Dry Fire Practice - Day 3

All right, and actually I'm going to leave comments hidden, so I'm only going to see what you put up there. All right, so we're live. Hey, how you doing all? Um, what day is it? It is Thursday, it's 6 PM Eastern time, and we are doing dry fire. Why? Because that's how you actually get better with firearms. So my name is Brooke Cheney, I'm the owner instructor here at A Great Start Shooting School. I have a competition a week from Saturday, so 7, 8, 9 days away depending on how you count. Sometimes people say 8 days away. So start off with a quick recap. On Monday, did some whitewall drill, trigger press, and a bump drill. On Tuesday, I ran an IDPA classifier. Looked at the results and decided that I could easily get from novice to marksman if all I do is clean up my reloads. Yesterday, without you wonderful people here on the YouTube world and Facebook, I did my own dry fire all by myself. I got notes and I'll read that to you. And so now today is day 4 of me actually doing dry fire. A couple things for y'all to know is that One, I'm not gonna shoot live fire until Friday, a week from tomorrow, because I want you guys to see that all I'm doing is dry fire and where I'm gonna go from the IDPA classifier I shot on Tuesday and just doing tiny bits of dry fire. I'm literally only doing like 10 or 15 minutes, if that. A lot of people will say, oh, you gotta do at least 20 minutes, all this sort of stuff. If your gun— your hands are on your gun, you will get better as long as you're paying attention to what you're doing. So documentation, documentation, documentation. If you don't pay attention to what you're doing and write it down and observe, you're not going to get anywhere. So last night's notes, just so y'all know, I really need to see the sights. Just push it out with eyes closed. Than open. So one of the things I was doing— oh wait, and so this one is a new wrinkle because I found out, because some of you lovely people let me know that I'm violating TOS by, um, at least on YouTube. So I've got a very fancy gun today. Are you ready? It's my Pop-Tart gun. I figure if it counts as a gun in New Jersey, it can count for a gun anywhere. All right, so with my Pop-Tart gun This is not how I practice. This is just for YouTube so I don't break any TOS problems. Maybe this will last, maybe it won't. All I was doing— ready? Oh my goodness. All right, I would literally close my eyes, push out, and I'd open my eyes. I would fix my sight picture, and I close my eyes, come back down, and see if I could recreate just pushing out and pushing back in. And when I saw that my sights were down, I would bring them back up. So I hope you all appreciate my Pop-Tart gun. I had to go through like 4 Pop-Tarts before we could make one that didn't break. So, um, that was yesterday. It's just I really want to see crisp and clear that sight. I'm a little bit off here, here, here. It just depends. So I just know I need to do a lot more reps. And the nice thing about training my eyes is I just have to do that over and over and over again and pay attention to what I'm doing, what's working and what's not. So for today, because I don't want to bore you with all the stuff that I'm doing, first thing we talked about, there's always going to be a physical part of competition. There's a physical part of self-defense too. So are you going to the gym? Are you eating well? Are you paying attention to the upstairs space, right? Where, where, what's going on in your brain? Ready? Everybody stand up straight, shoulders back, take a big breath in, big breath out. Congratulations, you just meditated for like 5 seconds. Did it feel good? It usually does. If you can expand that, that helps the mental space. I did get to meditate today, so I had to brag about that a little bit. All right, why are you practicing? The nice thing about the books that I've been telling you guys about, whether it's Ben or, um, Mike, is they tell you what you're doing and why you're doing it. So my books have highlights in them from so that I know what I'm paying attention to. All right, so we did triggers, white wall drill, bump drill. I did sight picture, worked on sight picture a second day. Today, if I could, I would do reloads, but because I don't have any fake guns for that, I'm gonna have to do those off camera. I'm just gonna tell you about them, and then this is what you can practice. So no, When I am done, I will be doing the actual reloads. Look, I upgraded to a piece of plastic instead of my Pop-Tart. All right, and just so you all know, the end of this will be the end of this. All right, reloads. A couple things: I'm left-handed, so my— on my actual competition gun, my mag release is over here. For a good reload, I am up here. And again, so remember, I'm keep— right now my first competition is IDPA, so I am practicing for IDPA reloads, which generally means I have shot until I have my slide locked back. So as I hit that last shot and this locks back, there's a couple things that are going to happen. My hand, my right hand for you other people, um, your left hand is pulling the gun back a tiny bit so that my thumb can actually reach my mag release. Super important when you're in competition, you need to have your finger either welded to the frame or here, because an RO is looking for where your finger is while you're making a mag change. So up on target, slide lock back, come down. My right hand, my index finger is out. I don't have my rig on right now, but it's going to come straight down to where my mag is. And actually But since I got a Glock, I'll get a Glock magazine. So when I pull it up out of my belt, I'm tilting, I'm seeing where I am going to be putting that mag, put it up in and finish my, my, my grip. So what part of this do you practice? All of it. Hold on. So slide lock back, you'll drop the mag while your index finger is coming to the front of the magazine. Ideally, when you're— this motion is going to help this eject, right? So like this, you're looking into your mag, you're pulling it up off your belt and sliding it in. Now the way I do it is finish my grip go back out, and that's it. I'm not actually going to be— am I going to be practicing sight picture with this as well? Yes. Why? Because I know I need to pay attention to that. Am I going to be checking in my grip? Yes. So even though the main focus of each drill is one thing, like I want to get better at my reloads because I know if I had a better reload, I would have automatically been a marksman, not a novice. So that's what we've got. That's it. Um, know what you're doing, know why you're doing it. I'm out of breath because it's hot as the heck as Hades in my, my office today. But that's kind of what I've got. Notes. Have notes ready. Did I hit— oh, I know. Run what you brung. I almost forgot about that part. Right now whether it's because of TOS, terms of service, on Facebook and YouTube. If you need to run a Pop-Tart gun, you can run a Pop-Tart gun. If you don't have your permit yet and you live in Connecticut, you can spend $40 to $80 on a piece of plastic that is going to help you practice a lot of things before you ever get a firearm.. There's also simple things like, oh, your fingers. Remember, we used our fingers to work on being able to see your sight picture. So know that dry fire practice does not have to be hugely equipment heavy. And anything else? No, I think that's it. Like I said, I want to try to keep these short so you'll actually watch them. And oh, and this is the other announcement I almost forgot. Because I can't do this on live on YouTube, I was told that I can actually do a reloading video and then just put it up here afterwards. So if any of you folks want to see an actual reload, let me know and I will create that and upload that for you all. Um, another advantage of me getting into my soft— my software— another reason of me getting into my dry fire is that I had to go find my holster and my mag pouches. And so I'm getting closer to being ready for my competition by having everything I'm gonna need. Alrighty then, now I'm really going. It only takes me at least 5 minutes to say goodbye. So hope you all have a lovely evening. It is Thursday night, uh, so we're really close to the weekend for those of you get the weekend off. If This is the beginning of my work week because I am open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday nights because I'm doing pistol permit classes on Wednesday nights. So for y'all looking forward to the weekend because you get time off, come visit. Let's go play. I'll talk to y'all later.