Tatiana Whitlock's Defensive Handgun and Handgun Accuracy Classes

On 19 and 20 September I hosted Tatiana Whitlock for two, one-day classes on my range in lovely Culpeper, VA. The weather was awesome, and so were these classes!

Tatiana is well-known to many for her work with “A Girl and a Gun” and other similar venues, as well as becoming a highly effective brand ambassador for a variety of quality firearms and accessories. Relatively “late to the game”, she underwent a blistering training program, and through combination of intellect, drive and personality, she has become far more than the sum of her instructors in both the content and delivery of her well-honed curriculum.

The 19th was “Defensive Handgun: An Intermediate Handgun for Self Defense Course.” This class was purposely designed to transition people beyond basic handgun/concealed carry courses by introducing a spectrum of skills and placing those skills into a defensive context. Tatiana’s tag line is, “Training in context”, and she really closes this loop and makes good on the promise. Students were re-familiarized with a safe draw stroke/presentation and were then presented an increasingly challenging series of marksmanship challenges. Along the way, target discrimination was introduced in what I can only describe as a unique and effective fashion. Students were encouraged to think for themselves, and appropriately rewarded for doing so. Others took the lesson that was intended…you’re on your own. I am always looking to sharpen my own program, and I found her “post-incident” procedures, and the way she taught them, validating but with a few good twists I will incorporate. We wrapped the day up with work from the seated position, that had several technical twists I had not seen before.

“Handgun Accuracy” took place on the 20th, a different class with a much different emphasis as she built these shooters “from the ground up”. This was a novel approach that achieved startling results, particularly amongst the newer shooters in the class. Every facet of the program was explained and then demonstrated in detail, with plenty of coaching along the way. The emphasis from the beginning was on form, with each element of a shot thoroughly explained in detail. Function then naturally followed. Her demonstration of how predictable the results are from various grip errors was a first seen for me, and I found her explanation of sights, angles and the human eye particularly interesting.

Overall observations: At every class break Tatiana sought feedback from the class, soliciting dialogue and leaving no stone unturned. Her style and demeanor were much more “mentor/coach” than instructor, and the results spoke for themselves. Everyone was kept safe and everyone left better than when they arrived….the very definition of success for this sort of venture.

Bottom Line: A very solid program and instructor. 10/10 will host again!

I was there for the Defensive Pistol class. I agree with everything John said about it. Tatiana was an effective teacher and she covered some really important material. I won't talk specifics because part of the effect of this class comes from the surprising, unexpected, unfamiliar, frankly slightly unsettling elements, so if I give stuff away that effect will be, to some extent, lost on future students who read this. That would be a shame.

One thing that I think I can talk about without giving anything away is the emphasis on reholstering. Not only did Tatiana teach reholstering effectively--talking us through it, running us through it dry, running us through it live--but she came back around to it after a short while with a very strongly worded reminder about the importance of doing it right. There was a hint of anger in this reminder--not directed at any students, but directed at the stupidity of negligently shooting yourself because you can't be bothered to take care when holstering. It was strong medicine. Because we shot in two relays, I spent some time standing behind the firing line and observing. I saw two students with holstering problems after all of that, and I saw both of them addressed privately and (it seemed) effectively by the instructors. One student had a bad holster, which she replaced with what I believe was a loaner holster/gun from John. (Not sure about that--but I am sure that the second edition was definitely a better, safer fit for this student.)

Saying "she" up there about the student reminds me to talk a little bit about the students. I think there were 18 total, of which 6 were women. We were a pretty old crew, which isn't that unusual in my experience, but I had hoped there might be younger parents and such in attendance. It seemed to be a pretty squared-away group. I do not believe that guy showed up. Many of the students were instructors, including several from The Well Armed Woman. People were friendly and respectful. And the class structure really encouraged communication among students in various ways.

This was not a shooting class. I mean, we shot. But Tatiana was not there to teach people the fundamentals of pistol shooting. (I imagine she did a lot of that on Sunday. Not on Saturday.) Like I just said, nobody was really ate up so it wasn't really necessary. But, for example, I noticed one guy who could have used some pointers on grip. As far as I saw, this was not addressed. I'm not criticizing, I'm just observing. The focus of the class was principally mental. Secondarily, we practiced some neat stuff like what she calls 'yoga with guns' and dealing with chairs, and whatnot. Tatiana took the fundamentals of shooting for granted.

The class material hung together really well. Pieces built upon pieces. You'd get a bit of foreshadowing, and then an hour later, the payoff. It was a very well designed class. I'm gonna echo John's 10/10.

One final observation is that John Murphy was the de facto assistant instructor. I took a pepper spray and a Skills and Drills pistol class with him about a year ago, and got the full splendor of his large personality on that day. In his role as T's assistant, though, he faded right into the background and completely ceded the floor to her. You might imagine some people not being able to play that part, especially people with big personalities. But John was just a busy and effective assistant for the day. Nice to see that he respects his guests like that. I'm 4 hours from FPF, and I'm super grateful to have reasonably manageable access to such a great company. I look forward to getting back to Culpeper soon! (Hint to John: I really need to do the Armed Parent Class)