JHC
10-27-2012, 01:08 PM
Class Report: Two Day Custom Pistol-Carbine Training with Frank Proctor
Situation: Twenty year old son decides two years of college is all he can stand (for now) and enlists Army Infantry to fast track to the action stuff he wants to do. However, unlike his older brother (active duty Army already) his prior interest in working at shooting skill was casual to low historically. NOW it’s high. Six months ago said young shooter struggled to keep 5 shots on a dinner plate slow fire at 7 yards. He’s been working hard and has improved a lot but is still way behind the power curve with just a couple months before starting Basic. Dad (me) has brought young shooter along to be able to stay on a 3x5 consistently slow fire at 7 yds and has a very decent reload. But a long ways still to go with pistol and still mediocre with the AR carbine. (Note: he’s a lefty and shoots rifle lefty. His lefty pistol shooting was abysmal and I had him try right handed which was better so he stuck with it. What was a pleasant surprise was that his reloads were immediately very smooth and pretty quick using his most dexterous hand to retrieve the magazine and guide in the reload. Hmmm.)
Scheduling
Scheduling conflicts in general didn’t support regular scheduled classes. I was also concerned about my son’s noob ability to A. keep up in a class and B. get the most out of a class while struggling to keep up. We went the “custom” class route with Frank Proctor based on his resume, reputation, and proximity – just 2.5 hours drive. US Army SF, combat deployments, USPSA GM . . . 2 ½ hour drive away . . . are you kidding me???
I booked two days with Frank, first contacting him via email through his “Contact” page of Way of the Gun http://wayofthegun.us/
Frank was back in touch with me via email very quickly and we corresponded several times as I dialed in dates and curriculum. I asked about a hybrid custom course that included basic rifle marksmanship and fighting with carbine and pistol. Frank’s enthusiasm for this class came through loud and clear just over email as he explained the training content he recommended and it was on. I felt like he was really excited to “train with you guys” (his words).
Day 1 Training
We started at 9:00 on a Monday morning and finished about 9 ½ hours later. So much for the 8 hours the $500 per 8 hour block huh? I thought I loved shooting but Frank is an order of magnitude more passionate about shooting and teaching shooting. Day one and two – no lunch, few breaks. Grab a drink, an apple, or other snack when you must and drive on to the next rep or next lesson. We discussed breaking for lunch on day one and it was all up to us. Well we packed trail food and didn’t intend or need to go anywhere and Frank didn’t want to stop so it was easy. Keep shooting or discussing shooting.
Frank recommends a 50 yard zero to get a battle sight zero out to around 300 yds. Out of curiosity and innovativeness he experimented with a ballistics calculator on his smart phone and determined a 10 yard zero would allow a very tight shot group to adjust sight to, then verify at longer range. It appeared to work.
After zeroing the irons on young shooter’s primary; a BCM lightweight barreled middie with fixed FSB and DD fixed rear Frank put him to work at 100 yards from prone supported. BTW all the lad’s shooting these two days would be with irons.
At first he struggled to consistently hit an approximately 8 ½ by 11 steel plate at 100. Frank meticulously educated, trained and coached him on the elements of rifle marksmanship.
Stability: Frank prefers a “sniper” prone vs what I call AMU prone (because older son learned it from AMU clinics). Frank’s method was chest flat on ground and legs wide and flat – stability.
Frank emphasized points of contact and max stability of getting down flat and getting pressure against the available support with the mag well and positive shoulder. He highlighted the consistency of the principles of stability, points of contact, positive shoulder, sight picture and trigger control whether prone or standing. For precision rifle work, he argued that stability is even more important than how sweet your trigger press is.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8106916861/in/photostream
Vision thing: Get face back comfortably and don’t go “nose to charging handle”. Unnecessary to crane the neck and distort the head position that far forward and lose full visibility of upright predator eyes. No matter where your face landed – just have to get that sight picture, get stable, and break a clean shot.
