Ron Avery Handgun Mastery

victran

Amateur
20170508-20170509 Richmond Rod & Gun

Instructor: Ron Avery, former law enforcement officer of 25 years on both active and reserve roles. Served as trainer and director of multiple law enforcement programs. Firearms Expert Witness. Multiple world class shooting champion over a span of several decades.

Introduction: Ron Avery's reputation and experience has been legendary in my eyes for some time now. The information that has been put out and regurgitated by many instructors today are all spawns of Avery's work from decades back. Yet, unlike those instructors and trainers who come and go, Ron Avery has always remained relevant in his work and continues in his growth in skill. He really defines "what is new, is actually [really] old." And with the over-saturated training industry, it is testament that Ron Avery still remains mountains higher than a majority of trainers and tacticians out there. Upon meeting the man on day 1, the humble smile and wisdom in his voice, I was very motivated to take on everything had to teach us in the next two days.

Equipment: Beretta 92G Elite 2, Glock 34 Gen 3. Off the Grid Concepts Eggrolls. Bladetech OWB holsters.

Ammunition: 1500 rounds of Remington UMC, FedArm reloads, Freedom Munitions reloads, 3-4 boxes of 124gr NATO WWB.

Beginning of Class: The class size was originally 30 with a computer glitch that prevented the cap of 20. Several students had withdrawn for a refund or placed in a different class before day 1. Roughly half the class was active law enforcement officers of neighboring cities in the East Bay. Two students who drove up from socal. Two distinct novices in their first class with Avery. Ron had two RSOs on the first day, Rossen and Brian Nelson (and Ken Nelson on day 2) assist him with the students. Ron explicitly stated that he prohibits us from recording or taking pictures of him during instructions. He stated that he was tired of people regurgitating his work and teaching it wrong. He has every right to have to have that parameter, just as I will not go over every single exercise and target we shot in this AAR.

The Mindset of Creating an Image: Ron began with talk on creating an image in one's mind. The goal for every shooter, is to have their own style. Ron explained that it all beings with an image in their mind, as that image is to represent what is right. The image is to be played over and over and then practiced several times. Performance of practicing that image, provokes learning of deficiencies and flaws of the original image. Thus forcing you to change it and improve on it. Ron states that it has to be different. By being different, that image becomes your own individual style. There is no "Ron Avery Style" or "Rob Leatham Style" that a person can completely copy, mimic, and foster into their own as those individuals continue to change and improve through progression and evolution of their skill set.

The conscious mind fostering by training and practice, to develop a subconscious thought process to fix problems on demand. We attain this by obtaining the knowledge base and execution of processes. With the time frame being mere hours to develop the knowledge base to days and weeks to execute development of skill.

Ron then introduced the concept of principal, where we would implement what is given to us to achieve results that would be our measurement of own individual performance. For all of that to work, technique has to work under pressure. With the right technique added to mindset of desire for change and improvement. How we can apply principal better is a constant circle and loop:

Principal -> Image -> Application -> Improvement -> REPEAT

Ron talked about the fallacy of "tools in the tool box," how it can be cluttered with too many unnecessary as an individual style should have everything fitted with the entire system. Application of that very principal for the individual creates that specific style, thus making it all very different. We have to shake the mentality of mimicking and take the notion of self development and one's own creation.

Fire Control: Stance, Grip, Trigger. We all want to have absolute control of the gun while in reality it comes from those three things that causes direct control of the gun. However, as many would argue for sights, sights would cause indirect control by applying too much focus into the sights. Thus, forcing one to actively press down onto the gun while trying to maintain the gun to be still. Ron basically explained to us that sights needs to be ignored as our stance, grip and trigger control are all more important in our fire control.

We have to accept and let recoil happen instead of trying to actively prevent it. Instead, let recoil be absorbed by the body with the objective of having it be transferred into the ground by our stance. Ron talked about finding our natural point of aim by way of our hips. He demonstrated with a pendulum hanging from his belt line to show where his posture needed to be at in his natural point of aim. He told us to be mindful of our head position as the body would follow the head. He wanted us to notice what is commonly neutral with people, such as standing on heels, which is not as stable when forces such as recoil is induced onto the body. The importance of being on the balls our feet with a stable lean forward is what we should look for in our fire control.

