The Summary: This is a fantastic one day (10 hour) relatively high round count (700 rounds) broad based pistol skill primer with some pretty novel neural/visualization based drills that are pretty groundbreaking, in my opinion.
The conditions of the range was just terrible. It rained literally ALL day. This slowed down the pace of the class to allow people to fish their magazines out of the mud and slosh through the muck. That's a reality of outdoor firearms training, so whatever. Jeff also had a wicked cold that left him all but voiceless. I had to step in to run several of the drills because it wasn't prudent for him to yell the 'threat' commands just for the sake of yelling. Now on to the nuts and bolts.
The day started with the usual medical brief and evacuation plan, then right into the gun handling rules. Though a quick note here, I've seen several notable instructors not mention medical plans at all. I don't know if that's because they don't want to scare their students, or because they just don't place a high priority on that. It's generally in lower speed classes, so I guess that might be why. In any case, I always have a medical brief and evac. plan. It's just a good practice.
One overreaching principle that AD sticks to is to not do too many needless repetitions of a certain drill. He gives you a taste of the drill, and moves on. This allows him to get a tremendous amount of information and convey a huge amount of technique in a short time. It gives the students things to think about, and take with them to train later. Mastery can't be attained in an afternoon, but the groundwork can be set for the student to build upon later. People without pens/paper are doing themselves a disservice. Take notes. It's as important now as it was in high school or college or whatever.
The streamlined nature of the class starts to show itself with the unload/load procedure. The emphasis on tactile reference points in gun handling and manipulation, and body awareness is introduced early and continues throughout the training day. Large, gross movement manipulations are the name of the game.
personal note: I still totally agree with this method of gun handling. That is, leaving the little gun buttons out of the equation for the sake of making the adrenaline dump gun handling more manageable. This is what I practice and what I personally teach. The idea being that you could lose the sharpness of your fine motor movements during an ambush and adrenaline dump. The counter point to this is that fighter pilots perform split second fine motor skill maneuvers during combat, or that we drive 90 miles an hour, mere inches away from other cars on the freeway. To counter that argument, I would point to the high amount of flight-hours, simulation, and stress inoculation involved in being a pilot, and the fact that there is no adrenaline dump happening during a 90 mph drive. To see the effects of adrenaline on driving, think about when you drive over a puddle and lose control of your car. A person untrained in driving in slick conditions will clench their steering wheel, and grossly over-correct and generally lose their minds. Average Joe who gets into a gunfight and has taken a class or two, PROBABLY doesn't have the flight hours to be able to overcome his adrenaline in the moment. Hence gross motor manipulations. But I could be wrong./rant
The draw-stroke was taught next. Jeff encouraged the students to work from concealment (not that there was a choice with all the rain gear) and showed the 4 count draw (a la SouthNarc). He didn't introduce or even talk about the added complexity of shooting through the horizontal line of presentation, but he laid the ground work to do that later in the day. I think this is a smart move. I have a tendency to give people too much to think about at once and should just build the layer cake of skills as I go, instead of laying it all out at once.
Both one handed and two handed grip were covered. So was the best stance to shoot from (when a stationary position is available and tactically sound). An athletic, nose over toes stance.
Basics of shooting followed. There were some good tips about how to manipulate the trigger and some tricks that would allow the students to ramp up their shooting speed. They were able to find their balance of speed and accuracy. These were the most repeated drills of the day, but what could be more important than building the firing grip and getting rounds on threat as fast as possible?
personal note: I'm still trying to work this out for myself, but I'm at odds on the different ways to get people worked into drawing and firing from the holster. I sort of like this progression, and have had some pretty good luck with it in the small classes I've done for my extended family and friends:
1 - Explain the drawstroke by the numbers and rep it with the class, no shooting. Once they have drawn dry, have them load their pistols.
