Chris Sajnog emphasizes the significance of incorporating dry fire practice.

Dry Fire vs Live Fire: Uncover Why Dry Fire Practice Prevails

In the topic of what is better in dry fire vs live fire, I’ll admit it: convincing you that dry fire is more effective than going to the range is a tall order. How in the world could NOT firing a gun make you a better shooter? Well, I’m up to the challenge, and to do it, I’m not even going to talk about dry fire – it’s too boring!

Wax on, wax off. Don’t forget to breathe.

Many years ago, when I first started learning Goju-Ryu karate, my sensei had a strange way of teaching this martial art. Much like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, before I was allowed to use any technique in sparring, he had me do the single move repeatedly until it was perfect. I didn’t have to wax any cars or paint any fences (although I did paint the inside of the dojo), but I did have to perform nothing but an upper block for six months before I was allowed to progress to a new move.

That’s right. I trained every day for six months to learn the perfect upper block. Often I was doing this for hours in his driveway because I would show up for training and he was not there, or so I thought. He would go to his neighbor’s house and watch me to see how long it would take before I gave up. Everything was a test. Of course, I never gave up.

Chris Sajnog and his sensei

Then one day, as I was practicing, my sensei started throwing punches at my face without forewarning. I easily blocked every punch he threw. Master that he was, he knew that by making me repeat the perfect block in practice I would be prepared for the real punch in life. And I was ready! Through his instruction, I had trained my joints and muscles to move along a single path so many times that they were subconsciously able to remember that path with amazing speed and ease. Through my training, I had mastered muscle memory.


Muscle Memory (a.k.a. Myelination)

Next in dry fire vs live fire, what most people (including me) call muscle memory is the process of myelination. Myelin is basically insulation that your body puts around your nerves. Repetition of motor skills builds myelin around the nerves responsible for your movements so that the next time you do a practiced movement, it can be faster, smoother, and easier. This happens slowly… but it DOES happen no matter what your movement.

The important point here is that if you are training incorrectly, you’re still building myelin around that erroneous pathway. Each time you do any motor skill the wrong way, you are reinforcing the wrong way to do something and it will be that much harder to learn the right way of doing that task later down the road. If, for example, my sensei had been throwing punches at me when I was trying to learn and perfect the single movement of the block, I would have been blocking slightly differently each time and there would have been no clear path to perfection.

To build myelin the fastest, your movements need to be flawless, but not necessarily fast. The best way to learn and reinforce motor skills is through slow, perfect practice. 

Chris Sajnog urges you to begin forging your way towards perfection.

Paving the Path to Perfection

With consistent, perfect practice, you are paving the path to perfection. Let’s say your goal was to eventually get from one side of a dense forest to the other as quickly and easily as possible, and you had time to train and prepare. How would you do it? How would you spend your valuable training time? Would you just keep running different patterns as fast as you could, seeing which route was the fastest? Or would you plot out the best course, remove obstacles along the way, and then pave the ground so the path is smooth and fast for future challenges?

Sure the first time you go down the wooded path, it will be slow moving and you may even need to backtrack a few times to find the best route. But each time you take the path, the route will be smoother and faster. Stay on the path long enough and you’ll be able to do it with your eyes closed! But take just one step off the path and you’re instantly back in deep brush. The key is to recognize what happened. All is not lost; you just need to get back on the path. Slow down and backtrack to where you went off course and you’ll be back up to speed.

The best way to learn and reinforce motor skills is through slow, perfect practice.

And This Has What to Do with Shooting?

Going to the range and just shooting to learn how to shoot is like trying to learn an upper block while someone is punching you in the face. Some people will eventually learn this way, but their skills are likely to be flawed (Flinch anyone?) and it will never lead to mastery. Still, others will find the whole thing hopeless and simply stop trying to learn.

If you want to be the best shooter, you need to learn without someone punching you in the face (gun no make bang, bang). You need to perfect your shooting skills before going to the range and having small explosions going off in your hands as you’re trying to learn. If you do, those explosions won’t distract you because you have cemented your path to perfection. As you’re starting off, you might feel like you’re learning slower than those who are burning through ammo on the range.

Don’t give in to these thoughts. Stick with your perfect practice, conserve your ammo for a later time and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you progress. You will soon be the one on the range not just pointlessly burning through your ammo but, instead, shooting with true skill, deadly accuracy, and impressive speed.

That’s right. On the range, you’ll encounter two types of people: those who amass expensive piles of brass and those who forge priceless pathways of myelin. So, that’s all for today. I hope you’ve learned about the advantages of dry fire vs live fire shooting practice and why dry fire training is the superior choice for precision and skill development. Which path are you paving?


 

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4 Comments

  1. Good to know as I was thinking I needed to buy thousands of rounds to shoot. This will help, along with front site focus.

  2. Chris,

    I’ve been working on fine tuning my kit over the last two years. I started playing airsoft at a local CQB facility as a way to get some great exercise, improve my muscle memory on mag changes while keeping training affordable. My question is now that I’m very comfortable with my kit and how it supports my primary I’m finding it challenging finding a good place for my secondary. I’ve tried the drop leg which always pulls on your belt and shifts while you run, I’ve tried on my chest rig with a Blackhawk Serpa which affects your prone not to mention some people get uneasy when you sweep them with a live gun while training, and I’ve tried a belt holster but my chest harness always hooks up on my secondary while I’m trying to draw. Where do you place your secondary while running full kit?

    Thanks,

    Derek

    1. Derek,

      Without actually seeing what’s going on I can offer a few suggestions:
      1. Try removing top strap on drop-leg and make it as high as possible. This keeps pistol from moving around.
      2. Find a platform to mount the pistol on your belt that cants the gun out. This will clear your gear.

      Hooyah,
      Chris

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