Tactical Performance Center - Competition Super Camp Sept 12-16

[GJM]

My wife and I just finished up TPC’s Competition Super Camp, held over five days at their excellent facility near St. George, UT. After shooting five straight days in near 100 degree heat, it might take me a few days to get all the info out. About 50 students from “Unclassified” to GM, and 15 instructors, including Ron Avery, Brian Nelson, Max Leograndis, Glen Wong, Ken Nelson, Rossen Hristov, Aaron Berke, the Williams sisters, and many more who would be known to SW US based shooters.

The five days was roughly broken into three parts:

1) quick review of the key points from TPC’s excellent Handgun Mastery course.

2) technical shooting knowledge blocks like the draw, reload, transitions, moving into and out of position, swingers.

3) competition specific skills of breaking down a stage, determining the most efficient plan for your skill level, and executing the plan.

The course culminated in TPC constructing five national championship level stages that the instructors broke down for us, and we got to shoot as a match with the TPC instructors and our fellow students on Sunday, putting into practice all we learned throughout the course.

More later but that was a truly outstanding course that showcased the best of TPC. Every student I spoke with was equally as enthused, with many planning to return in February when the course is next offered.

[MVS]

Can't wait to hear all about it.

[GJM]

I need to get with the program and knock this review out. In the mean time, here is an interesting observation. Fifty students, 15 instructors, approximately 150,000 rounds fired over five days, a wide variety of handguns and divisions, and I didn’t hear a single hardware discussion, just people completely focused on software.

[Drang]

I need to get with the program and knock this review out. In the mean time, here is an interesting observation. Fifty students, 15 instructors, approximately 150,000 rounds fired over five days, a wide variety of handguns and divisions, and I didn’t hear a single hardware discussion, just people completely focused on software.

That's interesting. Do you think it was due to the focus of the instructors and the nature of the course?

[LittleLebowski]

I need to get with the program and knock this review out. In the mean time, here is an interesting observation. Fifty students, 15 instructors, approximately 150,000 rounds fired over five days, a wide variety of handguns and divisions, and I didn’t hear a single hardware discussion, just people completely focused on software.

Jealous. Looking forward to the AAR. If you want, you can send it to me and I can edit your OP and add it in.

[GJM]

Day one, TPC Competition class

On the first day, they crammed three days of a TPC handgun mastery class into one day. Unlike handgun mastery, where the first morning is spent with TPC staff describing and demoing, here it was ten minutes of classroom and then off to the range with our class divided into four squads of twelve each. TPC has an interesting approach as they kept the same two assistant instructors with each indidual squad, but every ninety minutes rotated around the lead instructor. Their theory is different people learn in different ways, and having different lead instructors maximized the chance the info would get through.

First, an aside on the handgun mastery class. Like many shooters that use Practiscore, I had seen TPC banner ads, and generally knew Ron Avery was involved. What got my interest, is when I was speaking with a Las Vegas shooter I knew who went from B to GM in a year. I asked what his secret was and he said he dry fired, live fired, shot matches, but the big thing was he took the handgun mastery class four times in a year. He also mentioned that his Air Force team was formally integrating the TPC reactive shooting cycle approach into their shooting. Since I had no idea what their reactive shooting cycle was, my wife and I decided to take the class last spring. We both thought it was the best foundational technical shooting class we had ever taken.

TPC doctrine is that stance controls recoil, grip controls muzzle raise, and their fire control triangle consists of stance, grip and trigger control. Here are some of the class handouts describing this.

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The day was spent running a series of drills to systematically work through the material, starting with stance, then grip, then trigger control, and then putting together the entire reactive shooting cycle. My wife realized she was getting moved some in recoil and adjusted her stance to be slightly more forward, with her strong foot back a tad more. Instructor, JoAnn Bradley, showed me how she keeps the second knuckle of her trigger finger bent at a 90 degree angle to help press the trigger straight back. On one drill designed to assess muzzle control, TPC used a rainbow colored target that allowed you to see what color your muzzle rised to, and then worked on grip to maximize control.

In a late afternoon session, we got to pick whatever target we wanted and I choose a page of one inch circles that from five yards, I worked to draw and as quickly as possible fire a hit to five across one inch circles. I think we shot about 750 thoughtful rounds, and by the end of tape I saw a lot of tape on various parts of my classmates’ hands! After a long near 100 degree day, the instructions were to “hydrate, rest and Do Not drynfire.”

[GyroF-16]

Thanks, GJM - keep it coming!

[Norville]

Very interesting, thanks for posting GJM and please continue when you have time.

[GJM]

Day 2, TPC.

Day 2 was filled with many knowledge blocks. Things we covered were the draw, reloading, one hand shooting, table starts, transitions, and determining an acceptable sight picture for difficult targets. Like day 1, our assistant instructors stayed with us, and the leads rotated through the various groups. Lots of great info, but my absolute favorite block was transitions taught by Max Leograndis. Besides being PCC national champion, Max is extremely smart and an excellent instructor. A credit to Ken Nelson, is over the last six months I have seen his course curriculum and instructor abilities continue to improve. My wife especially liked the reloading block, their table start technique where you use two hands with your support hand scooping under the barrel just ahead of the trigger guard, and the concept of holding a full glass of water as you transition between targets. Her absolute lightswitch moment was when Ken Nelson described leading with your strong elbow as you start the draw.

Day 3, TPC

We started with a block led by Glen Wong, who I affectionately refer to as the third Williams sister, on movement into and out of position. The second block was shooting on the move taught by Rossen Hristov. The third block was shooting movers led by Max. The final block was on continuous flow throughout a stage led by Aaron Brekke. All were excellent. Max’s block was my absolute favorite of the entire course. Max explained the idea of shooting movers is to shoot them at the point they are stationary, and took us through ambushing and tracking, which by the end of the block I was equally comfortable with.

