victran
Amateur
March 26-27 at Prado Shooting Park, Chino, CA. 16 hours.
Instructor: Bob Vogel, former Law Enforcement Officer in Ohio. multiple championships and multiple rankings in USPSA, IPSC, and IDPA within several divisions in respective sports. (bio)
Objective of World Class Pistol Skills: Reinforcement of fundamentals of shooting with skills application for tactical and competition use.
Introduction: I have been shooting for about 4 years now. I have had informal classes, mentors, mostly self-taught. I started out with a focus on tactical applications and manipulations of firearms. It was not until less than 2 years ago that I have had an interest in competitive shooters and competitive shooting sports, mainly USPSA. What I wanted out of this class; I wanted direct and personal exposure to a world class shooter on where I am as a shooter, what I need to work on, and how to improve.
Disclaimer: I lacked adequate recording equipment but will link and source from previous classes and instructions. This is also a detailed perspective of the class and will not go into entirely what drills were done and discussed, for the audience of P&S is well experienced as is. Overall, this is a general consensus of what the class was like and how I felt about it.
Gear
Beretta Brigadier 9mm
Wilson Combat Fiber optic front and U-Notch rear.
Wilson Combat Action tune kit personally fitted.
13lbs and 11.5lbs recoil spring.
Shok-Buff Recoil Buffer
12lbs hammer spring.
Hogue G10 grips with skate tape.
Four Mec Gar magazines.
Glock 22 Gen 3
Lonewolf Industries 40-9 barrel.
TruGrip grip tape.
Zev-Technologies extended magazine release.
Dawson Precision fiber front and adjustable rear sight
Streamlight TLR-1 gen 1, 160 lumens.
Five Magpul GL9 magazines.
ATS Warbelt
5.11 double pistol magazine pouch
ITW Fast Mag Gen 2
5.11 dump pouch
HSGI bleeder pouch w/ CAT Tourniquet
Safariland 6004 Single leg strap panel with single magazine pouch
ITW Grimlock
Mechanix Gloves
Ronin Tactics Senshi Belt
AWS inc. single pistol magazine pouch x2
AWS inc. single rifle magazine pouch
AWS inc. medical pull out pouch
Safariland UBL with single leg strap
Ammunition
500 rounds of Wolf 115gr. 9mm
500 rounds of Sasquatch 124gr reloaded 9mm
Holsters
Safariland 7TS for Beretta
Safariland ALS w/ light channel for Glock 17/22 with weapon light.
Prelude
I drove 6 hours south into Chino, CA and checked into my AirBnB room rental. Gear check, ammo check, ensure weapons were cleaned and lubed. Read previous students AARs, watch Vogel videos and demonstrations, etc the night before and weeks prior. Clearly, I wanted to know what to expect and was really excited.
Day 1
Arrived at Prado Shooting Park at 0745, gate opened at 0800, introduce myself to other students up tillVogel gathered us about at 0830.
The class size was 25 enrolled students, full class and I was lucky to grab the last slot. At least 5 students drove from my area the night before to attend this class. At least 8 Law Enforcement Officers; 5 active and one being an active SWAT officer, 3 retired or administrative role. Rest are local who compete primarily in IDPA and USPSA. 3 additional students were the range hosts/photographers; SMGlee, Andrew Ho, and “Shin” who is a current Grandmaster in USPSA.
This was Vogel’s first class at Prado and through Alias Training Group (nicknamed Alias Mafia by me because of their cadre). Though he is familiar with the area as Taran Butler (of TTI) is a local. Off the bat, Vogel quickly went over his biography, I already had the presumption that he is not one to boast about himself or status, all of which is true. Vogel spoke about safety, his background and foundation for 5 minutes before going into what he wants to do for us.
What Vogel wanted to do with us for the class was dead simple; improve our shooting skills by testing us constantly and exposing us to our flaws.
Very, very clear and concise.
Mechanics
Vogel then went on with how he grips the pistol. His grip gets so high up onto the gun that he accepted the slide bites and at a distance, it almost looks like he is bending the frame itself. Vogel’s approach to his grip is simple; grip it as high and hard as you can without inducing fissures into your sight picture. His dominant hand grip is high where the web of thand between thumb and index finger is is mere millimeters under slide, absolutely amazing how he is able to index grip every time he draws his gun. Next, his support hand, he torques his support hand forward to consume as much of the support side as possible, often at times the palm of his hand will cover the frame. Along with the aggressive torque of the support hand would actually induce a slight cant into his gun. Naturally, he keeps all his controls stock and low profile for his Glocks, standard magazine release and standard slide stop/release.
