At this point in life I'm just trying to keep what little skill I got left.

At this point in life I'm just trying to keep what little skill I got left.

Since I got my CT Laserguard green laser, I have been able to practice drawing and firing from the hip with no noise or needing to burn expensive ammo.  The laser activation button is just below the trigger guard and I tap that to see where I would have hit had I fired an actual round.  With no noise or burning of expensive ammo, I have been able to practice every night inside my home or garage.  Previously I had a tendency to shoot high, but now my muscle memory and positioning enables me to get on target at chest height most of the time.  I have only had the laser for about a week so I am sure it will get better as I practice more.  That in itself makes the $229 purchase price well worth it to me.

Not as often as needed, but I do loading drills at home for the 12 ga. pump with snap caps and spent shells.   Load from the side to get one chambered and loading gate on the bottom for the mag tube and exercise that pump.

I was never great with pistols so my pistol skills have always sucked. In the last 6 years I have been practicing so often with rifles that, what little pistol skills I had have gone downhill. I shot pistol 2 weeks ago and I suck.

So I would like to practice with my revolvers more often to bring what little skill set I have back to where I feel comfortable.

What do you envision yourself doing to get more proficient?  Mostly live fire?  Or some dry fire stuff? 

How would you define comfortable?  As in results on the range?  Like being able to keep all hits within an X" diameter circle at 25 yards.  Or something else.  Just curious.

I don't shoot my 686 very often.  I have almost a full case of .38 SPL, so really no reason I don't shoot it more.  Mostly because I don't care for cleaning it.  It's not that it's hard, just takes a bit more time and being stainless, I notice more of the dirty/grime where on a black gun, it would go unnoticed.  Still no excuse though. . . haha.  That and I really do enjoy shooting that gun.

The laser is an idea, but remember trigger pull also affects where the round lands.  So the laser just will show your POA when you press it on.

Also don't want to get into the habit of pressing the laser, because if you do need to use your handgun, you might press that due to habit.

I would buy a SIRT instead.

I hit the laser and squeeze the trigger.

Mostly live fire. I have done some dry fire practice. My main problem is arm strength. I have a repetitive strain injury (nerve damage) in my right arm and I'm right handed. I have lost about 40% of my strength in it. I compensate as much as possible with my left arm but it is still not the same as it used to be. Plus my eyesight is pretty bad at this point. Red dots help that a lot. 

Video 

Tried to but response I got was cannot upload that type of file.

I have a YouTube account but don't want to post the video there.  It was only 4 seconds long.  Rather boring as well.

What are some things that you do in terms of firearm training to build skills as well as break bad habits.

First and foremost is that I try to burn correct and proper reps.  I do it at a deliberate pace and increase the pace with a set number of correct reps.  Getting the neuropathways and motor learning to fire and trained correct is the key and this is done via repetition, so obviously the repetition must be quality.  Much of this training for myself is accomplished via dry training, be it dry fire or just dry manipulations.  Live fire is obviously great for training and validation, but it also has drawbacks associated with the gun actually going bang.  Often times we can learn more without the ignition of the weapon and many top shooters will have much more dry training in their routine than they do actual live fire.

I know this group that does an amazing dry fire workshop.  I'll let you know if they put something together in the future.

After not shooting much the past 8 months or so, I was able to get a full day of shooting in this past weekend.  Great stuff and had fun.  I was able to learn some new stuff as well as see old bad habits as well as bad tendencies (that I know better). 

Great to be back on the range isn't it!

A couple of things that I found that helped shooting performance for me was two slight tweaks in stance and head position.  I previously shot isosceles with my right foot slightly back, but based on encouragement from knowledgeable folks, I tweaked that a bit more by setting my right foot slightly further back as well as incorporating a little more weight distribution to the front leg (very slight).  This tweak helped shift my natural point of aim ever so slightly.  I found that that slight adjustment helped, so it's something that I want to train to ingrain.  Over the course of the day, I found myself having to remind myself to get into that position and later in the day, it felt more natural.  I'll probably still have to think my way through it again in future shooting sessions, but something that I think I can train to easily. 

Sounds like your referencing what I call the "Power Iso".  Definitely not built in a day, but dry reps is a good tool here for developing it. 

The head position one is probably going to be a tougher one to break.  I have shot for so many years with my head forward, neck sort of craned over, and eye's "up".  I had been trying to transition to a more neutral head and eye position overall prior to this past weekend.  However, as I was concentrating on other things, I found myself getting back into the "old" shooting position.  I did some dry fire and tried to do the draw and get sight alignment slowly to try to start breaking that habit of craning my neck over, but I think this is one that will take me a lot of time to transition away from as well as seeing it creep back in often. 

Head position is huge.  "turtling up" creates far too much negative muscle tension in the neck, traps, shoulders, delts and back, which directly or negatively affects your grip and trigger finger.  In addition, as binocular creatures we are meant to look out of the center of the fovea on a flat plane, which optimizes our vision. This "bad muscle tension" also wreaks havoc with the eye muscles and vision over a long day.

One good thing about having a break from shooting is that it allowed me to sort of reset.  Just like with other sports, bad habits tend to creep in from time to time.  That said, shooting is very much a perishable skill and I definitely felt it while shooting this past weekend.  Stuff that I thought I was solid on and things that I would normally find easy (or at least less challenging) weren't quite so.  I was a little disappointed in that, but I also took it as a reminder that I need to shoot and train regularly.

Hopefully you will have more opportunities to "shoot and train regularly".

I have a YouTube account but don't want to post the video there.  It was only 4 seconds long.  Rather boring as well.