MantisX Pistol/Rifle App Tips Every Shooter Should Know

Whether you just got a MantisX, or you have owned one for years, there are some lesser known features within the Pistol/Rifle App that can make your training easier and give you a richer training experience.  Let’s jump in and talk about features that are often overlooked within the Mantis Pistol/Rifle App.

Training Schedule Notifications

Let’s face it, remembering to train with our busy schedules is difficult!  Within the app you can create a Training Schedule located in the SETTINGS tab, but did you know that you can also create device notifications to remind yourself to practice?  We recommend setting up your shot count goal and days you intend to train, which also correlates to the shot goals located at the top of the HISTORY tab.

At the bottom of the Training Schedule screen, you can add custom training reminders so that your device can prompt you to train with a notification on set days and times.  First, make sure notifications are enabled for the Mantis app within your device settings (Android, iOS).  You can have multiple reminders set up, even different times on different days.  Make sure that you set these up on the device you have with you the majority of the time, like your cell phone, as the reminders are device specific.  Setting up a reminder on your tablet will not trigger notifications on your cell phone and vice versa.

Audio Feedback

Do you tend to check your score or look for the direction of a shot on your device each time you press the trigger?  This can take you out of the flow of your practice and takes extra time during your practice.  Enabling the “Speech” feature within the Audio Feedback screen in the SETTINGS tab makes the app speak to you with every shot.  You can choose to have just the score announced, or you can choose to have the direction of the shot, or you can have both!  If you also would like the audible “ready position” (if applicable) and “standby” commands, there is an Announce Ready option that you can also toggle on or off.

Another great feature within Audio Feedback is the ability to get audible or visual feedback on the cant of your firearm during a drill.  Enabling the audio and/or visual options will give you the option to set your target cant (or your ideal cant of your firearm) up to +/- 60 degrees and set an allowance range of up to +/- 30 degrees before the audio or visual cue is given that the cant is not within the allowed range.  This is helpful if you are working to keep your gun horizontal while shooting.

Audible vs Visual Start signal

Have you noticed that with the drills that require capturing time or with a par time set that it’s a beep that starts the drill?  A timer with a beep is commonly used in competition and in classes when running live fire drills, but is that realistic to self-defense in the real world?  Most likely the “go” signal in a defensive incident is going to be visual cues, not an audible beep.  You may have noticed that with the start of any timed drill the screen will also flash white with the word “GO” along with the beep.  Consider turning down your volume on your device, and you now have only a visual start signal.

Want to test the difference in reaction time between the audible and visual start signal?  Try the Compressed Surprise Break drill with using the beep only, and with using the flash of the screen only and you can see your average reaction time difference visually vs audibly.  It may surprise you that you are quicker with the audible beep!

Setting Buzzer Delay and Par Times

Do you have times where you are running a drill and the time span in between the beeps (or buzzer)  isn’t long enough or is too long?  You can easily adjust the time the app gives you to get ready for the next beep by adjusting the Buzzer Delay time.  This can be changed globally within the SETTINGS tab, under the Advanced Settings screen.  There are two distinct Buzzer Delay settings.  One is for regular drills and one is specifically for reload drills.  Both have a random range of 3 seconds that cannot be changed, but you can choose how long you want to reset before the “standby” prompt.  Move the respective slider bar to the amount of seconds you want to recover before the random timer starts for the beep.  This can also be changed within the drill settings for the specific drill that you are currently using.

Another tip to delay the next start beep is when your drill has a specific Ready Position set.  The ready position screen will direct you to the direction and degree that the firearm needs to be pointed in before it will move to the standby prompt and when the red line begins to fill in, the firearm is in the correct position. Just ensure your firearm is not in the required ready position for the drill and the “standby” prompt will not show until the firearm reaches the ready position.  This is great if you need some extra time over the normal delay to get reset.

