Frank Proctor (Way of the Gun) Performance Pistol Process
AAR Frank Proctor (Way of the Gun) Performance Pistol Process
Training Date: 23-24 NOV 2013
Location: Shooters World (Phoenix, AZ)
Gun: M&P9L
Ammo: Freedom Munitions 147g RN, Remanufactured (900ish rounds)
Gear: JMCK AIWB Holster, RCS Double Mag Carrier, Concealed under untucked Polo
Let me start by saying what I am/not going to do. I am just going to share my experiences and things that stood out to me. I am not going to give a blow by blow of the class, even though your class may end up being very different than mine.
My Gear: I ran the course from concealment, as always. I was using a JM Custom Kydex holster which again performed well, as expected. The Raven Concealment mag carrier also performed well. My only real gear issue was the ammo I was using. I would normally run my reloads in a class but I was unable to get that done before the class, so I picked up 1k of Freedom Munitions 147g Round Nose Remanufactured ammo. I have always had success with this ammo in the past, but it's performance during this class was totally unacceptable. I was loading 15rds per magazine, and had at least 1 Failure to Fire per magazine. At first I thought it could have been the striker spring, but it was in good condition and almost new. Upon inspection of the failed rounds, it was definitely not a light primer strike causing the issue. I am of the opinion that whatever primers were being used for the Lot# were way too hard. I will be contacting them to let them know. I am hoping that the issue is just an isolated incident. On a seperate gear note, I also broke one of my magazines. During a slide-lock-reload, upon hitting the concrete floor the metal lip connecting the mag body to the base plate broke off. I am not too upset about this though. That particular magazine was one of the mags I received when I bought my first M&P9 in 2009 and has been a hard use training mag since then.
Frank's Bio: I am not big on resume's and bio's, as what someone did 10 years ago has no bearing on what they can do now. That being said, Frank has experience as both a member of the Special Operations community, as well as a SSP Master in IDPA, and Grandmaster in USPSA (Division unknown). His bio is available at Wayofthegun.us and aliastraining.com.
Class Overview: This class was exactly what I was looking for without knowing it, lol. During Frank's intro, he made it clear that he was not bound by doctrine in his class and we'd work on what we needed to work on. This is a great approach in my opinion and I am a huge fan of it. With this approach, you could take the same class multiple times and see some totally different things based on the differences in students, hence why my class may be totally different than yours as far as exercises shot and how much time is spent on what. Frank broke up shooting into four areas: Processing, Control, Mechanics, and Movement. We would visit these principles multiple times over the next two days. Here is how I saw those four:
Processing: Seeing and recognizing what I needed to in order to do what needed to be done shooting wise.
Control: Controlling and steering the gun. This was a HUGE point for me, to be seen later.
Mechanics: Everything we do with the gun; presentation, reloads, malfunction clearance, etc.
Movement: Pretty self explanatory.
Most classes in the training world I feel mainly address mechanics and movement, with brief time spent on control and even less on processing. Not the case in this class. I would say the class was mainly driven by processing and control followed by movement and mechanics. I'll talk about all of these concepts as they relate to what we were doing as I saw it.
Frank's grip and upper body positioning was/is probably the hardest thing for me to put to work. His grip, which I thought I had a grasp on, was much higher on the gun than I had initially thought. I still do not feel I can duplicate it at this point. During the class I would revert back to my old grip over and over. This can be said for almost all the control factors. The initial thing that drew me to Frank's class was his recoil management. The largest factor in this according to Frank was not his grip pressure, but his tricep and elbow positioning. He made some excellent points about unlocking your elbows and triceps and allowing the arms to act as the suspension system. I had heard this before and was under the impression that I was doing this.....WRONG. After Frank pointed it out, my elbows are slightly bent, but not unlocked. This was almost the rule rather than the exception for the rest of the student body as well. Having come from the "tactical" shooting world, I had learned many years ago to lock out the elbows and "fight the recoil." I later abandoned that technique for locking out and pulling back until the elbows unlock. This works, to a point as I saw. Frank's elbows are extremely unlocked and you can watch them acting as a suspension system during recoil. This is something, like the grip, that is gonna take me a while to figure out. Another key point was how we position our head. We all know not to "turtle" our heads and neck, but we all do to some extent. The mirror shatter happened for me when looking through my sights and realizing I was looking through the top most part of my glasses. I would have never considered what I was doing to be turtling or a hindrance, but when Frank suggested we try and keep our chin parallel to the ground, it was eye opening. Literally, I could see soooo much more.
This brought us into the concepts of Focus and Awareness. This is pretty abstract, but the basic premise is we can focus on something while being very aware of many many things. A great exercise, as Frank calls them, was seeing the brass eject from the gun during the firing cycle. It's amazing what you can be aware of when you try, lol. On a side note to this, Frank has an interesting approach to seeing the sights in relation to the target. He believes we can see the rear sight, front sight, and target all on the same sight plane while focusing on all three. Super abstract concept to me and the best way I can think to describe it is using a soft sight focus on everything as opposed to a hard front sight focus or hard target focus. I may not be properly explaining this concept, but it was interesting to me, especially after reading and pondering over OrigamiAK's great article on vision.
Let me talk about Frank's presentation from the holster (draw stroke) and reloads. Though mechanically no different than what I would consider the standard techniques, he imparts the concept of "comfortable hand speed." The best way I can think to describe this is moving at a speed to guarantee a proper presentation or reload. This is not necessarily slow, but more controlled than anything else. Imagine dry firing at a very deliberate pace to get perfect technique. With this came some math (specific to presentations where shooting was required). Target + Sights = Trigger - Delay. Barney style: when you see what you need on the sights, press the trigger as soon as you see it, i.e. press-out/trigger prep.
The rest of the class was pretty much about letting your vision drive the gun....where have I heard that before.... Much of the class was shot between USPSA/IPSC lower A-zones and 3x5 cards, with the latter being the majority. If you are looking for a class to really help you work target to target transitions, this would be key! Much of the class was shot on multiple targets or multiple target areas. The standout drill/exercise for me in this class by far was something called the "Eye of the Tiger" drill. Five vertical index cards spread out and numbered out of order. All you have to do is shoot the cards in number sequence with one round. Seems easy, but it really drives home how your vision needs to drive the gun from card to card. We would then go to two rounds per card, trying to match our target transitions to the splits. Easier said than done. This is gonna be a staple in my practice for sure.
Conclusion: Frank is most definitely a great shooter and instructor, which is not always the case. He was very down to earth and willing to talk about his shortcomings as a shooter. This is the biggest and often most overlooked trait of great instructors in my opinion. An instructor who tells you he does everything correctly and never misses or messes up is either lying to himself or lying to you. Either way, I don't want that person as an instructor, and I have seen more than my share of these. Frank was more than willing to tell you how he struggles with certain aspects of shooting or why he thought he missed a shot or reload, etc.
There is so much more I want to say about this class and the great techniques and teaching points, but to truly appreciate it you should check out the class.
