3 Dry Fire Drills Enhanced By G-Sight ELMS

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Adding accuracy and urgency to your dry fire regimen, G-Sight ELMS ups your handgun skills without the need for ammo.

What Dry Fire Drills Does ELMS Enhance:

• Presentation
• Reloads
• Clearing Stoppages

Like playing Texas Hold’em by yourself, dry fire training isn’t a thrill a minute. Take away the bang and the hit downrange, well, you’ve got some pretty dry (pun intended) trigger time. That said, disciplining yourself to drop the hammer on an empty chamber on a regular basis has always been among the best things you can do to improve your skill as a marksman. Now it’s even better.

In the long-ago—less than five years ago—getting the most out of ammo-free practice was a subjective endeavor. Sure enough, the mechanics were there, honing sight pictures and schooling trigger pulls. But unless you had a sharp-eyed observer picking nits from draw to follow through, at best gauging improvement was a semi-educated guess. No longer, with devices such as the G-Sight ELMS (Expert Laser Marksman System) making alone time with your gun as fruitful as a high-priced class with a seasoned instructor.

What Is ELMS?

We’ve done a full review on what to expect from the G-Sight device previously. Suffice to say, we walked away impressed. But a thumbnail sketch of the system is in order.

There are two parts to the G-Sight ELMS, the laser diode and smart device app. The diode interfaces with your gun, providing what might be considered a virtual bullet—the laser beam. Chambered directly in your handgun, a pressure pad at the rear activates the laser when the firing pin strikes it, thus projecting the laser onto the target.

The other side of the equation, the ELMS app, displays hits. Utilizing a smart device’s camera, it records up to 10 shots giving you an idea of the precision of individual shots and the accuracy of groups. No matter how you cut it, it is a powerful tool.

There’s no substitute for first-shot accuracy. Certainly, many lethal-force encounters require multiple shots to neutralize a threat. However, a dead-nuts center-mass hit goes an incredibly long way in reducing the number of trigger pulls needed to save your skin. This is exactly what the G-Sight ELMS is built for and how it enhances any number of dry fire drills away from general bullseye practice.

Furthermore, you get instant feedback. Not only visual, via shot tracking on the G-Sight app, but also auditory. Hits on the target elicit a sweet ping, nearly as satisfying as knocking a steel target, allowing you to focus where you need to—on target and your front sight.

Drilling In With G-Sight

While general accuracy shooting—plugging away at the X-ring— is worth the time and is an enjoyable diversion. To get the most out of the G-Sight ELMS and dry fire in general, you should strive to work more true-to-life scenarios. No, not a combat roll behind cover. More along the lines of a textbook draw, presentation, trigger pull and follow through. We spell out three areas of practice ELMS enhances below. But, before the cart goes before the horse, a slight word of the aim of dry fire and ELMS work is warranted.

Similar to fielding endless grounders in baseball or running pass routes in football, the goal in ammo-less exercises is building muscle memory. And like those athletic drills, this isn’t accomplished by going full speed from the get-go. Instead, the majority of dry fire work is executed at quarter speed or less, allotting you ample time to perform every movement with the utmost precision. This includes the trigger pull, follow through and reset. There’s magic in the lack of urgency and speed.

Done over and over and over, you’ll program your body to perform these movements with an exactitude. When you pick up the pace this precision will manifest itself. But to start, the keywords are slow, smooth and accurate.

One last note before you start drilling with the G-Sight ELMS—do so safely. Always double and triple check you have no ammunition in your gun or magazines you’ll drill with. A good rule to follow is not to allow any live ammunition in the room in which you’ll practice. One lapse in discipline can cause a lifetime of regret.

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Presentation
Essentially, this is the foundation of any self-defense dry fire training. At its quick, it’s retrieving your handgun and orientating it toward the target—a skill that requires more practice than it sounds. Utilizing the G-Sight ELMS, this dry fire practice goes a step beyond, incorporating sight-picture acquisition, trigger pull and, of course, accuracy.

When practicing presentation, ideally you’re doing so in steps. That is, clearing clothing, grasping the handgun, orientating your support hand, drawing, etc. Each step of the process you take pains to ensure you’re executing each movement to perfection—including placing a perfect shot with the ELMS. As these slow and deliberate movements become second nature you can speed up, but never to past the point where execution degrades. Finally, when you’re at the point where everything is crisp, clean and relatively quick, you can add an element of urgency with the G-Sight shot timer.

Don’t cheat yourself working on presentation. If you’re practicing with your self-defense handgun, be certain you do so with the holster you’ll carry with and in clothing, you’ll likely wear.

Reload
Chances are in a self-defense situation you won’t need to reload, particularly with the excellent capacity of most modern pistols. But it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. Better safe than sorry, you should be confident and expedient in recharging your handgun with a fresh magazine, manipulating the slide and getting off an aimed shot. Given there are much different mechanics to emergency, speed and tactical reloads than presentation, the G-Sight ELMS goes a long way in honing accuracy on the last part of this practice.

Reload practice can be practiced standalone or as an extension of a presentation drill. Again, this is where smooth and accurate are at a premium, working each part of the movement in textbook fashion. G-Sight will give you a good gauge if you’re rushing—move too fast you won’t be on target.

Additionally, get into the practice of muzzle discipline with these drills. You’re responsible for every bullet that leaves your handgun, you don’t want any going where they’ll do more harm than good.

Malfunction
Handguns aren’t exempt from Murphy’s law. In turn, you might as well accept you’ll have to deal with a malfunction sooner or later. There are many:

• Failure to feed
• Failure to chamber
• Failure to lock
• Failure to fire
• Failure to unlock
• Failure to extract
• Failure to eject
• Failure to cock

Like reloads, addressing malfunctions requires movements that can throw off accuracy—especially given the amped up pressure.

We won’t go through how to set up every scenario here, give we have an excellent article on how to stage each type of handgun malfunction. Sufficed to say, G-Sight will give you guidance on where you stand in getting your handgun back in a fight productively. Be patient when practicing clearing stoppages, you’ll find they prove more challenging in maintaining accuracy. But over time you’ll also find you can place meaningful hits as quickly as if you were drawing from your holster.