DrRansom
Newbie
EAG Tactical Pistol Shoothouse
June 3-5, 2016
Alliance Police Training Facility, Alliance, OH
Primary Instructors - John Chapman, John Spears, Steve Fisher
Assistance Instructors - Mike Sebastian, Joe Weyer
Course was flown under the EAG Tactical banner, but administered by LMS Defense due to special circumstances.
====================
Gear - Mayflower APC, Ops Core ballistic helmet w/ GoPro, Glock 19 Gen 4 w/Trijicon night sights & TLR-2 IRW, Surefire handheld white light.
I'll spend the majority of this AAR on my thoughts and learning points - I'm not going to go through all the curriculum. This is my fourth or fifth live-fire partner shoothouse class, all of which have been at Alliance Police Training's awesome training facility.
Not surprisingly, one of the mantras from the beginning of this class was to slow down. I'm not naive enough to assume that this doesn't apply to me - it especially applies to me. My partner and I, while both having attended these classes before, and having been partners before, have a tendency to try and process information quickly, and move correspondingly fast. "Not overruning your headlights" is a concept that's been smashed into my face before - but sometimes, it can be hard to determine how far out exactly your headlights are shining.
So pace and speed was a bit of an issue for us - not because we're exceptionally poor at processing the information in the house, but more keeping the throttle back and being smooth, and keeping each other honest. A plus here is that we both ran head-mounted video, and you cannot lie to yourself when you watch the vids. I suspect that part of this at least was size differential - considering that one of my steps is equal about 2.5 of my partner's, I constantly had the impression that part of the pace differential was because she was trying to keep up with me (even though I wasn't moving that fast).
At one point, a light bulb went off when Chappy told me that I was seeing the furniture, not the shapes. The immediate reaction was "what? I know what the shapes are..." but after some ruthless self-inspection, I realized what he meant - and, as usual, the problem here was overthinking on my part. Taking a giant step back and literally just drawing the shapes of where I would move as compared to where there were potential danger areas made a huge mental difference to me, almost embarrassingly so. Reevaluating this also made knowing when certain movement techniques made more sense.
Again, having all my old vids is priceless here - being able to run through all of my old runs and instructor comments in hotwashes is invaluable because if I try looking at things differently, like above, being able to reference past criticisms allows me to look at what they're saying through this new lens. I've also noticed that many times even though I shake my head yes when receiving criticisms, I'm not really comprehending what they're saying - I've had vids where Doc or Chappy has said something to me and I didn't understand what they meant until months (and several viewings) later.
It's kind of hard to judge where you should be at when you've taken a few of these classes. On one hand, the material is not surprising to you, and you're better able to manage some of the stress of the class; but on the other hand, doing this stuff properly, effectively, and smoothly is extrememly difficult. Even for people who do it frequently. I was a bit disappointed with my performance; I expected more from myself.
Handgun accuracy was marginally acceptable, I made some 25+ yard shots without any trouble, though out to 50 I had a bit more difficulty with; this is probably more due to not finding my POA/POI at those distances after I switch to the G19. That, and a couple of small bobbles with tac reloads will be easily fixed on the square range.
By day 3, people were relaxing a bit, self included; one of the cool things about these classes is that you can see people eventually submit to the class fatigue a bit, and it often has a very positive effect instead of a negative - you start to let go of all the unnecesarry stuff and just slow down and do things one at a time. As one of my buddies said to me that day - "I suddenly realized at one point in the shoothouse that I was flexing every single muscle in my body. After I noticed that (after 2 whole days of doing it) - things went a lot more smoothly."
One other objective for me was that I brought a few good friends and family members that I wanted to expose to what Chappy would call "techniques-based training", in hopes that taking some of the normal classes and skills-based training and putting them into a different context for them. I think this was fairly successful - I know that I look at most square-range stuff very differently after the shoothouse. We had a damn good time doing it, too.
All-in-all, even though I felt as though I slogged through the class with minimal success, it was still very worthwhile and you have to take advantage of your time available in the house when you can. Pat was missed greatly, you could tell; I kept waiting for him to walk around the corner, in full kit, as before, but it just didn't happen. That's going to take a bit to get used to.
The Alliance team is top notch and are like family to me now. They provide a top-shelf product, and I can't recommend them all enough. Chappy, Doc, Yeti, Seabass, & Joe are a great team and are great instructors.
Finally, I am proud to sponsor the APD range through my company, EuroOptic, and we were privileged to sponsor this class with some goodies. For those of you that train at this range, have FFLs, or have LE/Mil/GG affiliations, please contact dealer-pricing@eurooptic.com to get hooked up with free no-commitment discount pricing on our site. Thank you!
