Steve Fisher/Sentinel Concepts RDS Handgun
I recently took the RDS Handgun course from Sentinel Concepts in a two-day format. So... here's an AAR. No photos are available due to a no-recording policy.
Gear:
I shot the class from concealment using a Dark Star Gear Orion, a JM Custom Kydex V3 OWB magazine pouch, and a Blue Force Gear belt mounted magazine pouch. My gun was a Gen 5 Glock 19 MOS using an Aimpoint ACRO and Dawson Precision BUIS. Other students shot from either open carry or concealment using a mix of Glocks (some of which were loaners from Fisher), SIGs, and M&P 2.0s.
After the safety brief, Fisher discussed RDS-specific gear choices (along with a bunch of other gear -- see below). To summarize, he currently recommends Trijicon, Holosun, and Aimpoint for duty-ready RDS optics; he does not advise getting a gun milled at this time because the technology is in flux. He is a fan of plate systems such as the Agency AOS (note: he says he is sponsored by them) and recommends CHPWS for MOS plates. He recommends Vibratite and torquing to no more than 11 inch pounds for RMR/similar screws. For BUIS, he is a fan of playing with Dawson's sight heights; he says that Ameriglos tend to be POA/POI at 10 yards and not 25 yards. He recommends a 25 yard zero to provide the best maximum point blank range. For guns, he advises playing with the backstraps as those can change your presentation, grip, and recoil control for the better.
Shooting:
Fisher notes at the outset that he does not believe a specific RDS handgun class is necessary; with iron sights, we put the sights on the target, trust what we see, and shoot the gun, and in his view it's no different with a RDS. The things he stresses over and over are to trust the dot and shoot when the dot is relevant. In his view, people over-complicate this sort of thing, and in particular they have a tendency to want to turn the dot into a sniper rifle. We don't do that with irons, so why do we do that with the dot?
After taking the course, I disagree with his contention that he doesn't think specific RDS training is necessary. I think there is something to be said for taking a course under somebody who knows what they're talking about and having individualized attention paid to your technique. Yes, just shoot the gun, bla bla bla, but what's happening in this class is actually a bunch of micro-tweaks to your technique. You're learning why you're missing, not finding the dot, and so on and so forth (according to Fisher, most of the time it's an error in the grip -- improper from the start, gripping during the trigger press, etc. etc. etc.).
You do not learn any sort of fancy, patented Art of the Dynamic Shooting With a Red Dot technique. Fisher wants you to stand like a normal human being, obtain a solid grip using certain techniques to set tension, place the gun onto the target, press the trigger straight to the rear when the dot is relevant, and repeat that again as much as required. For me, my head position was tweaked (I have a tendency to dip my head -- a holdover from the turtling days) slightly, which improved consistency on the draw and under recoil. Likewise, the distance I extend the gun was tweaked, as even slight extension or compression can make a big difference. Certain things were advised to get better control of the gun during recoil, using your shoulders, pinky, and thumbs to gain a mechanical advantage. No one thing was earth-shattering; taken together as a whole, however, I saw some good performance increases in controlling the dot's movement under recoil.
The individualized coaching was very valuable to me because, while I've trained a decent amount with some good folks, I've never had anywhere near the amount of emphasis on technique and individualized coaching on the same. I wasn't doing anything manifestly wrong; with the level of shooters we had in the class, Fisher just took us as we came and optimized our technique for efficiency. One guy got different coaching than the next -- it was very tailored to the individual.
Trusting the dot was emphasized over and over again. Fisher used an NRA B8 for almost the entirety of the course, because -- as many have stated -- that is a highly relevant target size for real-world use. To teach us to trust it, he simply moved us back and had us pick up the pace -- as soon as the dot was in the black, press the shot... and if your grip and trigger press were correct, you would hit it. At 15 yards shooting for speed, it turns out the dot does not need to be perfectly centered or stable to still get hits. This may seem obvious to long-term dot shooters, but it's one of those things I guess I just needed to see to believe.
There were not any special sauce drills we shot -- it was a lot of rapid fire to B8s and marksmanship on B8s. The one thing that stood out that I was not already doing was his "load one, shoot two" drill. Basically, you load a round, drop the magazine, and fire a live round and a dry shot. This shows you a very clear picture of your dot movement under recoil as well as your second trigger press. It's something I'll be incorporating as a warmup for a while, for maybe 10 rounds towards the beginning of a range session.
We learned how to shoot if our dot fails, and various techniques for various dots (he discussed guillotine for RMRs, and simply framing the target in the window for other optics without that reference). For this, he finds the closed emitter optics to be better due to the tube effect helping to level things out. Likewise, we worked with our BUIS and confirmed zero with those (parallax from the optic can affect them). After that, it was learning what kind of technique worked for us in the event of a dot failure; in my case, I found I can get pretty effective hits on a B8 within 10 yards without using my irons.
Apart from the above, we learned about ready positions, engaging multiple targets, shooting on the move, the (non-) effects of parallax, single-handed shooting... Basically everything you need to do with a pistol was done with a dot.
In sum, this class was about optimizing your technique under trained observation and then getting good reps in under that same observation. As I stated earlier, no one thing was earth-shattering, but taken as a whole, performance was improved. I got my money's worth.
Closing Thoughts
I had no real critiques of Fisher as an instructor. As a matter of fact, I found him to be excellent. He was patient, took plenty of questions, had answers that worked, and gave plenty of individual attention. He provides a very casual, candid, and easy-going learning environment. Put simply, as an instructor he lives up to the hype and I found the class to be well worth my time and money.
I will say that his safety brief/policy is very much "big boy rules:" he has a hard ND line, in that anybody who NDs is dismissed from the class, but other than that it boils down to "don't do dumb stuff with the gun." I think big boy rules works fine with big boys; the problem, however, is that everybody thinks they're a big boy, even those who are not. Other instructors I have experience with are far more comprehensive in their safety briefings, and I did observe things some students did which would not have been tolerated by those instructors if seen. That is not to say that I felt unsafe at any point, but more that what some students were doing was a little outside my comfort zone of what I had experienced in classes at times.
Speaking of other students, candidly I found the deluge of gear-related questions annoying for a shooting class. I get it when we're talking red dots; when we're talking shirts and shoes, I think we're a little out there. Again, that's not a criticism of Fisher but moreso a criticism of those students. Likewise, some were plainly there as representatives of the Cult of the Celebrity Gun Instructor, and the name-dropping and cool-by-association was a little offputting from those folks.
Other than that... it was hot. Fisher took steps to mitigate heat-related injury, which was appreciated. This class was originally scheduled earlier in the year (in more mild weather) but was re-scheduled due to COVID. Fisher had it rescheduled for a date certain within about a month and a half, which -- all things considered -- was pretty good.
