CHAOS16
Regular Member
Course- Tactical Pistol Skills
Company- Langdon Tactical
Primary Instructor- Ernest Langdon
Location- A law enforcement range outside of Salt Lake City, Utah
Cost: $500
Equipment for Class-
S&W M&P 9 w/ TLR-3
Kydex Holster
Issued Army belt
Sig Tac double magazine pouch
S&W and Promag magazines
Round Count- ~850 rounds
I attended Ernest Langdon’s Tactical Pistol Skills course in order to increase my proficiency with handguns and try to prevent the building of bad habits as I am a novice pistol shooter. I rarely carry for work purposes and my primary reason for pistol proficiency is conceal carry and self-defense.
Day 1
The first day started with a brief PowerPoint presentation that covered the objective of the course, as well as the “Langdon Theory of Training.” There were ten students in the class with a pretty varied level of experience and reason for attending. There were about three civilian competition shooters, a father and his two young adult sons, two novice civilian shooters, one LE, and myself (Army / Contractor).
Ernest covered three elements of shooting performance under stress
1. Situational Awareness
2. Combat Mindset
3. Sub-Conscious performance
He covered the awareness color code
1. White – unaware of one’s surroundings
2. Yellow – Some awareness
3. Orange – Possible threat identified
4. Red – Threat identified
He discussed combat mindset briefly (nothing new to me covered here) then went into discussing how training for sub-conscious performance means training muscle memory that can realistically be executed under stress.
In order to train sub-conscious performance there are three levels of training. He had them ordered in stages as first, second, and third but I just naturally saw them as crawl, walk, run.
1. Basic understanding, beginning of building muscle memory
2. Mastery of skill
3. Introduction of stress to confirm memory (examples include competition, force on force)
He identified the fact that he would point out bad habits or training scars if we exhibited them but we would not be able to fix them during the course of the event. This made perfect sense and I appreciated the honest talk and realistic goal of the course.
I honestly didn’t know of the guy before taking the course because I don’t keep up on the big names of the industry. It has just never appealed to me as most of my heroes I look up to are current or past military. He is a big Beretta guy, and really is all about the DA/SA and competition guns. I was blind to these facts so it made for an interesting contrast to the P&S hive mind of Glocks (striker fired) being the preferred handgun for duty and protection use.
No new material for me regarding stance, but he did describe the reasoning behind having maximum surface area of your grip well that added to my understanding of how I want to employ my grip.
His description of trigger pull was new to me and broken down into four phases with the goal being to reduce mechanical and metal dwell time in order to make faster, accurate hits:
1. Pre-travel
2. Release striker/ hammer
3. Over travel
4. Reset
He covered range safety and medevac prior to going on the range.
We began live fire around 1030 that morning. Warm-up drills and assessment of student precision and accuracy was doing by conducting slow fire drills at 4 yards on 2” circles, then under 1 second, .5 seconds, and under .35 seconds on 4” circles.
After lunch (1400-1500) we practiced presentation, drawing from holster and firing on target. 1500-1600 we practiced reloading by firing two rounds from each of three mags in succession.
The second day we started firing at 0900 with warm up drills from the first day. From 1030-1130 we executed a 5 shot group on a 10 ring target in six seconds at 10 yards. From 1130-1230 we practiced shooting while moving. Beginning at 1515 we practiced single handed shooting, strong and support hand shooting. We finished out the day by learning to shoot from behind cover, and the dangers of hugging to closely to cover.
The last portion of the course was some proprietary drills for time and accuracy from the draw in which a student could earn a hat or lapel pin if they beat the standard. The LE student won the lapel pin, no other students met the standard.
The course did not have any serious incidents.
One incident that did occur, however, was during a movement drill that was dry fire practice. A student mistakenly heard to load live and discharged his firearm on target during movement. The previous iteration had consisted of half the class running the dry fire, then live fire portions. Ernest did not call a cease fire and it was obvious to everyone what had occurred. Everyone had on their PPE still. Clearly this was on the student, and I mention the incident only to provoke further discussion of whether or not a range instructor/safety would take a different action in this circumstance.
Overall, the course was great. I would take it again given the opportunity. If I take his course again I would most likely run my M&P 9c from AIWB or if I was deploying within a year OCONUS, I may even opt for a strong side Beretta 92 to simulate my M9.
