Rob Pincus

Dryfire Practice With A Training Partner

Rob Pincus
Duration:   10  mins

Description

Claude Werner and Rob Pincus demonstrate a training session for dryfire practice with a handgun.

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2 Responses to “Dryfire Practice With A Training Partner”

  1. Whatwuzzat

    Awesome video. I will be checking out the site for more.

  2. Frank E. Ritter

    Very good! I learned a lot.  Thanks

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. How's the practice session going Claude? You know, it's going really well. I had a couple of good learning opportunities and I'm really enjoying getting some practice in. Well, I think it's time for me to get some of those learning opportunities too.

Great. Like one of the things I'm gonna do, of course, this is a first time for me running through your drills with your methodology. And of course, for those of you seeing this at home for the first time, if you've been watching the series and following the methodology of Combat Focus, and things that we do in our reloads and integrating the flinch on presentation from the holster, of course, we want to integrate those and I'll be integrating those into my drill. If that's not part of your practice, if you're part of another system or another approach to firearms training, or use other mechanical techniques, that's irrelevant. The methodology that Claude has set up for dry fire practice is so you can practice when you can't get to the range, when you don't have ammo, time, resources, budget.

All of those issues shouldn't stop you from practicing your preferred techniques. And in fact, through practice like this, you might find out that there are some weaknesses in your technique, that we want to switch one way or the other and improve our capabilities overall. That's a great thing about dry fire practice, is it allows you to have the opportunity to practice more. Absolutely. Great.

I've got a dummy magazine here. I'm not sure that it's been set up by the way you recommended with a stick in there, so that I can't get rounds in, and of course we've painted it blue. One of the other things I noticed when you were going over, all of the safety equipment, I can remember when orange was the safe color because of hunter orange, and now of course blue in military and law enforcement safe color. Either way we can't take any of that for granted? Correct.

Yeah, just because something's a certain color does not mean it's safety equipment. You need to check and make sure yourself. Even here we have a blue on the magazine, but I think, you have one of the yellow safety barrels in there? I do. Great.

So that gives us two colors we are working with here, both of which are designated as safe in this case. In fact, I noticed even when I came into this safe area I came in behind you. And that's another good point with any safe area. We wouldn't want someone to walk in and think you were pointing a real gun at them, or feel threatened, and maybe even if they were armed, certainly cause you a problem. We'd hate to have that happen inside of a house.

That would be tragic for a family or group of friends. So having that doorway to your back in your safe area is another important safety point. So if you don't mind, I'll actually take that Glock and use that for the drill. Yeah, absolutely. Outstanding.

So what are we gonna do? Now, the first thing we're gonna do Rob is, just present from a high compressed ready. Okay, I'll take your position, and if you want to keep an eye on this, so from over there and see what I'm doing right or wrong. Go ahead and draw your pistol to your preferred ready position. Okay.

And I've got the timer set for eight tenths of a second. Okay great. Here we go. Standby. And of course I'm gonna integrate lateral movement and I'm gonna integrate my immediate action drills and reset the pistol after that click, I'm gonna tap and rack.

Of course, if I recognize that I hit the magwell, and I didn't actually hit a magazine, I would initiate a reload sequence at that point, find that magazine, follow the body up, insert it firmly into the magwell, rotate my hand around, rack, and then reset in the ready position or shoot depending on the scenario. So this dry fire training, just gave me an immediate action drill for failure to fire, gave me lateral movement practice, gave me presentation practice, and also gave me the opportunity to practice a reload, when my firearm wasn't set up the way I wanted it to be. All of which might be missed if all I did was do it perfectly. So once again, the learning opportunities are bound in dry fire practice, as well as light fire. Let's try that again.

Here we go. Stand by. So what do you see? Looks like you're presenting it pretty well. Nice smooth trigger pull.

And I don't notice that the sides are dipping or anything. That's what as your partner in this, I'd be looking for, is to see that your pistol is not dipping, especially very common as you know, that people will press the trigger really hard. Sometimes we call it snatching, and that causes the pistol to nosedive, creating a low shot. That's one of the things that partner, I'd be looking for on you. Okay, great.

And then I know one of the things that I'll see a lot with presentation even from the ready, is that people might plane the gun out this way, looking for that front side early, based on a balance of speed and precision issue. If they're trying to pick up that front side, they might tip the gun up and not plane it out parallel with their line of sight. So that's another thing we'd be looking for, is does the gun break that plane, which of course is inefficient and then they have to pull it back down, and this could cause an early shot to go high. So that's another thing. If you don't mind keeping an eye on me for that, I want to make sure that-- Absolutely.

