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View Full Version : AAR: FPF Training's Concealed Carry for Self Defense (CCSD), June 2-3 | Culpeper, VA



bdcheung
06-04-2012, 01:36 PM
Info: http://www.fpftraining.com/ccsd.html#top

First off, I would like to extend a huge thanks to John Murphy for hosting and teaching this class. I walked away from this 2-day course a smarter, more aware, more responsible, and more proficient hitter*. ETA: Also, it was great meeting fellow PF'er LewisM at the course. He's a great guy and I don't think I saw him without a smile the entire weekend!

Course Overview
CCSD is billed as a course "designed to prepare average citizens to apply lethal force to protect themselves and others from criminal violence." First and foremost, it is not a shooting course. You will not burn through 1,000 rounds of ammunition; you will, however, burn the equivalent of that (and probably more) drilling and working your brain. Throughout the course, we focused primarily on mindset and tactics; marksmanship, while important and emphasized, was not the major focus of the course. What you will learn is a foundation of how to identify a threat, de-escalate the situation and, if all else fails, how to prevail in an Interpersonal Ballistic Conflict (TM).

TD1
The class convened at the rally point at 0745 and, after a brief overview of the route we'd be taking, convoyed to the range. I'll provide a little info about the range itself; if you're not interested, skip to the next paragraph. The range is in a rural part of Culpeper and is accessible via an "improved double-track road". The road isn't paved, but my (stock) Mazda3 hatchback didn't have difficulty getting down or up it. Don't bring a lowered vehicle. Do know how to drive--there's one section where the center of the road has been washed out a bit and if you're an idiot (i.e. you'd have to be a really bad driver) you could get a wheel/tire stuck in there and have a really bad day. The range itself is nice. John has a cozy, air-conditioned classroom for the sit-down instructional parts of the course. The square range was pretty typical, with a big dirt berm behind the 15 or so target stands and orange lines marking 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, etc. yard firing lines. There's also a dolly set up for Tueller drill variations, some steel targets, etc. I was told there may be high grass, but for our class the grass wasn't even noticeable.

TD1 started off with three hours of classroom instruction that established the groundwork, goals and objectives for the two-day course. We learned about FPF Training's core principles and philosophies, situational awareness, conflict escalation, and other core self-defense lessons. Throughout, John's lessons were grounded by real-world examples--demonstrated through photos and/or videos of documented situations--to remind us that the information imparted to us was not merely pedagogical. There was no ivory tower here; John's lessons came directly from, and are intended to be implemented in, the real world.

Following the classroom portion, we headed out to the range to begin drilling on fundamental marksmanship. We learned fundamental skills, such as: proper trigger press, sight alignment, loading, reloading, and malfunction clearing. We ran these drills dry, with dummy rounds/snap caps. Throughout, John reminded the class of The Four Rules. For the most part, everyone adhered. After breaking for lunch, we came back to the line and spent the rest of the day working fundamental marksmanship skills. Draw stroke. Single shots. Controlled pairs. Multi-shot strings. Shot placement. We finished the day with a walkback drill on three steel IDPA-sized silhouettes. To move on to the next distance, you had to hit 2 out of the 3 targets. I crapped out with my M&P 9c at 25 yards because I was stupid and rushed the shots, hitting 1/3. Once everyone had failed, John moved us back to ~60 yards and had everyone shoot again. My first shot, with a center hold, went high. Aimed lower on the second and it went high. On the third target, I used a 6 o'clock hold and hit the steel. Would love to have tried to repeat that, but c'est la vie. I was happy enough to hit the silhouette at 60 yards with a 9mm M&P.

So concluded TD1.

TD2
TDU started with classroom instruction on the tactics involved in applying the marksmanship fundamentals we learned in the previous day. We learned what I am calling "How To Identify a Sociopath" and received a basic lesson in pre-incident indicators. The lessons here were all about maintaining situational awareness and being able to identify (and therefore properly react to) when a situation was getting f*cked up. The classroom portion of TD2 was by far the most beneficial to me and was the "meat and potatoes" of what I had identified as my personal take-aways.

