Chasing pointless numbers

Here’s me doing a sub 2.50 second reload from concealment in dry fire.

This is actually a completely pointless accomplishment; a vanity drill. It’s the dry fire equivalent of bro-curls in the squat rack. Yes, it’s cool to be able to manipulate the gun quickly, but you’ll notice that I’m not doing anything other than the reload itself.

A much better drill, and the drill I prefer to train on in dryfire is the Reload-2 drill. I’ll use a specific target point for this drill, and on the buzzer initiate the reload, then dry fire two trigger presses at the target. This forces me to actually establish a proper master grip and get a decent sight picture. Obviously, the par times for that are going to be longer, and there’s more that can go wrong on a Reload-2 dry fire drill.

That’s not to say that vanity drills aren’t fun. Just like there’s a time and place for shoulders and arms day, there is a place for vanity drills like straight reloads or one shot from the holster. Morale is an important part of training, and sometimes it’s fun to do a silly bro-drill and feel good. Because it does feel good to crack a 2.5 concealment reload, just like it feels good to have a 0.75 draw from the holster. But you wouldn’t go to the gym for two months and do nothing but curls and forward plate raises, and similarly you should make sure to do other dry fire drills to train.

4 Comments

  1. Also, to pick nits: you didn’t actually dump spent cases (cause that never goes wrong), but still… nicely done! Full bragging rights accorded!

    Is that the Match Champ? How are you liking the charge hole chamfers?

  2. If only my shooting skills can match my reloading speed. Cause I reload just fine but shoot like an idiot. 😉
    Empty gun reload like that I’ve done in 1.8 seconds (personal best). With ejecting dummy rounds and reload I can consistently reload in under 2.5 seconds.

    My question (maybe tip) is why do you carry your reloads on the right hand side?
    I started to play with the weak hand reload because I wanted to save the muscle memory switching from pistol to revolver for IDPA specifically. It just feels easier to go to the “normal” side then going cross body.

    1. Economy of motion. Reloading like this means I can just slide my hand under the vest and not have to sweep it out of the way if my loaders were behind my hip on my weak side.

      1. I can see the logic in that but I’m still not a fan of going cross body. Could be the spare tyre syndrome. 😉

        However I don’t think I need to increase the speed of my reload. I need to work on my shooting skill. Otherwise what is a consistent sub 2 second reload worth if I shoot slow and sometimes under major match pressure shoot slow and inaccurately. Funny thing this match pressure. When I shoot just to have fun I shoot fast and true. Worry about the match and I shoot slow and bad to boot.

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