I spent most of this first morning sitting back watching this craftsman impart his lessons into this young and not highly experienced shooter. An hour later this young shooter was now owning the 100 and 200 yard plates and consistently ringing the 325 yard plate. During one magazine loading interlude, Frank steps up with an EOTech sighted carbine and rapid fires about 10 rounds into the 200 yard plate at about a one second per shot cadence. I was like Holy Smokes. In this 1 on 1 setting over the next two days Frank was able to get some drilling of his own in, especially on Day 2. That made the training all that more fun; watching him drill with us.
Mid- afternoon we moved to an “action bay” and started on the standing, fighting carbine stuff. Frank breaks it down in very specific building block steps and methodically explains, trains and drills each step thoroughly before adding the next.
First the body’s and feet’s position and balance. I had the aggressive weight forward thing but was too narrow left right. Rear (strong side) foot too far back and ergo my base was too narrow, less stable and less versatile. Both youngster and I got trued up.
We moved up to the hand placements and super important – “positive shoulder”. Rolling the strong side deltoid into the gun – this was quickly proven later to have a huge effect on keeping the sights on the target during extended strings of fire. Hand out pretty far, not quite MagPul Dynamics far – to allow the support elbow to drop downward easily which adds some easy relaxed pressure drawing the rifle into the positive shoulder.
Then he busted one of my paradigms. I like short stocks. Run that carbine all scrunched up. He took us through his own evolution along the same path and how he ended up with the stock out long for better true control in strings of fire and target transitions. He related how he hit 3-Gun with his short stock and VFG and watched superior 3-Gunners outrun him with 18 and 20 inch barrels, no VFG and A2 stocks! Clue!!! Sport driving innovation. I was skeptical until I started running it that way but was immediately converted.
Frank is really big on working each building block for quite a few reps before you start shooting. I was itching to make some noise but worked the new methods hard in the dry fire reps. There were quite a few building blocks. After the body, feet, hand shoulder positions there was the low ready and presenting up and getting the sight picture. Then the next block of moving the safety off in the presentation from low ready and getting the finger on the trigger. Then put it all together and break a dry snap. And all with the ever present, constantly reminded “extended follow through” to learn from what the sights did getting on target and then breaking the shot. VERY methodical.
Several ready positions were covered and their respective advantages i.e. high ready easy to run like hell across a significant distance. But all around for being ready to shoot fast, he’s a low ready advocate.
Frank’s presentation of all this was clear as a bell and riveting in the purposeful reasoning behind each detail.
Shooting started with a presentation from low ready and then fire a precision single quickly. Then it was three. Then three faster. Then five. Then five faster. That’s where I learned the expression “Feed it!”.
We finished up this day with a neat little drill for score and competition. Target was a vertical 3x5 card. Start at 10 yards and active the timer. At the beep, run back to 25 yds and shoot 5 to the card. Run up to 15 yards, shoot 5 on the card. Run up to 10 yards and shoot five. I don’t recall the exact times but my son was moving faster than me, and his splits from 15 yards were faster than mine (just by perception) and whereas I got 14 of 15 on the card, he hit 13. One day of instruction and he was on my tail. BTW Frank was 15 for 15 and ridiculously faster.
Day 2
We picked up the carbines again and reviewed all the prior days’ building blocks and dry fired them through each sequence of progressively adding the building blocks. Frank’s concept on this uses the analogy of “loading the program” borrowed from software. It mean intense concentration and awareness of each step and cycling these frequently with full awareness of what you’re doing and what it feels like and what you’re SEEING - this loads the program. Same for his repeated teaching of “extended follow through”. Get your eyes and mind soaking up all the feedback lessons of every dry fire exercise and every training shot. Every time there was a less than desired result from one of us – there was a Q&A – what did you see? What made that happen? How to you correct that? Try it again.
