What to Dry Practice

In previous articles, I wanted to help you understand the value of dry practice, how to select a safe area to conduct your dry practice in, how to follow the necessary safety rituals needed to dry practice without hurting yourself or anyone else, how to make your dry practice count by maximizing your training time, and what additional tools you could purchase to get the most out of your dry practice.

In this article, I want to outline what you should be focusing on the skills you need to work on during your dry practice sessions.

With the idea that proper practice is a means to achieve our goal of weapons handling mastery, let's set the ground rules for your dry practice sessions:

Ground Rules

• When dry practicing you should set a reasonable time limit for each session. Practice no less than 15 minutes a day and no more than 30 minutes per weapons system. Practicing five times a week for fifteen minutes per session is much better than a one hour and fifteen-minute practice secession once a week.
• The ratio of dry practice to live fire should be about 4 to 1. Therefore, if you plan on a half hours worth of live-fire per weapons systems on Friday, you should dry practice for about a half an hour per weapons system Monday through Thursday.
• In order to benefit fully from your dry practice, practice no less than 4 days per week and no more than 6 days per week.
• You need time off, and you don't want to burn yourself out on your dry practice, so dry practice for 21 days (3-weeks) and take the last week of the dry practice session off to rest and recuperate, to review your previous 21-days of practice, and plan your next 21-day session.
• I recommend that you start with 15 minutes a day per weapons system for the first quarter (three months), as this is an easy goal and after 90 days you will have established a habit that can last a lifetime.
• I highly advise that you stick to a short and simple routine as described above for the initial 90 days of your training. If you can keep it simple and maintain the routine for 90 days, you will be able to establish a lifetime habit.
• Remember that only proper practice makes perfect. Do not dry-practice if you cannot be "all there" mentally. If you practice halfheartedly you will defeat the purpose of dry practice and not get the benefits of training; thereby missing your training goals while wasting valuable training time.
• Never practice faster than you can perfectly perform the task properly.
• The only thing that should be missing from your dry-practice sessions is ammunition. Everything else must remain the same (wear all of the equipment that you will be wearing in real life). If you are a police officer, wear the gear you will wear on duty, if you are a CCW holder wear the same type of clothing and holster you will wear when carrying.
• Just as when you are training on a live-fire range, keep a positive attitude and focus on what you do correctly; no negative talk allowed.
• If there is a technique that you do not understand or do not remember, do not practice the technique, as you will be teaching yourself how to do something wrong.
• If you are unsure, seek proper training.
• Never practice to mental or physical exhaustion, and never practice failure.
• Keep in mind that the above time recommendation are simply a starting point. As you advance in your training you should experiment with less time and more time, keep a training journal like the one found in DSIs Training Notebook so you can confirm what works best for you.

When Should You Dry Practice?

At a minimum, you should perform proper and deliberate dry-practice for at least fifteen minutes before you intend to carry a firearm.

• For the citizen, this would be before you leave your home
• For the policeman, this would be before you leave for the station to go on shift
• For the soldier, this will be any time you can get it prior to a mission.

I know that for those of you in the military, especially for those who are single and in bachelor's quarters this is highly unlikely to happen because of the fact that you are not trusted with firearms while in garrison. So unless you live off base, you are kind of screwed. If it is at all feasible get married (joking), or move out into town with some buddies (not joking) and reclaim some amount of personal liberty. If you are deployed to a combat zone, don't have a range nearby, and you are not S.F.... make friends in the S.F. and get some range time.

If any of the above suggestions are truly not options for you, then see if you can arrange for your unit to set up a secure dry practice are. This may be difficult, but it is worth a shot because most units do have a designated "snap in" area at the battalion level for regular qualifications courses, so it's not entirely unprecedented.

In the worst-case scenario use your dry practice guides and find a nice quiet place to accurately pantomime your weapons manipulations while you vividly visualize the actions. While I know that this sounds silly, it has been proven that vivid visualization with 100% focus on correct techniques will gain greater results than no practice at all or sloppy practice (I have used it with both myself and my students overseas). As a matter of fact, Lanny Bassham attributes one of his world record performances to such training when he was deprived of live-fire training for a number of years during his time in the military.

What Should You Practice?

In short, you should be practicing the skills that are new to you, or that you know you know need attention.

As a new shooter, this will mean that you will be practicing each gun handling skill as it is introduced to you. If you are a veteran shooter, this means you should be focusing your attention on the areas you know need shoring up, while running those skills you have mastered through a review pool of skills you practice regularly.

If you're a DSI student, both those new to shooting and veteran shooters should begin with DSIs Smartsheets Training Plan or "STP" which initially lays out a basic daily curriculum and dry practice routine for you.

The nice thing about the STP (Smartsheets Training Plan) is that you can modify your STP on the fly to best suit your needs as you progress and master specific skills. If your a veteran shooter and you already have some or most of the basic skills down, you can add the skills you already know into your refresher training pool/routine and then place a heavier focus on the skills you know you need work on.

If your not a DSI student and don't have a Smartsheets Training Plan to guide you, start by dry practicing all the skills your instructor is training you on.

