Practice makes things permanent. If you practice correctly you become a good shooter.
I’ve been using this book (it’s more like log book with dry fire scenarios) along with LASR software (so no needs for buying targets). If you are persistent enough you will see your skills difference once you finish this book. 
Yes, great books. Steve Andersons stuff isn’t bad either. I started drying firing with Andersons stuff and at the time was shooting IDPA. It took me 3 months to make Master in IDPA with a revolver just dry firing every night.
I think Ben’s stuff is more complete and well rounded, it took a while but I’ve make GM in USPSA with a significant amount of my training being dry. I’ve never shot more than 15k rounds in a year, which really is a fairly low round count for a competitive shooter.
In my Defensive Shooting World it is a pretty good round count. And you are not alone… I’ve never shoot more that 15K per year as well… however I’m close to this number.
But coming back to dry fire practice - I’ve tried to calculate how many dry fire shots per year comes through my firearms… and 40K - 50K seems to be a valid number.
I didn’t realize this till this moment 
Perhaps that’s the reason my firearms never fails during live fire, once they are so hard exploited running dry. 
I always wondered how many times I pulled the trigger in dryfire a week. It’s so hard to guess.
So about 2 years ago I decided to work on rifle shooting and shooting PCC in uspsa. So I bought one of those Mantis black beards. They claim the battery is good for 100k rounds. The batter lasted me about 3 months. Dryfiring twice a day.
Maybe the batter life is off. But recently I’ve started playing with that AceVR thing to spice up my dryfire. I’ve been running that about 2 months and it tracks your round count. I’m sitting at 87k rounds fired in VR. It’s not at all crazy for me to shoot 1k rounds before I leave for work in the morning and another 1k before bed. On top of that 87k I’ve also done some regular dryfire with my real gun.
If I were to speculate I’ve been dryfiring for 10 years at different levels of intensity and typically only maybe 8-9 months out of the year. I take the winter off from training. There have been years I go 12 months straight but breaks are good. Ball park it at 45k a month, x8 months would be a easy 360k a year. 10 years add a zero so 3.6 million.
Holy $h!t, I did not put that together until right now. That’s pretty ridiculous. I guess I like training. lol
Edit…got me thinking about what live fire numbers might look like.
Live fire I probably average 10k a year. Early on being much less, then ramping up to 12-13 or so. More recently dropping to maybe 6-8 a year. 15 years of that. 150k rounds maybe. I will not math how much money that is.
Those numbers are telling how much we value our training. People don’t pay attention how many times they press the dry trigger. For me this is more important than sending the round down range.
I’m attending a lot of 6h - 7h classes where we shoot less than 200 live rounds. 75% of range time is dry firing. And final results are even better than practicing everything with live ammo.
Much like others, I run the Mantis X10. I love the tool and it’s helped a lot! Highly recommend! And…you get a 10% discount by being a member of USCCA. I pair the Mantis with a Glock/Umarex 19 Gen 3 BB gun for a lot of training. The trigger resets on the BB gun even without CO2. Only thing is this one does not blowback. There is a Glock 17 clone that will blowback (with CO2). I got the BB gun from Midway. Works out pretty well because my primary EDC is a Glock 19.
That’s pretty awesome. It’s good to see more people are embracing dryfire and really getting just how much you can do with it.
Guys we all need to stop overcomplicating our lives. And dry fire practice is not a new idea by a long shot.
Now, I love laser systems, toys and gadgets as much as any other guy but…
I’ve done probably tens of thousands of trigger presses dry firing using nothing but a 1” orange target dot that I pasted on the wall in my office as my aiming point. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten 20-50 trigger presses while listening in on a conference call. Basically a daily routine for me.
Col. Jeff Cooper used to keep an Officer sized 1911 as a paperweight on his desk, and he would pick it up and do 10 perfect dry fire trigger presses routinely throughout the day. I read that and decided that was a great habit. And it has served me well.
I agree, you don’t need to spend any money on fancy things to dry fire. Though as mentioned above I still recommend Steogers books to really understand what can be done in dryfire.