We ran a slew of drills with the carbine and all of them were for many repetitions. We didn’t just sample a drill and then stash it away for practice at home. We ran and ran and ran them over and over. Each one. Type-writer drill on plates, then adding multiple strings in place of the singles.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8104496785/in/photostream
About then we started into shooting while moving. First up were the concepts on how to decide whether the odds of good hits from various distances indicated stationary shooting or shooting on the move. We ran the same drill running between static shooting positions and shooting while moving. The lesson being that with a carbine; getting multiple torso hits under 12 -15 yds – shooting while moving through the points should get the total amount of work done in a shorter time frame than moving between points but shooting static. Big advantage of a rifle. About a 2 sec advantage in this example. No I’m not sandbagging. I’m trying to keep a sight picture through the irons. Lol
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8105678935/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8105360518/in/photostream
The pistol training started with the similar building blocks like the carbine training did. Frank evaluated our two hand grips and we were both pretty close to OK with the high thumbs grip but he offered some tweaks. The anchor point of the support hand thumb is on the frame forward of the trigger guard. Check. But pressing toward the strong hand side and slightly downward was new info for us. Another new twist was giving that anchor point a “fingerprint” of the support thumb. I just oriented my thumb with fingerprints down. It was great to get new ideas to eval.
Frank offered that the first finger of my support hand may inhibit the smooth and free action of my trigger finger and I should try anchoring it on the strong hand’s index finger out of the way of the trigger finger.
On the placement of the trigger finger on our Glock pistols, Frank recommended the middle of the first pad for the reasons normally argued for it. This is really the only teaching point I decided I would not adopt. And that’s because I’d already spent a year and thousands of rounds years ago working with the two options of 1st pad or first crease and have shot much better since going first crease. But I kept my mouth shut on that and let junior give it an honest try.
The draw stroke had another new approach for us. I have previously coached my sons as I recall learning it from a Tom Givens symposium. Four point et al. Weak hand comes to the sternum to stay out of the way and meet the gun hand close to that position, then press it out. I hope I can generally call this a press out of one variation or another albeit it doesn’t require breaking the shot AT extension. I use more of the “index” draw with gun hand arcing straight out toward full extension and support hand catching up with it a good distance out in front of my chest; at least half way to full extension. (Note I have coached the four point to both sons as their application is martial and they didn’t have a bazillion reps another way yet.)
The moment Frank began to explain and demonstrate a different draw stroke I had to mentally fight the urge to shut it out and forced myself to give it some reps. I’m very glad I did. I need a lot more time and reps to know for sure but in the class I worked it hard slowly and gradually building speed (trying to “load the program”) in Frank’s recommended “one smooth motion”. The strong hand comes down on the pistol as we’re all doing now and gets a high grip. The support hand moves over to immediately in front of the strong side hip and as the pistol is drawn up it rotates to muzzle level and downrange immediately and the support hand takes its place on the two handed grip immediately just in front of the holster. To my perception, lower and sooner by several inches than Bob Vogel for instance demo’s in his YouTube video on the draw. Then it all “escalators” up in a smooth ramp, bore level to the ground, to full extension. Frank did not want the now two handed gripped pistol coming up an “elevator” then straight out. He wanted an “escalator” from where you got two hands on the gun to eye level.
Then the whole unit ramps up “like an escalator” (Frank), bore level; tracking in the shortest line up to eye level. The trigger gets contacted about the time the sights are just below line of sight and the trigger prepped. Sights come up pretty close to true and you see what you need to see and press.
We worked this dry fire pretty extensively. I gave it an honest go and really liked it. I built up the speed and was really diggin’ now little adjustment was left to do at full extension. Now I realize how much I slap them together half way out to full extension. This period of dry fire with trigger press emphasized the “extended follow through” again to learn from the sights as the trigger is pressed.
When we started shooting it was for single shots to a vertical 3x5 card at 7 yards. Then triples on the vertical 3x5 card. Frank continued to emphasize the extended follow through to “load the program” – learning from your sights and what they do in recoil. Stance, draw stroke, grip, escalator, prep trigger, press, extended follow through.