So for instance, if you were trained on the proper presentation (draw), chamber/mag check, and positions out of the hoster on Monday, give it a day to sink in (Tuesday) and then on Wednesday add the proper draw, chamber/mag check, and positions out of the holster to your dry practice lineup of skills to focus on until mastered. Continue to add the skills you are learning with your instructor to your dry practice pool of skills you are focusing on.

As you grow in your skills, you should ensure that you practice both the skills you know you need to work on, as well as those skills you have already mastered.

I am not trying to be cute when I tell you that you should be your best adviser in this matter. You should know your strengths and shortcomings better than anyone else - especially if you are keeping your training journal (in your training notebook), as it should leave a clear trail of what you are practicing and the results you are getting from your training. This get's back to the previous article on how to make your dry practice count by maximizing your training time.

If you are getting hung up or aren't making progress, you should share your training notebook with your DSI instructor. Not only does your DSI instructor keep his own training notebook, but he has also had extensive training in what to look for when it comes to helping you identify what areas need to be sored up in your training program.

When dry practicing, use interleaved training to advance quickly. Interleaving is a process where you mix, (interleave) multiple skills while training in order to improve your learning. This is different from traditional "blocked" practice where you practice one skill for a long time until you get it right. Interleaving has been shown to be more effective than blocked practice for developing the skills and also leads to better long-term retention and improved ability to transfer learned knowledge.

Interleaved training is more difficult, but the payout is greater. To maximize your training and take advantage of interleaved training, we recommend that you purchase a deck of 3x5 cards and write out each drill you wish to master on the card. You can keep two piles of cards, those you need to work on, and those you have mastered, then mix the cards in a 2-to-1 ratio (two needed techniques to one mastered technique). Take the mixed cards and shuffle them. Pull the top card and dry practice the skill for about 5-10 minutes, and then move on to the next card until you have completed your 15 or 30-minute practice session This will structure your training time in a manner that will give you about 2/3rd's of the training time shoring up any deficiencies while brushing up on the skills you already have mastered with the 1/3rd of your dry practice session.

Every practice session mix your cards up so you don't get stuck repeating the same routine over and over. Keep accurate records in your training notebooks training journal pages and spread your attention around, keep prodding and poking to find what needs help.

Skills to dry-practice:

• Voice commands with hand and arm signals: "Stop!" "Stop! What do you want?!" "Let me see your hands!" "Stop or I'll shoot!" etc.
• Your presentations and draws from the type of carry you will be using in real life (concealed, sling, transitions, etc.)
• Utilize your contact drills every time you present to challenge or conduct dry practice
• Both your combative sighted and reflexive fire
• Practice shooting with both eyes open
• From the holster, ready, weapons retention, high ready, and close contact
• Three types of presentations for rifle and shotgun (field ready, high ready, and ready positions)
• Your basic gun handling drills (tactical, speed, and empty gun reloads)
• Immediate and remedial action malfunction clearances
• Your movement techniques - both slow stalking and rapid approach
• Forward, backward, laterally, and oblique movements to a shooting position behind cover/concealment
• Getting to cover safely (maintaining muzzle control), and utilizing the cover/concealment correctly
• Practice all the standard shooting and improvised positions (standing, kneeling, squatting, prone, etc.)
• Utilize your tactical light correctly and efficiently
• Ambidextrous shooting (such as shooting with the support hand only, support hand malfunction clearances, support hand reloads, etc.,)

Practice only those things you have been trained on and you know you can perform correctly. If you practice something you haven't been trained on or don't remember well you will run the risk of practicing something incorrectly, and you will later have to unlearn the bad technique and then re-learn it properly, therefore wasting your precious training time. So get into the Defense Academy (which you can access from any smart device) and watch the videos and read the descriptive text to make sure you are properly practicing the technique if you have any doubts or you just want a refresher before your practice session.

If you have any doubts about the technique, it's better to not practice it and bring it up with your instructor the next time you see him.

As Lord Kelvin once famously said, "To measure is to know." If you can't measure it, you can not improve it, because you have no way of quantifying it. This is certainly the case with the proper practice of any firearms training program. So in your training notebook, keep detailed notes in your training journal of what you are doing with both your dry practice as well as your live fire.

In closing the above article, I would remind you of two things:

1. I would again encourage you to read Lanny Bassham's book With Winning in Mind in order to get a good idea of what a good training attitude and habits consist of and help you outline a good solid training schedule as well as provide you additional training tools, tips, and insight. It is a short inexpensive book that will give you a solid understanding of Mental Management and ensure speedy progress towards your training goals.
2. Next, put dry practice in perspective. What you are practicing in your dry practice and during your live-fire sessions focuses on physical skills of gun handling and the mental attitudes needed to progress in skills quickly. And while having the basic skills down at the unconsciously competent level is paramount, in order to master life or death situations, you must apply these skills and attitudes in quality RBT (Reality Based Training) scenarios where these skills will be tempered by the friction and high stress of realistically simulated battle.

Why is this important? Because you want these skills you are developing in practice available to you under the stress of a real-world fight for life, not just during your dry practice and live fire training sessions where there is no real stress involved. If you don't have quality RBT training to back up your dry practice and live-fire training, you are building a false sense of security that is almost as bad as not having the skills to begin with.