Dry Practice

Dry Practice

We call it dry practice and not dry fire because there isn't going to be any firing. Words have

meanings and by calling it fire, we are in the beginnings of programming ourselves to expect

firing. Here’s the great thing about dry practice, the goal is to practice all the things in

between the shooting. Believe it or not, if you are at the point on your journey that you are

dedicating time to dry-practice you can probably press the trigger just fine. I’m willing to

wager that you do that better than all the other things we do with a gun.

I have students that the closest range doesn't let them move, or even draw from a holster.

Great, when at that range they can focus strictly on trigger presses and at home, they can

dry-practice that draw. When I dry-practice, after all of the safety considerations below, I

always start with drawing the gun. This is a perfect draw, slow and deliberate. I take at least

one giant sidestep but will do more depending on available space. At this point on my

journey, I’m programmed to start moving my feet anytime my hands move towards my gun,

that's exactly where I want to be. The point of dry practice is to build that neural pathway so

I don't have to put any conscious thought into adding that step.

On that same note, every single time I reholster my pistol, there is a full 360* scan

preceding it. The same thing, I have a neural pathway established at this point to get a full

picture of my surroundings before I put my gun away. I could easily do a 5-minute dry

practice session and do nothing but draw the gun and aim in. Then scan and reholster and

get good results on gun handling skills.

One of my favorite things to practice is clearing malfunctions. This is actually one of the few

times I touch a trigger during dry-practice. I will load a few magazines up with dummy

rounds and after the draw, I will aim in at my target and press the trigger without disturbing

the sight alignment. When I get a click, I move my feet and clear that malfunction. Often I’ll

set up different types of malfunctions, some with empty brass and practice those without the

draw. The reason behind that is I don't want to build a habit of drawing the gun and

expecting a click and instantly go to fixing a gun after the first press of the trigger. When I’m

actually shooting, starting immediate action after the first shot is counter to my goals.

I’ll practice reloads, usually from a ready position (High-ready, Low-ready, Gun-Up,

Gun-Down, Assess, Position 3) with the sear already tripped. I get that dead trigger/gun

empty feel and move my feet and reload my gun from my primary magazine location before

I get the sights on target. I will often press the trigger on this one to trip the sear. I can then

practice a tactical reload and have a dead trigger to set up the next emergency reload.

2 reload practices per rep.

The thing I focus on in these is to initiate movement at the beginning and as much as

possible during each rep. Many times that will be moving into a piece of simulated cover.

I usually dry practice at my house and it is full of different sizes and shapes that I can use.

The safety considerations below mention that you should have a backstop behind your

target that will stop bullets if you ignore all the other considerations. Folks will let a brick

wall or something similar define their dry practice location and not be able to utilize cover

or even movement. The simple solution is to make your target smaller than your plate

carrier and simply stick it on the front with a binder clip and then hang your plate carrier

wherever it works for you.

Dry-practice probably has the largest ROI (Return On Investment) of any practice that you

could possibly do, but it can be overdone. Each rep should have 100% focus. After

removing all possible distractions, it’s still easy to burn yourself out and start cutting corners. Corners cut in safety can be catastrophic, corners cut in execution will certainly cease

progress and most assuredly lead to regression. This is why I limit my sessions to a strict

time limit. For my self, it’s never more than 5 minutes at a time. You can pick whatever time

limit suits your ability to completely focus, but I suggest starting shorter than what you think

you can go. The good news is that you can do multiple sessions in a day after you’ve had a

chance to decompress. I think we all could see a large increase in gun handling abilities

with a small investment of our time. Let’s take a look at the actual procedure.

Procedure
Follow all firearms safety rules while dry practicing.

If you are interupted during your dry-practice, (phone call, knock at the door, etc)

Start over at step 1.

1. Go into your dry practice area and remove all possible distractions (phones, Tv ect turned 

    off).

