Because both my parents were music teachers, I fully understood the power of practice and had already experienced it first hand as a guitar player. As a teenager I spent hours playing scales and finger exercises on un unplugged electric guitar to build finger strength, speed and coordination, so the idea of dry fire made perfect sense to me.

I analyzed the USPSA classifiers and realized that most of them involved shooting six rounds, reloading, and then shooting six more rounds and various target arrays. From there it was simple to devise drills to address those challenges. These became the first 12 drills in Refinement and Repetition. The others came after a similar analysis of the skills that are needed in common USPSA stages.

It’s important to remember that I never set out to write a dry fire book. I set out to make GM. The book got produced because I got tired of giving away the drills for free.

My son, a Ph.D. Mechanical Engineer, got into shooting sports while a graduate student. He shot IPSC* and IDPA** and reached Master Level in IDPA. He was invited to three nationals and went to two. Constant dry firing in his apartment he believes really helped maintain proficiency. He would have targets placed in a few places and practice multiple times a day. People who he was up against that would be hard to beat were the occasional policeman who was given time and ammunition to practice daily and military personnel who were encouraged to actively practice with live rounds. The dry firing, however, helped him he believed. He now is living in the Phoenix, AZ area and has not been impressed with the local clubs: little or no camaraderie? unlike where he was in graduate school.

Dan Kurt

*IPSC: International Practical Shooting Confederation

**USPSA: United States Practical Shooting Association