So with such an aggressive grip, comes his body posture, Vogel’s arms were straight out and is unlike a majority of competitors. He emphasized the support arm being above the firing hand arm and to have the shoulders rolled forward to control the recoil. However, he is not one to “tactical turtle,” at a distance it may look like it but his head and entire body is not hunching overly aggressively forward in a planted stance. Vogel indicated that anything above the diaphragm is primarily controlling the recoil in terms of body posture.
Keep in mind, Vogel is not a large man either, he is around 6′2 and ~180 lbs. with a really lean build. His physical attributes towards shooting is mainly from his grip strength. Being raised on a farm and rural countryside of Ohio doing hard manual labor helped conditioned his hands at a young age. If one were to look at his hands, first thing they would notice is how white they are from calluses and the dedication he puts for his grip work. He brought out the first three levels of the Captains of Crush grip trainers and explained that it is not your average grippers, from level 1 to 10, only a handful of people in the world can ever get past level 4 and 6. An actual training regimen of these are not simply sitting down and squeezing, one is supposed to work on technique of closing them to the point of exhaustion, the level 3 is rated at 280 lbs of resistance and no one in the class was able to close a level 1 single handily. Apart from his grip workout, he only does pull-ups in order to keep his physique. Since leaving full-time law enforcement a few years ago, his workout regimen is not intensive. For he reiterates that in the competition world, physical fitness can only get you so far versus correct application of technique and form.
(video explanation of grip)
Last thing he wanted to talk about before we headed downrange was seeing. Being able to track and see your sights every time you fire the gun and the slide cycles is imperative. Vogel is reinforcing everything I had lived by since taking up shooting seriously, never drive faster than you can see. How this is achieved is simply conditioning and training your eyes to track and focus while moving fast. Vogel gave examples of baseball players being able to see and determine whether to hit a baseball being thrown at over 90 mph. To the normal person that is unconditioned, all they would see is a white blob coming at them. Yet, the baseball player can see the finer details of the stitching of a baseball and entire sphere flying at them towards their hit or no hit zone.
Vogel talked about having an ideal sight picture on the gun. Ideally, a wide rear notch with a thin blade that can be tracked easily as the gun cycles. This eventually went into talk about having the right recoil spring and somewhat about personal ammo. Vogel talked about having lighter recoil springs to help track the sights better while the gun cycled. His competition guns would have lighter recoil springs while his duty guns would have stock or slightly lighter than stock recoil springs. The ammo he used are all set to meet power factor and only slightly lighter load with the primers seated fully in for most reliable ignition.
Downrange
We started our drills with simple exercises and a standard USPSA target, first few were from the low ready and the par times were set from 7, 5, and 3.5 seconds. Starting with repeated controlled pairs, after the 3.5 second par time, Vogel would time us individually down the line. This is where I personally started to fall apart early in the class.
Excitement, stress, Vogel’s very presence, a combination of all? I was rushing my shots and was not being smooth at all. Whenever Vogel ran the timer and I fired my shots, 1 A and 1 D. I had so much time left out of the 3.5 second par time. I allowed myself to go too fast where I had no control. By the time we got to one handed shooting, my shots were sporadically all over the target. Vogel kept telling me to slow down, I had plenty of time left over to work the drill whenever he ran the timer. The mental pressure of being watched and critiqued is not something new to me, however I just had to go fast. After each drill, we went back to our equipment to reload our magazines for the next drill, I would have spare boxes of ammo in my dump to top off my magazines so I could spend more time up range and dry practice at the berm. Vogel discussed dry practice briefly, how every live fire shot he takes during practice equates to at least 6-8 dry fire shots during or after his practice sessions. So one can imagine how much time is actually spent on dry fire and what kind of training regimen he puts himself through.
The Bill Drill
The infamous Bill Drill that is often practiced by competitors. To the uninitiated, it would seem like a flashy drill. Vogel started us at the 7 yard line and demonstrated the drill with us. The objective is to put six rounds into the A zone under the set par time, all while seeing the sights track each time before you break the shot. Now, I am very familiar with the drill and often run it in a slow cadence at my home range. However, even being so focused to keep my shots in the A zone, I started to become distracted. I observed the slide reciprocating to the rear after each shot I fired, but even with my eyes so focused, they started to wander away from my sights. Distraction? Fatigue? I did not know, but I definitely identified my problematic focus drift. It was like going back to what Vogel said earlier about the eyes being able to track fast moving things at high speed, my eyes were seeing the entire slide, rear sight, front sight, all that mass coming back to the rear and cycling forward. All of which, for some reason, my eyes tracked off and away. This was one of few instances during our drills that I caught myself drifting off focus.