A trigger control drill I really like is using a timer set to a delay, hit the start button then aim at a spot on target, My finger will be just off the face of the trigger. At the beep, quickly pull through the trigger and release quickly. Basically slap the trigger. Note what the sights do. Ideally they don’t really move, the timer adding that urgency makes it harder. Pay attention to what your hand does and how everything feels. Repeat the drill next time you’re at the range.
That’s about the only specific trigger control drill I do dry or live for that matter.
There’s nothing overcomplicated.
Some of us has enough self discipline to just pickup the handgun and do dry fire anytime at home.
But there are a lot of people who need some kind of motivation or help to do it.
Books and videos are great for this.
If you don’t know how to properly dry fire you look for any help.
The goal is to practice dry as much as possible using any help, any method, as long as it’s done correctly.
And I’d add sometimes new gizmos are motivating and will get people practicing. Same with new guns, I’ve seen that a lot. Guy gets new gun, dry fires a bunch goes to the range a bunch with it. Says “man I shoot this gun so much better then ____” …Of course he does now he’s practicing lol.
I’ve been playing with this AceVR thing, it’s expensive but I think it’s been worth it. It’s fun, I’m training regularly and I can even jump on line with a buddy that lives 4 hours away and we can train together and push each other. I think it’s a good training aide.
Oh I absolutely agree that anything that will motivate someone to practice correctly and frequently is a good thing and like I said I’m not putting down laser systems and apps. They are excellent tool!!!
As a matter of fact I find that nothing shows you how crappy you trigger press is like a dancing laser 
But some folks take the lack of fancy equipment as an excuse to put it off, when we’ve been doing it for a long time balancing a dime on the front sight through a trigger press. A drill I spent MANY hours perfecting as a young man. That’s all.
But I’ve taught many to shoot correctly in a class room with a SIRT gun 
For sure, when I started dry firing back in like 2012-2013 I bought a few snap caps and cut out targets from cardboard boxes and taped them to the wall. Then I got after it.
I never did the balance a coin on the gun, but I remember people talking about it. Didn’t seem to align with my goals.
It’s actually the equivalent of watching how much your red dot dances on the electronic target when you press the trigger. You goal is zero movement through press and follow through. That’s what makes you accurate.
Modern 1911s and other guns tend to have flat relatively fat front sights so they are perfect for this exercise. If you place (centered and balanced) a coin over the sight and press the trigger and the coin does not fall off the gun you had a perfect trigger press.
My first mentor challenged me to this. Do it every day for just 10 flawless repetitions and you are done. But if the coin falls during the set, you start from 1 again.
IT REALLY WORKS!!! Nowadays I could do it all day long because thousands of repetitions years ago built the right technique into my brain.
We all need to remember, practice does NOT make perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect!!!
I know most of shooters use all the new fancy gadgets for dry fire. It does work - that’s awesome.
I’m using old date school. Empty casing, coin, bowl with water give me more visual data than MantisX.
Laser cartridge and laser target / software are the only new add-ons that helps me to improve.
It just seems like such a PIA to setup lol. Really I do similar, with a red dot it’s vary easy to see tiny movement in your sights. So just aiming the gun and pulling the trigger and being honest with yourself about what you see is the same. The the dot move? The drill I mentioned above, (use timer, aim gun, at beep slap trigger) the end goal is the same just the process is a little different.
“perfect practice makes perfect” I’m of a different mindset here. I think in shooting there really is no perfect. But I come at shooting from the practical shooting aspect where I want to be fast and accurate. In that arena there is always room to be faster and/or more accurate. Here I see a lot of benefit in pushing beyond what I can do, making mistakes and seeing my technique break then trying to fix it. My practice runs are really never perfect.
Occasionally I take that too far and go setup something to do in practice that’s so hard I fail repeatedly and leave feeling like I’m terrible at shooting. It’s a fine line, and hard to balance. But you gotta push past your cofort zone to ever find your true potential.
If your sights are not suitable for balancing a coin you can balance a .22 brass in the slide. When you get proficient with it balanced in the rim you can try it inverted (which makes it top heavy). Good shooting!