Why Dry fire?
Mostly because dry firing is one of the best ways to becoming a more proficient shooter. You see, dry fire practice enhances your trigger skills in two primary areas. First, it enhances your trigger control, which is roughly equal in importance in how well you aim and arguably, more so.
The Fundamentals of Dry Firing
It’s been said that it takes 10,000 repetitions to commit an action to muscle memory. For a shooter, that can represent a considerable amount of ammunition to perfect a trigger squeeze. With the skyrocketing costs of ammunition, dry-firing represents a very affordable alternative.
The first thing to do before practice is to ensure that all firearms are unloaded and that no live ammunition is present in the area where training is to take place.
While practicing, break every detail down of the firing sequence, acquire a perfect sight picture, hold your breath, squeeze the trigger while releasing that breath and see if the sights move.
You also build muscle memory with every pistol you dry fire practice with, making you that much more proficient with it.
In truth, you can’t afford not to be engaging in any dry fire training.
Hone Your Trigger Control With Dry Fire Practice
The aspect of arguably the greatest importance regarding dry fire practice is that of trigger control. If you ask the experts, they’d tell you that your trigger technique is just as important – if not more so – than your aiming technique.
In fact, if your trigger technique is off…your hits will be too, regardless of your aim.
Here’s how.
A good trigger pull won’t move the gun. That keeps the aim true and puts your shot on target.
However, a trigger pull that is not WILL move the gun. For instance, if you pull the trigger with the tip of the finger, that will tend to pull shots to the left. If you pull with the distal joint (that’s the last knuckle) or behind the distal joint, you’ll pull shots to the right. If you’re tightening your grip in anticipation of recoil, that can pull shots up.
And so on and so forth.
In order to ensure that your trigger technique is correct, you need to be able to observe it, which dry fire practice gives you the ability to do.