The next few exercises and drills we conducted revolved around implementing what we did static and relatively slow, to incorporate movement, and then changing up distances between targets. All of which I am familiar with, all of which very simplistic in terms, and all which we want accuracy to finalize our result with the reflecting time. Efficiency overall.
Gun Failures
Prior to the class, I ensured over the past month and weeks leading up to the class that my pistols will perform. The Beretta Brigadier has been the most modified weapon in my collection; having a more reliable trigger bar to ensure reliable ignition of primers then paired with the lightest hammer spring to push the envelope of having the lightest double-action trigger pull with smoothest break. With this combination of springs and gears, I tested the weapon with basically crappy ammo. Collectively I had about 300 rounds through the gun with steel and aluminum cased ammunition prior to the class to ensure it would run fine during the class. I did change out to the stock heavier recoil spring from a lighter spring prior to the class as the last box of Wolf ammo had trouble completely feeding into the gun.
However, around the time when we started the movement drills, my Beretta had began to malfunction. It started when we were still on the line conducting static line timed drills; light primer strikes onto the hard primers found in the Wolf ammo I was shooting. Often at times, I would tap and rack the slide and eventually pick up the round(s) ejected for the next cadence of fire, but I eventually had a failure to fire every third or fourth round so it overly became ridiculous. Eventually, when it came time to shoot the movement drills, Vogel would actually notice my ammo problems and catch the ejected live rounds in the air, often with multiple hammer strikes onto the primer. He even commented that some of them looked like rifle primers in the steel cased ammunition.
I then took out the Glock and began to run the drills with it. Surprisingly, even my Glock had started to fail miserably on me. I experienced failures to feed and my magazines would not fully feed the ammunition reliably into the Glock. So my Glock is a Glock 22 Gen 3 with a Lonewolf Industries 40-9 barrel, running Magpul GL9 magazines. I had noticed that the steel cased ammo were tighter fit in the magazines in comparison to the brass ammo, but overall, very tight fitting rounds into the magazine. An example of a hard malfunction would be my Glock locking back and extra smoke would exit the chamber and a live round would sit hollowly on top of a half way fed follower. Vogel also commented that it a combination of steel cased ammunition with a tight fitting barrel would commonly cause those types of malfunctions.
Overall, these mechanical failures intrigued me as my pistols were tested with hundreds of rounds of ammunition over the course of the months and weeks following up to the class. Regardless, of the matter, having lost of confidence of my pistols truly distracted my focus when conducting the drills and exercises the rest of the first day. At the end of the class, I took the last box of Wolf and did a walk back on my own with the Glock from 5, 7, 10, up to 50 yards. Slow cadence of fire onto the reduced IPSC steel target to regain my focus and practice my missed shots. I would experience a few malfunctions but I picked up the rounds and eventually fired them off by the time I was done. An interesting note was that my rear pin for my Dawson Precision rear sight had actually drifted itself out during fire and I kept pushing it back in every 3-5 rounds. Later that night I found my front sight severely loose as well. Improper installation and lack of enough loctite by the local gun store that had installed my sights for me.
Day 2
That night, I stripped my Beretta and Glock down for a deep cleaning and lubricated both guns. I swapped out the recoil spring of the Beretta to a lighter spring because I would be shooting quality brass ammunition.
Day 2 started off similar to Day 1, safety brief and went onto the range. We immediately worked on our draws. Vogel then had us conduct the Ohio Police Qualification test. A relatively simple and easy test with long par times, but once again, I continued to rush my shots and not control my speed which translated onto the target. My score was 18/25, failing the simple police qualification. Vogel then had us push the distance of the drills in the qualification by two. I was more focused and scored again, an 18/25 but with the double distance, I accepted the fact for what it was.
Ohio Police Qual
The next drill we conducted was the classic El Presidente. Simplistic in its nature and the objective of the drill is to work those mechanics while running the gun. Eyes, sights, trigger press, follow through, reload, repeat. All two have two holes in the A zone for each of the three targets from 7 yards.
Additional movement drills required incorporated more movement and transitioning to single handed shooting. All of which just pushed us to think on our feet on the implementation of shooting.
