What training regimen do you generally recommend?

Top shooters, like police officer Robert Vogel, a two-time National Production champion, dry fires a large amount. In fact, after heavy live fire sessions of say 400 rounds, Robert feels he has to dry fire to reaffirm the proper mechanics. The traditional problem with dry firing is that it is generally too easy or engaging enough given the motivation level of a majority of shooters. The instant feedback and convenience of the SIRT Pistol provides a very natural system to promote dry fire, letting you use it right away without having to retrofit anything to a gun or otherwise waste time on setting up proprietary targets. To put it simply, it makes dry fire more fun. Therefore, we recommend that any shooter allocate some dead time, even just a couple of minutes, for using the SIRT to dry fire on any suitable target in a proper location (sticky notes on the wall works great).

Training with dry fire is important because with live fire, although many rounds can be expended very quickly, in some cases these live shots are not the most effective for providing specific training skills. People rely too heavily on live fire to train their draw and a plurality of other shooting skill sets, and because of budgets and the time constraints of going to the range, many people simply do not train enough. While dry fire is important, recoil management simply cannot be emulated outside of actual live fire. Therefore, live fire must be integrated into your training regimen as well.

To get the most out of your live fire, the most desirable protocol we have found to date is to shoot a drill, unload and show clear your pistol, and then do the same drill anywhere from 3 to 10 times with the SIRT Training Pistol. With the dry firing of the SIRT Training Pistol you are working on trigger mechanics, handling of the gun, and confirmation of sights and trigger break, basically all the necessary movements to make the shot other than handling recoil for follow-up shots. When you feel comfortable in your quality of movement, you can go back to shooting your real gun and reaffirm all the techniques integrated with live fire.

One desirable element of integrating live fire with dry fire is not only are you making your live fire more productive by getting a higher volume and higher quality of training in between your live fire sets, but you are also making your dry fire more effective. You practice to ensure you exhibit a proper grip, chest squeeze and low body position, which are necessary components for properly handling recoil management with live fire. In other words, the dry fire makes sure you are doing your live fire properly.