When I first started shooting, I was obsessed with round count. I knew that top professional shooters fired tens of thousands of rounds each year in training and competition, and I believed that kind of volume would get me to their level.
It worked—to a point. From 2011 through 2013, I fired around 25,000 rounds per year and progressed from a middling C-class USPSA shooter to knocking on the door of Master class.
Compare that with 2016 through 2018, when I fired 27,968 rounds across all three years. That averages about 9,300 rounds per year, which is still a lot by most standards. Despite shooting roughly one-third of the ammunition I used in 2013, however, I became a much better shooter.
What changed?
Round Count Is Not a Training Plan
The biggest change was the quality of my training. I had been so focused on reaching a particular round count that I did not always bring the right attention to my practice sessions. Firing 30 Bill Drills was not necessarily quality training. Too often, I arrived at the range with a large bag of ammunition and no plan.
In weightlifting, poor repetitions do not count toward productive training. What I had been doing with firearms was similar: performing large numbers of repetitions without meaningful programming or planning. I was becoming better at firing a lot of rounds, but that was not the same as deliberately improving specific skills.
Limited Ammunition Forced Better Practice
In 2016, I had ample time to pursue shooting excellence but no longer had the generous ammunition sponsorship I had enjoyed in 2012. That turned out to be helpful. It forced me to plan each range session for the best possible return on my time and ammunition. It also forced me to spend considerably more time in dry fire.
Everyone has heard about the value of dry fire, but I had always struggled to do it consistently. I could not maintain useful attention through the hour-long dry-fire sessions that seemed common on social media.
Quality Repetitions Over Marathon Sessions
I discovered that the quality of each repetition mattered more than the total number. Two focused, 15-minute dry-fire sessions per week allowed me to maintain attention throughout the entire session.
Before each session, I selected one skill and worked on it for the full 15 minutes. That might be drawing from a retention holster, reloading from slide lock, making target transitions, or another defined task. Instead of chasing a large number of repetitions, I concentrated on producing good ones. Bad reps did not count, and I added speed only after I could perform the task without fumbling.
Connecting Dry Fire to Live Fire
Here is how I applied the method. I dry-fired on Tuesday and Thursday, then went to the range on Friday morning. The two skills I practiced in dry fire during the week became the focus of my live-fire session.
If I worked on drawing from the holster and slide-lock reloads, I used my best dry-fire par times from Tuesday and Thursday to establish live-fire goals. My objective was to perform each task in live fire within 0.20 second of the corresponding dry-fire time.
For example, suppose I practiced drawing from a Safariland SLS holster and presenting to a 3-by-5-inch card. If my best dry-fire time was 1.25 seconds, my goal was to reach a 1.45-second live-fire par time for one accurate shot by the end of the range session.
Focused Practice Produces More Useful Reps
The result was that my number of quality repetitions increased even though my total training time and ammunition expenditure decreased. My earlier “training” had included too much aimless shooting. Now every session has a defined purpose, and the goal is always focused, positive repetitions.