6x6x6 (which I failed because I shot freestyle during the strong hand portion)
4 Corners
Course of fire Vogel set up for us
Overall, Day 2 was mostly focused on putting everything we did on the static line on Day 1 and incorporating our skill set onto the stages Vogel had put together for us. I shot the Beretta the entire day with only one malfunction (light primer strike with a left over steel cased round from the day before). We ended the Day 2 with the walk-back. We all lined up parallel to the steel reduced sized target and started at the 10 yard line. Draw and shoot, no par time. I took all my shots at a double-action pull. By the time I reached the 60 yard line, my front sight covered the target completely and guessed my shot and pressed. Shot landed mere inch(es) above the left side of the head of the target. 5 students went from the 60 to 100 yard line and by the 100 yard line, 2 students remained. Two cops, a younger guy with an STI 2011 vs an active USPSA competitor and trainer with a Wilson Combat Beretta 92G Brigadier. They both made their shots at 100 and when Vogel set the par time at 3.5 seconds, draw and shoot, the Beretta came out on top. Very impressive. We did the walk-back again and once again, complete coverage of the target from my front sight at around 50-60 yards bumped me out. This round, the cop running the Beretta shot the entire walk-back one handed at double action till he finally missed around the 50 yard line.The younger cop won the par time at the end against a Springfield 1911 9mm and Glock 34.
Closing
I really enjoyed this class and being grateful is a definite understatement of how I feel about the class. However, there is just one thing I would like to address about the class that I did not like and would recommend to Vogel for his class structure.
Too much downtime between drills to reload and top off magazines.
I felt that after each drill and test we had, there was too much time spent and given to top off our magazines. Time that could have been spent practicing the drill again or being tested against the timer by Vogel. I understand that I was partaking in the class in a magazine limit restricted state, but having ammo on hand or kit would have reduced the time we could have spent topping off our magazines. After each drill, whether it be 4 rounds or 12+ rounds, I would reach into my dump pouch and top off my magazines that had plenty of ammunition for the next distance or run we had. There was a student, who was a cop using his department issued P220, that would top off his magazines like I would after each drill. There was also another cop that kept most of his reserved ammunition on the side of the range next to the berm away from us, which resulted to shorter time to top off magazines. On average, a student was expected to have at least 4 magazines on them during the class. At least 40 rounds on them at any given time, having more magazines and ammo on yourself would have helped a lot with reducing the down time to reload magazines.
Bob Vogel overall, made the class very easy and simple to understand what he was doing and wanted to project to us. No need for ten dollar words or overly complicated scientific explanations into recoil control, nor was there any dogma of embracing one way or technique over another.
This was not a beginner class, nor was it an intermediate class. Vogel and the class expected everyone to their left and right to be at a certain level of competency and skill behind the pistol. Training with steel and plate racks is definitely something I do not practice enough (due to lack of range resources) but it really made me appreciate what experienced competitors have to train for and practice all the time. Many of the police officers in the class were very skilled in their pistol craft, it goes without saying that it is their lifeline which relies upon their competency and mindset they had behind the gun. I truly appreciate them and their input whenever I approached them with questions in regards of weapon manipulation or mental processing. Some of the students I ran into had plenty of valuable insight in their craft. Majority competitors with background experience elsewhere and some expanding their knowledge base with a world class shooter like Vogel.
Few Notes
In closing, I want to thank Bob Vogel for taking the time to come out west to teach our class. SMGLee and crew for providing a great range experience and having the equipment Bob could use to teach us and for inviting me to dinner after Day 1. And lastly, the very students I met, spoke with and became friends with over the course of that weekend. An accumulation of all this made this class very worthwhile class. Even though I failed many times during the class, I left with more knowledge at my disposal. I came to this class knowing that I am not here to “operate” or be a gunfighter, I came here to simply be a better overall shooter.
I highly recommend this class to anyone looking towards testing themselves in their skill set.
"that f*ing guy" lol
Instructor: Bob Vogel, former Law Enforcement Officer in Ohio. multiple championships and multiple rankings in USPSA, IPSC, and IDPA within several divisions in respective sports. (bio)
Objective of World Class Pistol Skills: Reinforcement of fundamentals of shooting with skills application for tactical and competition use.
Introduction: I have been shooting for about 4 years now. I have had informal classes, mentors, mostly self-taught. I started out with a focus on tactical applications and manipulations of firearms. It was not until less than 2 years ago that I have had an interest in competitive shooters and competitive shooting sports, mainly USPSA. What I wanted out of this class; I wanted direct and personal exposure to a world class shooter on where I am as a shooter, what I need to work on, and how to improve.
