When dry fire training, how long during a session are you training? I think about when say weight training, overtraining has a negative impact so I figure that’s probably the same thing here. I’ve been focusing a good chunk of my sessions on sight picture/trigger control with a target and laser. Sometimes I do a couple hours 3,4 shots….sometimes admittedly I get frustrated and Im done within 30 mins. What’s the sweet spot some of you have found?
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Weight lifting usually begins with a beginner training routine that exercises the entire body each session. The muscles get stronger over time; to a point the lifter is stressing the muscles beyond what the body can recover from between workouts and instead of moving forward, they plateau, or maybe even move backward. This is over training. To provide more recovery time, they change to a split routine, exercising upper body one day, and lower body another. Long enough on that, and they change to a 4 day split, then change up their 4 day split, and so forth.
Your dry fire training could be considered similar; a beginner training routine focuses mainly on trigger pull to learn to avoid pulling the shot off target. Once that is engrained into muscle memory, just like the weight lifter, the dry fire training needs to move up into another category. It can now expand into additional training – draw from the holster, aim, and shoot. Instinctive shooting can be added after that, or magazine swaps, or shooting while moving, drawing and shooting from a seated position, and a plethora of skills can be developed that most live fire ranges will not allow you to do. So yes, I agree, dry fire gets boring real quickly if you are not learning new skills as you go. BTW, I’m not saying nobody needs to practice trigger pull, if I don’t have time for anything else, then that is what I still do.
Still on the weight lifting theme, I like to add dry fire training between sets while weight lifting. It adds a bit of fatigue factor to the training. I do this in my home gym, your mileage may vary if your gym doesn’t allow it 
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Train with a plan. Just pulling out your weapon and doing half dozen drills will soon become tedious. First, identify where/what you want to improve. Next, write down what dry fire skills will help you the most. Then, for each practice session write down (I use a 3x5 card) what drill(s) you will use and the objective(s) you want to achieve. Remember, almost everything revolves around either accuracy or speed! You should be using a shot timer. Run the drills you wrote down. Next - and most importantly - measure your degree of success. Modify your next training session plan accordingly. Since you are probably training at home, and you are not shootimg live ammo, there is no reason to make your sessions overly long or difficult. Train to your strengths.
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Single digits of minutes for me. And on the low end of that.
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10 minutes max.
It’s not about how long single session takes, it’s about persistence and consistency.
This: 10 min x 7 days = 70 minutes will give more than this: 70 min x 1 day = 70 minutes
If I’m trying to correct something, I extend dry firing to 15 - 20 min. But 99% of that time is slow motion, to make movements perfect. Remaining 1% is a normal speed to find out if I’ve improved.
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i agree with Jerzy and Larry130. I will train for 5 minutes at drawing from concealment. The next day I train with target acquisition for 5 minutes. The next day I will practice my point shooting for 5 minutes.
Just like having a leg day or core day at the gym. When I am at the range shooting targets and I find I am lacking in an area then I will add this task at home with dry fire drills. Working on the muscle memory of the tasks at hand will help me to maintain these drills properly and improve my skills.
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Mines go for about an hour a few times a week since I have laserlyte and use the free version of mantis laser Academy app.
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I really like the MANTIS system but it only tells you where the sights are when the gun is fired and it is really important to clear and safe the gun and remove live ammo from the area yes you use your gun and get used to your trigger
I train until I start getting sloppy. Don’t want to train bad habits. All depends how I feel 10 min- 2hrs.
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I’ve looked at that one but I ended up going with Laserhit. I might get the mantis for range days
Loving the input all! Sometimes I can’t tell if my focus on the front sight is bad, Im doing too many/too little shots or I’ve overdone it. For example, 1 day my groupings (on the laserhit) pretty good, the next day it’s like Ive never held my handgun before. Or when doing a 4 shot, I have 3 good 1 wth shot, maybe 2 good 2 bad. When I say “bad” I’m talking out in the 8 zone usually high or say a 10, 10, 9, 8 high. I don’t do much 5 shot anymore as that leads to frustration and quick fatigue in the arms.