Do you mind if we go from the holster? Absolutely. Let's do that. Let me set the timer up. And of course, while Claude's setting up that timer, concurrent with our counter ambush worst case scenario training, I'll be integrating the flinch, prior to my presentation from the holster as if I was caught off guard and startled by this person that presents a threat.

All right, get ready. I've got it set for one and a half seconds. See what happens. Now that looked pretty good, Rob. Let's try that again.

Okay. And one thing I noticed was missing 'cause I was re-holstering of course, is we want to integrate as much as possible from our real world training. I'm gonna make sure to assess my environment afterwards, and that's the kind of thing again that a training partner can catch, or to be honest with you, if you set up a video camera, which we can now get pretty inexpensively, a simple digital video camera will allow you to review your session afterwards, and you might pick up on things like that that you're not doing that you know you want to do. I think the video camera is a great training partner. Really is.

And in the absence of having a live person to do the immediate correction, it's the next best thing. One more time. Standby. Well, I think I was a little closer on the time that time. And sometimes we find with that lateral movement to get offline and other things we might want to adjust the time.

If I were getting past that beep, of course we'd set that beep a little bit longer. Integrating the real world responses and flinch and making sure we get offline and everything else that we want to practice doing with live fires, an important component to any of the practice sessions, I think you'd agree with that. Absolutely. Great. What's next?

Let's try a reload. Okay. Sounds good. Do you have another magazine perchance? Great.

There you go. And let me set my timer. Let's try that at three seconds, Rob. Okay. Now, draw your pistol.

Lock your slide to the rear. And once again, because we're doing this in a training environment, we don't have the actual feel of the pistol locking open or the side of it. So we're gonna use the initial beep as our simulation of recognizing that the pistol has locked open. Okay. Sounds good.

Aiming on your target. Standby. Well, I think we might be able to go a little bit faster on that. I think so. Let's try that.

We want to make sure you're pushing yourself. If you stay too far in your safety zone, then you may not be getting the most out of it. You may not even know where your limit is. Now, I don't mind bending over and picking up the magazines just to get that extra bit of field. Of course, if I were to come back and hit that magazine release and the magazine didn't fall out, I would want to be able to recognize that in my brain.

So as many reps as I can, as close to the real world out on the range or, worst case scenario defensive situation as I can get is the way I want to train whenever possible. And aiming on your target. And what's the time set for now? Time set for two and a half seconds. Okay, great.

Standby. So clearly dry fire environments can give us an opportunity to train almost all of our fundamentals. Claude, how do you solve the problems? I know you've probably figured out a way to address it. How do you solve the problem of the recoil management issue when we don't actually have a round going off?

When you have a partner, like you and I are right now, what I can do as the partner, is work the slide for you while you're doing the shooting. What that does is that'll simulate the recoil of the pistol and allow you to check your position out, see if you're not set up correctly, or standing up too straight, and get pushed back by the recoil. That's a good way of managing that. Okay, why don't we try that out? Absolutely.

So are we gonna start, I guess with no magazine in? Start with no magazine in. Okay. And then what you're gonna do is, you're gonna present the pistol to the target, break a shot, and when you do that, I'll reach over and just work the slide for you, and you'll be able to see how your position worked. when the pistol fired.

Sounds good. So we don't really need the timer for this? No-- I'm just going to go ahead and present current and do my thing. Okay. Sounds good.

Anytime you're ready. So clearly, you saw me move back a little bit. Now, if we run that tape back or if you run that tape back at home, you might find a deficiency in my body position. We always want to make sure that our knees are bent to simulate that realistic crouch, the lowering of the center of gravity. And of course making sure that the shoulders are forward of the hips, when we're getting recoil from the firearm, so that we give as much support as we can to the frame of the pistol.

Let's try that again. Yeah. And that time I actually went forward almost gaming it, probably putting too much effort forward. So finding that balance, the appropriate balance, you certainly wouldn't want to fall down on our face, pushing ourselves forward into the recoil, which probably would lead to a flinch anyway, if I were really shooting. Let's try that one more time.

That one felt better. Now that one you looked... Your body was very stable, no movement forward nor back that was noticeable. Good repetition. So we got a good learning opportunity out of the first two and figured out how to make our position work.

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