Disclaimer: I lacked adequate recording equipment but will link and source from previous classes and instructions. This is also a detailed perspective of the class and will not go into entirely what drills were done and discussed, for the audience of P&S is well experienced as is. Overall, this is a general consensus of what the class was like and how I felt about it.
Gear
Beretta Brigadier 9mm
Wilson Combat Fiber optic front and U-Notch rear.
Wilson Combat Action tune kit personally fitted.
13lbs and 11.5lbs recoil spring.
Shok-Buff Recoil Buffer
12lbs hammer spring.
Hogue G10 grips with skate tape.
Four Mec Gar magazines.
Glock 22 Gen 3
Lonewolf Industries 40-9 barrel.
TruGrip grip tape.
Zev-Technologies extended magazine release.
Dawson Precision fiber front and adjustable rear sight
Streamlight TLR-1 gen 1, 160 lumens.
Five Magpul GL9 magazines.
ATS Warbelt
5.11 double pistol magazine pouch
ITW Fast Mag Gen 2
5.11 dump pouch
HSGI bleeder pouch w/ CAT Tourniquet
Safariland 6004 Single leg strap panel with single magazine pouch
ITW Grimlock
Mechanix Gloves
Ronin Tactics Senshi Belt
AWS inc. single pistol magazine pouch x2
AWS inc. single rifle magazine pouch
AWS inc. medical pull out pouch
Safariland UBL with single leg strap
Ammunition
500 rounds of Wolf 115gr. 9mm
500 rounds of Sasquatch 124gr reloaded 9mm
Holsters
Safariland 7TS for Beretta
Safariland ALS w/ light channel for Glock 17/22 with weapon light.
Prelude
I drove 6 hours south into Chino, CA and checked into my AirBnB room rental. Gear check, ammo check, ensure weapons were cleaned and lubed. Read previous students AARs, watch Vogel videos and demonstrations, etc the night before and weeks prior. Clearly, I wanted to know what to expect and was really excited.
Day 1
Arrived at Prado Shooting Park at 0745, gate opened at 0800, introduce myself to other students up tillVogel gathered us about at 0830.
The class size was 25 enrolled students, full class and I was lucky to grab the last slot. At least 5 students drove from my area the night before to attend this class. At least 8 Law Enforcement Officers; 5 active and one being an active SWAT officer, 3 retired or administrative role. Rest are local who compete primarily in IDPA and USPSA. 3 additional students were the range hosts/photographers; SMGlee, Andrew Ho, and “Shin” who is a current Grandmaster in USPSA.
This was Vogel’s first class at Prado and through Alias Training Group (nicknamed Alias Mafia by me because of their cadre). Though he is familiar with the area as Taran Butler (of TTI) is a local. Off the bat, Vogel quickly went over his biography, I already had the presumption that he is not one to boast about himself or status, all of which is true. Vogel spoke about safety, his background and foundation for 5 minutes before going into what he wants to do for us.
What Vogel wanted to do with us for the class was dead simple; improve our shooting skills by testing us constantly and exposing us to our flaws.
Very, very clear and concise.
Mechanics
Vogel then went on with how he grips the pistol. His grip gets so high up onto the gun that he accepted the slide bites and at a distance, it almost looks like he is bending the frame itself. Vogel’s approach to his grip is simple; grip it as high and hard as you can without inducing fissures into your sight picture. His dominant hand grip is high where the web of thand between thumb and index finger is is mere millimeters under slide, absolutely amazing how he is able to index grip every time he draws his gun. Next, his support hand, he torques his support hand forward to consume as much of the support side as possible, often at times the palm of his hand will cover the frame. Along with the aggressive torque of the support hand would actually induce a slight cant into his gun. Naturally, he keeps all his controls stock and low profile for his Glocks, standard magazine release and standard slide stop/release.
So with such an aggressive grip, comes his body posture, Vogel’s arms were straight out and is unlike a majority of competitors. He emphasized the support arm being above the firing hand arm and to have the shoulders rolled forward to control the recoil. However, he is not one to “tactical turtle,” at a distance it may look like it but his head and entire body is not hunching overly aggressively forward in a planted stance. Vogel indicated that anything above the diaphragm is primarily controlling the recoil in terms of body posture.
