Shellback
03-27-2012, 01:08 AM
SUBJECT: Chris L One Day Pistol Class announced via email to prior and prospective students.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: At this point in time Chris doesn’t have a formal website and there wasn’t a formal course description outlined. His curriculum was established prior to the class but was dynamic and changes were made on the fly to help address particular issues with each individual shooter.
INSTRUCTOR: Chris was our lead and sole instructor for this course. He has been active in several different law enforcement task forces over the past few years and is currently active as a police officer in the southwestern United States.
LOCATION AND WEATHER CONDITIONS: The class was held in Casa Grande, AZ and the weather conditions were excellent for most of the day, temperature being held in the low 80’s. After lunch time the wind picked and we were getting anywhere from guesstimated 10 – 20mph gusts. The wind added some additional challenges at longer distances but also provided some real world interference that you wouldn’t normally get at an indoor range or on a perfect day. Murphy shows up when he wants to not when it’s convenient for you.
MEAT AND POTATOES: I was originally supposed to attend this class last year but due to a family emergency had to bail less than 24 hours before the class. Chris graciously offered to send me my ammo, I’d ordered and sent it direct to him online, and also refund my deposit for the class. I declined knowing I’d want to attend one of his classes in the future after hearing about his reputation as an instructor and how he dealt with me on a personal basis regarding my situation that precluded me from attending his class.
Fast forward to this past Saturday, March 24th where I attended an all-day pistol class in Las Vegas then hopped in the car and jammed down to Casa Grande, AZ for his class on Sunday. I may be missing a few things and more than likely a lot of things. Normally I take notes in a class but in my haste to get down to AZ I forgot to bring my pen & pad so I’m going off of memory here and a late night drive coupled with not a lot of sleep will prevent me from hitting on all the bases but I think it’s well worth the effort to try.
The class had a total of 4 students and Chris was our sole instructor. The student to instructor ratio was the best I’d ever had and the personal attention given to each student far exceeded my expectations and my past training experiences. We started the day off with a safety brief and got straight to work on performing some basic bullseye work from the 1yd, 3yd, 7yd and 10yd lines so Chris would have a base line to see what he was working with.
The majority of the day was spent focusing on the fundamentals of sight alignment, trigger control, grip, stance and follow through. We did a wide variety of drills and from distances that I haven’t normally practiced from including walk balk drill past the 25yd line. We did a variety of other drills including shooting at various target sizes, most too small :), at varying distances while the entire time the focus of the class was on accuracy and putting hits on your intended target.
Some of the drills were timed and others were left open in order for the student to focus solely on the fundamentals and ignore any type of outside pressure or stress, unfortunately it didn’t always help, and I threw my fair share of shots due to having my own issues. We did ball & dummy drills and were forced to perform 10 perfect dryfires for every time we flinched on an empty chamber. We shot lots of bulls from varying distances and really focused on fundamentals throughout the day. We also performed Dave Harrington’s Iron Cross drill and Kyle Defoor’s standards test. I know I’m missing a lot of the drills but this gives you an idea of some of the things we worked on.
Chris also set up a variety of photo realistic targets in order for us to work on engaging multiple targets or hostiles and to get a break from running just fundamental and accuracy drills. We did a variety of different target transition drills and also worked on pinging steel out to distances none of the students normally practice at.
OVERVIEW: I have never had as much one on one time with an instructor and had them instruct me on trying varying techniques to help improve my shooting. I’m having an eye dominance issue, or possibly not, and Chris worked with me extensively on helping me to overcome this in the short amount of time we had. Breaking old ingrained habits is a bitch sometimes. He also worked on my stance and got me into a more “heads up” shooting position rather than the chin tucked, shoulder rolled position that I’d been using for so long. Along with that he showed me new trigger positioning using more of my index finger closer to the knuckle that works in a more linear fashion with the Glock trigger mechanism.
While safety is paramount Chris puts a relaxed spin on things with his funny anecdotes and good humor, until he’s breathing down your neck waiting for you to screw up and throw a flyer! Even then he kept it funny and talked enough shit to reassure everyone we were all training for serious stuff but that we should all have a good time as well.
At a few points in the training day Chris also conveyed some of his work experiences that directly related to our training. In no way was it “chest thumping” or ego driven which I think is often the case when lethal force encounters are discussed. He provided some very good insight and critical analysis of what a person can expect to encounter post-shooting and I think the information provided was very useful for everyone involved.
