? Why? Because a it it lets you work on everything other than your recoil management and, to an extent, your trigger manipulation, maybe a couple other things. It really lets you work on all of the things that you'll be doing when you're at the range, with live rounds going on, and so if you don't have to leave your own home and can get it right, that's just hours upon hours over your shooting career that you're able to train All right. So let's talk about the five things that you need in your life in order to make dry fire great again.

Speaker 1: 8:17

So the first thing I've got is have a plan like choose specific skills that you want to work on. So think about this. Let's say you work out and even if you don't, shame on you, but even if you don't, I think you'll get the analogy. So imagine someone going to the gym and you're just observing them and they roll in and they walk over to the squat rack and they do maybe two, three squats, then they go get a drink of water and then they do a couple push-ups and then they go for a two mile run and then the next day you see them. They came in and they do some pull-ups and they go hit the leg machine, they do some calf raises and then they go back and do some push-ups and then they get on the exercise bike for 30 minutes. I mean, I think, other than circuit training, which I don't know, any circuit training that would be that, um, that's schizophrenic in its approach. But I, I understand, but you get what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 9:26

It's someone that's coming in without a plan, that doesn't have a goal and objective. That's just kind of going in there and just kind of making it up as they go along. Well, I mean, I guess it's good in the sense that they got off the couch, but they're probably not going to reach their fitness goals Not really in a timely manner anyway and so that's why it's important. A draw fire is the same thing. If you roll in and you're like I'm gonna work on reloads till I get bored and then I'm gonna do some draws and presentations and I'm gonna work on this, I'm gonna work on that, and you're just kind of meandering and just kind of stopping like a butterfly, just kind of from flower to flower and not staying or focusing on anything for any one length of time, those are probably the results that you're going to get.

Speaker 1: 10:12

It's probably going to be sporadic and and and not get you where you want to go in the most efficient manner, right? So instead of just randomly practicing drills, I would recommend you choose one or two, a couple. Just kind of get an idea of what you want to put laser focus on during each session, and that will help you maximize your time and ensure you're making progress towards your goal, because you'll actually see improvement. You'll be focused, paying attention to those things, and you'll actually start seeing the improvement, and that will motivate you to stick with it and to do more. So, for extra credit on this as you're developing a plan and the things that you want to work on, try to assess what your baseline skill is before you train, then reassess after the training and see if you've made any improvement and to what degree you have or haven't. You can make adjustments for your next session. So just something to think about, right? So, in recap, have a plan, choose some skills to work on. Work on those skills and nothing else.

Speaker 1: 11:28

All right, that's number one. Number two focus and concentration. Limit your training duration. We've mentioned this before, but I think, just because we're talking about making drop fire great again, I think it's important enough to go through it again. That is actually having micro sessions in your training. What I call micro session are just small, very intense, highly concentrated burst of training that are done frequently and over a long enough period of time, versus a few long sessions spaced out throughout the week whenever you can get to it right. So I think one of the most common mistakes in dry fire is that people practice too long without a break. Right when you do anything for too long, you start losing concentration, you start losing the fire, right, you can. It can get kind of dull and dry, no pun intended. So what I would recommend is limiting your training sets.

Speaker 1: 12:31

I don't do more than 10 or 20 minutes tops on a dry fire session. I don't think I ever do more than 20 minutes, but usually mine are about 10 to 15 minutes. Um, um, yeah, I find that that that works really good for me. It's, it's intense, like in 10 minutes I can give myself totally to it. The other demands of my day, other responsibilities or chores or things that I got to get due to with running the business or anything like that. It doesn't invade that space. It's kind of like a sacred time. Nothing else gets in my brain. I'm 100% focused on my dry fire, right.

Speaker 1: 13:14

The other thing it does for me is that the shorter sessions, it's easy to fit into my lifestyle, right. It's easy to fit into my lifestyle, right. So if it's easy, chances are you're going to do it more and you're going to stick with it, and that's part and parcel of being a successful shooter is just having the consistency of the practice so I can keep it intense. I could do them more frequently. I can fit it into my lifestyle. And then the shorter sessions they encourage the regular practice, right.

