If you're anything like me you love firearms and have a very strong need to get better end progress your skills, but rising ammo costs have prevented you from going to the range as much as you used to. Ammo prices over the past few years have gone up anywhere from 30% to 100% or more per round. Inevitably this means that many of us are not getting as much trigger time as we want or need to be getting in order to improve our skills; at that point the choice becomes to either find a more cost-effective way of training or to allow our skills to atrophy.
This is where dry-fire practice comes in. For those of you unfamiliar, dry-fire practice is basically shooting without the ammunition. You go through all the steps of taking a shot, but without having the weapon actually loaded and setting off live rounds. The benefit of this is of course that it costs you nothing but time, provided you already own a weapon. You can practice and practice to your heart's content and never have to spend a dime on ammo costs.
Dry fire practice even has some benefits over live fire practice; it lets you as a shooter focus on each and every part of the mechanics of shooting. Are you slapping the trigger or tightening your grip as the trigger breaks? Since there's no recoil to cover it up, you'll be able to see it happen during dry fire. Another benefit of dry fire training is that it can be done basically anywhere and any time. Most commonly this means being able to practice from the comfort of your own home, without having to drive to the shooting range (and in a world where a gallon of gas costs 6 dollars, that's nothing to sneeze at!)
As effective a tool as dry fire training is, it can be made more effective with the use of any number of training aids. These systems take the benefits of dry fire practice and allow us to extrapolate a hypothetical shot resulting from each trigger press. The system that I prefer is the Mantis X2.
The Mantis X2 system is a dry fire training aid that works through this sensor that attaches to any 1913 rail section, or to specially made magazine base plates. It communicates wirelessly with your phone or tablet via Bluetooth. It tracks the movement of the weapon during the trigger press, and assigns you a score out of 100. The mantis can also show you your hits on a simulated target, as well as recordings of your weapon movement from a few moments before the trigger break through to a few moments after the trigger break. Mantis can also "see" what you're doing wrong and offer advice to help correct it. To top it all off, the Mantis comes with multiple in-app exercises that push you to build your shooting skills in a number of different shooting drills and compete with your friends through the app.
The Mantis has been a godsend for me in the past few years. I have put thousands of reps on the system and have watched my live-fire shooting improve remarkably as a result. This doesn't even begin to mention the almost literal pile of money it has saved me in ammo costs since I've had it. It's just so effortless to put in 50 or 100 reps at night before dinner or before bed that it has become part of my routine.
So there you have it: the benefits of dry-fire practice and how incorporating a training aid can make it significantly more effective. If you're interested in the Mantis, check it out and pick one up for yourself at Brownells. Also, don't forget to check out the PT YouTube channel, where you'll find more practical content just like this. Until next time, stay safe!