Keep in mind, Vogel is not a large man either, he is around 6′2 and ~180 lbs. with a really lean build. His physical attributes towards shooting is mainly from his grip strength. Being raised on a farm and rural countryside of Ohio doing hard manual labor helped conditioned his hands at a young age. If one were to look at his hands, first thing they would notice is how white they are from calluses and the dedication he puts for his grip work. He brought out the first three levels of the Captains of Crush grip trainers and explained that it is not your average grippers, from level 1 to 10, only a handful of people in the world can ever get past level 4 and 6. An actual training regimen of these are not simply sitting down and squeezing, one is supposed to work on technique of closing them to the point of exhaustion, the level 3 is rated at 280 lbs of resistance and no one in the class was able to close a level 1 single handily. Apart from his grip workout, he only does pull-ups in order to keep his physique. Since leaving full-time law enforcement a few years ago, his workout regimen is not intensive. For he reiterates that in the competition world, physical fitness can only get you so far versus correct application of technique and form.
(video explanation of grip)
Last thing he wanted to talk about before we headed downrange was seeing. Being able to track and see your sights every time you fire the gun and the slide cycles is imperative. Vogel is reinforcing everything I had lived by since taking up shooting seriously, never drive faster than you can see. How this is achieved is simply conditioning and training your eyes to track and focus while moving fast. Vogel gave examples of baseball players being able to see and determine whether to hit a baseball being thrown at over 90 mph. To the normal person that is unconditioned, all they would see is a white blob coming at them. Yet, the baseball player can see the finer details of the stitching of a baseball and entire sphere flying at them towards their hit or no hit zone.
Vogel talked about having an ideal sight picture on the gun. Ideally, a wide rear notch with a thin blade that can be tracked easily as the gun cycles. This eventually went into talk about having the right recoil spring and somewhat about personal ammo. Vogel talked about having lighter recoil springs to help track the sights better while the gun cycled. His competition guns would have lighter recoil springs while his duty guns would have stock or slightly lighter than stock recoil springs. The ammo he used are all set to meet power factor and only slightly lighter load with the primers seated fully in for most reliable ignition.
Downrange
We started our drills with simple exercises and a standard USPSA target, first few were from the low ready and the par times were set from 7, 5, and 3.5 seconds. Starting with repeated controlled pairs, after the 3.5 second par time, Vogel would time us individually down the line. This is where I personally started to fall apart early in the class.
Excitement, stress, Vogel’s very presence, a combination of all? I was rushing my shots and was not being smooth at all. Whenever Vogel ran the timer and I fired my shots, 1 A and 1 D. I had so much time left out of the 3.5 second par time. I allowed myself to go too fast where I had no control. By the time we got to one handed shooting, my shots were sporadically all over the target. Vogel kept telling me to slow down, I had plenty of time left over to work the drill whenever he ran the timer. The mental pressure of being watched and critiqued is not something new to me, however I just had to go fast. After each drill, we went back to our equipment to reload our magazines for the next drill, I would have spare boxes of ammo in my dump to top off my magazines so I could spend more time up range and dry practice at the berm. Vogel discussed dry practice briefly, how every live fire shot he takes during practice equates to at least 6-8 dry fire shots during or after his practice sessions. So one can imagine how much time is actually spent on dry fire and what kind of training regimen he puts himself through.
The Bill Drill
The infamous Bill Drill that is often practiced by competitors. To the uninitiated, it would seem like a flashy drill. Vogel started us at the 7 yard line and demonstrated the drill with us. The objective is to put six rounds into the A zone under the set par time, all while seeing the sights track each time before you break the shot. Now, I am very familiar with the drill and often run it in a slow cadence at my home range. However, even being so focused to keep my shots in the A zone, I started to become distracted. I observed the slide reciprocating to the rear after each shot I fired, but even with my eyes so focused, they started to wander away from my sights. Distraction? Fatigue? I did not know, but I definitely identified my problematic focus drift. It was like going back to what Vogel said earlier about the eyes being able to track fast moving things at high speed, my eyes were seeing the entire slide, rear sight, front sight, all that mass coming back to the rear and cycling forward. All of which, for some reason, my eyes tracked off and away. This was one of few instances during our drills that I caught myself drifting off focus.
The next few exercises and drills we conducted revolved around implementing what we did static and relatively slow, to incorporate movement, and then changing up distances between targets. All of which I am familiar with, all of which very simplistic in terms, and all which we want accuracy to finalize our result with the reflecting time. Efficiency overall.