2. Unload your gun.

3. Do a three-point check to assure that it is empty ( Chamber, Breachface and Magwell should

    be EMPTY).

4. Put live ammo outside the room and close the door behind you.

5. Do another three-point check on your gun.

6. Put up a target on a backdrop that will stop a bullet.

7. Do another three-point check on your gun.

8. Announce out loud “I am beginning dry practice”

9. Perform a perfect draw, with movement. Continue on with whatever regimen you decided to

    work on prior to starting. Even if you are not working on the draw (why not?), any time the

     gun comes out of the holster it should be a perfect draw. Every time it goes back in the

    holster it should only be done after a good scan. Practice each rep perfectly, never sacrificing

    good form for speed. Like a musician, we need to get the notes perfect before we get them

    up to speed. Nobody plays Holy Wars on their first day of guitar lessons.

10. Repeat these reps until your allotted time has passed. If you are losing focus or getting

      sloppy, STOP.

11. When you are finished, Take down your target and announce “I am done with dry-practice”.

      The verbalization will cement in your mind that it is over. Taking down the target reduces

      the temptation to do “one more rep”.

12. Unload the dummy rounds from your gun. Put away any dummy rounds.

13. Open the door to your dry practice area and retrieve your live ammo on the way out.

Charge your gun and reholster it. (Did you scan?)

Professionalism in shooting (and some football lingo)

There’s a few different types of folks out there carrying guns frequently. I try to keep an
internal log of their behaviors and their numbers. Below, I’ll give you my observations.

not to scale

The first group is people that get paid to use a gun frequently that should and do practice
their craft regularly (Green). We like to think of our mighty military as being these guys.
I wish they were. If I had a genie in a bottle, this is one of those things I’d task him with.
However, even with the most powerful military force in the history of the universe, it’s rare
to find a truly impressive shooter working for the DOD. I know you are out there reading
this and said “SOCOM Motherfucker!” And I will absolutely agree that those cats, in
general, far exceed the rest of the Military. Having shot with some guys with funny hats
and a few vanilla frogs I’m still not sold on the overall abilities of that “branch” taking their
job as shooters seriously enough. Too large of a portion of these guys, and the vast bulk
of the rest of the Military machine fall into the second group.

This group is paid to use it infrequently yet often do not, and in large numbers, practice that
craft. (Blue). These people are not professional, nor are the professionals. We see this in
Law Enforcement with alarming regularity. People who, by job description, are much more
likely to use a gun to defend themselves yet treat it as an occupational obligation.
Something they are forced to carry but do not value having the skills to use it to even a
portion of its potential effectiveness.

Some people do not get paid to ever carry a gun, yet they hone their craft much more than
the second group sometimes more than the first group (Orange). These people are the
practice squad in the NFL. They prepare as though they are going to play the Superbowl
with zero expectation of ever putting any of their skills to any measurable test. This
exemplifies professional behavior. These are the people we should admire. That Green
group meets our expectations, that Blue group miserably fails them, but that third group,
the Orange. They do more than is likely needed, certainly more than is ever asked, and
they relish the opportunity to push further.

Most people in that second group, carrying a gun is their job and they treat it like any of the
unpleasant parts of a typical job. They do as much as they have to to keep their job. The
first group, those are the all-stars, they are in the big game, they know when and where
they are playing and they prepare accordingly. I often wonder how many continue putting in
the work once they become members of the third group. Or do they fall into the fourth
group? (Pink). The people who own a gun and therefore they are prepared for everything.
Reliving the days long past, do they become the Al Bundy's of the world, talking about that
time their number was called back in the day, from the comfort of the couch?

I’m going to have to say that the mindset that is to be most favorably viewed is that
third (Orange) group. The ones who train like tomorrow is their Superbowl, knowing that the
chances of being in the big game are as likely as riding their unicorn to the lotto office to cash
the winning powerball ticket while they get struck by lightning. That’s the dedication and
professionalism that I like to celebrate since it’s so often overlooked.
I’m not knocking my word-champ, OBL-slaying Teamguy here, I’m just recognizing those
10 guys who didn't make the 53-man cut. They have a dedication that is difficult to replicate.
They are the ones I put on a pedestal, and rightfully so.