Frank suggested both of us had our elbows excessively locked straight and taught to keep some bend in the elbows for better shock absorber recoil control and easier tracking once we start moving and shooting. I knew I’d formerly shot that way and gave it up for full extension at some point but couldn’t for the life of me remember why at the time. Since the class, I recalled that years ago I’d moved to full locked out extension on the idea that under life and death stress I’ll not likely stop my elbows from locking out (who knows? not me, not for certain; I think I picked this up from Ayoob’s Stressfire many years ago). But nevertheless after some reps I could perceive the advantages of recoil control and sight tracking Frank predicted would be the benefit. I’m gonna work on this more.
That’s potentially two major highly ingrained methods to re-wire. That is intimidating to this old dog. ;)
Frank instructed in the speed reload and the “tactical” reload with the highly efficient drill of alternating with a full mag and empty mag. Shoot one, slide lock reload the full mag, tactical reload the empty mag, repeat cycle over and over and over.
We moved through some stationary drills for reps. Quite a few reps. Like almost everything we did; we ran them for a LOT of reps.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8114612577/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8104490529/in/photostream
Then it was time to get moving with the pistols. Frank movement while shooting was the 1st thing that grabbed my attention when I first saw his videos some weeks ago. We learned his method which is more upright than the lower Groucho walk I was more familiar with.
Frank teaches less extreme lowering of the body and maintaining a normal length walking stride with slight bend in the knees and smoothly rolling feet. His was constructed with our own hands on experiments. We held a sight picture while just walking like normal down the street and watched our sights bounce. The worst bounce is each foot impact. Frank’s style of movement reduces but cannot completely eliminate that. However a longer normal stride length vs my old style of short stride Groucho walking led to fewer footfall impacts in the same distance.
Frank explained a bit about the nature of competition movement vs CQB movement as part of a team. CQB movement is relatively slower to execute precisely as one has trained to as a team to dominate a space/room etc. Also how in CQB movement you have a little different decision issue than in competition. You need to get to where you are assigned to get in a takedown and you need to be able to engage while you’re getting there.
We shot singles for reps and then multiple round strings for reps.
We haven’t mastered this yet but made a lot of progress with this skill. The lad made the greatest improvement. He could not make these shots moving a week prior.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8114762418/in/photostream
Lateral movement was added, striving for the same upright normal stride length and pivoting the upper body to shoot.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8114645418/in/photostream
We finished the pistol work with one of Frank’s favorite qualifiers he calls “The Magnificent Seven” which is designed to tie all the building blocks together. Four IDPA targets were set up in an array that called for about a 7 yard shot on each if you moved promptly through all the shooting. Each target was to get 3 shots and score 10 points; scored with a system such that no two hits alone could score 10. The shooter started with 7 in the gun and a slide lock reload was mandated. The standard was 10 points on each target and shot in 7 seconds or less.
Frank ran this one with us for reps, lots of reps. He was pushing for under 6 seconds and saw 6.09 etc but didn’t break 6 this day. After many reps I hit a 7.78 clean and while taping targets I asked Frank, “In one of your classes, how many shooters break 7 seconds?” and Frank said while taping “Oh I’ve never had a student break 7 in a class.” I was like LOL “Thank you!”
We wrapped up the formal pistol training and Frank took the youngster aside and worked through malfunction clearance with the AR. This was my opening to slip over to the long 145 yard bay and plink his hanging steel at 60, 80 and 145 yards with a G17 and G26.
And that about sums up two days of custom training designed primarily to impart skills to the young shooter beyond my capabilities to teach. It was stunningly successful at that purpose. I learned vastly more than I expected to going in, and I expected to learn a lot.
Gear
I shot a Noveske N4 Basic Recce using the Troy BUIS set and a Gen 3 RTF2 G17 for the pistol. My son used a BCM 14.5” (16.1) LW middie and his FDE Gen 4 G19. All guns ran fine.
We used PMC 55 grain FMJ and Magtech 115 grain FMJ. 2800 rounds in two days between the two of us.
I didn’t catch the make of Frank’s carbine although he mentioned building it. He ran an EOT. His pistol was a Gen 4 G17 he’d had a modest beavertail built up on and a red fiber optic front. His guns ran fine as well.
