hogarth
Member
Below is an AAR I wrote and posted on a couple of other websites:
This was the sixth firearms course I took this year. The course was CTT Solutions' Covert Carry class, which took place at the Bethlehem Police Department Range in Bethlehem PA on Saturday, 7/26 and Sunday, 7/27. I am not in any way affiliated with CTT Solutions or Alias Training, except as a paying customer. Cost for the class was $525.
CTT Solutions is run by Mike Pannone, and if you don't know who he is, I would suggest visiting the CTT Solutions website, or visiting the Alias Training website, which seems to serve as some sort of umbrella for Mike's company as well as the companies of Larry Vickers, Kyle Defoor, Ken Hackathorn, Pat McNamara, and Larry Proctor. The common thread among these guys is special operations forces (Vickers, Pannone, and McNamara all former Delta, Defoor ex-Navy Seal, Proctor ex-Army SF, and Hackathorn ex-Army SF Firearms instructor, amongst other things). Mike's resume is available on his website as well as on the description of each class he teaches on the Alias website. Post-injury with Delta, he has spent time developing the training program for Federal Air Marshals, trained Naval Special Warfare units, and, as it happened, had just spent the week prior to our class training US Marines. He is regularly contracted by numerous law enforcement agencies.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I have been wanting to train with Pannone, or someone of similar background, for some time now. I wanted to see if/how training with someone with a background like his might differ from others I have trained with over the last two years.
Let me begin by saying that there was nothing boastful about how Mike teaches. When he says things like, "This is how we taught the Air Marshals how to do this," or, "this is what we used to do in Delta," or, "this is what we teach the Naval Special Warfare folks," he does so in matter-of-fact fashion just to help demonstrate that what he teaches is the real-deal.
This was the first class that I took with a prior friend of mine, i.e., not someone I met in a class. The fact that I took this class with a friend whom I have known for about 19 (?) years probably did impact my overall enjoyment of the class (there was some trash talking!). He works in LE and we drove up to Bethlehem from Baltimore on Friday night; with a 9 AM start time for class, we wanted to be able to wake up and already be in town.
My friend navigated and we made it to the range by about 8:35 AM. At least half the class was already there. The range we would work on (there were several at the facility) was completely covered in short grass rather than gravel, which was nice. It was hot and humid both days, with temps close to 90 degrees and humidity off the charts. We got situated at a bench and loaded a few mags while chatting with those in our immediate surroundings. Right at 9 AM Mike called us over to get us started.
He introduced himself with no fanfare. He just told us his name, said that, since we were there, we probably knew all about him and his background, and described what the course is about. He explained that he calls the class "Covert Carry" rather than "Concealed Carry" because there is a difference. Concealed in most places, legally speaking, means covered, whereas the people he spends so much time training carry covertly, wherein if they are "made", there are all sorts of ramifications. He suggested early on that we experiment a bit with holster positions, cover garments, etc. He emphasized that all cover garments are different based on thickness, weight, etc., and all of the different variables will have an effect on our ability to clear the garments and get a solid draw.
EVERYTHING we would do over the next two days was from concealment. Indeed, before we had fired a shot, Mike told us that we would probably fire around 700-800 rounds over the two days but, more importantly, draw from concealment 400-600 times!
The first shooting drill was simply designed to allow Mike to determine what type of students he had in class in terms of marksmanship fundamentals. This is an advanced class and Mike wanted to be able to take remedial action as needed and meet the class where it was. So at about 7 yards, the 20 of us fired 5 rounds two-handed, 5 strong-hand only, and 5 support-hand only at a circle target taped over a standard IPSC target. Mike walked up and down the line quickly assessing our abilities, declared a "good, you're all squared away, we can get to it more quickly now", and off we went.
I am not going to list every drill we ran. Despite my furious writing in my notebook, there were times when we changed things so quickly that I didn't get the chance to write down every little thing. What I would like to talk about is Mike as a teacher.