Gun Failures
Prior to the class, I ensured over the past month and weeks leading up to the class that my pistols will perform. The Beretta Brigadier has been the most modified weapon in my collection; having a more reliable trigger bar to ensure reliable ignition of primers then paired with the lightest hammer spring to push the envelope of having the lightest double-action trigger pull with smoothest break. With this combination of springs and gears, I tested the weapon with basically crappy ammo. Collectively I had about 300 rounds through the gun with steel and aluminum cased ammunition prior to the class to ensure it would run fine during the class. I did change out to the stock heavier recoil spring from a lighter spring prior to the class as the last box of Wolf ammo had trouble completely feeding into the gun.
However, around the time when we started the movement drills, my Beretta had began to malfunction. It started when we were still on the line conducting static line timed drills; light primer strikes onto the hard primers found in the Wolf ammo I was shooting. Often at times, I would tap and rack the slide and eventually pick up the round(s) ejected for the next cadence of fire, but I eventually had a failure to fire every third or fourth round so it overly became ridiculous. Eventually, when it came time to shoot the movement drills, Vogel would actually notice my ammo problems and catch the ejected live rounds in the air, often with multiple hammer strikes onto the primer. He even commented that some of them looked like rifle primers in the steel cased ammunition.
I then took out the Glock and began to run the drills with it. Surprisingly, even my Glock had started to fail miserably on me. I experienced failures to feed and my magazines would not fully feed the ammunition reliably into the Glock. So my Glock is a Glock 22 Gen 3 with a Lonewolf Industries 40-9 barrel, running Magpul GL9 magazines. I had noticed that the steel cased ammo were tighter fit in the magazines in comparison to the brass ammo, but overall, very tight fitting rounds into the magazine. An example of a hard malfunction would be my Glock locking back and extra smoke would exit the chamber and a live round would sit hollowly on top of a half way fed follower. Vogel also commented that it a combination of steel cased ammunition with a tight fitting barrel would commonly cause those types of malfunctions.
Overall, these mechanical failures intrigued me as my pistols were tested with hundreds of rounds of ammunition over the course of the months and weeks following up to the class. Regardless, of the matter, having lost of confidence of my pistols truly distracted my focus when conducting the drills and exercises the rest of the first day. At the end of the class, I took the last box of Wolf and did a walk back on my own with the Glock from 5, 7, 10, up to 50 yards. Slow cadence of fire onto the reduced IPSC steel target to regain my focus and practice my missed shots. I would experience a few malfunctions but I picked up the rounds and eventually fired them off by the time I was done. An interesting note was that my rear pin for my Dawson Precision rear sight had actually drifted itself out during fire and I kept pushing it back in every 3-5 rounds. Later that night I found my front sight severely loose as well. Improper installation and lack of enough loctite by the local gun store that had installed my sights for me.
Day 2
That night, I stripped my Beretta and Glock down for a deep cleaning and lubricated both guns. I swapped out the recoil spring of the Beretta to a lighter spring because I would be shooting quality brass ammunition.
Day 2 started off similar to Day 1, safety brief and went onto the range. We immediately worked on our draws. Vogel then had us conduct the Ohio Police Qualification test. A relatively simple and easy test with long par times, but once again, I continued to rush my shots and not control my speed which translated onto the target. My score was 18/25, failing the simple police qualification. Vogel then had us push the distance of the drills in the qualification by two. I was more focused and scored again, an 18/25 but with the double distance, I accepted the fact for what it was.
Ohio Police Qual
The next drill we conducted was the classic El Presidente. Simplistic in its nature and the objective of the drill is to work those mechanics while running the gun. Eyes, sights, trigger press, follow through, reload, repeat. All two have two holes in the A zone for each of the three targets from 7 yards.
Additional movement drills required incorporated more movement and transitioning to single handed shooting. All of which just pushed us to think on our feet on the implementation of shooting.
