Myth or Reality? Scores in Live Fire Are Lower Than Dry Fire With MantisX

If you’ve taken your Mantis X3 or X10 Elite unit to the range to do some live fire drills, you may have noticed, and maybe even expressed some frustration that your scores on live fire drills were lower than what you have experienced in dry fire practice.  As a Mantis user, at the time of this writing for more than 6 years, I had experienced the same thing.  When I Googled it. I found many blogs and Reddit articles that talked about the lower live fire scores, so I just chalked it up to “well that’s normal”.  But should that be the norm?  Let’s explore why I don’t think that is the case and what you can look at changing to increase your live scores to meet your dry fire practice scores.

Get A Grip!

In dry fire it’s easy to say we are handing the gun in a similar manner like it has bullets in it, but in my experience I have found that most people do not grip the gun with the same pressure as they do when they know the real “bang” is going to happen.  To experiment with this I really began to focus on how much dominant and support hand pressure that I use in live fire and realized that I was not gripping with the same intensity during dry fire as I was in live fire.

Thus began the journey of more focused dry fire and implementing the same grip as I had when doing live fire.  The first thing you will find when you implement the same grip is that it’s hard to replicate your grip pressure in dry fire practice.  My hands, arms, and shoulders felt more tired quicker.  I could not dry fire with the amount of shots that I used to because I would wear out.  The result showed in my dry fire scores dropping 5 to 10 points from my normal average!  At that point, I realized I was onto something.

When you go to the range, how many shots do you typically shoot in a session?  For me, it was maybe 50 to 100, but with a break to reload as I would only use one 15 round magazine.  Thus, I rested my arms after 15 rounds each time for at least a minute to reload the magazine.  In dry fire, I was running 50 or more shots consecutively without a break, but getting great scores and not wearing out.  No wonder trying to run 50 shots with the same grip intensity as live fire was exhausting.  So I changed my dry fire routine to not shoot so many shots in a row so I could maintain that live fire grip.

Almost every drill within MantisX now has a drill setting in which you can set a “Repeat” and number of “Shots”, so that you can force a break in between groups of shots.  For example, instead of running 30 shots straight in Open Training, I will set repeats of 15 Shots to match what I would do at the range.  To load a 15 round magazine typically takes maybe a minute or two, so I force myself to reset at least a minute in between repeats, which helps me be able to maintain the grip pressures as I do at the live range.

Replicating Weight

I dug a bit deeper into why it’s harder to grip the firearm the same way in dry fire as it is in live fire.  Through some investigation, I realized that generally there is a significant weight difference between your firearm when it’s dry versus if it’s fully loaded for live fire.  The data is telling.  My go-to setup is a Heckler & Koch VP9 with a Holosun 507C optic.  Fully loaded with 124 grain 9mm ammo, the setup weighs 2 pounds 3 ounces.  I weighed my dry fire setup (same gun/optic but with an X10 Elite mounted on a MagRail) it only weighed 1 pound 8 ounces.  That is a difference of 11 ounces or nearly three quarters of a pound!  

In my opinion, that weight difference was significant.  I set out to solve that problem in hopes that it would “level the playing field” between dry and live and make my grip feel more natural to live fire.  I purchased some weighted dummy rounds and filled my dedicated dry fire magazine one short of the full capacity, and then topped the magazine off with a Tap Rack Trainer so that I could rack the slide without the dummy rounds being ejected out.  

With the weighted dummy rounds, I was able to get my dry fire setup to weigh 2 pounds, 1.2 ounces, which is less than 2 ounces different from what I shoot in live fire.  The added weight definitely makes dry fire different!

I’ve been running this setup for over 6 months now and I have found that it is easier in dry fire to replicate my standard live fire grip pressures on the gun with the added weight.  With these two changes, I started to see my dry fire scores creep back up to where I was before I started my journey in equalizing the scores across dry and live fire.  Something was still missing and causing my live fire scores to still be lower (albeit the difference was reduced).  

The Dreaded Anticipation

I continued to be curious and knew that recoil had something to do with the score difference.  I had purchased a green gas replica of my VP9, as well as used the Coolfire Trainer to try to replicate recoil in dry fire, but the directional force and intensity of the recoil are just not the same as what you experience with live fire and our brains know that.  We can more easily ignore that desire to push against the recoil even using those tools that replicate recoil.  Our conscious brain knows that it’s not going to go “bang” the same way as if we were shooting a live round, thus that missing element is the hardest piece to overcome, and that cannot be overcome in dry fire, although data shows we still input some of that movement into the firearm.  

