Training Tips

Training Tips To Become A Better Shooter

"Focus on the object, not on the obstacle."

"Good shooting is 10 percent technique, 90 percent practice."

Practice Regularly
As simple as it sounds, many people do not follow it. It is better to shoot 100 rounds every week than 400 rounds once a month.

Dry fire often
Ideally, you should dry fire every day. Most shooters seldom dry fire or even understand the concept. Our Dry Fire Practice Kits have been created specifically to fill this significant gap in most shooters’ practice routine. Dry fire allows you to manipulate your firearm without the masking effects of recoil and allows you to get enough repetitions to learn the skills you seek. Make sure that you are pressing the trigger smoothly without disturbing the sights; dry fire is the way to learn to do this well. Dry fire has two major things going for it: it’s cheap and it’s convenient. SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS: be sure you do not have any live ammunition in the room with you when dry firing, do not allow yourself to be disturbed when dry firing, and put your gun away immediately afterward to avoid that “one last repetition” that goes BANG!

Have a Practice Plan
Plan what your practice session will consist of before you leave for the range. Are you going to shoot the tightest possible groups, do one-shot draws, practice splits and transitions, or will you do some combination of these? What will be your objective; a 5 shot 5 yard one hole group, one second draw, .20 second split, or 8 second El Presidente? If you don't have a plan, you will inevitably waste ammunition in non-productive ways. Live Fire Practice Routines help define session objectives and structure practice for more effective results.

Practice on Paper Targets
Full size steel silhouettes are the worst possible targets to practice on. Invariably, the shooter begins shooting faster and faster, thinking that because the steel is ringing, hits are being made. In every case I have observed this, the shooter's groups on the target are getting larger and larger. At the end of the session, the shooter is less skilled in marksmanship than at the beginning. This is an easy trap to fall into. Shooting steel is helpful for developing speed, but paper is what you must practice on to learn to shoot accurately. Paper provides feedback on what happened when you didn't hit what you intended to. Without that kind of feedback, you will never be anything more than a "spray and pray artist."

Aim small, hit small
Practice shooting groups with a small aiming point. I like to use 2 inch Targ Dots at 5 to 7 yards. An excellent target to practice on is the 6-dot target (95-003) available from Hot Shots Targets. To be able to hit the 8 inch -0 zone of the IDPA target from the barricade at 20 yards, you have to be able to hit a 2 inch dot at 5 yards; the size/range relationship is the same. For an IDPA shooter, think of any shots in the -3 zone as misses. They add 1.5 seconds per shot to your score. By taking the extra half-second it takes to hit the -0 zone, you actually improve your score by a second, when you avoid shooting -3s.

Use Random Live and Dummy regularly
The most common cause of missed shots is anticipating recoil (flinching). The best way to prevent this is loading with random ball and dummy. When the dummy rounds come up to fire, any unnecessary movement of the trigger will be obvious, unless the eyes are closed, which is a separate issue.
With revolvers, loading very easy; load three fired cases with three live rounds. They can be alternated or done in ball, ball, dummy, ball, dummy, dummy order. Spin the cylinder as you close it so you don't know which rounds are going to fire.
For autoloaders, you will need dummy ammo that will feed through the gun. ST Action Pro makes the best I have found. It's best to have three magazines. Load each magazine with two or three dummy rounds and six or seven live rounds in random order. As you shoot, you will encounter the dummies which will both identify trigger jerking and will give you practice on malfunction clearance (tap, rack, ready).