I remember reading a story years ago about an officer in the Rhodesian Army who was training recruits in his unit to shoot by dry firing only without live ammo whatsoever. Long story short, his guys shot at their qualifications about the same as other soldiers who'd burned through a substantial amount of ammo while training. For those of us who are not history buffs, Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe and, because of sanctions, saving ammo was essential for them.
A similar example of human performance was proven by the basketball experiment of Dr. Biasiotto at the University of Chicago.
He split people into three groups and tested each group on how many free throws they could make.
After they finished the testing, he had the first group
practice free throws every day for an hour.
The second group just
visualized themselves making free throws every day for an hour.
The third group did
nothing.
After 30 days, he tested them all again.
The first group (
practice) improved by 24%.
The second group (
visualized) improved by 23%!
The third group (
nothing)
did not improve, which is something you would expect.
Another example relates to the story of Tatsuya Sakai, a Japanese sport shooter who
won the 2004 Steel Challenge World Championship in Piru, California.
Since handguns cannot be legally obtained by civilians in Japan, he trained at home using an
airsoft pistol.
A month before the championship he went to California to train with a real gun, and placed first; 0.59 seconds ahead of the next competitor.
