So I’ve got a carbine, a bunch of mags and a warbelt.
The only rifle range I have access to is indoors, and it’s $20/hr.
I’ve been doing mag change drills in my apartment to make up for the low amount of live fire I get.
Typically I do three mag changes from my belt, dry firing between each one, then transition to pistol after the third mag, and do two mag changes with that. I have an orange dot sticker as a
consistent aiming point on my far wall. (Concrete wall facing woods)
I do this routine about ten times a day. It works up a decent sweat and makes my manipulations much smoother. I start out slowly and go faster until I fail, then slow down until I get it right.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Is this a good drill, or is there something else I should be doing? Any adjustments?
Your post reminded me of my apartment living years (before marriage, family and a mortgage). I, too, spent hours dry practicing with all variety of pistols, rifles and shotguns. I learned from Clint Smith the procedure and methodology of dry practice and always made sure to religously follow an established routine before each session. Like you, I always made sure to use a specific room in the apartment and only aim at one specific target so as to be in compliance with Rule #4 (exterior brick wall with natural berm beyond it and woods beyond that). I always took care to remove all ammo and loaded mags from the room prior to beginning a dry practice sequence. I was specifically taught not to practice speed reloads or malfunction drills during dry practice sessions. These drills are designed to get an empty or non-functional gun back up and running, so if you do them successfully the gun should go “bang” at the end of your sequence. As the years went by, however, I got lax with this rule and would sometimes dry practice them with empty mags or mags with dummy rounds loaded.
Based on my experience, I would strongly advise that in your dry practice sessions you not perform mag changes that include cycling the action and then dropping the hammer. Even though you may take precautions to remove all live ammo from your dry practice area, if you were to accidentally grab a mag that contained a live round you just might find you have a hole in the wall where your orange dot sticker used to be. Ask me how I know that this can happen! :blink: Yep, it happened to me once and served as a wake-up call that even I can screw up royally when I disregard the lessons of my instructors. All it takes is one round left in a mag that you thought was empty and you will get a “bang” when you expected a “click.”
I would suggest leaving speed reloads and other magazine changes to the range and reserving for dry practice the fundamentals of presentation, sight picture and trigger manipulation. This is just my experience, but it also reflects what I have been taught over the years by people with a lot more experience than me.
I would respectfully disagree. As with anything gun related using your brain, and taking the appropriate safety precautions there’s no reason why one can’t practice reloads. If instructors are giving that kind of advice, then IMO they are defaulting to the lowest denominator.
i hate to say it but I’ve seen it in other part of training. Instead of training up, expecting more from people, they sometimes train down and either lower requirements or train for the lowest denominator.
If someone is incapable of separating live ammo from orange training ammo and not have an accident, then they should really rethink guns as a hobby or as a method of protecting their family.
Again, just think, pay attention, don’t become complacent and be safe. Now one can train at home until their heart’s content.
Fair enough. However, I don’t think anyone would accuse Clint of training to the lowest common denominator. If that were the case, dry practice would be discouraged altogether.
I just reviewed my old “Handgun Dry Practice” handout. Simple reload drills with empty magazines (i.e. nothing in them, including dummy rounds) are OK. What you want to stay away from is any dry practice drill which involves inserting a magazine, manipulating the action, and then pressing the trigger. If I read 1911-A1’s post correctly, this is what he described doing (dry fire in-between mag changes). This is also what I did that got me into trouble. Avoiding this practice minimizes the potential for an ND.
A simple mag change (drop old, insert new) should not create any issues as long as there is no manipulation of the action afterward.
1911-A1: PM me if you would like a scanned copy of my old dry practice handout. It is geared toward handguns, but there’s no reason the same drills couldn’t be applied to the carbine. I need to review it every so often because it is easy to forget things and fall into bad habits.
Hey MP,
I know what he meant and I still don’t agree. I practice realods with the orange dummy rounds including running the slide and pulling the trigger. As long as you pay attention use the proper gear I think you’ll be fine. Why wouldnt you be? Again, one just has to really make sure no live ammo is in the area and use only training rounds.
BTW I also have a dry fire practice sheet if you want it. just PM me.
I have done this on occaison. I use a chest rig, empty mags (sometimes with Magpul dummy rounds inserted) and go to town. It is all I have until I find the time for a class.
How hard is it to not shove a loaded magazine into your weapon, I mean really? I’m all for being safe and everything but I think we go slightly overboard at times. Put your live magazines out of the way and train.
Dry fire drills are the single biggest thing you can do to increases your speed and weapon handling skills. About the only thing that cant be practiced with dry fire is recoil. Draws, target transitions, reloads, malfunction drills can all be done with dry fire. Once on a real range you are basically confirming that can you do with live ammo what you practiced dry. As far as safety, do what you are comfortable with. If you feel you will get live ammo and dummy ammo mixed up, dont use them. The only way a bullet can get in a gun is if a person puts it there.
-A timer will dramatically increases the results you get from dry firing. There are some sites on line that will do this for you but the best it to just buy a timer. I use mine like this: I set a delay (typically 3 seconds) and then a par time. Here is a an example of a draw drill. I hit the start button and stand ready, 3 seconds later the buzzer sounds I then draw and try to acquire a sight picture and pull the trigger on a target stuck on the wall before the par time sounds.
Of course you can practice without the timer but when you start to push yourself you don’t have anyway to gauge yourself. With the timer you can start knocking off .1 and .05 seconds. You will see improvement!
-On many weapons you can rig the action so that you can keep pulling the trigger and get a more realistic trigger pull. It wont have the break but the trigger resistance and length of pull will be more realistic. For example on an AR lock the bolt back. This allows you to work the safety on and off and the trigger pull is more realistic than if you let the hammer drop. On a glock you can put a piece of note card in between the barrel hood and breach face. This pulls the pistol out of battery just enough to have a full length trigger pull. On DA/SA pistols you are kind of stuck with the DA pull unless you cock the trigger. On pistols with a hammer DA/SA, 1911, etc cut up a piece of a foam style ear plug and put it on the back of the slide over the firing pin. This will save a little wear on the firing pin, but it really makes it a lot quieter. If anyone is in the house with you they will thank you for muffling the incessant clicking noise of dry firing.
There may be others but Steve Anderson has a book “Refinement and Repetition, Dry fire drills for dramatic improvement” It is a great book that has dry fire drills and pages for logging your times.
-In the book mentioned above is one of my favorite drills. It is a reload drill. Start without a mag in the gun. On the buzzer draw a mag and just insert it into the magwell. This gives the most efficient practice for a reload. There doesn’t need to be a mag in the gun to start as long as you are remembering to hit the mag release. You can put one in there occasionally to make sure you are fully depressing the mag release but this saves you from picking up mags. On reloads, especially with pistols I have found that dummy rounds make a big difference. I found as I would start to push my speed the mags would sometimes get hung up on the feed lips. With a dummy round in the mag it will insert easier. If you push the drill farther you just integrate it with a target or trigger pull. You can take it all the way to a full el presidente drill.
A way I typically practice with timer, again from the book: I do a few warmups a few tenths of a second above my par time. Practice reps at par time. Then I push myself a tenth or possibly more below the par time. You will see that as you practice you start to get more and more of your reps at the below par time speed. This will then become your new par time.
-If you practice regularly and have a way to measure your performance you will see improvement.
