Can't get to the range? Try this...
As most of my readers know, I am a strong advocate of the practice of “dry-firing/dry-practice”. Some of the particular techniques I like to employ are:
1) With empty pistol up on target, have a buddy balance a penny on your front sight post. Maintaining sight picture/sight alignment, press the trigger until release – repeat five times (if the penny falls during the cycle, it zeros you out and you start from scratch).
2) Conduct the above with strong hand with support grip, strong hand only and support hand only.
3) Walk while maintaining the sight picture/penny setup described above. Execute a smooth trigger press when your buddy calls it at random (while in motion). Same rules apply – drop the penny, start over.
4) From the holster, draw and maintain steady SP/SA while dry firing. The goal here is to be as fast as you can while maintaining zero movement in the SP/SA through the “firing” cycle. Follow the drawing principals of “Fast to the holster – deliberate to set the grip – fast to the target – deliberate sights and press”.
5) Walk (no penny this time) maintain SP/SA and press, conduct IA , reacquire SP/SA and press – continue this until the end of your available walking lane, conduct 40 pushups, repeat the process. You can mix it up with whatever exercise you wish, you are just trying to elevate the heart rate and induce some physical stress. Remember the walking principals for shooting are - put more flex into your legs, let them absorb the up/down motion so that it is largely isolated below your torso. Take shorter steps, rolling your feet from heel to toe. Try to narrow your path to mitigate side to side motion in your gait, for example, visualize walking on a length of 2X6 lumber lying on the ground.
If you are struggling with the whole walking and shooting thing, and many do, try this: at work or at home, fill a coffee cup to the brim, hold it out in front of you and walk through the house without spilling…….do it often. Adjust your body mechanics until you can pull this off with repeated success. If you want to induce some more stress into it….fill the cup with grape juice and practice over your wife’s favorite carpet.
We used to assume a prone position and have a partner balance a dime on a cleaning rod placed in the muzzle of our M4s.
ReplyDeleteIf it stayed on the rod through a trigger pull, it was considered a "go".
AP
I'm guessing someone could attach a laser pointer to their barrel with rubber bands or something and have someone push on their muzzle to simulate recoil to see if they return to target after. The only thing that bothers me about that is that someone would be muzzling themselves to push on your barrel, since you'd be using a real rifle. Even if it is unloaded.
ReplyDeleteApparently because of the use of body armor, the army has been teaching men not to hitch up their trigger leg when shooting prone, so as to make themselves a smaller target and not expose unarmored legs to shooting. But then, I think their tactic has become to just put a lot of rounds out there to keep heads down, rather than to actually hit anything, so perhaps marksmanship has become a lost art there. I guess they forgot about the rout at Merriam's Corner. That's what you get when they don't teach real history in school anymore.