Speaker 1: 13:50

It's something that because by the time that 10 or 15 minutes is over, whatever timeframe, I do even 20 minutes sometimes, but like I'm starting to get really going, good, I'm in the zone, and then it's like all of a sudden my timer goes off and it's like there's actually a part of me that's like, oh man, we're done already, like, and there's a temptation to want to keep going. But here's the thing Do not keep going when the timer goes off, stop. And the reason why I do that is it's like I want to keep that fire going. I want to keep. I want to cage that tiger, right, I want to keep him in there so that he's going to stay hungry and he's ready to go for the next day. If I burn myself out, I might have a hell of a session. But if I kind of burn myself out, then maybe next day when it comes time to it, I might be tempted to skip it, right, cause I'd be like, oh man, I had a really good one yesterday, maybe I could just skip it today. I'll double up tomorrow. No, shouldn't. Don't do that, right. Cage the tiger, man. Cage that lightning inside, put it in a box inside your heart and then unleash it on your next session, all right.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So, number two, focusing with lightning concentration, like precision laser focus, limit your training duration, all right. Number three this one is a little harder to do, but you'll see why here in a second is get a proper grip from the draw, like, really pay attention to your grip. Now there's other things that you need to be watching to, like you know, watching your sights. Pay attention to, as you squeeze in the trigger, what your sights are doing or your reticle. I mean all that kind of stuff too.

Speaker 1: 15:33

But grip, grip is so fundamental, especially when you're shooting the pistol. It's just so fundamental to your performance. You can have a crappy draw and maybe get get by on your first shot, but if you're taking follow-up shots, like strings of shots, especially fast ones, like doing a bill drill or something, you're not going to be able to get by with a, with a trash grip. So, making sure that you're paying attention to your grip. But there's two issues with that. Okay, when it comes to dry fire.

Speaker 1: 16:06

Well, number one what is the proper grip? And that totally is a pandora's box that I'm not going to completely open, but I'll open it up just enough for us to see what kind of mess it is. And the reason why I say that is if you get on the interwebs or you do a search online for like articles regarding how to grip a pistol properly, man, you're going to get the phone book. You're going to get so much information Some of it's conflicting and some of it from reputable shooters, like people you know and trust, that are in the space and are good at what they do, and they have different ways of describing it or different ways of doing it. And I saw a video from Ben Stoger on YouTube and it was entitled like with grip. It's like, the more we talk about it, the worse it gets. That's a really interesting video, but here's what it comes to with grip.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Um, I'll just go through the standard. You know the quote-unquote standard that you're going to see and it's kind of the one I followed through uh on. But I'm going to talk about the other part that is as important. That does get neglected, I think. So.

Speaker 1: 17:21

The standard shooting grip you've you've seen or probably heard it's your shooting hand is high and tight up on the pistol as possible to man. You know, help manage the recoil. You want to see on your shooting hand kind of a ripple, um, right between the webbing of your skin and the and the beaver tail right. You don't want any gap there. It needs to be up as high and tight as you can get it. The palm of your support hand comes up to meet and covers up the remaining real estate of the pistol grip. You lock your wrist of the support hand and your thumbs forward. For most models are kind of the, the kind of standard, uh, tried and true grip. There are other techniques out there, but that's kind of. That's kind of the, I mean the, the standard or conventional one.

Speaker 1: 18:09

But here's one that I think is really important is people don't talk a lot about the pressure of the grip, like how you apply the pressure, and the best thing I've come across, um, you know, some people say push, push, pull, some people say 60, 40. I think most folks are kind of going away. I think that's some old, not everything. Old school is bad, but I think that's one of those old schools that's kind of dying out slowly. But when I talk about pressure, you don't want. You want enough grip around the weapon that the weapon secure, but you don't want to put. So you don't want to crush grip. That's so tight and you're putting so much energy into the gun that it causes you to have to disturb the sites right Cause you got to have a steady position when you're shooting. So you want a grip that is secure enough to hold onto the weapon as it's completing its cycles of function, as it's firing, um, but and you know, going back into battery, all that kind of stuff. But you need it relaxed enough so that you don't put too much energy into the gun and make it harder to catch your follow-up shot. So enough that secure but relaxed.

