Mike Ox

Mike Ox is an avid defensive and competitive shooter who has co-created several firearms training products, including Dry Fire Training Cards. His team is made up of current and former law enforcement and military special operations instructors with an emphasis on accelerated learning techniques for shooting as well as controlling brain state and brain chemistry for optimal performance in extreme stress situations. Learn more about dynamic dry fire training for defense and competition at DryFireTrainingCards.com.

Articles by Mike Ox

• 4 myths of front sight focus

  Thursday, May 20, 2021

  There are a ton of myths floating around about using a front sight focus on a self-defense pistol. One is that you must always use a front sight focus. I agree with this for bullseye shooting, 4H shooting, hunting non-dangerous game, and other specific situations. I also think it’s critical to practice front sight focus during every practice session and at the end of every string of fire (red dots are the possible/probable exception). Let's take a quick look at a few others.

• Making the switch to a pistol red dot instantly and effortlessly

  Tuesday, March 16, 2021

  Red dot sights on pistols, also called micro red dots or micro red dot sights (MDRS), are all the rage right now for defensive use after proving their effectiveness in the shooting sports for the last several years. They are almost as big of a game-changer on pistols as they were on long guns. On most targets, you can keep your focus on your target, put the red dot where you want your bullet to go, and the bullet will go there. They negate many of the aiming advantages of a longer slide, make shooting easier for shooters with visual confusion and they can be easier to track in recoil than iron sights.

• Self-defense shooting with corrective lenses

  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  A lot of times, the techniques that we use for plinking and having fun with guns don’t necessarily carry over to self-defense shooting. Take shooting with glasses or contacts as an example. The fact is, we may or may not have our corrective lenses handy when we need to defend ourselves. It may be bifocals, trifocals, correcting astigmatism, monovision, progressives or readers, but roughly three-quarters of Americans wear corrective lenses of one sort or another. That can pose some interesting challenges with shooting … particularly self-defense shooting using traditional iron sights.

• What is the best way to simulate ‘stress shooting?’

  Thursday, February 11, 2021

  I got a great question recently: What is the best way to simulate "stress shooting?" It’s an important question, and one that most people get wrong. When most people think of stress shooting, they think of trying to shoot in high stress shooting conditions that are usually overwhelming. Force on force; a dark range with flashing lights and heavy metal or screaming; immersive scenarios and/or time constraints that are beyond the shooter’s ability. This type of training does not help shooters improve quickly…it mainly serves to highlight shortcomings and gets the shooter to focus on what not to do.

• Is your gun training perturbing enough?

  Wednesday, January 20, 2021

  "I’m very perturbed about that" was a relatively common saying when I was growing up. Today, when you say it, it elicits reminiscent smiles from those old enough to remember and confused scrunchy faces from most 20-somethings. But did you know that perturbation is vital for effective self-defense firearms training? How quickly we’re able to restabilize our balance, our vision, and our aim after being perturbed are some of the biggest differences between sterile range training and resilient self-defense training.

• Are you training too much at one time?

  Thursday, December 17, 2020

  There’s a natural assumption that if you want to get better at a skill, you should spend hours every day practicing it. After all, we hear stories all the time about the best athletes in the world showing up an hour or two early for practice and being the best because they simply outwork everyone else. But pros train different aspects of their skill than ordinary people. Pros are able to spend so much time practicing because they’ve already mastered the fundamentals. From a shooting perspective, when you push yourself too much mentally or physically while you’re trying to learn a skill, you’re not going to have as much mental bandwidth available for the actual skill.

• Busting the myth of the iron grip for shooting

  Wednesday, June 17, 2020

  For some reason, I've been getting questions and finding myself in conversations about grip quite a bit lately. There’s a lot of misinformation on grip…especially on how firmly you should grip; how to improve grip; and what to do about reduced grip from arthritis, carpal tunnel, and other pain issues. Take the 100% grip or "iron grip" as an example. Grab anything with 100% grip and your hand is going to shake. Drop off to the max intensity that you can grip without shaking and your ability to isolate trigger finger movement is going to be compromised.

• Video: Perfect stance vs. odd angles…which is faster?

  Wednesday, May 13, 2020

  There's a lot of talk on what the best "combat" shooting stance is. In my mind, that’s the wrong question. If the situation gives you time to get a perfect stance, then take advantage of it. It'll probably make you more accurate. But what if you don’t have time to get a perfect stance … and all your training has been done with a perfect stance? That's bad.

• Are combat-accurate groups good enough? Probably not

  Wednesday, April 08, 2020

  There's a continual debate among shooters about whether it's important to be able to shoot precisely with a pistol. I get messages from well-meaning people saying it's silly to shoot tight groups. There are three things that are vital to understand about the importance of being able to shoot tight groups with your defensive weapons.

