Ben Stoeger, Skills and Drills
My wife and I just finished up with this class with Ben. It was our first Stoeger class, and we came to it with a number of impressions about Ben, based on his many years of top level shooting performance, speaking with others who have trained with him, and his social media presence.
Let me say right off, that you should not attend a Stoeger class if you are looking for pins, kudos or contagious enthusiasm for shooting. When you screw up, Ben tells you that succinctly, generally with “that sucked.” When you do well, you might get a “that was OK,” or “you are better at this aspect of shooting than X.” If other instructors would take your temperature orally or with a no touch wand, Ben does it rectally. Of course the benefit of this approach, is it removes ambiguity.
What surprised me, is I learned more about shooting a red dot in these two days, than I have collectively from all the classes I have taken. Ben has been shooting Carry Optics lately, along with Production, and it really shows.
Ben’s approach is based on vision, and specifically being completely target focused. It starts with looking at a exact spot on the target, and making the dot come to that spot. When I asked him about how to know whether you are target focused as opposed to dot focused, he said to cover the lens of your optic with tape, and shoot everything that way for a while. His approach to recoil control is not post ignition push, but to let recoil happen, look at your aiming spot and let your eyes bring the dot back to the target. Transitions, he always leads with his eyes. You can sum up his approach as look at where you want to hit, and let your body bring the dot to your aiming point. This is very different than acquiring the dot early and driving the dot around the targets. Interestingly, he shoots his iron sight Production gun the same way — completely target focused.
Ben is obviously a very smart guy, with a complex personality. He is also an amazing diagnostician. If you are willing to check your ego, and open your mind, you will learn a lot. Ben says you really don’t get better in a two day class. What the class does is diagnose where you are, and give you the tools to do the work on your own and improve. He zeroed in on three issues holding me back, that I had been struggling with, without a clear plan of how to fix them, and gave me a way to address these in dry and live fire.
Ben demoed everything he had us do. We had a stage set up through class, that we would periodically return to. Here is Ben demoing it.
https://youtu.be/88M_yOfHMrg
