Drills for the living room?

[St.Michael]

Hey guys,
I am trying to practice a lot more at home with my pistol and wanted to get some ideas about what you guys do or I can do to improve my skills. As of now mostly I just dry fire a lot and pull from my holster and bring my sight picture up to a target. Is there anything else I can try or practice? I have some snap caps too and am going to try to acquire enough to fill a magazine for some reloading practice. I am compiling a list so I can put together a schedule and such so I get a well rounded amount of time for each thing I can practice at home. This is mostly geared towards helping because I always carry, but these days it's expensive to hit the range every week anymore. Thanks.

[SteyrAUG]

Somebody makes a firing pin activated chambered laser sight. This would make your dry fire exercises a bit more practical by providing some visual feedback. Even a standard red laser sight would show you how you are moving your handgun during dry fire drills.

But keep in mind you are essentially shadow boxing. Many significant things aren't there. The weight of a full magazine, the recoil and the movement of the firearm as it cycles.

And I cannot stress redundant gun safety checks enough. I know more people who had NDs doing living room training than you would believe.

[MPJMP]

If space permits, try adding one step (or more) of lateral or rearward movement while drawing.

[St.Michael]

Somebody makes a firing pin activated chambered laser sight. This would make your dry fire exercises a bit more practical by providing some visual feedback. Even a standard red laser sight would show you how you are moving your handgun during dry fire drills.

But keep in mind you are essentially shadow boxing. Many significant things aren't there. The weight of a full magazine, the recoil and the movement of the firearm as it cycles.

And I cannot stress redundant gun safety checks enough. I know more people who had NDs doing living room training than you would believe.

I heard about that, but haven't looked at it. And I check constantly before drills. I am always scared of blowing a round into my wall or something.

If space permits, try adding one step (or more) of lateral or rearward movement while drawing.

I have been moving a bit with the space that I have. I guess there isn't much else I can do huh? I have to put together a new AR then the training starts for dropping into prone and such.

[Don Robison]

I work cqb, drawstroke, and mag changes with a charged but no ammo airsoft gun and blue gun in the house and workshop at night while the wife is at work. I also have a drop in dry fire trigger I keep in a Glock to work on drawstroke to the first shot with a safe but real gun.
Like has been pointed out you can't do everything, but you can work the basic mechanics and then verify the mechanics at the range.
Another thing I like to do is either video record or use our large gym mirror to critique myself.
Personally, I'm a big proponent of dry practice. What I've found is keeping the sessions short(under 30 minutes) seems ideal for most folks; beyond that the attention span as well as attention to detail fades from boredom of no live fire.
A couple of rules I've set for myself and I recommend to students are

1. Isolate all live ammo in a drawer.

2. Verify there is no live ammo in the area.

3. When you're done put the training gear away and have a bottle/glass of water away from the training area before you re-arm yourself.

4. Once the dry practice session is over; it's over. No going back to try one more thing.

Rules 1 & 2 are for obvious reasons.

Rule 3 is to clear your head and get you out of the airsoft/empty gun thought process.

Rule 4 came about after while deployed; a pretty squared away buddy re-armed himself, brainfarted, drew his M9 and put a round a foot above the chair I used at the end of my cot. We had been running dry drills for about 2 hours and he got careless. I was glad I had already put my boots on.

[.45fmjoe]

Drawstroke.

As my lead firearms instructor used to say, "you can shoot the balls off a mosquito at 500 yards with both eyes closed and it won't do you any good if you can't get the gun out of the holster."

I'm not sure where the hell you could get it outside of a good LE academy, but an interactive judgement pistol shooting lab shows you just how quickly shit goes bad and just how slow your quickdraw really is.

[St.Michael]

Thanks guys. I will add all of this to the list and keep it safe. Do you guys practice going into prone and such with pistol/ar?

[Failure2Stop]

Soft armor, rifle plate, or a steel target make for good backstops during dry-fire as well as a loading/clearing target.
I keep an old vest in the corner of my gunroom for such activities.

As far as lasers and such go, I prefer to simply use my sights as confirmation that I am doing things right. Acceptable sight deviation for the skill being worked on? Yes or no. If the answer is no, examine what you are doing and where it went wrong, and correct it. I want to fight to keep my focus on the sights (pistol or BUIS) during all relevant phases of the training, and one of those times is right as the hammer drops. Subconsciously training yourself to shift from front sight focus to target focus as the shot is being delivered can harm your skill. Of course there are times that a soft focus will get the job done, but that's a skill for live fire, not dry-fire in my opinon.

I think that one of the best things to work away from the range is stoppage reduction. You can use dummy rounds that are very obviously not live rounds, and since the critical part of the skill is the hand work necessary to correct the issue, lack of recoil doesn't detract from the training quality.

During dry-fire, many people will fail to achieve proper grip strength or position after a few iterations since the gun isn't going anywhere when you press the boom lever. Fight yourself to maintain the same grip and position you use when delivering multiple live fire shots.

[St.Michael]

I think that one of the best things to work away from the range is stoppage reduction. You can use dummy rounds that are very obviously not live rounds, and since the critical part of the skill is the hand work necessary to correct the issue, lack of recoil doesn't detract from the training quality.

I don't think I am understanding what you mean by this. Can you elaborate? Thanks!

[Failure2Stop]

I don't think I am understanding what you mean by this. Can you elaborate? Thanks!

Stoppage reduction (aka Corrective Action): the manipulations necessary to make a gun that does not go "bang" into one that does.

Commonly identified by the visual/physical condition of the weapon. Can range from complex chamber impediments to lack of ammunition present in the magazine. Different platform have different indicators and manipulation requirements.