Fucking Presschecks

The old presscheck. Why do them? That's a serious question. Why do we do them?

If you answered “ I like to hear the clickety-clack of the gun parts moving around”, I’m not going to argue with you. It’s dumb as fuck, but it is a factual way to accomplish the desired result. The rest of us just throw on that first Magpul DVD and get a cacophony of clickety’s and clakety’s.

If you answered “I want to know the condition of my gun”, now we’re going to have a discussion. If we move the slide, just ever so much to take the gun out of battery, we might be able to see some brass. We just took a gun that might have been working and caused a malfunction. Yep, out of battery means the gun no worky. Sure, we’ll go ahead and palm strike the rear of the slide to put it back in battery, so it’ll be fine. I checked a lot of contemporary instructions on what to do to a gun that won't fire, and all of them said fuck-all about a palm strike to the rear. So now we’re gonna add yet another malfunction clearance method to our list of choices and I’m sure Bill Hick will roll his eyes from the afterlife at us, but what does that guy know, I mean he died 45 years ago, he can’t be too smart, right?

It’s gonna be OK, because we’re not going to do that reactively, only diagnostically. That's what that armorer's class was for right? Diagnose the issue. Apply the proper remedy. Great, we justified making the gun not work and justified the one instance this remedy will be the one we use. So endeth lesson….right?

Well, not so fast sport. We did some mental gymnastics to get here, but what did we learn? Well, we learned that maybe we saw something. I know, you’re saying “ what do you mean maybe?” Well, I mean we can see stuff when there's enough light to see stuff with. If it’s dark, breaking open the slide works as well as that silly witness hole in the top of my M&P slide. But, we can just run it back further until we can feel it, can't we? I don't have the fattest fingers in the world, but I have to pretty much extract the round to get my finger in there. Maybe some readers have dainty enough fingers to reach in there (as long as their acrylic press-on nails don't get in the way).

But just like the ridiculous loaded chamber indicator on the top of an XD slide. (Don't get me started on how often the bits of XDs stop working). All that tells us is that there is brass in the chamber. Some of us are keenly aware that a piece of brass and a live round are not the same things. The last time the gun was fired, was there anything impeding the slide? If you remember the last round that was fired, I beg the question: Why are we doing this press check again? (Hint: the answer is that we like the clickety-clack.)

Let me ask you, what will you do if you neither see nor feel that the chamber is loaded?  That's also a serious question. What do you do next, after you diagnosed the problem?
We all know that the remedy is to run the slide all the way to the rear in a sharp fashion and let it go, allowing the fully compressed spring to expand, flinging the slide forward with authority and strip a new round off the magazine on its way home. Odd that many of the sources I checked on fixing malfunctions included this particular step and not the palm strike, but what do those guys know?

To recap this series of events, when we aren't sure if the gun is loaded, we induce a malfunction to check if we can see or feel what we hope is a live round. If we don't see or feel what we want, we then run the slide. This is akin to the old fallacy of tourniquet usage. Instead of doing a bunch of steps prior to doing the one that works, we could always just start with the one that works. We have abandoned the idea of direct pressure, elevation, pressure points and waiting for those to fail before applying a TQ, I’m perfectly happy with doing the same when learning the status of my gun. I know running the slide works, so if I am in doubt, I’m gonna do that. I don't care if a live round goes to the deck. If it’s a partial magazine and I’m not sure how many are in there, I should probably top off the gun. And you know what? That also includes running the slide. Notice I didn't include a palm strike nor any justification for doing one, I wonder why that is?

If you managed to make it this far, there's the lesson. If you don't know the status of your gun, run the slide. If you do it after inserting a fresh magazine, all the better.

#fuckpresschecks