June 3-5, 2016
Alliance Police Training Facility, Alliance, OH
Primary Instructors - John Chapman, John Spears, Steve Fisher
Assistance Instructors - Mike Sebastian, Joe Weyer
Course was flown under the EAG Tactical banner, but administered by LMS Defense due to special circumstances.
====================
Gear - Mayflower APC, Ops Core ballistic helmet w/ GoPro, Glock 19 Gen 4 w/Trijicon night sights & TLR-2 IRW, Surefire handheld white light.
I'll spend the majority of this AAR on my thoughts and learning points - I'm not going to go through all the curriculum. This is my fourth or fifth live-fire partner shoothouse class, all of which have been at Alliance Police Training's awesome training facility.
Not surprisingly, one of the mantras from the beginning of this class was to slow down. I'm not naive enough to assume that this doesn't apply to me - it especially applies to me. My partner and I, while both having attended these classes before, and having been partners before, have a tendency to try and process information quickly, and move correspondingly fast. "Not overruning your headlights" is a concept that's been smashed into my face before - but sometimes, it can be hard to determine how far out exactly your headlights are shining.
So pace and speed was a bit of an issue for us - not because we're exceptionally poor at processing the information in the house, but more keeping the throttle back and being smooth, and keeping each other honest. A plus here is that we both ran head-mounted video, and you cannot lie to yourself when you watch the vids. I suspect that part of this at least was size differential - considering that one of my steps is equal about 2.5 of my partner's, I constantly had the impression that part of the pace differential was because she was trying to keep up with me (even though I wasn't moving that fast).
At one point, a light bulb went off when Chappy told me that I was seeing the furniture, not the shapes. The immediate reaction was "what? I know what the shapes are..." but after some ruthless self-inspection, I realized what he meant - and, as usual, the problem here was overthinking on my part. Taking a giant step back and literally just drawing the shapes of where I would move as compared to where there were potential danger areas made a huge mental difference to me, almost embarrassingly so. Reevaluating this also made knowing when certain movement techniques made more sense.
Again, having all my old vids is priceless here - being able to run through all of my old runs and instructor comments in hotwashes is invaluable because if I try looking at things differently, like above, being able to reference past criticisms allows me to look at what they're saying through this new lens. I've also noticed that many times even though I shake my head yes when receiving criticisms, I'm not really comprehending what they're saying - I've had vids where Doc or Chappy has said something to me and I didn't understand what they meant until months (and several viewings) later.
It's kind of hard to judge where you should be at when you've taken a few of these classes. On one hand, the material is not surprising to you, and you're better able to manage some of the stress of the class; but on the other hand, doing this stuff properly, effectively, and smoothly is extrememly difficult. Even for people who do it frequently. I was a bit disappointed with my performance; I expected more from myself.
Handgun accuracy was marginally acceptable, I made some 25+ yard shots without any trouble, though out to 50 I had a bit more difficulty with; this is probably more due to not finding my POA/POI at those distances after I switch to the G19. That, and a couple of small bobbles with tac reloads will be easily fixed on the square range.
By day 3, people were relaxing a bit, self included; one of the cool things about these classes is that you can see people eventually submit to the class fatigue a bit, and it often has a very positive effect instead of a negative - you start to let go of all the unnecesarry stuff and just slow down and do things one at a time. As one of my buddies said to me that day - "I suddenly realized at one point in the shoothouse that I was flexing every single muscle in my body. After I noticed that (after 2 whole days of doing it) - things went a lot more smoothly."
One other objective for me was that I brought a few good friends and family members that I wanted to expose to what Chappy would call "techniques-based training", in hopes that taking some of the normal classes and skills-based training and putting them into a different context for them. I think this was fairly successful - I know that I look at most square-range stuff very differently after the shoothouse. We had a damn good time doing it, too.
All-in-all, even though I felt as though I slogged through the class with minimal success, it was still very worthwhile and you have to take advantage of your time available in the house when you can. Pat was missed greatly, you could tell; I kept waiting for him to walk around the corner, in full kit, as before, but it just didn't happen. That's going to take a bit to get used to.
The Alliance team is top notch and are like family to me now. They provide a top-shelf product, and I can't recommend them all enough. Chappy, Doc, Yeti, Seabass, & Joe are a great team and are great instructors.
Finally, I am proud to sponsor the APD range through my company, EuroOptic, and we were privileged to sponsor this class with some goodies. For those of you that train at this range, have FFLs, or have LE/Mil/GG affiliations, please contact dealer-pricing@eurooptic.com to get hooked up with free no-commitment discount pricing on our site. Thank you!
