Live Fire Training: Potential Danger of Dry Reps

Rob Pincus discusses how “dry repetitions” can create over-confidence or even complacency in regard to safety when performing new skills with live fire training. There is a healthy amount of anxiety and respect for difficulty that enhances a student’s ability to perform a skill safely and encourages them to pay very close attention to what they are doing. While there is a time and place for dry repetitions, doing them under the assumption that the student will always be safer afterwards could be a recipe for disaster. If students aren’t ready to perform more advanced skills with a live firearm from live fire training, it may be better to let them work on more fundamental skills for more time than to have them pseudo-perform the skill and develop a false confidence.