Following the classroom lesson, it was back on to the range to work on verbal de-escalation and movement. We worked on moving backwards, moving forwards, moving left, and moving right. For each direction of movement, we ran the drill with "air guns", with our firearms but WITHOUT firing, and finally pulling it all together into a firing drill. One of the things I loved most about John's teaching is that he doesn't tell you to move for movement's sake. During the drills, John plays the "bad guy" verbally confronting you, to whom you must respond. Not every drill ended with shots fired. Not every repetition warranted a movement backwards. Each student was challenged to visualize the situation in their minds and react accordingly. For me, the task of thinking critically while under stress was the most challenging part.

TD2 also saw us run a variation of the Tueller drill. Target on dolly moving towards you at a walking pace, John playing the role of "shouting at you from behind trying to stress you out". Again, you aren't guaranteed that sh*t will hit the fan. You're challenged to think and react accordingly. Video clip of me running the drill (and fumbling as I try to clear my cover garment) is below:
ETA2: Two things about the video. First, the target should have increased speed when John yelled "GUN! GUN". Second, I have no idea why I took such a massive step forward. That...seems...dumb...


https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/kBmzn81mKkjcpnhP_Z0a--cKeLoUHEX06bZXfoUrKGQ?feat=directlink

We concluded the day with a one-on-one skills assessment and challenge. It gave you a good idea of how far you'd come, and how far you may still have to go.

Conclusions
For me, this was a great class. I emerged far more confident about my capabilities than I felt prior to the class. I would strongly recommend this class to anyone who is looking to build a foundation of knowledge for educated and informed concealed carry.


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* Throughout the course, John made a distinction between "shooters" and "hitters". His perspective is that anyone can pull a trigger and call themselves a "shooter"; what we should strive for is to be a "hitter," one who can not only pull a trigger, but do so while reliably eliminating the threat.

Dropkick
06-04-2012, 05:06 PM
Video doesn't work for a regular pokes.
"..privacy settings."

bdcheung
06-04-2012, 05:47 PM
grumble... stupid facebook... replaced FB embed with a direct link to video.

tomrkba
06-04-2012, 06:10 PM
Nice AAR! I love training with John. Sometimes his "verbage" gets "creative".

Al T.
06-04-2012, 06:22 PM
Good review!

bdcheung
06-06-2012, 10:56 AM
Nice AAR! I love training with John. Sometimes his "verbage" gets "creative".

Thanks! This being my first course, it was also my first AAR. Glad to hear I didn't miss the mark with the information I shared.

John is a great instructor. He artfully mixes colorful language into his rhetoric as a master chef would season a dish. It keeps things interesting and helps students stay tuned in.

cdunn
06-06-2012, 01:47 PM
did you feel the love?I think Johns classes are great,I 've been to 3 and he is the first person I recommend when asked.

LewisM
06-06-2012, 05:55 PM
Excellent first AAR! John is a great instructor and runs a good class. I would highly recommend it as well.

jc000
06-09-2012, 08:26 PM
I hope to train with John this year. Nice write-up.

TGS
06-10-2012, 07:53 PM
John's CCSD is a fantastic class for applying guns to self-defense on the street. When I took it, the morning of TD1 was in the classroom (at the hotel ;) ) and like you said is probably the best part of the course. Too many people take high-speed shooting classes before anything more relevant to carrying a gun on the street like that morning of CCSD. I can honestly say it was a fantastic foundation for me to work off of, and gives the student a lot of knowledge that they wouldn't learn from most shooting technique-centric courses. I'm not sure how much he draws from it as I've never taken Ayoob's courses, but from what I've read of MAG40, John's CCSD class seems to be a well thought out condensed version of it.

I wonder what John incorporated from ECQC that he, Dropkick and I took together. Did he reference anything from Craig's ECQC class?

bdcheung
06-10-2012, 08:35 PM
Yes.


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