Situation: Twenty year old son decides two years of college is all he can stand (for now) and enlists Army Infantry to fast track to the action stuff he wants to do. However, unlike his older brother (active duty Army already) his prior interest in working at shooting skill was casual to low historically. NOW it’s high. Six months ago said young shooter struggled to keep 5 shots on a dinner plate slow fire at 7 yards. He’s been working hard and has improved a lot but is still way behind the power curve with just a couple months before starting Basic. Dad (me) has brought young shooter along to be able to stay on a 3x5 consistently slow fire at 7 yds and has a very decent reload. But a long ways still to go with pistol and still mediocre with the AR carbine. (Note: he’s a lefty and shoots rifle lefty. His lefty pistol shooting was abysmal and I had him try right handed which was better so he stuck with it. What was a pleasant surprise was that his reloads were immediately very smooth and pretty quick using his most dexterous hand to retrieve the magazine and guide in the reload. Hmmm.)
Scheduling
Scheduling conflicts in general didn’t support regular scheduled classes. I was also concerned about my son’s noob ability to A. keep up in a class and B. get the most out of a class while struggling to keep up. We went the “custom” class route with Frank Proctor based on his resume, reputation, and proximity – just 2.5 hours drive. US Army SF, combat deployments, USPSA GM . . . 2 ½ hour drive away . . . are you kidding me???
I booked two days with Frank, first contacting him via email through his “Contact” page of Way of the Gun http://wayofthegun.us/
Frank was back in touch with me via email very quickly and we corresponded several times as I dialed in dates and curriculum. I asked about a hybrid custom course that included basic rifle marksmanship and fighting with carbine and pistol. Frank’s enthusiasm for this class came through loud and clear just over email as he explained the training content he recommended and it was on. I felt like he was really excited to “train with you guys” (his words).
Day 1 Training
We started at 9:00 on a Monday morning and finished about 9 ½ hours later. So much for the 8 hours the $500 per 8 hour block huh? I thought I loved shooting but Frank is an order of magnitude more passionate about shooting and teaching shooting. Day one and two – no lunch, few breaks. Grab a drink, an apple, or other snack when you must and drive on to the next rep or next lesson. We discussed breaking for lunch on day one and it was all up to us. Well we packed trail food and didn’t intend or need to go anywhere and Frank didn’t want to stop so it was easy. Keep shooting or discussing shooting.
Frank recommends a 50 yard zero to get a battle sight zero out to around 300 yds. Out of curiosity and innovativeness he experimented with a ballistics calculator on his smart phone and determined a 10 yard zero would allow a very tight shot group to adjust sight to, then verify at longer range. It appeared to work.
After zeroing the irons on young shooter’s primary; a BCM lightweight barreled middie with fixed FSB and DD fixed rear Frank put him to work at 100 yards from prone supported. BTW all the lad’s shooting these two days would be with irons.
At first he struggled to consistently hit an approximately 8 ½ by 11 steel plate at 100. Frank meticulously educated, trained and coached him on the elements of rifle marksmanship.
Stability: Frank prefers a “sniper” prone vs what I call AMU prone (because older son learned it from AMU clinics). Frank’s method was chest flat on ground and legs wide and flat – stability.
Frank emphasized points of contact and max stability of getting down flat and getting pressure against the available support with the mag well and positive shoulder. He highlighted the consistency of the principles of stability, points of contact, positive shoulder, sight picture and trigger control whether prone or standing. For precision rifle work, he argued that stability is even more important than how sweet your trigger press is.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8106916861/in/photostream
Vision thing: Get face back comfortably and don’t go “nose to charging handle”. Unnecessary to crane the neck and distort the head position that far forward and lose full visibility of upright predator eyes. No matter where your face landed – just have to get that sight picture, get stable, and break a clean shot.