Speaker 1: 19:19

And the best analogy I've seen on this or read on this was from Brian Enos, who was a big time competitive shooter. Back in the day In one of his books he said it's like the amount of pressure you would have in your grip would be the same as when you're swinging a hammer, like when you're swinging a hammer on a nail. Man, that works really good for me. I started really thinking of it that way. And man, that really helps.

Speaker 1: 19:44

But here's the thing with grip. When I say practice your grip and draw fire, I mean kind of more like pay attention to it. But the only way I think you're really going to validate that is you're going to have to go down to the range. You're going to have to run some rounds through it, because that's what's going to tell you if you've got a good grip. I mean you can. You can draw fire all day long and and really improve a lot of these other skills that are associated with shooting, but you're really never gonna know if your grip is right until you start testing it. That's where you validate it, and really that goes for all this stuff that we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 20:22

Going to the range should be a regular culminating event. I'm not gonna say that you have to go every week. Some people don't have the time or the resources to do that but you do need to, at some point, regularly build that in. Even if you're rolling in with just a box of rounds, you know 50 rounds and that's it. If that's it, that's it If that's all you got, that's all you got. But you should have some measure to validate the training and ultimately, you're validating it through live fire. All right, so making sure you get a proper grip.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Number four we are going to drive the gun to our eyes, really paying attention as we're doing that and drive fire, and on the live range at all as well. So when you're aiming at your target and you're focusing on your front side or your reticle if you've got a red dot on it right you want to drive the gun to your eyes. So what do we mean by that? We're talking about bringing the gun up to your line of sight rather than looking down and trying to find it with your eyes as you're presenting out to the target With this technique, when you drive the gun to your eyes, your sights will naturally align with your eyes as you're indexing out towards the target. So what's the benefit of doing that target? So what's the benefit of doing that? Well, number one, it's going to keep you from cranking your neck and getting in some janky posture that's going to add more tension to your body as you're trying to shoot. And we're trying to release tension, right, cranking your neck's going to add more tension, uh, so it helps keep your body more relaxed. So you don't crank your neck. It helps you stay more relaxed and by doing that, it's going to help you find your sights faster. So you can make faster shots on target if you can get to the sights faster. So that's why you want to drive the gun to your eyes. So it's one thing. When you're driving the gun to your eyes on a target, then the next thing you'll have to learn is driving your eye when you have multiple targets, all right. So number four, that's driving the gun to your eyes, not your eyes to the gun, all right.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Uh, here's our final one. Y'all this one's going by quick practicing your weapon manipulation skills. So I know we've talked about that uh ad nauseum before in other episodes, so I'm going to try to add a little bit more to that than that we maybe not talked about before. But you know, weapon manipulation skills are essential for any shooter, and dry fire is where you make your money. That's where you practice these skills, and what I mean by that is, if you're, if you're needing to conserve ammo, then then make sure your weapon manipulation skills are white hot before you go down to the range and start blasting, because that way you can focus your time on the range, working on recoil management, validating certain certain skills, and your your trigger control and reset, and you know all that kind of stuff trigger manipulation, right. That's where you can really focus and use your rounds sparingly on those things rather than having to divide them up on all the other stuff.

Speaker 1: 23:43

So when we're talking about basic, when we're talking about practice and manipulation skills, what are we talking about? Well, I mean, the sky's the limit on this y'all. I mean, we've got what I would consider basic, intermediate and even advanced skill sets that you could build. So if you're starting out and you're new to this, I would consider basics. What the beginners should be able to do, or learn to do, is your basic combat or emergency reloads maybe even a tactical reload here and there that's not a bad idea to practice Clearing jams and malfunctions.