• How Twister and a 99-cent app can help you ‘overtrain’ beyond common pistol standards

  Thursday, March 26, 2020

  Most training today is what is known as "training to a standard." It may be passing a test, shooting a certain size and speed group, or checking a box on the amount of time and reps done. The problem is, that type of training doesn’t carry over to the real world. Going to the range, standing flat-footed, and staying in your lane just doesn't cut it. It may be fun. It may be therapeutic. But it only builds a fraction of the skills we need for real-world, lifesaving shooting situations.

• Combat accuracy vs. precision

  Wednesday, February 26, 2020

  One of the arguments against practicing to shoot one-hole groups is that you won't have time to do this under stress. That's a fine argument, but it's one-dimensional and conflicts with the very training that teaches it. Oftentimes, the same training that teaches that 8-inch groups in sterile training conditions are adequate also teaches that you should fire two rounds to center-of-mass and, if that doesn't stop the threat, to shoot one round to the head. The problem is movement, stress, speed, and unstable shooting positions will cause your shot groups in a surprise self-defense situation to be at least twice as big as your groups in practice.

• Why you need to keep your finger off the trigger

  Wednesday, February 12, 2020

  I'm part of a few instructor groups online and a question was recently posed about an agency whose policy is to scan for threats with the trigger finger on the trigger and the slack taken up. The response was pretty much universal…if your sights are on your intended target, the finger goes on the trigger. If your sights aren't on your intended target, your finger goes off the trigger. But why?

• Why ‘point shooting’ doesn’t work on its own

  Wednesday, January 22, 2020

  I get into frequent discussions with shooters and instructors on the merits of sighted shooting vs. point shooting. Now, to be clear, I teach that there's a time for both and teach a blended approach that lets shooters seamlessly and effortlessly switch back and forth, but this isn't something you can just decide you're going to do…it takes deliberate practice. But, at the same time, countless instructors claim — and demonstrate — that point shooting is accurate and predictable by shooting shotgun shells, 9 mm brass, and coins out of the air — all without using their sights. So…what’s going on? Why is there any debate or disagreement?

• Top 3 ‘getting off the X’ myths about shooting on the move

  Tuesday, January 07, 2020

  One of the most important rules in a gunfight is to avoid being in the path of incoming rounds, and one of the popular sayings is that you need to "get off the X." But that's where bumper-sticker answers do us a disservice and cause us to buy into training myths about shooting on the move. As an example, some say that you should point your "finger gun" at a friend, have him walk around and see if you can keep pointing at him.

• What’s the best distance to practice at for self-defense? It’s not what you think

  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  I see the debate of how far out to put the target almost every time I go to a range during public hours. Should I put it at 21 feet because of the "21-foot rule?" Should I put it at 11 feet since half of law enforcement fatalities happen within 11 feet? Should I put it at nine feet since an "average" self-defense encounter happens within three yards, lasts three seconds, and three rounds are fired? The answer is a little simpler and a little more flexible than you may think.

• Avoid this dummy drill and turn it into a ‘smart’ drill

  Friday, November 22, 2019

  One of the most popular range drills is the "ball and dummy" drill. The way it typically works is that someone loads your magazine with mostly live rounds and one dummy round with the expectation that, when you get to it, you’ll press the trigger and flinch to manage recoil that didn’t happen. It's a "gotcha!" Sometimes, the simple fact that the instructor is telling the student that it's a test to see if they flinch will create enough anticipatory stress to cause them to flinch. It's a horrible drill for most shooters and you should do your best to avoid it until a very specific time in your training.

• Busting 3 myths of the ‘21-foot rule’

  Wednesday, November 13, 2019

  Almost everyone who shoots has heard about the "21-foot rule" and how important it is to practice at 21 feet. I used to teach it and I've probably been taught it in more than a dozen classes I've taken. Except, it's a myth. It has no basis in fact or history, and it can actually hurt your ability to effectively handle a threat that’s 21 feet away. So, here are three myths about the 21-foot rule and how to fix them.

• Video: Comparing the top laser training pistols

  Tuesday, August 27, 2019

  I'm asked all the time about various laser training platforms, including the SIRT Dry Fire Pistol, the M&P SIRT, the SIRT Pocket Pistol, Laser-Ammo’s laser barrel insert for airsoft guns, and the CoolFire Trainer. Finally, after months working with all of them, I have a valuable video review to present. I cover benefits and limitations of each, special considerations for various training conditions, and the best options for 1911 owners.

