My New Drill

After about 6 months of shooting I'm doing OK with the 22. Approaching Expert percentages in practice. Starting my first league shooting in the fall. Added a 45 a few weeks ago and it's like learning to shoot all over again. I'm sure many beginners notice how easy it is to shoot "tens" in dry fire practice in the living room and how it's much harder at the range. For tomorrow's range session I'm going to put one round in a magazine, put it in the gun without racking the slide. Cock the hammer manually and shoot a few "tens" dry. Then rack the slide and try to duplicate the hold and trigger pull. Kind of like a ball & dummy drill in reverse.

Any thoughts?

I still like the ball and dummy best.

I have 5 dummy rounds made up and marked with red so I can separate them.  I add 5 live rounds to the 5 dummies and close my eyes mix them up and load two mags with 5 rounds each.  Then slow fire practice at 25yards.

- Dave

I do this every slow fire target. I dry fire until I get 2 good ones in a row, rack the slide and load a magazine (in that order). Dry fire one more time, rack the slide and "dry fire" again, except this time a bullet comes out. If everything goes well I continue with the rest of my SF shots. Usually it takes 3 dry fire shots, sometimes it takes many more to get it right.

If I have a problem keeping the same trigger pull when dry firing and live firing, I alternate dry/live firing in practice. This is a very good training tool to drill a consistent trigger pull and to emphasize the importance of every single shot. Traditional ball and dummy is a diagnostic tool. It is excellent if the shooter doesn't know (or doesn't believe) s/he is jerking the trigger or as a check from time to time.

A month or so ago this thread would've not made any sense to me but now it does.  There's no question that I jerk the trigger AND anticipate the recoil by applying pressure in the opposite direction of it.  A dry fire routine in any form, especially just before shooting a live round definitely helps me.