Speaker 1: 24:21

You can get some dummy rounds for your weapon and you can put those in there and you can practice those. And then, of course, your draw and presentation. You can put those in there and you can practice those. And then, of course, your drawing presentation. It's drawing it from the holster, from concealment, or your gun belt, whatever it is that you're, whatever your rig is, and don't forget your one-handed draws too, on your strong hand, and your support side too. There's more, there's other basic skills, but those are. Those are just some right off the top of my head I'm thinking about. And also, when I say basic, I don't mean that you graduate beyond them and don't have to go back. I mean the basics you're. You're working on the whole your whole career, right? So now as we go into intermediate and advanced, you're still practicing basic stuff, but now you're adding the intermediate and the advanced stuff. So what would I consider intermediate type skills being able to do multiple target acquisition.

Speaker 1: 25:19

I would start incorporating various shooting positions, right, orthodox ones, like you know kneeling. You know standard kneeling, alternate kneeling, um, you know standard kneeling, alternate kneeling, and then you can do some unorthodox stuff, right, there's all kinds of eight million prone, uh, all kinds of kneeling sitting on your back. There's a whole wide range of stuff. If you're looking for a really good resource on that it's something I've talked about before, but. But there's a book called Combat Pistol that was done by Sergeant Major Lamb or Kyle Lamb Highly recommend that. He does such a good job of just walking you through the A to Z of pistol shooting and he covers a wide range of positions and how to do it. And I love his books because there's no fluff. He communicates very simply and clearly and you clearly are able to do the stuff that he's telling you in the book and I don't ever find myself scratching my head by like what do you mean by that? Or not being able to match my actions with the pictures and illustrations that I see in the book. So highly recommend his materials. I'll leave a link to it in the comment in the show notes below.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Then you also movement mobility drills, right, everybody wants to shoot and move. Well, you can practice that dry firing, all right, as you move about in your house or out in your backyard or wherever you're at right, just really watching your sights, observe your sights, see what they do as you move. If you can go see if there's a difference between when you're moving in your house on the carpet or your wood floor tile, or if you, when you go outside and you're on the grass or on pavement or concrete on your back porch, whatever it is, just observe like, see what, that if there's a difference, and you, to make that smooth, Low light training techniques, I mean, I think anything you do in the day you should be able to do it night. So practice that. You could do low light training even with dry fire and there's more. But that's kind of what I'd consider intermediate stuff.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Advanced stuff would be like your CQB stuff, your muzzle awareness. A muzzle awareness is also basic right Meaning point, the but I'm talking beyond like keep the weapon pointed in a safe direction up and down range when you're doing kind of static line stuff. I'm talking about a little more high octane than that. So what I mean about moving around people without flagging them, so you can set or designate friendly and hostile targets in your house or wherever your training area is, and then practice like moving around, negotiating space, moving from point A to B and trying to move around these things that could represent friendlies or neutral people, people that are not hostile to you but you don't want to be flagging them, and everything like that. It just really creates that muzzle awareness and will help you with CQB and stuff like that too.

Speaker 1: 28:24

I would consider those kind of advanced stuff. And then again you can have basic firing positions or intermediate firing positions and some more esoteric kind of positions that kind of take a little bit more flexibility and ability to pull off but that are important to learn as well, and you can find those in Kyle Ams books and other ones like it, um, clearing jams and malfunctions single-handedly. That could be considered depending on its difficult uh difficulty level. That could be an intermediate or an advance. I mean clearing a jam with your strong hand, that's one thing, but then try doing it with the, with your support side. It can get a little tricky if you haven't done it before. So you know I wouldn't go to those things if you're brand new or you haven't done a lot of shooting right. I would kind of leave that for further on in your journey. But I would. But that's kind of how I would set that up and you could start training. It's up to you.

Speaker 1: 29:36

So just to recap so drop fire training. Like we said, it's a powerful tool in your arsenal for improving your shooting skills and building up confidence with the firearm. If you incorporate these tips, you're really going to make the most of your practice and you're going to be well on your way to becoming a better, more proficient shooter. So that's it for today's episode of Pearl Snap Tactical. Remember the key to effective training is consistency and focus. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, again, please subscribe. Leave us a review. It really helps. So until next time, stay safe, stay sharp and keep it Pearl Snapped. We'll see y'all later you.