Company- Langdon Tactical
Primary Instructor- Ernest Langdon
Location- A law enforcement range outside of Salt Lake City, Utah
Cost: $500
Equipment for Class-
S&W M&P 9 w/ TLR-3
Kydex Holster
Issued Army belt
Sig Tac double magazine pouch
S&W and Promag magazines
Round Count- ~850 rounds
I attended Ernest Langdon’s Tactical Pistol Skills course in order to increase my proficiency with handguns and try to prevent the building of bad habits as I am a novice pistol shooter. I rarely carry for work purposes and my primary reason for pistol proficiency is conceal carry and self-defense.
Day 1
The first day started with a brief PowerPoint presentation that covered the objective of the course, as well as the “Langdon Theory of Training.” There were ten students in the class with a pretty varied level of experience and reason for attending. There were about three civilian competition shooters, a father and his two young adult sons, two novice civilian shooters, one LE, and myself (Army / Contractor).
Ernest covered three elements of shooting performance under stress
1. Situational Awareness
2. Combat Mindset
3. Sub-Conscious performance
He covered the awareness color code
1. White – unaware of one’s surroundings
2. Yellow – Some awareness
3. Orange – Possible threat identified
4. Red – Threat identified
He discussed combat mindset briefly (nothing new to me covered here) then went into discussing how training for sub-conscious performance means training muscle memory that can realistically be executed under stress.
In order to train sub-conscious performance there are three levels of training. He had them ordered in stages as first, second, and third but I just naturally saw them as crawl, walk, run.
1. Basic understanding, beginning of building muscle memory
2. Mastery of skill
3. Introduction of stress to confirm memory (examples include competition, force on force)
He identified the fact that he would point out bad habits or training scars if we exhibited them but we would not be able to fix them during the course of the event. This made perfect sense and I appreciated the honest talk and realistic goal of the course.
I honestly didn’t know of the guy before taking the course because I don’t keep up on the big names of the industry. It has just never appealed to me as most of my heroes I look up to are current or past military. He is a big Beretta guy, and really is all about the DA/SA and competition guns. I was blind to these facts so it made for an interesting contrast to the P&S hive mind of Glocks (striker fired) being the preferred handgun for duty and protection use.
No new material for me regarding stance, but he did describe the reasoning behind having maximum surface area of your grip well that added to my understanding of how I want to employ my grip.
His description of trigger pull was new to me and broken down into four phases with the goal being to reduce mechanical and metal dwell time in order to make faster, accurate hits:
1. Pre-travel
2. Release striker/ hammer
3. Over travel
4. Reset
He covered range safety and medevac prior to going on the range.
We began live fire around 1030 that morning. Warm-up drills and assessment of student precision and accuracy was doing by conducting slow fire drills at 4 yards on 2” circles, then under 1 second, .5 seconds, and under .35 seconds on 4” circles.
After lunch (1400-1500) we practiced presentation, drawing from holster and firing on target. 1500-1600 we practiced reloading by firing two rounds from each of three mags in succession.
The second day we started firing at 0900 with warm up drills from the first day. From 1030-1130 we executed a 5 shot group on a 10 ring target in six seconds at 10 yards. From 1130-1230 we practiced shooting while moving. Beginning at 1515 we practiced single handed shooting, strong and support hand shooting. We finished out the day by learning to shoot from behind cover, and the dangers of hugging to closely to cover.
The last portion of the course was some proprietary drills for time and accuracy from the draw in which a student could earn a hat or lapel pin if they beat the standard. The LE student won the lapel pin, no other students met the standard.
The course did not have any serious incidents.
One incident that did occur, however, was during a movement drill that was dry fire practice. A student mistakenly heard to load live and discharged his firearm on target during movement. The previous iteration had consisted of half the class running the dry fire, then live fire portions. Ernest did not call a cease fire and it was obvious to everyone what had occurred. Everyone had on their PPE still. Clearly this was on the student, and I mention the incident only to provoke further discussion of whether or not a range instructor/safety would take a different action in this circumstance.
Overall, the course was great. I would take it again given the opportunity. If I take his course again I would most likely run my M&P 9c from AIWB or if I was deploying within a year OCONUS, I may even opt for a strong side Beretta 92 to simulate my M9.