If you are running Holster Draw Analysis and you flub your draw or you choose to not press the trigger, the app has a default par time of 7 seconds before it moves to the next shot, meaning the drill will not reset until the par time of 7 seconds has elapsed if the trigger is not pressed.  This par time can be modified in the Drill Settings, just change the Par Time for the drill to be a second or two longer than your average draw time.  For example, if you have a 2 second draw, set the par time to 4 seconds so that it would still capture a draw time over 2 seconds, but would reset at 4 seconds if there has not been a trigger press.  This concept applies to other drills as well, if you feel that any drill is too long or short on the repeat, check out the Drill Settings to customize it.

Drill Customization

Many MantisX users tend to just practice with the drills listed in the app as is, but the real magic is customizing the drills to make your practice repeatable and easier.  For example, you want to practice doing 20 shots in Open Training, and would like the app to track if your scores were above an 85.  You can just run the Open Training drill and hit STOP when 20 shots have been reached, but that means you are watching your device to know how many shots you have done. 

Customizing drill settings allows you to control some parameters and can make your training easier.  Go into Drill Settings, which is the cogwheel in the drill screen, and you can see what settings can be changed for a drill.  Most drills will allow you to set a shot count.  For the example above, the shot count slider can be set to 20 shots.  There is also a passing score option, and set that to 85.  You also might want to track the customized settings you used within the Notes option once a drill is started or immediately after completing the drill.

With these settings the drill will automatically stop after 20 shots, and the Session Overview screen will show the total of how many shots were below the passing score set and the Score Summary screen will visibly show which shots failed to meet the passing score.

   

Another key Drill Setting is the Repeat function.  Drills that require a beep to start and time shots have default repeats built in, but on many of these drills you can adjust the number of repeats.  For example, Compressed Surprise Break defaults to 10 shots, which is 10 repeats of one shot.  Some find it’s tiring to do 10 shots with this drill so you can drop the number of repeats to what you are comfortable with.  And just to reiterate, a complete repeat looks like this:  shot or par time end → ready position (if applicable) → buzzer delay → standby → beep.

If you have a TitanX or a BlackbeardX or using a MantisX with anything that allows multiple trigger presses without racking the slide, using shot counts and repeats is valuable on drills like Open Training.  You can set your shot count, and then repeat that entire shot count again without having to restart the drill.  Let’s say the drill requires firing 3 shots from the low ready position to an A zone.  Once all repeats are completed, the Score Summary screen will show the average score and time overall and for each repeat.  Note that the breakout by repeats is only on regular drills at this time and does not show on dynamic drills.

The Drill Settings screen is also where you can customize the magazine capacities for TitanX on some drills, forcing reloads when the digital capacity is exhausted.  This allows you to replicate having to do emergency reloads just like you would on the live range.  The magazine count setting will display only when a TitanX is connected to the app.

Zooming in on Trace View

One of the big benefits of MantisX technology is that you can see your actual muzzle movement on the Trace View screen, but sometimes we have a shot that we cannot see the yellow trace as well as we want to on higher scoring shots.  You have two options to help with that!

When in the Trace View screen, you can use two fingers to pinch and expand to zoom in or pinch closed to zoom out on the trace.  It’s important to know that two fingers must be on the screen, or you may accidentally swipe back to other screens.  With two fingers on the screen, you can also move around the trace in case the entire trace is not visible.

If you are commonly using the pinch zoom in/out method, you might want to consider changing how the Trace View displays for each shot.  In the SETTINGS tab, under Advanced Settings you will find a Trace View Autozoom option.  If you turn on that setting, the screen will automatically zoom in so that you can see as much of the trace as possible on the screen without pinch zooming in and out on the trace.  You still can apply the pinch and zoom method if you want an even closer up view of the trace for a shot.

   

Want to learn more?

Maybe you knew some of these tips, and some maybe not.  The MantisX Pistol/Rifle app has so many settings that you can work with to make the app work best for your training plan.  If you want to really dig in and learn more about every setting, feature and drill within the app, consider taking the MantisX Mastermind course.  It’s over 8 hours of self-paced video learning that covers it all, and it gives you access to a weekly live question and answer session where you can bring up questions or learn more about how others are using the app for their training.  

Whether you enroll in the course or not, we hope this article helps highlight a few lesser known features and helps you with a more integrated experience with your MantisX, BlackbeardX or TitanX and the Pistol/Rifle app.  Keep on training!