I do a lot of dry fire. I get a lot of questions about dry fire. I offer a free dry fire class for LE agencies. Here is a short dry fire routine out for those of you who are interested. This program is not complete by any means but is designed to give the most bang for the buck.
You will need a timer and a target for this practice, as well as your gun, holster, 2 magazines and a mag pouch. Actually, you do not really need a timer. A ton of good work can be done with no timer at all, but at the higher levels, you will want a timer to push you. I do this from concealment most of the time, but if you have a duty belt or competition belt you can work those in every week or so. I like a scaled target for the distance I am practicing at, but you can use small items in your room, like the light switch cover or whatever is appropriate. I find smaller is generally better for most of what I do dry fire.
After triple checking that your firearm is empty and no ammo is in the room with you, you need to make sure of two things before training. Make sure you have a good index and make sure you are gripping the gun just as you would when shooting live ammo. As long as you have those two things sorted, you won’t go very wrong. Set your timer for a par time of around .6-.8. This is what I use for my draw practice, and is the first thing I do each session. The goal is to draw to a sight picture and a fully prepped trigger. I can’t make it in .6 but the time pushes me to try, which is the point. It also induces errors, which shows me what I need to work on. At a minimum, I will do this for a minute, but longer is better.
A quick note about par times. You can develop your skills to a high level without a timer. Just focusing on doing it right and going faster will accomplish an awful lot. Once you want to go beyond that, the par times help. I try to pick a time that is about .2 of a second faster than I can accomplish the task. As an example, my draw from an open top holster is in the .8’s normally. So I use a par time of .6. My reloads from an open mag pouch are 1.1-1.2 so I use a 1 second par time. I often use the same times for concealment even though I am slightly slower that way. The issue for me is that the par time be fast enough to push me, but close enough to my actual times that I think maybe I can make it if I go hard enough.
When I say that the par time induces errors, that is only helpful if I am paying attention to what I am doing and noticing where things go wrong. When I see that my grip is not right, I will focus on making it right for the next reps. If I feel too much tension somewhere, I will work to reduce that tension for the next reps. If the dot is coming in from the left of the target, rather than straight up from the bottom, that is something to correct. I think you get the point.
The next drill is usually pressouts. There is no par time needed for this and I don’t usually use the timer for it. I just want to coordinate the trigger break to the presentation. Again, a minute is a good start but longer may be needed. I then do this strong hand only and support hand only.
My third drill is smashing the trigger. I aim at the smallest spot I can and at the beep (no par time), I smash the trigger as hard and fast as I can, trying to not disturb the sight picture. I want the trigger to break before the beep is finished sounding, usually a fair bit before if I am going fast enough. The first iteration can be from a slack out position on the trigger. Then I move to touching the trigger but not moving it. Finally I start from off of the trigger. I do all of these two handed, then strong hand and support hand as well.
The goal with these is to learn how to pressure the gun correctly so that you don’t disturb the alignment when you fire a shot. Rob Leatham taught me this drill in 2006 and he called it jerking the trigger. Other people today call it trigger control at speed. I view it as one half of how I work the trigger at speed.
The last drill is reloads. I will start with a magazine in the gun, slide locked to the rear. Par time is .6 again. At the beep I will go for my spare mag, drop the one in the gun and finish with the spare mag about to go into the gun. At the next beep, I insert the mag, drop the slide and finish with a fully prepped trigger and a sight picture. These types of reloads are called Burkett reloads, from Matt Burkett, and the concept can be applied to the draw just as easily.
I find much more value in the first half of the Burkett reloads compared to the second half. The first half forces you to go really fast when precision is less important. The second half require more precision to accomplish, but since you are artificially starting the drill over at that point, I find my hand position and magazine/magwell relationship to be slightly different that it was at the end of the first drill. This makes it less useful for me, so I don’t do a lot of these.
After enough Burkett reloads, I will set the par time for 1 and do the whole reload.
And that is that! You can do these for as little time as you have available, or for as much time as you are getting training value out of them. Some days I do 5 minutes, other days I do 30 minutes or more. There are a ton more drills you can incorporate as well, but these are designed to give you the most important skills in the least amount of time. I designed this practice for professionals who want to maintain or improve their skills but will not or cannot devote the time to do everything under the sun. Reloads are of course the least important and that is why they are last. If I run out of time, I will drop the reloads.
The minimum practice times I listed are just baseline guides. One minute is not much practice at all, but it is better than nothing, especially if you do it everyday. If you stick to this program for 6 months, trying to get in 5 practice sessions a week, you will probably not meet a better shooter unless you compete pretty seriously. I did a slight variation of this program in the 90s and it set the stage for my shooting for decades afterwards. If you can draw fast, shoot accurately, and keep your gun loaded with minimal delay, there is not much you can’t do.