Best Dry Fire Exercises

It’s no secret that dry fire practice is a very effective tool in getting better with your firearm, but many people don’t know what to practice besides pressing the trigger.  Let’s cover some dry fire exercises that you can add into your routine, whether you are a beginner or an advanced shooter, and all it takes is your empty firearm, some time, and your dedicated focus to the task.

Dry Fire Practice Essentials

Are you brand new to the firearms world?  Dry fire may seem scary, or you may have read that you should never fire a gun without ammo in it.  We would recommend you read your owner’s manual, but for most centerfire pistols and rifles, pressing a trigger without any ammunition in the chamber will not harm or cause excessive wear to your firearm.  On the contrary, most rimfire pistols and rifles should not be dry fired due to the risk of the firing pin being damaged if it comes into contact with the chamber. 

Dry fire practice requires these setup steps to ensure safety for all occupants of your residence (and those outside).  All safety rules must be followed.  Determine the safest direction possible for dry fire.  Brick or concrete walls are best, but analyze what wall or area offers the safest direction to point your firearm.  Your firearm must be cleared, the chamber and magazine well physically and visually verified that all ammo has been removed.  Then remove all ammo and any loaded magazines from the room.  When you return to your room, verify your firearm is empty physically and visually one more time.

While dry fire is easier with tools like the MantisX, TitanX, BlackbeardX and Laser Academy, none of these are required for dry fire practice.  Having these tools will make your dry fire practice more meaningful to have the additional data that all of these products provide.

Another important point for dry fire practice is that it should not be done while doing other tasks.  Yes, that means turning the TV, audio book or podcast off.  Mindful practice is key to making dry fire exercises successful in cementing the skills you are striving for at the range in live fire.  Dry fire practice sessions do not need to be long!  If you can dry fire at least 3 days a week, 10 to 15 minutes a day, you will see skill improvement, as long as it is mindful practice.

Practice the Basics

Dry firing doesn’t mean that you are always pressing the trigger.  There’s no better way to work on your fundamentals and practice safe habits.  Safety is paramount, even in dry fire!  Dry fire gives you the opportunity to observe your gun handling methods, whether you are working from a table or the holster.  If your actions pose a risk to safety, make corrections.  You don’t even need a partner, just set up your phone while doing your dry fire and in reviewing the video, ask yourself a few questions revolving around the rules of safe gun handling:

1. At any time did the muzzle of your gun cross anything that you would not want to destroy, including your own body parts like fingers or your hand?

2. At any time did you place your finger on the trigger when you were not engaging a target?

3. Are you switching the firearm from hand to hand, or keeping the firearm in your primary hand only to manipulate? Switching the gun from hand to hand introduces more risk of getting a finger on the trigger.  Unless there is a physical need to switch guns from your primary to your support hand, it’s recommended to always have control of the firearm in your primary hand when loading and unloading.

Are you struggling to get a consistent grip on demand?  Another exercise that doesn’t involve pressing the trigger is to work with your firearm from a table, then pick up the firearm and build your grip.  Then analyze it by visually inspecting your hand and thumb placement.  Does it feel like it should and look as it should?  If not, identify what needs to change and fix it while making a mental note to correct on future repetitions.  Then set the firearm down, and repeat the process being mindful to what does not happen naturally and work on repeating this drill to get the same grip each and every time.  This is also a great drill to work on trigger finger discipline when handling the firearm.  At any time did the finger enter the trigger guard or get near the trigger when you picked up or set down the firearm?

Classic Dry Fire Drills

There are some classic dry fire exercises that people commonly use to focus on trigger press and understand what is happening to their sights during the trigger press.  The first one is the “Wall Drill”.  The Wall Drill helps you understand the muzzle movement that is occurring when you press the trigger.  Ultimately we want to press the trigger without introducing any movement into the firearm.  Find a blank wall, press the gun out about 1 one inch from the wall where you can clearly see and focus what is happening to the front sight or the red dot when you press the trigger.  The goal is to not see the sights (or your red dot) move when the trigger is pressed.

Another dry fire exercise that goes along with understanding what your gun is doing during the trigger press is the “Visual Trigger Break and Reset Drill”.  Instead of the focus on the sights, it requires you to rotate the gun so that you can see the movement of the trigger and understand where your wall is and how much pressure you need to input for the trigger to break for that specific firearm.  Then once the trigger breaks, hold it to the rear and cycle the slide to reset the trigger.  Finally slowly let out the trigger to understand where its reset point is.  

