Sentinel Concepts Critical Handgun Employment
AAAR (Atypical After Action Review)
Date, Location, Size : September 9,10, 2016 – Hedgesville, WV . 19 Students
Gear : Glock 19 with Zev Tech Slide and RMR07, S3F barrel, Inforce APL, Sasquatch Mountain Tactical Mandalorian Appendix Holster, Phlster gen 2 mag caddy. Federal RTP 115 grain (0 light strikes, 0 malfunctions)
Be forewarned: This will not be a typical AAR, I am writing this review stream of consciousness and it will include my personal thoughts as they happened throughout the course and what my key takeaways were. Some important stuff is bolded for you lazy folks.
For those of you who are just reading this to decide whether or not to take the class and don’t want to read through my mind’s random wanderings… TAKE THE CLASS! FIND IT NEAR YOU AND SIGN UP ASAP! Good, now that that is out of the way I can start…
Day 1 –
We get to the range and start getting our gear, water, and ammo settled in to what would be its home behind the firing line for the next two days. Steve was there, chillin’ and talking to Barry (veteran and runs the Back Valley Creek Bow and Gun Club that was hosting the course.) At first glance, Barry’s age will try and convince you that he only knows how to operate a bolt-action rifle and a side-by-side. He lifted his shirt and was carrying a Glock 19 with an RMR appendix; don’t judge a book by its cover.
Safety briefing – super important, of course, but safety is pretty basic. Play by big boy rules or you’re gone, don’t do dumb shit and bad stuff won’t happen. Not to brag too much, but I’ve got some pretty solid trigger discipline, instilled in me by Jeff Bloovman of Armed Dynamics. He taught me to index my trigger finger on the ejection port at all times you’re not engaging a threat, it works, even when you trip and fall with a gun in your hand, which happens. Steve asks, “anyone here running appendix?” Uh oh, I thought, is that prohibidado? Three people raise their hands, he goes, “Cool, you can do that here but you know what you’re getting yourself into, be safe and take your time reholstering.”
Steve tells us to grab mags and get on the 25 yard line. 25 yards with a handgun? Yo Barry – did you bring that bolt-gun I stereotyped you for having earlier? 10 rounds slow fire at a modified and realistic sized chest box. I tried to run my own race but realized I was checking out other people’s targets because I was completely unfamiliar with 25 yard handgun shooting. No excuses – that’s a defect in my training plan. Noted. We get up to check our hits (for the good majority of us that meant our misses) and I noticed my group wasn’t too bad, but it was left. I zeroed my RMR for 10 yards, but wasn’t a consistent enough shooter to confirm positively at 25 yards at my range. Being honest with yourself and your own abilities is the key to progressing. Scott “Jedi” came up to me and told me to throw my dot 5 clicks to the right.
Who is this dude telling me what to do? I’ve seen him floating around the interwebz with some solid skills, on Primary and Secondary modcasts, and Steve vouches for him – I’ll take the candy from this stranger. I went back to hydrate, jam mags, and adjust my RMR 5 clicks to the right. Turned out, Jedi used the force and was dead on with his recommendation for zeroing my RMR, despite the far from ideal ammo I was shooting.
Next, Steve got us all grouped together and brought up the only girl in the class for his ball and dummy demonstration. Steve taught us about proper trigger control and sight alignment and emphasized the simplicity of the concept, yet also the ease at which you can totally botch perfect sight alignment with a bad trigger press. She did great, barely fidgeting on the click of the empty chamber. I volunteered to go next, knowing that I tend to “flinch”. Steve asked me why I think I flinch when I pull the trigger before I did the drill in front of everyone, and I answered honestly, because legend has it that true Yeti’s can smell bullshit from a mile away. I told him, and everyone in the class, my deepest darkest shooting secret. “When the gun goes off and makes the bang and fireball, it scares me. I don’t like the noise and the explosion.” Besides immediately being stripped of my young – man – card in front of the rest of the class, I needed to be honest with myself, because, once again, that’s how you overcome these things.
I go up there and give Steve my gun and he hands it back to me to take a shot. No round in the chamber and I flinch/dip the gun down horribly. My anticipation of the recoil was embarrassing. Whatever, he did it again. Then I did it again, dipped the gun down with atrocious trigger control on the click. Third times the charm, right? Nope, not for me, flinched again. Wow, this ended up so much worse than I had thought it was going to from an embarrassment standpoint, but it showed me how much I really needed to focus and concentrate.
One shot at a time, one loud bang and scary fireball at a time. Didn’t realize it then, but this was yet another example of Steve’s ever present teaching point of “Compartmentalization of task, do one thing at a time and then move on to the next task.”
We partnered up and ran these trick drills to work on our trigger control. It certainly worked for me. After we regrouped to talk about what we learned from that drill, I told everyone that I was able to concentrate and minimize my “flinch”, which Steve more appropriately labeled, my “seismic activity.” This was a pretty solid joke for the rest of the course.
At our next break, Jedi was walking around and approached me, he said, “Hey, I have something for you to try that might help you with your stance and controlling that flinch.” He had me hold out my arms like I was holding the gun and then he smacked my hands to simulate the recoil impulse. Then, he faked to hit my hands and I dipped forward in anticipation yet again. We repeated this with the same results. He then told me to stand straight and begin to take a step. Mid- step he told me to stop and leave my foot where it was. We repeated this drill with dramatically different results this time, even when he faked the hit, I didn’t lunge forward. What did Jedi teach me besides a ton of useful marksmanship skills? Trust, but verify. I didn’t believe in his hokey religion and ancient weapon skills… Yet… I stood tall, began to take a step and then stopped in a natural, comfortable position. He hit my hands to simulate the recoil and then faked one, and I didn’t flinch, the stance made a huge difference immediately in my shooting.