In 2021, we analyzed the data from 10 million shots and if you review points 5 and 6, you can see that anticipatory push (typically low left for right handers) exists in both dry fire and live fire, it’s just more exacerbated in the live fire scores.  You can view your own live vs dry comparison chart by going into “HISTORY” and choosing the “COMPARE” charts, and then scroll down to the Trigger Control By Fire Type chart.  

I believe that is because the gun is truly going to go “BANG” and our conscious mind knows that and does something about it.  I mean, if we didn’t have the natural reflex to fight against something like that, we wouldn’t be at the top of the food chain, would we?  If you can see that push a tiny bit on your charts and Trace View in dry fire, it’s there even more in live fire!

This is where shooting a firearm crosses into a mental game over a physical game.  We all know that the gun won’t push us over and we won’t be thrown backwards with recoil of our standard pistol or rifle, so why does our mind still want to push against it?  The answer is, because it’s innate in us.  The only way to overcome that is to work on the mind and preoccupy that part of our mind with another task.  There’s many tricks out there, and ones that seem to work with many of my students is to have them count backwards from 100, say the alphabet backwards or hum a song when shooting.  That act forces the conscious mind elsewhere and can help curb that anticipation of the shot.

Another great drill to include into live fire to help you understand what anticipation or push feels like is to do the Ball and Dummy drill.  Have a friend load your magazines mixing in dummy rounds with live rounds so that you do not know when you will have “BANG” versus a “click”, and watch and feel for each shot so that when you hit a dummy round, you can see what your sights are doing, but most importantly feel the tension (anticipation) that you are inputting into the firearm.

This one thing itself is probably the hardest hurdle to overcome in equaling your dry fire scores in live fire, but there’s more to the mental game than just fixing the anticipation…it’s the internal and external pressures we feel while live firing.

Oh The Pressure!!!

Going to the range is fun, right?  I would say for most firearm owners that is the case, but even when something is fun, we set expectations upon ourselves to a standard.  That standard is defined in your mind, even if you don’t track progress or have a plan at the range.  Especially in an indoor or outdoor range where you might see other people’s targets, and people can view your targets while you are shooting.  As much as we don’t want to care, deep down inside, we probably do care.  Do we put our focus elsewhere when we have a target that we are shooting at?  Again, the mind is where this fix is at.  We should not care about anyone except ourselves.  We should not compare ourselves to anyone else, we are on our own journeys and are in different places of skill development from the people next to us or those who we watch and aspire to be on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok.  

As much as we don’t want to admit it, we put pressure on ourselves to perform.  You want your shots to go where you are aiming and when they don’t, we can become our own worst enemy with negative self-talk.  There are numerous studies and books written about how the best athletes work to overcome mental reactions, and it’s no different in the gun world.  One of the best books I can recommend to help with the mind game and how negative self-talk will actually degrade your skills is “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey.  

This book addresses that internal battle that we have and that is a skill that can be worked on in all parts of our lives, not just while we have a firearm in our hand and this is a skill that you can’t just learn from an instructor.  It’s an internal change that you must make and embrace and IT IS HARD.  I still struggle with this from time to time, but it is getting much better with each day to let that internal pressure go.  Just reframe how you talk to yourself and think, “Would I talk to my best friend or spouse this way?”  No way! 

We all have the capability to choose where each shot goes by applying the fundamentals correctly.  If the shot doesn’t go where we expected, we cannot go and mend the hole in the paper, or dig out the lead round from the berm to reload the casing to get it back!  It’s a “whoopsie”!  We need to leave the past in the past and focus on the next shot and talk to yourself in a positive manner of correction of how to get the shot to go where you want it to.  I know that self-talk happens in just about everyone because I see the negative head shake after the bad shot…from friends I’m shooting with, to my students, to strangers in the range, and even myself.

For example, let’s say you knew you pushed the firearm in anticipation of the recoil.  The positive conversation could look like “I am more successful when I keep consistent grip pressure on the firearm and allow the firearm to fire without adding unnecessary tension”, instead of us shaking our heads and demeaning ourselves that we aren’t worthy of that “good” shot.  See the difference?  Again, scientists have proven that positive affirmation and correction and a positive mindset will build skills, whereas negative correction does nothing but tear down.

Did it work???

For me, it did!  Implementing these things has worked.  It has been quite a journey and 6 years ago I just accepted that a 10 point difference is normal.  It is not something we should just accept.  I fully believe that your dry fire scores and live fire scores can mirror each other with some curiosity.  Identify why your dry fire looks different from your live fire.  It might include these things, or it might be some different things.  Take steps to identify and close that gap by implementing change. Question the why’s and don’t just settle for what everyone else is saying, and I believe that everyone can make their live fire and dry fire scores mirror each other consistently.