This drill will help you learn your trigger.  Consider doing this drill with both your primary hand and with your support hand.  It’s also important to begin to feel the trigger and all of its nuances and not just view it.  You could also close your eyes when doing this drill to help focus on feel versus sight.  Learning your trigger helps you limit the movement of the muzzle during the trigger press.

One of the most common dry fire drills is called “The Penny Drill” or “The Dime Drill” and it does require one additional piece of hardware (either a penny or a dime) and maybe a partner to help out.  The partner will be helpful because for each shot the penny or dime must be balanced on the front sight of the firearm.  It doesn’t matter if you are using iron sights or a red dot, this drill still works the same.  This drill gamifies the challenge of keeping the pistol as still as possible during the trigger press.  The goal is to be able to press the trigger without the coin falling.  Want to make this even harder?  Balance an empty casing on the front sight on end!

Holster Work

Dry fire practice is the best way to work towards feeling comfortable drawing, and re-holstering a firearm.  This is also an exercise that does not require pressing the trigger, but focuses on the process of drawing a pistol and returning it to the holster.  Again, this is where recording yourself and doing analysis on your own videos is a great learning tool for analyzing your drawstroke for unnecessary movement and what portion is maybe not as efficient as it could be.  

If you have a Mantis X10 Elite, the Holster Draw Analysis drill helps to identify the phases of the drawstroke where you might be inefficient or be inconsistent with and you can pair that with any recorded video to visualize the drawstroke in line with the 5 tracked phases of the draw.

Don’t forget to analyze for safety!  Ask the same 3 questions as stated above.  This is especially important for both the draw and the reholster of a firearm.  

If you aren’t quite ready for working out of the holster, but want to work skills that directly relate to drawing from the holster?  You can dry practice the last half of the drawstroke with the Extended Prep and Press Drill. Start with a good grip on the gun where you would typically join your hands on the gun and extend the firearm towards the target.  Work on getting your sights on the target, prepping the trigger during pushing out to the target, and pressing the trigger without disturbing the sights.  Target size is completely up to you, but the goal is for your sights or your optic reticle to be within the target when the trigger breaks.

If you have Laser Academy, the bullseye target is great for this drill as it gives you an 8 inch circle and will show if your shot hit within the circle or not.  With the MantisX or TitanX, you could run this as part of a Compressed Surprise Break drill to give you the amount of time it took you from the beep to make the shot and shot score to show how much your sights moved when the trigger broke.  The time it takes you will be very dependent on the size of your target.

Get Creative!

There is no limit to what you can do in dry fire practice.  Any drill or skill can pretty much be broken down into some method of dry fire drills to practice.  Let’s take the El Presidente drill for example.  If you have a Mantis TitanX, you may have noticed that the El Presidente drill is a new Dynamic Drill available only for the TitanX.  The drill requires a 180 degree turn, a draw from the holster, multiple shots on target, multiple target transitions (both right and left), and a reload.  

Let’s break it down to separate dry fire exercises.  Set up 3 scaled silhouette targets like the IDPA or IPSC target.  You can download and print these Laser Academy targets here.  Printing them on regular letter-sized paper, to simulate 10 yards, you only need a distance of 3 yards.

Turn 180 degrees and draw to the first shot. - If you don’t have a Mantis product that would give you the time, download a free shot timer app on your phone or tablet and set a par time of 3 seconds.  Work your turn and draw the first shot. Be honest with yourself, did the sights remain on the target when you pressed the trigger?  If you can accomplish this easily, then push your par time down.

Multiple shots with target transitions - Starting on the far left target, presented at target, press the trigger 2 times, transition to the middle target, take 2 shots, transition to the far right target, take 2 shots.  Even if you do not have a resetting trigger, pressing a dead trigger still gives you good practice reps and you can still verify through your sights if they stayed on target.  Did you swing past targets and come back to make shots?  Make sure to transition with your eyes first, then the firearm.

Reload drill - You can practice either a in battery reload (start with your slide closed) or an out of battery reload (start with your slide open and close the slide after the reload).  Start out at one of the end targets.  Set a par time of 4 seconds and on the beep, drop the magazine in the firearm and reload (close the slide if open), and take a shot.  Did you make the time reliably and did the sights stay on target with the trigger press after the reload?  If so, reduce the par time.

The Sky’s The Limit

Hopefully you can see the power of dry fire exercises, ones that are common to ones that you come up with.  It’s a great way to focus on specific tasks to refine your skills on the road to improvement to meeting your training goals.  It’s also much cheaper than expending live ammo, and saves you time and gas driving to the range and back.  Dry Fire is ultimately the best, most focused method, and convenient practice you can do!