Tim Herron Practical Performance AAR: 18May2019 - 19May2019

Crash-7

Newbie
Background: I attended Tim Herron's Practical Performance pistol class at the Colorado Rifle Club range, on May 18th and 19th. This was a USPSA "gamer" based class focused on finding and eliminating inefficiencies in shooting, movement and stage planning. Tim Herron, for those who are unfamiliar, is a two-discipline Grand Master (Limited and Single Stack) and placed 7th at SS Nationals last year. He's popped up on some P&S Modcasts, and used to be a regular on Ben Stoeger's podcast.

Gear: Since this was a USPSA centric class, I did not run my duty rig. I worked out of my competition rig instead:
Double-Alpha inner and outer belt
Ghost Mag Pouches
Blade-Tech holster on a BOSS DOH mount
Standard Glock Mags
Glock 34 (Dawson Sights, Ghost trigger guts)

Class Makeup: There were 13 or 14 shooters. Two cops (myself and one other). The remainder of the class were varying levels of shooters from a first time never-ever shot USPSA, to one guy who shoots predominantly 3-Gun, but was there to work on his pistol skills. The other cop was running an M&P with an RMR, and was working out of his duty rig (SWAT style, battle belt). His performance did not suffer, his rig was not a "handicap" in the slightest.

I didn't experience any gear issues or malfunctions, despite not having cleaned this particular Glock since... (maybe) ever? I wipe it down and lube it when it's needed, and it continues to soldier on. No surprise there. I'll clean it when the performance begins to suffer. The rest of the class ran a mix of gun types: 3 or 4 varieties of 2011, a CZ a few SIGs, two 1911s (including Tim's), a couple of M&Ps and a Springfield XD. Two of the 2011 shooters endured repeated stoppages. I don't know much about 2011s, but if you have to "tune" each magazine to the gun, that sounds like an ass-pain to me. There was a 2011 open-gun that seemed to run perfect all class though.

TD1: The weekend provided a roller coaster of weather based emotion. TD1 started off cloudy, chilly (40's) and breezy. The sun came out briefly before lunch, and then the clouds rolled in for real. A dark MOTHERFUCKER of a group of storm clouds gathered on the horizon and marched steadily towards the range all afternoon. Looming and menacing, but we managed not to get any rain. I guess that's just living right.

Day 1 started off with folks rolling in about 30 mins before class was to begin. When I got there I saw Tim and the logistics host working quickly to build the weekends "evaluation stage". All those present dove in and helped to get the stage set up quickly. The stage was a 34 round course, with 15 standards USPSA cardboard (with one being a drop turner) and 4 steel.

Day 1 started about 15 mins behind schedule due to the stage construction requirement. Tim apologized for the delay. He stated that he usually goes to the site the day before to build out the stage so it's ready-to-go at 0900 on Day 1. However, the day before, it pissed rain sideways for hours, which prevented the stage build. After a round of introductions, safety and med brief, Tim asked each student what they were looking for to get out of the class. I had decided that I wanted to work on getting more out of my 1st run on a stage: my "cold" run on a stage being 95-100% of what I'm capable of (as opposed to 80-90%, and then if I re-ran that stage a few times, I would climb to my "peak" ability of 95-100%). Since you only run a stage one time in a match, your first "cold" run on that stage is it.

After that we went right into the eval stage. Each student ran it cold, on a timer, exactly as though it was part of a match. Tim sat back and took notes, offering no coaching or suggestions (yet). After the class completed the run, we debriefed. Tim gave us notes and suggestions, tailored to each student, which formed the framework for that student to work on throughout the next two days.

For the rest of TD1, we worked through a series of drills that helped carve down on target transitions and shot calling. Tim would walk the line and talk with each shooter, giving very appropriate and effective feed back. We ran some drills one at a time, so Tim could offer individual observation and coaching. While this did slow down the round count and shooting pace of the class, it did not diminish the learning pace. As one shooter would be on the X shooting, the vast majority of the rest of the class was sitting or standing nearby watching and listening, absorbing the lessons from the other shooters. This group was one of the most attentive groups I've ever been a part of, in that respect.

Tim is a very capable and adept instructor. He would key in on the smallest things, often times things the rest of us didn't see in the student that was shooting. His perception of things, even when the shooter was absolutely flying, was really amazing. But Tim's class was about showing us how to train, so he would then talk to the shooter about how to recognize those mistakes in themselves, so they can continue to work on and fix those errors in our own practice.

Tim's mantra is "Sooner not faster." Trying to go faster results in tension, hurrying, and mistakes. Where doing things sooner, is by necessity, eliminating inefficiencies in the movements, which leads to faster times. But Tim is not a "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" kind of guy. (link: Picture Proof) Fast is Fast. Period. But at a certain point, you can't "bear down" anymore to "just go faster" because muscle tension becomes an issue. That's where you have to work on doing things sooner and more efficiently. Tim offered to stay late with any and all who could, to make sure we didn't get "shorted" by starting late. He ended up staying much later than the few minutes we started late, and didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, he was very insistent on making sure we "got the time we paid for" (which we did, and then some).

TD2; Weather on Day 2 started off cloudy, quickly turned sunny and warm for a hot minute, and then the clouds came back and the wind kicked up. For all the changes and struggles we had with the weather and wind, at least we never got wet.

We started Day 2 off with another cold run on the evaluation stage. Tim again took notes and recorded Time, Points and Hit Factor. We then began breaking the stage down into mico-drills to carve out inefficiencies. This is where a lot of people in the class found speed they didn't know they had. It was dramatic and very cool to watch. A few drills on the flat range to work on hard entry/exit movements and we finished the day on the eval stage for a 3rd and final run, for a "check out" to see what kind of progress was made.

My results:
Run 1: 26.03 seconds / 158 pts / 6.069 Hit Factor
Run 2: 24.44 seconds / 158 pts / 6.46 Hit Factor
Run 3: 23.60 seconds / 160 pts / 6.77 Hit Factor

I shaved 2.4 seconds off my run time, while shooting (slightly) higher points. The biggest improvement for me between the 1st and 3rd run, was I had a much higher confidence level in calling each shot (my 3rd run I actually had two make up shots on steel, and a make up shot on a cardboard where I correctly called a Delta and made it up with an Alpha, and that run was still faster than my other two runs, where I didn't have any makeup shots). 2.4 seconds doesn't sound like a lot, but that's about a 10% time savings. When your score (Hit Factor) = Points divided by Time, 10% becomes huge.

I enjoyed this class a lot. Tim was an amazing instructor, finding ways to explain things that I had heard before, but different words made them break through in a new way. This was a "gamer" class, but Tim often came to me and the other officer in the class and asked if any of this was relevant to our work. Even though the focus of that class was for the USPSA game, Tim was still looking for feedback and input, because he also teaches LE only courses (that aren't centered around USPSA). A lot of the class was relevant, since being more efficient in our gun handling isn't ever going to be a detriment at work.

Today I received an email from Tim. The email was a final collection of notes, thoughts and training suggestions. After the class Tim went home and let the class and his notes marinate. He then sent out individualized suggestions to each student, on things to continue to work on and improve upon, based on that student's performance in the class. Who does that? That is some individualized, time-intensive, work right there.

Tim was a genuinely nice guy, with some real instructor chops. The class was a lot of fun, but there was some very real learning occurring. I would absolutely train with Tim again.
 
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