• Video: How to manage .45 recoil with only 2 fingers

  Wednesday, August 14, 2019

  Sometimes, the firearms training industry gets in a rut…and people get very emotional about techniques that they read about or see on videos without ever testing them. One of the sacred cows of gun training is that you should squeeze the life out of your pistol, get as much meat on metal as possible, and push in from the sides to manage recoil effectively. I heard, believed, and taught that for years.

• Shooting on the move: The 4 corners drill

  Wednesday, January 16, 2019

  Shooting on the move is more of a controversial topic than you may think. For some people, shooting on the move throws their accuracy and safety off so much that it’s not a good idea. For other people, they have to move so slow to be able to make hits that it makes more sense to run to where you’re going and then draw and shoot. But you can move fast and shoot accurately at the same time. It’s important to remember that there’s two components to moving and shooting. There’s the skill component and there’s the tactical component.

• If you still use your sights to aim, you should do this instead

  Thursday, December 06, 2018

  There are stages that shooters go through as they go from picking up a pistol for the first time to being ready to use a pistol in a life or death situation. This is true of all skills. For some reason, most people treat shooting differently. They think that if an instructor told them something at any point in their life, it must still hold true today. That’s not the way it works. Take the sights on a pistol as an example.

• The best live fire drills to do at the range

  Thursday, November 15, 2018

  There’s no one specific set of drills that’s best for every shooter. But there is an easy way to figure out the best drills for you. If you’re going to the range to plink and have fun, by all means do so…I just encourage you not to call it "practice" or "training." But if you’re going to the range to improve your performance with a pistol because you think you might need to use it to save a life, you want to do things a little differently. A little more deliberately. If we’re looking at the big picture, live fire practice is how you verify and validate the effectiveness of the dry fire practice that you’ve been doing.

• Front sight focus or point shooting: Which is better?

  Thursday, October 04, 2018

  This is a can of worms that divides the shooting world almost as much as the 9 mm vs. .45 debate. No matter which side of the debate you’re on, you’ve probably got some valid points…and some that aren’t so valid. So, today, we’re going to dig into which of these is the best…for self-defense, for competition, and for fun. But first, let’s define terms. Front sight focus shooting is where you focus on the front sight and let your target and rear sight get blurry. There are several names for "point shooting," including "threat focus shooting," "combat focus shooting," "instinctive shooting," "hip shooting," "unsighted shooting" and more.

• Speed vs. accuracy in training and self-defense

  Thursday, September 27, 2018

  There’s a continual debate in the gun training world between whether you should train accuracy or speed. It’s a great question, but most people presume that the answer is either-or. It shouldn’t be. Let’s start by talking about what "accuracy" and "speed" are. They are 100 percent dependent on the context. And the context is completely different between an IDPA match and a self-defense situation. Frankly, you don’t know what the situation is going to be when you find yourself in a fight for your life where you need to use your firearm.

• Why the quickest thing you can do to shoot better is something you shouldn’t do

  Thursday, July 19, 2018

  I’m going to let you in on a little firearms training secret. It’s a trick used by instructors to get shooters on target quickly when they’re having problems, but don’t have the time to work with every shooter on the line as much as they’d like. Roughly half of the shooters I work with keep using this trick for the rest of their lives. The problem is…this technique that works so well shooting paper is almost guaranteed to fail in a life-and-death shooting situation.

• Top 10 reasons you should shoot competitively

  Thursday, July 05, 2018

  There are thousands of opportunities across the country to compete in local, regional, and national shooting sports events that can make you a better defensive shooter. If you’re currently shooting competitive matches, this article will give you ammo when you’re trying to convince friends and relatives to join you. If you’re new to competitive shooting, it may give you such an irresistible desire to start competing that you find a local match and write it on your calendar in the next 10 minutes.

• AR-15 ‘overpenetration’ only exists if you do this wrong

  Tuesday, June 19, 2018

  Today, we’re going to talk about one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about the AR-15. To be fair, they get this misconception honestly. They’re repeated ad nauseam at gun ranges, in articles, blogs, forums, videos, and even on TV without proper context. To complicate matters even more, there’s an element of truth to it. What is this myth? "I think ARs are bad for home defense because of overpenetration. I don’t want to shoot my neighbors or kids in another part of the house."

• Sighted vs. point shooting: Myths and realities

  Wednesday, June 06, 2018

  A common argument in the shooting world for the last half-decade has been whether it’s better to focus on your threat when shooting or focus on your front sights. The answer is "yes." OK…so maybe it’s a little more complicated than that. But as you get deeper and deeper into shooting, you come to realize that it’s not a black-and-white issue.