I know I’m missing a lot of information and drills that we worked on but suffice it to say I would not hesitate to highly recommend taking a class with CJ and I for one will be making the trip back to Casa Grande. I’m also hoping to host him up in the Las Vegas area in the future so please let me know if you’re interested and we’ll move forward from there.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: At this point in time Chris doesn’t have a formal website and there wasn’t a formal course description outlined. His curriculum was established prior to the class but was dynamic and changes were made on the fly to help address particular issues with each individual shooter.
INSTRUCTOR: Chris was our lead and sole instructor for this course. He has been active in several different law enforcement task forces over the past few years and is currently active as a police officer in the southwestern United States.
LOCATION AND WEATHER CONDITIONS: The class was held in Casa Grande, AZ and the weather conditions were excellent for most of the day, temperature being held in the low 80’s. After lunch time the wind picked and we were getting anywhere from guesstimated 10 – 20mph gusts. The wind added some additional challenges at longer distances but also provided some real world interference that you wouldn’t normally get at an indoor range or on a perfect day. Murphy shows up when he wants to not when it’s convenient for you.
MEAT AND POTATOES: I was originally supposed to attend this class last year but due to a family emergency had to bail less than 24 hours before the class. Chris graciously offered to send me my ammo, I’d ordered and sent it direct to him online, and also refund my deposit for the class. I declined knowing I’d want to attend one of his classes in the future after hearing about his reputation as an instructor and how he dealt with me on a personal basis regarding my situation that precluded me from attending his class.
Fast forward to this past Saturday, March 24th where I attended an all-day pistol class in Las Vegas then hopped in the car and jammed down to Casa Grande, AZ for his class on Sunday. I may be missing a few things and more than likely a lot of things. Normally I take notes in a class but in my haste to get down to AZ I forgot to bring my pen & pad so I’m going off of memory here and a late night drive coupled with not a lot of sleep will prevent me from hitting on all the bases but I think it’s well worth the effort to try.
The class had a total of 4 students and Chris was our sole instructor. The student to instructor ratio was the best I’d ever had and the personal attention given to each student far exceeded my expectations and my past training experiences. We started the day off with a safety brief and got straight to work on performing some basic bullseye work from the 1yd, 3yd, 7yd and 10yd lines so Chris would have a base line to see what he was working with.
The majority of the day was spent focusing on the fundamentals of sight alignment, trigger control, grip, stance and follow through. We did a wide variety of drills and from distances that I haven’t normally practiced from including walk balk drill past the 25yd line. We did a variety of other drills including shooting at various target sizes, most too small :), at varying distances while the entire time the focus of the class was on accuracy and putting hits on your intended target.
Some of the drills were timed and others were left open in order for the student to focus solely on the fundamentals and ignore any type of outside pressure or stress, unfortunately it didn’t always help, and I threw my fair share of shots due to having my own issues. We did ball & dummy drills and were forced to perform 10 perfect dryfires for every time we flinched on an empty chamber. We shot lots of bulls from varying distances and really focused on fundamentals throughout the day. We also performed Dave Harrington’s Iron Cross drill and Kyle Defoor’s standards test. I know I’m missing a lot of the drills but this gives you an idea of some of the things we worked on.
Chris also set up a variety of photo realistic targets in order for us to work on engaging multiple targets or hostiles and to get a break from running just fundamental and accuracy drills. We did a variety of different target transition drills and also worked on pinging steel out to distances none of the students normally practice at.
OVERVIEW: I have never had as much one on one time with an instructor and had them instruct me on trying varying techniques to help improve my shooting. I’m having an eye dominance issue, or possibly not, and Chris worked with me extensively on helping me to overcome this in the short amount of time we had. Breaking old ingrained habits is a bitch sometimes. He also worked on my stance and got me into a more “heads up” shooting position rather than the chin tucked, shoulder rolled position that I’d been using for so long. Along with that he showed me new trigger positioning using more of my index finger closer to the knuckle that works in a more linear fashion with the Glock trigger mechanism.
While safety is paramount Chris puts a relaxed spin on things with his funny anecdotes and good humor, until he’s breathing down your neck waiting for you to screw up and throw a flyer! Even then he kept it funny and talked enough shit to reassure everyone we were all training for serious stuff but that we should all have a good time as well.
At a few points in the training day Chris also conveyed some of his work experiences that directly related to our training. In no way was it “chest thumping” or ego driven which I think is often the case when lethal force encounters are discussed. He provided some very good insight and critical analysis of what a person can expect to encounter post-shooting and I think the information provided was very useful for everyone involved.
I know I’m missing a lot of information and drills that we worked on but suffice it to say I would not hesitate to highly recommend taking a class with CJ and I for one will be making the trip back to Casa Grande. I’m also hoping to host him up in the Las Vegas area in the future so please let me know if you’re interested and we’ll move forward from there.