Do You Need the Bang? The Case for Dry Practice

Dry practice amounts to operating or manipulating your gun without ammunition, still following the rules of firearm safety. It takes a thousand (or more) repetitions to burn something into your muscle memory, and dry practice is a safe, cheap, and convenient way to get in many of those repetitions.

The key advantages of dry practice include:

• You can train anywhere. You must follow the rules below.
• It saves money. Ammo is only getting more expensive, so the more you dry practice instead of live firing, the more you save.
• It is a timesaver. Most of us can find ten or fifteen minutes during the day to dry practice. Forget about the travel time, traffic, and hassle of going to the range!
• It develops muscle memory, just like live fire. A simple action like aligning your sights and pulling the trigger is actually a very complex, fine motor skill. Practicing this skill a couple of dozen times a few days a week will help create that muscle memory.
• It will improve your familiarity with your gun. Just handling your gun in a safe manner will build your confidence!

Disadvantages include:

• Bad habits are also reinforced. You need to make sure you know how to perform the skill correctly. Have an instructor check you out.
• You don’t experience the noise and recoil of shooting. Noise and recoil can be detrimental, especially for new shooters. Dry practice helps you train the proper skills. You will have to shoot to get used to the noise and recoil.
• Semi-autos will not cycle between shots. Manually cycling the slide between each shot is itself building a negative habit pattern.

Dry practice is especially suited to these skills:

• Grip. You should frequently check your grip during practice. Have someone watch you to make sure it does not shift.
• Trigger press. Trigger control is arguably one of the most important factors in shooting accurately. Dry practice lets you get a feel for your trigger and where it breaks.
• Reloading. Practicing reloading will familiarize you with your gun. Doing it well at the range, without having to struggle with those magazines, will make you look good and feel good about your skills!
• Draw and presentation. If you carry, you need to be confident about drawing your gun from wherever you conceal it. It won’t be much use if your gun gets caught in your clothing, or you draw your wallet out of your purse instead of your gun! This is a safe, no pressure way to practice what could be a critical skill.

Before you start, review the 4 safety rules:

Here are additional guidelines you should absolutely follow if you are dry practicing:

Set a reasonable time limit for the dry practice session.

Short is good—15 to 20 minutes is optimal to focus attention on the task. Do not exceed 30 minutes.

Designate a dry practice area.

The area should be free of distractions; no phone, TV, pets, etc.

Remove all ammunition from your dry practice area.

Unload your gun, unload your magazines. Move all ammunition to a different room.

Place your dry practice target so there is a backstop.

In the event of a negligent discharge, the bullet should be captured in the backstop or travel in a direction that would not cause injury. Wood or sheet rock walls will not capture a bullet!
NOTE: The dry practice target should be something you put up and take down—not the TV, pictures, or light switches.

Verify that your gun and magazines are unloaded.

Present your gun in a safe direction, and visually and physically check the chamber, magazine well, and magazines.

Mentally enter the dry practice session.

Have a plan for drills and avoid all distractions. If you are interrupted, immediately quit the session, and take care of business. When you return, restart the session to mentally refocus yourself.

Mentally quit the dry practice session.

Remove your target, make sure your gun is still unloaded, and say out loud for an audible reinforcement, “I am done with dry practice.”

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A Dry Practice Drill—Trigger Control and the Wall

1. Hold your unloaded pistol in a normal shooting grip and stance, and move towards the wall until you just touch it with your muzzle. Then back off an inch or so. Standing at the wall gives you nothing to focus on, so you are forced to focus on your front sight. I use the corner in the room on an outside wall. The bunch of 2x4s in the corner should be an effective backstop, but remember—there should be no ammo in the gun or the room!
2. Focus on your front sight and get a good sight alignment—the front sight centered in the rear sight post, and equal in height to the rear sight post.
3. Press the trigger straight back with consistent pressure until the “shot” breaks without disturbing your sight alignment—without moving the gun. A proper trigger press doesn’t mess up your sight picture. If your front sight moves around or “hops” as the trigger breaks, slow down and pay more attention to your grip and finger movement. Are you putting pressure on the grip with your other fingers as you press the trigger? Are you pressing the trigger too fast or too hard, causing it to move at the last moment? Just work on keeping everything still except your trigger finger, and move your finger in a slow, smooth, relaxed trigger press.
4. Follow through by concentrating on the front sight.
5. Take your finger out of the trigger guard and index it along the frame.
6. For a semi-automatic, rack the slide and reestablish your grip.
7. Repeat.

Work on this for about ten minutes. If you are using a traditional double action gun with both double- and single-action trigger pulls, give equal time to each. Work on this drill three to four times per week for a month. You are guaranteed to see significant improvement in your accuracy.

Also, if you are getting wide groupings at the range during normal practice, and you can’t seem to get a tight group, clear your gun. Use a spot on your target as your “wall”. Who wants to waste ammo by sending shots downrange in random directions? Whenever your accuracy suffers, spend a little time on the wall.