Being a student in Mike's class is like watching a scientist, or maybe a Hall of Fame athlete in ANY sport. He has the ability to boil things down to their barest elements and identify all of the subtleties that separate bad performance from good, and good from stellar. His philosophy is straightforward:
1. Know what you are doing
2. Know why you are doing it
3. Know how to do it with a high degree of specificity, understanding the mechanism for success in whatever it is you're doing
4. Identify the potential failure points along the way
5. Train around those failure points in order to avoid them completely or mitigate their effects.
This is his philosophy, and he was able to provide abundant analogies for how to apply these points to all aspects of life, not just shooting-related endeavors. He said many times that, for him, all of this stuff can be summed up by two different percentages: 100 and 0. If something doesn't work 100% of the time, then it may as well work 0% of the time, because you can bet that whatever failures are possible with said technique, they WILL rear their ugly heads when the chips are down.
An example of this would be drawing from concealment. It may be that someone who merely flips away his split front shirt can get his gun out and up and on target in 1.0 second. But the chance of that flipped shirt not being out of the way when you acquire the grip is too great (wind can flip it back to you, the garment might be heavier than you are used to, etc.). Therefore, why not pull that garment WAY out of the way EVERYTIME. It might cost you .02 seconds, but it can potentially save you 2 seconds when that flipped garment doesn't clear and you end up "Barney Fifeing it".
The class was set up as almost "guided discovery", as Mike said that we each have different clothes, holsters, body types, etc., so what works for him or one student may not work for another. With each iteration of the same drill he would tell us to push ourselves, that, much like a race car driver, there's no way to know how fast you can take a corner until you put the car into the wall. Once you've done so, then you know you have to dial it back a bit.
Day One drills included the diagnostic drill mentioned above, some draw and fire drills (and he had the science of the draw down and explained it beautifully, I thought), some draw-fire-slide lock reload-fire drills, some movement drills backwards at an angle, straight back, and forward, strong-hand only draw-fire drills, support-hand only draw-fire drills (loved his technique here!), and then we broke for lunch. New targets up, we did one-handed reload drills (strong and support, not easy, but again he has a great technique for this stuff), some timed drills two-handed (from the holster....EVERYTHING was from a concealed holster...did I mention that?), then started working the head shots, then some timed head shots. We finished the day with some Rabbit Drills (more on that later). We finished for the day around 4:15 (the class advertises some night-firing, but clearly this is range dependent, as many have noise restrictions, depending on where they are located. Ours fell into this category). I shot 368 rounds on Day One, and probably had about 325 draws from concealment.
contd....
This was the sixth firearms course I took this year. The course was CTT Solutions' Covert Carry class, which took place at the Bethlehem Police Department Range in Bethlehem PA on Saturday, 7/26 and Sunday, 7/27. I am not in any way affiliated with CTT Solutions or Alias Training, except as a paying customer. Cost for the class was $525.
CTT Solutions is run by Mike Pannone, and if you don't know who he is, I would suggest visiting the CTT Solutions website, or visiting the Alias Training website, which seems to serve as some sort of umbrella for Mike's company as well as the companies of Larry Vickers, Kyle Defoor, Ken Hackathorn, Pat McNamara, and Larry Proctor. The common thread among these guys is special operations forces (Vickers, Pannone, and McNamara all former Delta, Defoor ex-Navy Seal, Proctor ex-Army SF, and Hackathorn ex-Army SF Firearms instructor, amongst other things). Mike's resume is available on his website as well as on the description of each class he teaches on the Alias website. Post-injury with Delta, he has spent time developing the training program for Federal Air Marshals, trained Naval Special Warfare units, and, as it happened, had just spent the week prior to our class training US Marines. He is regularly contracted by numerous law enforcement agencies.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I have been wanting to train with Pannone, or someone of similar background, for some time now. I wanted to see if/how training with someone with a background like his might differ from others I have trained with over the last two years.
Let me begin by saying that there was nothing boastful about how Mike teaches. When he says things like, "This is how we taught the Air Marshals how to do this," or, "this is what we used to do in Delta," or, "this is what we teach the Naval Special Warfare folks," he does so in matter-of-fact fashion just to help demonstrate that what he teaches is the real-deal.
This was the first class that I took with a prior friend of mine, i.e., not someone I met in a class. The fact that I took this class with a friend whom I have known for about 19 (?) years probably did impact my overall enjoyment of the class (there was some trash talking!). He works in LE and we drove up to Bethlehem from Baltimore on Friday night; with a 9 AM start time for class, we wanted to be able to wake up and already be in town.