Ron Avery instructed us on mindset and bio mechanics for two hours before we even went live with our guns. Those two hours, flew right by and I ate it all up. It already felt like I was drinking from a water hose.

Grip: Ron discussed the principles of grip. While I cannot or will not go into how he taught us to have proper grip, we conducted many tests of having proper grip of the pistol with a partner with an empty gun. Ron talked about what he has used and done in the past. Techniques and methods he has utilized on and off, which goes back to the formula of a constant learning cycle of one's style. As Ron had recently just started to use his current grip exclusively in the past year and a half. What I am very pleased to say is that Ron Avery has changed my grip once again and I have married it up with how I grip with my firing hand that I had learned with Frank Proctor just months prior. I definitely feel more control with my new grip style. We had our first rounds from the count two of the drawstroke into the dirt to demonstrate natural point of aim with our hips. Wherever our hips were pointed and with a stable stance, we would land our shots into the section we were orientated towards.

Trigger [Control]: Having self-control. Ron discussed people's tendency of breaking their shot at the very end of their presentation, something that I personally noted down as "Now Syndrome" that was coined by Ernest Langdon that I had heard way back when. This deficiency is often caused by poor trigger control and too much focus into the sights.

We exercised trigger control on a 3" circle, where we simple watch and let the shot happen when it is fired. Then bring the gun back down onto where we originally had our point of aim. We fired a few cadences of this exercise onto Ron's circles.
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Next, Ron demonstrated three trigger pull techniques. Pinning, Staging, and Slapping. Again, it takes a time and place for each method, but Ron demonstrated that you can get away with slapping the trigger from 5 to 15 yards onto a 5" circle from the draw. Ron then had us get on the line and shoot the 5" circle via slapping the trigger on his command. We would have our finger indexed on the edge of our trigger guard going into the trigger with full force. Stance, Grip, and now slapping the trigger, we would see where our shots would land and they were relatively close to where our natural point of aim would be if we were doing it correctly. This is something I have read by Ron and Rob Leatham over the years from their publications online.

Ron then had us conduct rhythm exercises, so we can learn how to control our throttle (our trigger speed). He had a major emphasis on counting out loud, which will then sync our voice (count) to trigger speed. We then worked on our trigger speed tempo onto Ron's targets, it was here that I started to really notice that my shots were landing way left. I passed my Beretta to Brian Nelson and he confirmed that I needed to tap my rear sight to the right. We had just wrapped up that exercise and started to set up steel for our final exercise of the day. I swapped guns and picked up my Glock 34 gen 3 with Dawson Precision Chargers and ran up to my relay line.

We had 8" steel lined up next to one another with a standard pepper popper in the center. Each side had 10 shooters and we were to run up to the table, tap it with both hands and draw our pistols to hit five pieces of steel one by one twice then leave our pistol on the table pointed down range and run back to the line while tagging the next shooter. The last shooter will do the same run but hit the pepper popper to end the relay. Simple enough, I was the anchor man at the end of my team and was somewhat worried that since I was using the Beretta all day and now that I had the Glock 34 holstered that I would slow down the team. Turned out, everything that Avery had instructed us on felt like home when I drew my Glock 34 and I breezed through it with ease. Grip, Stance, Trigger and tracking my targets and subconsciously calling my shots made it all so easy.

We wrapped up Day 1 with a quick debrief by Ron. I had already felt that this was an overwhelming class in terms of material. I was constantly racing to get my notes down and trying to keep up with whatever Ron had to say. Truly drinking from a water hose was day 1.

TPC 24: We opened up day two of training with Ron's TPC 24. Meant to be shot cold, we were to measure our hit factor in the string of fire. We began from 90 degrees from our presentation and raise the gun on the timer to fire eight into the Tiger Stripe target. I messed up my first run and scored a 8.71 hit factor, my second run later in the day was a 9.31. Ron commented that if we were below a 12, do not even bother signing up for Advance Handgun Mastery. Real humbling...lol