• 5 quick and easy spec-ops trigger control tips for defensive pistol precision

  Wednesday, May 23, 2018

  One of the most important things you can learn as a shooter — especially a defensive pistol shooter or long-range precision shooter — is how to press the trigger without disturbing where the sights are pointed. A bad trigger press can cause you to miss man-sized targets at incredibly close distances. When you’re shooting paper in front of friends, this is embarrassing. In a life or death situation, it’s catastrophic. Either way, improving your trigger press is one of the most important things you can do as a shooter.

• Push your shooting skills beyond what you think you’ll need

  Friday, July 28, 2017

  Shortly after the invasion of Iraq began, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said, "You go to war with the army you have — not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." This truth applies to armies at war, but it also applies to individuals in a fight for their lives — whether it's a soldier overseas or law enforcement or a civilian at home.

• Want to shoot better? Try to impress your friends

  Thursday, June 29, 2017

  When you think about training to use a firearm to stop a lethal threat, it's healthy to think of it as serious business, because it is. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun along the way — or, more importantly, that we shouldn't have fun along the way.

• Visual perception delay and its effect on shooting

  Tuesday, May 23, 2017

  In April 2015, there was a horrible story about an officer shooting a man eight times in the back while fleeing on foot after a traffic stop. What I've seen and read about the case is not good — simply by the number of shots the officer fired. But do you know why that is?

• Combat shooting tips from Larry Bird

  Friday, April 28, 2017

  Whether you're a basketball fan or not, there are great lessons we can learn from the greatest players in any sport and apply them to our lives. At some level, big games in professional sports and defending yourself in a self-defense situation are similar. In both cases, you're training to be able to do a complex motor movement in a stressful situation.

• How to combine live and dry fire at the range

  Friday, March 03, 2017

  As shooters begin dry firing more and more, it's common to get in a habit of doing dry fire at home and only doing live fire when they go to the range. By simply doing dry fire at the range in addition to live fire, you can maximize the effectiveness of your range time and spend less money.

• 8 ways competitive shooting improves defensive performance

  Wednesday, February 22, 2017

  ​My primary focus for shooting is helping people learn the skills they need to survive lethal force encounters. Whether it's law enforcement, military, concealed carry or home defense, I want you to be prepared mentally, physically and technically to succeed when second place isn't an option.

• Winter indoor self-defense training tips

  Monday, January 23, 2017

  I don't know about you, but we're having an epic winter. I spent more than eight hours last week taking care of snow — and that was only because my wife and sons helped. Today, I spent about 20 minutes digging a "tunnel" through knee-deep snow to get from my truck to my office.

• 4 firearm myths that bad guys believe but you shouldn’t

  Tuesday, November 01, 2016

  Here are four big myths about firearm accuracy that bad guys believe but you shouldn't.

• The danger of retention and contact shooting

  Tuesday, October 18, 2016

  One of the "sexiest" topics in shooting in the last few years is retention shooting. There are a few different definitions for retention shooting, but basically it's holding your gun close to your body while engaging an attacker within arm's reach in a way that he can't take your gun.

• Slow in practice means fast in combat

  Thursday, October 06, 2016

  Sometimes the most effective way to shoot faster and more accurately is to is to take one step back, slow down and change your approach. Personally, I don't like slowing down. It's not in my nature. I want to shoot faster without compromising accuracy by simply moving faster.

• The myths and realities of sighted vs. point shooting

  Tuesday, September 20, 2016

  A common argument in the shooting world for the last half decade has been whether it's better to focus on your threat when shooting or focus on your front sights. The answer is "yes." OK, so it's a little more complicated than that. But as you get deeper and deeper into shooting, you come to realize it's not a black-and-white issue.

• Maximizing your performance under stress

  Thursday, September 01, 2016

  ​If you have a desire to be more prepared or to shoot better, there's a good chance you would love to know how to perform better in extreme stress. It could be reacting to a family member having a life-threatening emergency, responding to a natural or manmade disaster, stopping a lethal force threat or everyday life challenges.

• 5 concealed carry pistol laser-sight myths

  Tuesday, August 09, 2016

  I want to start by saying that I love laser sights. I own several of them and use them on high-powered rifles, .22s and airsoft rifles. I bought my first Crimson Trace laser for a Kimber 1911 12 or 13 years ago. I use them for night shooting with night vision, and I've used them a lot with my boys since they were very young to introduce them to shooting. In the right hands, they're a great tool on a defensive gun, but there are some big myths about them.

• Recoil management for fast double taps

  Wednesday, July 20, 2016

  I was catching up with Larry Yatch (retired Team 3 SEAL) recently, and we went down the rabbit hole on recoil management for pistols, carbines and long guns. Some great stuff came out of it that I want to share with you on the pistol side.