I spent most of this first morning sitting back watching this craftsman impart his lessons into this young and not highly experienced shooter. An hour later this young shooter was now owning the 100 and 200 yard plates and consistently ringing the 325 yard plate. During one magazine loading interlude, Frank steps up with an EOTech sighted carbine and rapid fires about 10 rounds into the 200 yard plate at about a one second per shot cadence. I was like Holy Smokes. In this 1 on 1 setting over the next two days Frank was able to get some drilling of his own in, especially on Day 2. That made the training all that more fun; watching him drill with us.
Mid- afternoon we moved to an “action bay” and started on the standing, fighting carbine stuff. Frank breaks it down in very specific building block steps and methodically explains, trains and drills each step thoroughly before adding the next.
First the body’s and feet’s position and balance. I had the aggressive weight forward thing but was too narrow left right. Rear (strong side) foot too far back and ergo my base was too narrow, less stable and less versatile. Both youngster and I got trued up.
We moved up to the hand placements and super important – “positive shoulder”. Rolling the strong side deltoid into the gun – this was quickly proven later to have a huge effect on keeping the sights on the target during extended strings of fire. Hand out pretty far, not quite MagPul Dynamics far – to allow the support elbow to drop downward easily which adds some easy relaxed pressure drawing the rifle into the positive shoulder.
Then he busted one of my paradigms. I like short stocks. Run that carbine all scrunched up. He took us through his own evolution along the same path and how he ended up with the stock out long for better true control in strings of fire and target transitions. He related how he hit 3-Gun with his short stock and VFG and watched superior 3-Gunners outrun him with 18 and 20 inch barrels, no VFG and A2 stocks! Clue!!! Sport driving innovation. I was skeptical until I started running it that way but was immediately converted.
Frank is really big on working each building block for quite a few reps before you start shooting. I was itching to make some noise but worked the new methods hard in the dry fire reps. There were quite a few building blocks. After the body, feet, hand shoulder positions there was the low ready and presenting up and getting the sight picture. Then the next block of moving the safety off in the presentation from low ready and getting the finger on the trigger. Then put it all together and break a dry snap. And all with the ever present, constantly reminded “extended follow through” to learn from what the sights did getting on target and then breaking the shot. VERY methodical.
Several ready positions were covered and their respective advantages i.e. high ready easy to run like hell across a significant distance. But all around for being ready to shoot fast, he’s a low ready advocate.
Frank’s presentation of all this was clear as a bell and riveting in the purposeful reasoning behind each detail.
Shooting started with a presentation from low ready and then fire a precision single quickly. Then it was three. Then three faster. Then five. Then five faster. That’s where I learned the expression “Feed it!”.
We finished up this day with a neat little drill for score and competition. Target was a vertical 3x5 card. Start at 10 yards and active the timer. At the beep, run back to 25 yds and shoot 5 to the card. Run up to 15 yards, shoot 5 on the card. Run up to 10 yards and shoot five. I don’t recall the exact times but my son was moving faster than me, and his splits from 15 yards were faster than mine (just by perception) and whereas I got 14 of 15 on the card, he hit 13. One day of instruction and he was on my tail. BTW Frank was 15 for 15 and ridiculously faster.
Day 2
We picked up the carbines again and reviewed all the prior days’ building blocks and dry fired them through each sequence of progressively adding the building blocks. Frank’s concept on this uses the analogy of “loading the program” borrowed from software. It mean intense concentration and awareness of each step and cycling these frequently with full awareness of what you’re doing and what it feels like and what you’re SEEING - this loads the program. Same for his repeated teaching of “extended follow through”. Get your eyes and mind soaking up all the feedback lessons of every dry fire exercise and every training shot. Every time there was a less than desired result from one of us – there was a Q&A – what did you see? What made that happen? How to you correct that? Try it again.