My friend navigated and we made it to the range by about 8:35 AM. At least half the class was already there. The range we would work on (there were several at the facility) was completely covered in short grass rather than gravel, which was nice. It was hot and humid both days, with temps close to 90 degrees and humidity off the charts. We got situated at a bench and loaded a few mags while chatting with those in our immediate surroundings. Right at 9 AM Mike called us over to get us started.
He introduced himself with no fanfare. He just told us his name, said that, since we were there, we probably knew all about him and his background, and described what the course is about. He explained that he calls the class "Covert Carry" rather than "Concealed Carry" because there is a difference. Concealed in most places, legally speaking, means covered, whereas the people he spends so much time training carry covertly, wherein if they are "made", there are all sorts of ramifications. He suggested early on that we experiment a bit with holster positions, cover garments, etc. He emphasized that all cover garments are different based on thickness, weight, etc., and all of the different variables will have an effect on our ability to clear the garments and get a solid draw.
EVERYTHING we would do over the next two days was from concealment. Indeed, before we had fired a shot, Mike told us that we would probably fire around 700-800 rounds over the two days but, more importantly, draw from concealment 400-600 times!
The first shooting drill was simply designed to allow Mike to determine what type of students he had in class in terms of marksmanship fundamentals. This is an advanced class and Mike wanted to be able to take remedial action as needed and meet the class where it was. So at about 7 yards, the 20 of us fired 5 rounds two-handed, 5 strong-hand only, and 5 support-hand only at a circle target taped over a standard IPSC target. Mike walked up and down the line quickly assessing our abilities, declared a "good, you're all squared away, we can get to it more quickly now", and off we went.
I am not going to list every drill we ran. Despite my furious writing in my notebook, there were times when we changed things so quickly that I didn't get the chance to write down every little thing. What I would like to talk about is Mike as a teacher.
Being a student in Mike's class is like watching a scientist, or maybe a Hall of Fame athlete in ANY sport. He has the ability to boil things down to their barest elements and identify all of the subtleties that separate bad performance from good, and good from stellar. His philosophy is straightforward:
1. Know what you are doing
2. Know why you are doing it
3. Know how to do it with a high degree of specificity, understanding the mechanism for success in whatever it is you're doing
4. Identify the potential failure points along the way
5. Train around those failure points in order to avoid them completely or mitigate their effects.
This is his philosophy, and he was able to provide abundant analogies for how to apply these points to all aspects of life, not just shooting-related endeavors. He said many times that, for him, all of this stuff can be summed up by two different percentages: 100 and 0. If something doesn't work 100% of the time, then it may as well work 0% of the time, because you can bet that whatever failures are possible with said technique, they WILL rear their ugly heads when the chips are down.
An example of this would be drawing from concealment. It may be that someone who merely flips away his split front shirt can get his gun out and up and on target in 1.0 second. But the chance of that flipped shirt not being out of the way when you acquire the grip is too great (wind can flip it back to you, the garment might be heavier than you are used to, etc.). Therefore, why not pull that garment WAY out of the way EVERYTIME. It might cost you .02 seconds, but it can potentially save you 2 seconds when that flipped garment doesn't clear and you end up "Barney Fifeing it".
The class was set up as almost "guided discovery", as Mike said that we each have different clothes, holsters, body types, etc., so what works for him or one student may not work for another. With each iteration of the same drill he would tell us to push ourselves, that, much like a race car driver, there's no way to know how fast you can take a corner until you put the car into the wall. Once you've done so, then you know you have to dial it back a bit.
Day One drills included the diagnostic drill mentioned above, some draw and fire drills (and he had the science of the draw down and explained it beautifully, I thought), some draw-fire-slide lock reload-fire drills, some movement drills backwards at an angle, straight back, and forward, strong-hand only draw-fire drills, support-hand only draw-fire drills (loved his technique here!), and then we broke for lunch. New targets up, we did one-handed reload drills (strong and support, not easy, but again he has a great technique for this stuff), some timed drills two-handed (from the holster....EVERYTHING was from a concealed holster...did I mention that?), then started working the head shots, then some timed head shots. We finished the day with some Rabbit Drills (more on that later). We finished for the day around 4:15 (the class advertises some night-firing, but clearly this is range dependent, as many have noise restrictions, depending on where they are located. Ours fell into this category). I shot 368 rounds on Day One, and probably had about 325 draws from concealment.
contd....
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