Dry fire training is probably the most cost-effective method of training one can invest in. All it requires is a gun, and a helping of common sense. You do not need ammunition. You do not have to pay for time at a range. At most all you need is your chosen gun, and a target you can tape on the wall, but the target is even optional. Dry fire allows you to master the basics of sight alignment, sight picture, and trigger control. These 3 skills are extremely important. Dry fire is a practice many do not take full advantage of. You can check out how dry fire training works here.

Going Dry

The problem with dry fire is that it’s boring. After about 15 minutes of dry fire, I’m more or less of watching TV and pulling the trigger. Slowing, and carefully pulling the trigger perfectly can get boring fast. Eventually, you are also going to hit a plateau and just be pulling the trigger to maintain. 

To attempt to make dry fire a little more exciting, a set of Dry Fire Training cards has been released. These cards are similar to the dry fire fit cards I wrote about last week. However, as you imagine these aren’t designed to keep you in shape. There are a few physical exercises in there to keep the heart rate up, but fitness is not the goal. Weapon’s manipulation is.

The cards focus on making you an overall better shooter. The cards do not just have you carefully pulling the trigger with your sights on target. You’ll do something different with every card. You’ll be practicing fixing different malfunctions. The cards will have you doing both speed reloads, and tactical reloads. There are 5 different classifications of cards. You have the basics, advanced, exercise + dry fire, low light, and complex motion + dry fire.

Dry Fire Training How To

The idea is simple. Shuffle the cards, and draw one. Do whatever task the card has printed on it. Do this for 15 minutes a day, and you’ll become a better shooter. You are likely to be more confident with your weapon.  Shooters using the cards will surely be more familiar with their weapons. 

My first go round I shuffled the cards and the first card I pulled was push-ups to failure and shooting drills. The card read practice shooting, malfunction drills, and reloads. The push ups made everything a little harder. My rapid heart beat and moderately heavy breathing made it difficult to aim. Even though I recovered the following drills were certainly more difficult due to fatigue.

The Test

The drills were interesting, and I certainly enjoyed the change for my dry fire practice. Working malfunctions and training in low light was certainly a different experience. The goal of these cards is to make you a better shooter in 21 days. So my plan is to go shoot a group tomorrow and save the target. I also plan to time my ability to fix malfunctions and do reloads. After that, I plan to do these exercises dry for the next three weeks. After three weeks of training I’m planning to re-test, and see if my skills have improved. I’ll do this every day for 15 minutes only. I’ll be using my CZ RAMI 2075 in 9mm. I will not live fire the pistol during the 21 days, so the only handling will be dry fire training after the initial grouping.