We ran a slew of drills with the carbine and all of them were for many repetitions. We didn’t just sample a drill and then stash it away for practice at home. We ran and ran and ran them over and over. Each one. Type-writer drill on plates, then adding multiple strings in place of the singles.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8104496785/in/photostream
About then we started into shooting while moving. First up were the concepts on how to decide whether the odds of good hits from various distances indicated stationary shooting or shooting on the move. We ran the same drill running between static shooting positions and shooting while moving. The lesson being that with a carbine; getting multiple torso hits under 12 -15 yds – shooting while moving through the points should get the total amount of work done in a shorter time frame than moving between points but shooting static. Big advantage of a rifle. About a 2 sec advantage in this example. No I’m not sandbagging. I’m trying to keep a sight picture through the irons. Lol
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8105678935/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8105360518/in/photostream
The pistol training started with the similar building blocks like the carbine training did. Frank evaluated our two hand grips and we were both pretty close to OK with the high thumbs grip but he offered some tweaks. The anchor point of the support hand thumb is on the frame forward of the trigger guard. Check. But pressing toward the strong hand side and slightly downward was new info for us. Another new twist was giving that anchor point a “fingerprint” of the support thumb. I just oriented my thumb with fingerprints down. It was great to get new ideas to eval.
Frank offered that the first finger of my support hand may inhibit the smooth and free action of my trigger finger and I should try anchoring it on the strong hand’s index finger out of the way of the trigger finger.
On the placement of the trigger finger on our Glock pistols, Frank recommended the middle of the first pad for the reasons normally argued for it. This is really the only teaching point I decided I would not adopt. And that’s because I’d already spent a year and thousands of rounds years ago working with the two options of 1st pad or first crease and have shot much better since going first crease. But I kept my mouth shut on that and let junior give it an honest try.
The draw stroke had another new approach for us. I have previously coached my sons as I recall learning it from a Tom Givens symposium. Four point et al. Weak hand comes to the sternum to stay out of the way and meet the gun hand close to that position, then press it out. I hope I can generally call this a press out of one variation or another albeit it doesn’t require breaking the shot AT extension. I use more of the “index” draw with gun hand arcing straight out toward full extension and support hand catching up with it a good distance out in front of my chest; at least half way to full extension. (Note I have coached the four point to both sons as their application is martial and they didn’t have a bazillion reps another way yet.)
The moment Frank began to explain and demonstrate a different draw stroke I had to mentally fight the urge to shut it out and forced myself to give it some reps. I’m very glad I did. I need a lot more time and reps to know for sure but in the class I worked it hard slowly and gradually building speed (trying to “load the program”) in Frank’s recommended “one smooth motion”. The strong hand comes down on the pistol as we’re all doing now and gets a high grip. The support hand moves over to immediately in front of the strong side hip and as the pistol is drawn up it rotates to muzzle level and downrange immediately and the support hand takes its place on the two handed grip immediately just in front of the holster. To my perception, lower and sooner by several inches than Bob Vogel for instance demo’s in his YouTube video on the draw. Then it all “escalators” up in a smooth ramp, bore level to the ground, to full extension. Frank did not want the now two handed gripped pistol coming up an “elevator” then straight out. He wanted an “escalator” from where you got two hands on the gun to eye level.
Then the whole unit ramps up “like an escalator” (Frank), bore level; tracking in the shortest line up to eye level. The trigger gets contacted about the time the sights are just below line of sight and the trigger prepped. Sights come up pretty close to true and you see what you need to see and press.
We worked this dry fire pretty extensively. I gave it an honest go and really liked it. I built up the speed and was really diggin’ now little adjustment was left to do at full extension. Now I realize how much I slap them together half way out to full extension. This period of dry fire with trigger press emphasized the “extended follow through” again to learn from the sights as the trigger is pressed.
When we started shooting it was for single shots to a vertical 3x5 card at 7 yards. Then triples on the vertical 3x5 card. Frank continued to emphasize the extended follow through to “load the program” – learning from your sights and what they do in recoil. Stance, draw stroke, grip, escalator, prep trigger, press, extended follow through.
