What should my actual dry fire routine look like if I'm chasing a 1.5-second draw?

m.delacroix's progression is solid, but honest—it assumes a setup that might not match your carry. 1.5 from presentation is totally different from 1.5 from first movement in AIWB with a cover garment.

I'd push back on one thing: you need to know *where* your draw starts before you start timing blocks. If you're carrying AIWB (which most people chasing that number are), your concealment is eating time, and it's not a speed problem—it's a geometry problem. Garment clearance, grip angle, the actual path your hand takes—that's what m.delacroix means by "draw is the bottleneck," but it gets weird when fabric's involved.

Honest take: spend your first two weeks dry firing *without* a cover garment. Just the holster, just the draw mechanics, get clean and repeatable. You'll see your baseline clear. Then add the shirt back. The delta between those two numbers? That's what you're actually fighting. Some people lose 0.4 seconds to concealment friction alone.

Once you know that split, m.delacroix's timed blocks will tell you whether speed gains are coming from smoother mechanics or just accepting concealment cost.

What's your current setup—AIWB, what holster, what cover? That changes whether 1.5 is actually in reach or whether you're building speed on top of a sub-optimal draw path. Curious what your instructor's baseline was when they gave you that number.

Let me break this apart, because there's a real argument hiding under the gear talk here.

**What's actually at stake?** Both replies are correct about their domain, but they're solving different problems. m.delacroix is teaching you progression structure. southpaw_09 is correctly pointing out that concealment matters. But neither one is addressing the thing that will actually tank a 1.5-second draw for most people: you're not consistent yet, and speed on top of inconsistency just locks in bad habits.

Here's what I mean. **Should you time every rep or blocks?** m.delacroix says blocks (right answer for noise reduction). But before you do *any* timed work—blocks, segments, par-time—you need a baseline where 10 consecutive draws from your actual carry setup (with the shirt on, your real holster, your real grip) land within 0.15 seconds of each other. Not faster. *Consistent.* If rep 3 is 2.1 and rep 7 is 2.4, you don't have a speed problem yet. You have a repeatability problem.

That's the real first two weeks: dry fire your actual setup until the variance dies. *Then* you measure anything.

**On the concealment thing:** southpaw_09 is right that garment drag is real. But the order matters. Strip the shirt off, get clean mechanics grooved, *then* add friction back and see what you've actually lost. You can't separate mechanics from drag if you're learning both at once.

**My recommendation for you:** Call your instructor, ask them what their baseline was on you, and what variance they saw. If they didn't establish one, ask them to time you for 10 consecutive draws from your carry position next session. That number—not the goal, the *actual baseline*—is where everything starts. Consistency first, speed second. The progression m.delacroix outlined works, but only if you're starting from a real number.

Your instructor nailed it with quality over quantity, but here's what that actually means in metrics.

Start by establishing a baseline. Time 10 draws from your normal carry position—unrushed, just your current normal speed. Write it down. You'll probably see 2.0–2.5 seconds if you're early-stage. That's your anchor.

Now the structure: I run a simple progression.

**Weeks 1–2:** 3 sets of 10 draws, timed as a group (not individual). Rest between sets. Goal: consistency within ±0.1 seconds per draw. You're not chasing 1.5 yet; you're teaching your body the path.

**Weeks 3–4:** Same volume, but now split the draw into segments. Time 0–holster clear, clear–first press, press–break. This tells you where the drag lives. Most people hemorrhage time in the first 0.3 seconds or in that press window.

**Weeks 5+:** Once you're repeatable, add par-time work. Set your timer to your current average minus 0.1 second. Hit that par 5 times. Miss it? Stop, reset, understand why. This is where dry fire gets *dense*—fewer reps, higher signal.

To your second question: the draw is almost always the bottleneck first. Trigger press speed matters, but a clean, economical draw buys you 0.3–0.4 seconds immediately. Dry fire trigger work comes *after* you've grooved the mechanics.

Don't time every rep. Time blocks. The noise in single reps will drive you nuts. Track weekly averages instead.

Talk to your instructor about what "1.5" means in their framework—some count from presentation, some from first movement. That number changes everything.

Thank you all for this—I'm reading these three replies together and I think I see what's happening, but I want to make sure I'm understanding the actual disagreement, because it feels like you're all saying "consistency first" but in different orders.

So gulfcoast_ops is saying: get 10 draws in a row that are within 0.15 seconds of each other *before* you even start m.delacroix's progression, right? Like, my baseline isn't "what's my average time" but "can I repeat the same time?" That makes sense to me—speed doesn't matter if rep 3 looks nothing like rep 7.

But then southpaw_09 is saying do that consistency work *without* the shirt first, then add it back. And gulfcoast_ops seems to be saying do it *with* the shirt from the start. Is that the actual disagreement, or am I misreading?

Because my instructor timed me once and said "you're around 2.2 right now," but didn't do the ten-in-a-row thing you're describing. I've been assuming that 2.2 was my real baseline, but now I'm wondering if I should actually go home and see if I can even *repeat* 2.2 before I start any of these progressions.

Also—I'm carrying AIWB with a Vedder in a Cover Story shirt, if that helps context. The shirt definitely feels like it's part of my draw. So should I time my consistency baseline with or without it?

I think the answer is probably "ask my instructor" but I'm trying to understand what I'm actually asking them *for*. Is it: "Can you time me 10 times and tell me my variance?" That sounds right to me.