After that, we worked on cadence drills. In between drills, I was able to ask Steve and Jedi about specific shooting techniques such as grip, arm extension, etc. Steve told me to use the palm of my support hand and press it up against the gun tighter. That made a positive difference in the next round of shooting. Then, Steve told me to grip tighter with my pinky of my firing hand. Why in the world had I been holding the gun my entire life like a Brit drinking tea? Jedi came through and helped me with my arms. Before, I had my arms at full extension and this was not only fatiguing, but introduced a rapid shake in the red dot which got worse when I went to pull the trigger. Jedi had me raise the gun to my head, unturtle my shoulders, relax, and let my arms move slightly with the recoil. Think of it like a Barrett 50 with a gliding barrel, it works. When Steve came back over, he showed me how much of a difference the slightest change in my support hand finger placement introduces into your sight picture… This stressed the importance of consistency in grip and draw stroke. Consistency.
We took our lunch break and then returned to the 25 yard, 10 shot drill. With my new techniques employed and compartmentalization of task, I was able to perform much better than before. Steve then went over brain shots, and why that’s a pretty important and a realistic target to aim for, within a reasonable distance. We shot some faces, then we moved on to controlled pairs. Emphasis on the control part. I noticed that my pairs were really just two separate shots while trying to minimize the split time between them and 3 sight pictures. Double tap myth, busted. Funny thing to mention here was that when we all grouped up to talk about our mistakes and what we learned after these, one guy in the class said, “I felt shaky.” Steve asked him what he ate for lunch, he responded with coffee. He also hadn’t drunk any water all day. YES, I thought, I’m free! I’m no longer going to be made fun of for my “seismic activity” of trigger pull flinch. That wasn’t the case, but at least I wasn’t the only target anymore. The jokes were all in good fun and in good taste, the humor helped contribute to a great learning environment. But really, at lunch break, drink some water guys, don’t hook yourself up to an amphetamine IV, Jack….
We organized a crew to go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner for some beer and beef. It was cool, waitress started out a 5 but after our Yuengling’s, I think I tipped her as if she was a true 7…
Day 2 –
We revisited the 25 yard standard, the improvements were evident, all across the class. Seriously, it looked like an entirely different group of shooters. We learned some different types of reloads and when each is acceptable/preferred and ran a quick competition among the students for reload speed and ACCURACY. Accuracy and accountability of shots was always more important than speed of skills, fine tuning of techniques. During the competition, I fumbled with my cover garment and had a flashback to my Sage Dynamics course with Aaron Cowan, where he told me, “Dude, do whatever works for you and feels comfortable, don’t overthink it.” In the Instagram era of today, you see in videos all the time people hear the shot timer beep, bobble their draw and just say, “Oh, I messed up, I’m gonna redo it.” Problem is, in real life, you can’t ask the bad guy to pause while you try and get a clean, instacool draw. Well, I guess you could, but unless you guys hit it off and exchange instagram accounts and start following each other, it probably won’t. So, back to MY mag fumble during the competition. Screw it, just gotta work through it. Jedi saw the nasty tangle I was in with my cover government and spare mag carrier, but I remained calm and fought through it, and won the competition. Calm is contagious, so is panic.
Ready positions, low ready and high ready. Different applications for both, but each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Use of the ready positions is situation dependent and you must use your environmental cues/situation to determine what is ideal, appropriate, or even possible for the scenario you find yourself in. You don’t choose the time and the place. Take the class, Steve will explain to you how ready positions will change based on lighting, building structure, and the task at hand. Steve told us that a high ready position usually leads to natural extension of the gun, and at that height, a face shot; the ultimate problem solver.
At the end of the day we ran Steve’s real qualification under his stress-inducing tool, the timer. Not having much familiarity with shot timers and gauging my time, I knew it would be my downfall and would just have to let the gun and the sights tell me how fast I could go. I knew however, that regardless of time and distance for each different part of the qualification, my draw would need to be fast and consistent so that I wasn’t leaving anything on the table there. Steve is very strict with his accuracy standards for good reason and therefore even shots on the lines are out. Halfway through the qual, Steve called me “linemaster” and this added an additional level of stress to the qual for me, because I couldn’t see my hits on the line. I have 20/10 vision which is basically like X-ray vision besides being able to see through people’s clothing and I couldn’t even see my line hits. I guess it’s Yeti’s sixth sense. After getting closer, I saw my line hits and I had immediately assumed that I was no longer in the running for winning Top Shooter. But, I continued to run my own race. I ignored the speed at which people next to me were shooting, and only shot as fast as I could be confident in my sight picture and trigger press. When we scored the quals, I had 3 shots on the line and 2 shots touching just on the guys fingers about 1 inch out of the box. No excuses, that’s down 5. I made every shot within his time restrictions, and ended up winning Top Shooter by having the best accuracy and completion of his qualification. I won a dope Sentinel Concepts Aegis buckle and the guys over at Ares Gear are building my belt right now, I’m pumped. The stuff I learned in the two days at Steve’s Critical Handgun Employment go further than handgun skills and marksmanship techniques, there’s a bunch of no bullshit real-life takeaways that apply to every aspect of life, it’s all still sinking in.
Huge thanks go out to the other students in the class for being safe and smart and to Barry for hosting the class.
Another giant thanks to Jedi for all of his help with my shooting techniques and guidance about hand to hand combatives.
And lastly, an enormous thanks to Steve for driving 9 hours to WV to teach us all this stuff and being willing to share his knowledge and opinions with us.
Until next time – “Seismic Mark”