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Ron then explained the drawstroke to us; it was very simple and it was thanks for Ron Avery in the past that I was exposed to the common "competition" drawstroke. Ron explained to us, that the fastest and most efficient drawstroke is shown simply by what Rob Leatham had shown him years back; putting the gun back into the holster. From here, Ron changed how I drew my gun, again. Ron also, made the point that I had often over looked in the drawstroke. Going back to natural point of aim and when we were shooting from count two of the drawstroke, I came to realization that I was just lifting the gun up from essentially count two of the drawstroke. It struck me when Brian Nelson came up to me to work on my presentation, where I would bring the gun into compression and he told me to notice that my muzzle was not pointed downrange, instead I needed to keep it at the 90 degrees that we were using on the TPC 24. I have done this for years, but actually fully understanding the mechanics and just lifting the gun from reverse steps of holstering the gun was surely an epiphany. I have long before defaulted to a single drawstroke instead of having classifications of having a "competition" drawstroke or "tactical" drawstroke or "close retention" drawstroke, my default and situation dependent drawstroke is whatever my default is and how to present the gun with whatever I have. As vague as that may sound, it goes back to how Ron preached about having a style and system where everything simply fits.

Then Ron went on to talk about defensive shooting position. The same fundamentals remained, as he preached that tactics should not and would not change fundamentals, and I completely agree with him. Ron went over how we should properly engage from close proximity, discussed the fallacies often found in the commonly found methods of "defensive tactics" such as having the support hand indexing on one's head to "protect" while in reality, it would only add to the blows towards the head. The rhetoric of attempting to hold someone else down while they make advancement on you only clears one to shoot themselves if it does not play out correctly or in one's favor. What Ron showed and demonstrated simply made sense. Thus, the drawstroke remained the same with the body in moved towards the rear to induce a lower center of gravity with the support arm bent up to flail aggression and the muzzle firing past the support arm's elbow in similar fashion as count two of the drawstroke.

We then did a walk back to 55 yards and shot at 8" steel plates. Ron demonstrated everything that he had gone over with us and smacked dead center on the steel on the draw. The man simply made it look effortless. We got onto the line and each practiced shooting onto steel from 55 yards. I had already fixed my Beretta's rear sight during lunch and wanted to test it at distance. For some reason, I would hold my gun high and on the edge of the target, some sort of habit I posses, it was quickly remedied once I tuned it down onto the steel 55 yards away.

Closing: Ron had us set up the relay challenge that we did the day before to close up the class, this time with three 4" steel plates with the 8" plates. We had runs where he had us do controlled pairs onto the plates, go in a certain order, same rules and format applied. Bringing everything together at speed, made things so peaceful. I was truly enjoying myself under the pressure of making my shooting skill. I was able to see and track everything that I was doing. It felt amazing and rewarding to have this ability.

Ron had us police up the brass and our kit. We grabbed our class t-shirts and gathered around for a debrief of the day and overall class instruction. Ron talked about how we each improved and how much progress we have made in just the past two days. He talked about how grateful he was to see our progression and ability to learn his material and shape ourselves into better shooters. He then talked about his home range and business with and at Tactical Performance Center in St. George, Utah. How the home range is basically their playground and how the material that was covered in two days, can be better addressed at their home range and resources there. And then Ron talked about something he spoke about to me during lunch on day two; making life long friends and family. Ron necessarily does not care how many students get into his classes, nor does he care of getting his name out there as much as he did in the past. The man is only interested in having students become his friends and closer to him. He really wants to shape and build up better shooters because he genuinely cares. And it does not only stop with Ron Avery; Rossen, Brian and Ken Nelson all proved to be very adept instructors and shooters. All with keen eyes and abilities to shape better shooters.

Having Ron Avery teach in the past two days was a reward in itself. I have learned so much about shooting from the first time I came across his material years back and being before him having him teach right on front of me was just as eye opening as the first time I read his work. The man's experience in his law enforcement career with the stories he shared with me that has been added to my mindset, to the shooting performance he continues to improve on is truly testament of the man's drive. I have recognized for some time that Ron has been doing what he has been doing for literally generations now. I feel ever so compelled to make the trip to St. George, Utah to not only learn more from the man, but spend the time being part of the family he has built up with TPC. Just listening to him speak his wisdom, I truly cannot describe how many times he changed my mind throughout the class on how I did things and carry myself. Let alone the number of motivated and talented shooters who flock to his classes. It is always rewarding and humbling to meet motivated law enforcement officers and talented shooters at these classes. Ron Avery gave me an image of what is right, he gave me a direction for a path, and he continues to give us all knowledge for those who seek to learn and foster it ourselves....

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...and for that, I thank you Ron.
 
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