2 - 5 shots freestyle on their time (gives me an idea of who is missing fundamentals)
3 - 5 repetitions of pressing the gun out from 3 (high compressed ready), with a single shot at the end of this ( work on their line of presentation, and picking up sights)
4 - 5 repetitions of pressing the gun out from 3, with 2 shots at the end (let them feel recoil and follow-through)
5 - 1 rep of 5 shots rapid fire out from 3 (drive the follow through home)
6 - 5 reps of 1 shot starting at the '2' position. (forces them to build the grip consistently and present the gun)
7 - Let them work from the holster.
This reverse engineering method I got from Claude. It gives a lot of repetition of building grip, pressing out, and getting a consistent presentation with a relatively low round count. I think the way Jeff did it works great too. I just would do it slightly differently.
Cadence shooting was used and we saw a lot of quick increase of shooting speed with minimal degradation in accuracy. Their speed limit was in their mind. In the course of the shooting, they were forced to make reloads. As malfunctions came up, we talked them through them. Jeff's reload technique is very good and assures the ground isn't littered with slip inducing empties for when you have to get out of Dodge. Stoppages were covered in detail later in the day. The F.A.S.T. protocol was introduced with verbalization to get people used to un-gluing their feet from the ground, and reminding them that they were learning to fight with a handgun, not punch paper. Jeff's use of a covert ready position during a scan was new to me, but I definitely understand his reasoning behind using this. Less overt than 'up' position, and less technical than 'sul'. It also keeps the gun at ready in case you need to lift it back up and punch it out. I like this.
We did some basic movement drills to start task loading the students, and help them understand the static shooting they're used to just won't cut it. Turns and moving and shooting. This is always a crowd favorite.
Neural based shooting - I participated as a student during this portion. This is one of those things that you really have to give yourself to in order to get the most value from it. It begins with basic visualization exercises to warm up your imagination, I guess you could say. Then a series of exercises are used to burn in a kinesthetic feeling for perfect body alignment, grip, and sight picture. This is supposed to be an accelerated learning technique that seems to get people to get in touch with their body mechanics a lot faster than 100's of open eyed gun presentations. We did some shooting with our eyes closed, and it's amazing how quickly you can build a super strong draw index when you're mindful of it.
The real power of this module was the 'mindset' portion of the block. I must stress that you have to really give it a fair shake and let yourself go. Forget that you're standing there with your eyes closed on a range, and try to put yourself in the moment and listen to Jeff's words. If you do this right, you will FEEL anger/rage/fear/and a willingness to fight until the lights go out. You really will. This is a 3 hour mindset lecture in a 20 minute block of time. I will have to talk with Jeff about this. I want to integrate this into the classes I do with my friends and family. However, if you're a skeptic, and don't want to relent, you'll probably not get as much from it. I personally was shaking and nearly sobbed.
We discussed shooting through the horizontal line of presentation. Jeff's voice was pretty well shot at this point, so he asked me to present this portion. We also did some retention shooting to get people used to having a gun go off that close to them.
Before we broke for dinner, we touched on use of cover and some very basic team stuff. All of the usual items. We covered keeping juicy femorals behind cover, and exposing minimal amounts of yourself to the bad guy. Some tactics were touched upon including the way that rounds striking walls don't bounce off at the same angle they impacted at, and why crowding cover is a bad idea. Good useful stuff.
Low light was the last thing we did. We touched on the four big flashlight techniques, and let everyone try them out, and pick their favorite. We also did some cool scanning techniques that are deceptive to the ones on the other side of the light. It culminated in a flow drill that included scanning and shooting. All the while enforcing weapon manipulation and light discipline. The students really appreciated the non diagnostic and gross motor gun handling when there was no light.
The under appreciated (at the time) training partner was the mud. I really believe it builds some mental toughness and forces people to see how their gear performs in adverse conditions. People either gained trust in their gear, or learned what they couldn't trust.
Thanks to Jeff and Armed Dynamics for letting me come to train and hang out. I love a good day at the range.
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