6x6x6 (which I failed because I shot freestyle during the strong hand portion)
4 Corners
Course of fire Vogel set up for us
Overall, Day 2 was mostly focused on putting everything we did on the static line on Day 1 and incorporating our skill set onto the stages Vogel had put together for us. I shot the Beretta the entire day with only one malfunction (light primer strike with a left over steel cased round from the day before). We ended the Day 2 with the walk-back. We all lined up parallel to the steel reduced sized target and started at the 10 yard line. Draw and shoot, no par time. I took all my shots at a double-action pull. By the time I reached the 60 yard line, my front sight covered the target completely and guessed my shot and pressed. Shot landed mere inch(es) above the left side of the head of the target. 5 students went from the 60 to 100 yard line and by the 100 yard line, 2 students remained. Two cops, a younger guy with an STI 2011 vs an active USPSA competitor and trainer with a Wilson Combat Beretta 92G Brigadier. They both made their shots at 100 and when Vogel set the par time at 3.5 seconds, draw and shoot, the Beretta came out on top. Very impressive. We did the walk-back again and once again, complete coverage of the target from my front sight at around 50-60 yards bumped me out. This round, the cop running the Beretta shot the entire walk-back one handed at double action till he finally missed around the 50 yard line.The younger cop won the par time at the end against a Springfield 1911 9mm and Glock 34.
Closing
I really enjoyed this class and being grateful is a definite understatement of how I feel about the class. However, there is just one thing I would like to address about the class that I did not like and would recommend to Vogel for his class structure.
Too much downtime between drills to reload and top off magazines.
I felt that after each drill and test we had, there was too much time spent and given to top off our magazines. Time that could have been spent practicing the drill again or being tested against the timer by Vogel. I understand that I was partaking in the class in a magazine limit restricted state, but having ammo on hand or kit would have reduced the time we could have spent topping off our magazines. After each drill, whether it be 4 rounds or 12+ rounds, I would reach into my dump pouch and top off my magazines that had plenty of ammunition for the next distance or run we had. There was a student, who was a cop using his department issued P220, that would top off his magazines like I would after each drill. There was also another cop that kept most of his reserved ammunition on the side of the range next to the berm away from us, which resulted to shorter time to top off magazines. On average, a student was expected to have at least 4 magazines on them during the class. At least 40 rounds on them at any given time, having more magazines and ammo on yourself would have helped a lot with reducing the down time to reload magazines.
Bob Vogel overall, made the class very easy and simple to understand what he was doing and wanted to project to us. No need for ten dollar words or overly complicated scientific explanations into recoil control, nor was there any dogma of embracing one way or technique over another.
This was not a beginner class, nor was it an intermediate class. Vogel and the class expected everyone to their left and right to be at a certain level of competency and skill behind the pistol. Training with steel and plate racks is definitely something I do not practice enough (due to lack of range resources) but it really made me appreciate what experienced competitors have to train for and practice all the time. Many of the police officers in the class were very skilled in their pistol craft, it goes without saying that it is their lifeline which relies upon their competency and mindset they had behind the gun. I truly appreciate them and their input whenever I approached them with questions in regards of weapon manipulation or mental processing. Some of the students I ran into had plenty of valuable insight in their craft. Majority competitors with background experience elsewhere and some expanding their knowledge base with a world class shooter like Vogel.
Few Notes
- I definitely saw the limitations of my fiber optic front sight, despite it being a relatively thin front sight (.125 thickness), it covered a majority of my sight picture and A zone at relatively short distance too. Tried the Dawson Precision front sight on the Wilson Beretta 92G, even thinner.
- USE QUALITY AMMUNITION. This is a shooting class, not a combat shooting class or advance weapons manipulations class, where solving malfunctions during a shooting cadence is expected during a string of fire.
- There is always more time to practice, yet how one practices is often at times more important than how many reps you can do.
- Majority of the class ran Glock pistols; at least one 19, plenty of 34s, at least 4 STI 2011s, a Sig Sauer 1911, a Colt 1911, Springfield 1911 9mm, a CZ Tactical Sport, an H&K VP9, a PPQ Longslide, an M&P9L with Apex barrel, a Sig Sauer P220, and a Wilson Combat Beretta 92G.
- Take notes, ask questions, do not be afraid to approach Vogel with one on one tips and pointers. You really get your time and money’s worth if you do this, which I would not knockVogel on, you’ve already made the trip to the class and putting the time, get everything you can gather from your instructor.
In closing, I want to thank Bob Vogel for taking the time to come out west to teach our class. SMGLee and crew for providing a great range experience and having the equipment Bob could use to teach us and for inviting me to dinner after Day 1. And lastly, the very students I met, spoke with and became friends with over the course of that weekend. An accumulation of all this made this class very worthwhile class. Even though I failed many times during the class, I left with more knowledge at my disposal. I came to this class knowing that I am not here to “operate” or be a gunfighter, I came here to simply be a better overall shooter.
I highly recommend this class to anyone looking towards testing themselves in their skill set.
"that f*ing guy" lol
long time lurker and procastinator, first time poster lol