Frank suggested both of us had our elbows excessively locked straight and taught to keep some bend in the elbows for better shock absorber recoil control and easier tracking once we start moving and shooting. I knew I’d formerly shot that way and gave it up for full extension at some point but couldn’t for the life of me remember why at the time. Since the class, I recalled that years ago I’d moved to full locked out extension on the idea that under life and death stress I’ll not likely stop my elbows from locking out (who knows? not me, not for certain; I think I picked this up from Ayoob’s Stressfire many years ago). But nevertheless after some reps I could perceive the advantages of recoil control and sight tracking Frank predicted would be the benefit. I’m gonna work on this more.
That’s potentially two major highly ingrained methods to re-wire. That is intimidating to this old dog. ;)
Frank instructed in the speed reload and the “tactical” reload with the highly efficient drill of alternating with a full mag and empty mag. Shoot one, slide lock reload the full mag, tactical reload the empty mag, repeat cycle over and over and over.
We moved through some stationary drills for reps. Quite a few reps. Like almost everything we did; we ran them for a LOT of reps.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/8114612577/in/photostream
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Then it was time to get moving with the pistols. Frank movement while shooting was the 1st thing that grabbed my attention when I first saw his videos some weeks ago. We learned his method which is more upright than the lower Groucho walk I was more familiar with.
Frank teaches less extreme lowering of the body and maintaining a normal length walking stride with slight bend in the knees and smoothly rolling feet. His was constructed with our own hands on experiments. We held a sight picture while just walking like normal down the street and watched our sights bounce. The worst bounce is each foot impact. Frank’s style of movement reduces but cannot completely eliminate that. However a longer normal stride length vs my old style of short stride Groucho walking led to fewer footfall impacts in the same distance.
Frank explained a bit about the nature of competition movement vs CQB movement as part of a team. CQB movement is relatively slower to execute precisely as one has trained to as a team to dominate a space/room etc. Also how in CQB movement you have a little different decision issue than in competition. You need to get to where you are assigned to get in a takedown and you need to be able to engage while you’re getting there.
We shot singles for reps and then multiple round strings for reps.
We haven’t mastered this yet but made a lot of progress with this skill. The lad made the greatest improvement. He could not make these shots moving a week prior.
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Lateral movement was added, striving for the same upright normal stride length and pivoting the upper body to shoot.
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We finished the pistol work with one of Frank’s favorite qualifiers he calls “The Magnificent Seven” which is designed to tie all the building blocks together. Four IDPA targets were set up in an array that called for about a 7 yard shot on each if you moved promptly through all the shooting. Each target was to get 3 shots and score 10 points; scored with a system such that no two hits alone could score 10. The shooter started with 7 in the gun and a slide lock reload was mandated. The standard was 10 points on each target and shot in 7 seconds or less.
Frank ran this one with us for reps, lots of reps. He was pushing for under 6 seconds and saw 6.09 etc but didn’t break 6 this day. After many reps I hit a 7.78 clean and while taping targets I asked Frank, “In one of your classes, how many shooters break 7 seconds?” and Frank said while taping “Oh I’ve never had a student break 7 in a class.” I was like LOL “Thank you!”
We wrapped up the formal pistol training and Frank took the youngster aside and worked through malfunction clearance with the AR. This was my opening to slip over to the long 145 yard bay and plink his hanging steel at 60, 80 and 145 yards with a G17 and G26.
And that about sums up two days of custom training designed primarily to impart skills to the young shooter beyond my capabilities to teach. It was stunningly successful at that purpose. I learned vastly more than I expected to going in, and I expected to learn a lot.
Gear
I shot a Noveske N4 Basic Recce using the Troy BUIS set and a Gen 3 RTF2 G17 for the pistol. My son used a BCM 14.5” (16.1) LW middie and his FDE Gen 4 G19. All guns ran fine.
We used PMC 55 grain FMJ and Magtech 115 grain FMJ. 2800 rounds in two days between the two of us.
I didn’t catch the make of Frank’s carbine although he mentioned building it. He ran an EOT. His pistol was a Gen 4 G17 he’d had a modest beavertail built up on and a red fiber optic front. His guns ran fine as well.