3 Dry Fire Drills You Can Do At Home To Shoot Better

I began the year as a relatively new shooter and a not very good shot. I’ve been on a mission to improve my shooting this year and have made huge improvements. This is largely due to, getting professional training and getting out to the range more often. Dry Fire Drills have helped a lot as well.

My goal has been to go to the range no less than once a month and occasionally weekly. Shooting that often certainly helps out my shooting. The downside is that ammo is expensive and finding time for the range can be hard. My solution is for the expense and time is dry fire drills. Let me show you what I’m doing.

Saftey

I make no claim to being an expert here just a guy on the path to becoming a better shooter. Let’s start off with a little safety. Guns can be dangerous and no one likes being shot.

First off make damn sure your weapon is not loaded. OK, are we sure? Check again.

Have a safe place to point the weapon for your drills. I know this can be tricky. I live in an apartment so I point (my very unloaded) weapon at a wall that has the laundry room and empty storage space. I do this at times when no one is doing laundry usually around 3am or so.

Did you make sure your weapon was empty?

Take you ammo to another room. Do not have any live ammo in the area you’re practicing in.

The Draw

OK now that we are done with the safety briefing let’s get down to business. The first thing I’ve been working on is drawing the weapon from my holster. I wear the weapon as if I’m going out into the public. No need to rush this and try to act cool to yourself. I keep catching myself trying to go too fast and have to slow down. Get comfortable with drawing the weapon from its concealed location slowly and accurately. Don’t try rushing and muzzle yourself. You help no one but the bad guys when you try to rip out your weapon and blow your toes off. Until it becomes automatic, practice on control, not speed.

Trigger Control

The second drill I’m working on is placing an empty case on the barrel and working on controlled trigger pressing. If you’re jerking the trigger or pulling down (which I tend to do) the casing will fall off. This drill is a bit easier to do with a buddy to put it on the barrel once your on target but you can do it yourself . This drill I like to do once a week for a few minutes.

Sight Acquisition

The next one is a fun one. The room you plan to practice in set up multiple targets and work on sight acquisition. You can do this from a draw or not. I would recommend to do it from draw personally. Basically draw the weapon, get on target work the trigger and move on to the next one. You’re not getting the recoil but you are building muscle memory.

There are many more dry fire drills to do. Many of the really fun too. Keep in mind that nothing is a substitute for live fire training but in addition to it, dry fire drills can be a huge benefit to keeping your skills from degrading over time. Once you master those here is a link to some of the cool ones I mentioned. YouTube has some great videos on it as well that I spent all night watching. DO you have one that you think I should add? Let me know in the comments.