[Jesting Devil]

Lots of great info, but my absolute favorite block was transitions taught by Max Leograndis. Besides being PCC national champion, Max is extremely smart and an excellent instructor.

I take a tiny bit of pride that I took Max to his first match, his progression has been crazy to see. He thinks about things very unconventionally and practicing with him on and off pushed the level of my shooting dramatically.

I'd love to take one of these TPC camps.

[GJM]

I take a tiny bit of pride that I took Max to his first match, his progression has been crazy to see. He thinks about things very unconventionally and practicing with him on and off pushed the level of my shooting dramatically.

I'd love to take one of these TPC camps.

Max is very smart, very much an out of the box thinker. Something he told me, is that before a major match he fasts for 96 hours, carbo loads the night before, and eats nothing during the match. Kind of in gest, I suggested this to a buddy who is a PCC GM, and his reaction suggested eating came before winning, if this is what it took to win.

[GJM]

Day 4, TPC

Where the first three days of the TPC class were all about building skills necessary to be successful in competition, day 4 was where the rubber met the road. Day 4 was designed to replicate the day before a major match, and to create that environment, TPC had built five national level stages, each different, to test a wide range of skills. We spent the morning as individual squads, walking through each stage with our instructors breaking down the stages, explaining alternative ways to shoot each stage, and developing our own stage plans. Despite the wind picking up to 40-50 in the afternoon, and creating a complete malstrom, we spent the afternoon practicing the stages, while being critiqued.

As an example, here is a stage designed by Aaron Brekke.

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And, after breaking the stage down for us, here is Aaron shooting it.


https://youtu.be/JqoE6YEqLJA

Here is the stage that Max Leograndis picked, that came from a large European match.

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Here is Max describing and shooting the stage (with his Production gun not the PCC).


https://youtu.be/S2BDd9cUMdI

Later in the afternoon, here I am shooting the stage.


https://youtu.be/A6XZrFLWjFg

We repeated this process through the various stages, although feeling like you were in a Saharan dust storm only added to the realism.

While the stages were going on, TPC had also set up some classifier stages with instructors there to coach students as they shot them. As part of the class, TPC offered that on Sunday you could shoot the main match, or if you wanted to obtain a USPSA classification, shoot just the classifier match.

At one point, I walked to a stage Ken Nelson was coaching on. Listening to him work with a student, I was reminded what an accomplished diagnostician he is. He basically tells you how screwed up you are, suggests an alternative or two, and does it in such a way you thank him. I asked him about technique for an uprange start, and after watching mine, described it as a tornado of movement, and suggested a simple, efficient turn that placed me in a perfect TPC stance for the shooting part ahead. Here is a video of Ken on day two discussing how he practices reloads and the presentation, which gives you a sense of his style.


https://youtu.be/8PoNmdKFjq0

By the end of the day, we were all full of sand right down to in our ears and mouths, and agreed to meet that evening for a session of critiquing student videos. Max had been filming during the day, and over at the Holiday Inn in St George, started showing us in action. Ron Avery was there and not only did that as only Ron can, with highly technical analysis of movement by movement through the stage, and where the low hanging fruit to be picked was. Then, Ron delivered a memorable technical shooting mindset lecture that I put up there with Jeff Cooper’s best effort at Gunsite. Really, really amazing, and he seemed to transform to another person and another place as he shared his philosophy on shooting at a high level, as he has for over thirty years.

[GJM]

Day 5, TPC.

Day five was set up to simulate a major match, and it felt that way. Started with a shooters meeting, and we did everything but the pledge of allegiance. A neat thing was many of our instructors, including a number of the TPC pro team shot the match with (and against) us. Off with our squads to our stages, and the tension was palpable. I really focused on Ron’s advice from the previous night, which was to treat each individual target as the only target in the entire match that meant anything at that moment, and that helped manage tension and treat each target with an appropriate level of attention. It seemed like we were sipping through stages and, in what felt like just a few minutes, we were on our last stage. I made the mental mistake there of focusing on the entirety of the match, which was going very well, which did not help me on the last stage. On that stage, I had a mike, my only penalty for the match, but that was a mental failure on my part.

Here is my match video.


https://youtu.be/aDt1iVSEcmU

TPC posted results to Practiscore, just as with a “real match.”

https://practiscore.com/results/new/66194?q_individual=0

In the afternoon, the bays were open to repeat any stages, although not for score. I was both satisfied and exhausted from the morning and just observed. At 2:45 it was awards and we were done.

To pull this class off took enormous scale — 50 students, 15 instructors, a terrific range, Ron Avery’s vision, and Ken Nelson’s organizational talent. Highly recommended!

[YVK]

Nice report.

The second stage on your video is a stage from the last year's iron sights Nationals. While most of the shooters from D to local GMs were calculating if it was more beneficial to leave the disappearing clamshells alone or shoot them (for most average folks it ended up no difference), the contenders were double tapping that steel activator so it would drop faster...

[Mr_White]

Great report GJM!

[Dismas316]

One of my shooting buddies at a match was talking about this and he talked me into registering for the the 5 day super camp that’s in Sept. As usual great write up GJM, I’m pretty psyched about attending this. Was planning on doing at least one if not two class around competition shooting but this seems like a great deal for 5 days of total immersion into competitive shooting. Can’t wait.

[GJM]

My wife and I are repeating this class week after next.

[Dismas316]

My wife and I are repeating this class week after next.

well I guess that’s a testament to the class. Wish I could take it that soon.