Spent this past weekend attending Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions course at the OKC Gun Club near Arcadia, Oklahoma. You can check out GabeÂ’s website at www.gabewhitetraining.com.
I have trained with some of the best trainers in the country, most of which come from a military or civilian law enforcement background. Gabe has neither, and he readily admits it. I probably wouldn't have thought twice about not attending his course but for the recommendation from a couple shooting buddies of mine whose opinion I highly value. There seems to be a lot of discussion among the shooting world about who makes the best trainers, military or police, but there are a few who simply have a shooting background that stand out. Gabe White is one of those fellows.
He’s an unassuming fellow who could easily pass for your college economics professor. He even has a remarkable resemblance to the Dean of my alma mater law school. But don't let his look fool you. He's a remarkable shooter, but even more impressive, he's a remarkable instructor. IDPA and IPSC matches are full of some very good shooters, very few of which can teach. Gabe has the ability to make good shooters better, a lot better.
His Pistol Shooting Solutions is not a beginner class and you need to have a good, solid understanding of the fundamentals of handgun shooting. He doesn't spend a lot time discussing the draw, for instance, but he does cover several tricks that he's picked up that will help you improve your drawstroke. Our class was filled with some very good shooters, the kind of which will push you to improve your skills. Gabe has several man-vs-man drills where shooters compete against each other. Getting a dozen or so Alpha males together to shoot against each other can provide some pretty powerful motivation to improve.
I'm not going to go into the minutiae of the entire 2 days, but I will say you will leave a much better shooter. His basic course outline (which he has written and follows it carefully) takes a shooter on a journey starting with some basic, static shooting drills, to shooting from a flat out sprint! He will lecture briefly on each drill, then demonstrate it, then the class will shoot it. Gabe demonstrates every drill and does so at his so-called “Turbo” level. Gabe gives out series of little pins at the completion of his course depending on the skill level that the student demonstrates on a series of common drills. The lowest level is the “Dark” pin, next is the “Light" pin and finally there is the “Turbo” pin. No shooters in my class earned the Turbo pin. A few earned the Light pin, some earned the Dark pin and a couple didn't earn any pin at all. I will tell you that many acclaimed shooters would have a hard time earning any pin at all, and you'll have to shoot at Grand Master level to earn a Turbo Pin. By the way, Gabe demonstrated and shot all the drills at the Turbo pin level.
Gabe’s style of teaching is very easy to learn by. He's obviously very intelligent and articulate (he even articulates without foul language!) and discusses each topic in a fluid manner that leads easily from one point the next. He's also seems to be of unlimited energy. Even during our breaks he's either discussing a topic, answering questions or setting up the range for the next iteration of drills.
He's is the consummate professional, as I mentioned earlier, he speaks without foul language (unless he's quoting someone else), meticulously follows the course outline, which follows exactly the advertised curriculum, doesn't embellish his background and gives a lot of one-on-one attention to students. As I mentioned earlier, this course was full of some very “switched-on” shooters. Every student in the course improved during the course of the 2 days of instruction. There were several students in the class that were repeat attendees of Gabe’s courses.
This was not a tactics course, although we worked some barricade drills and discussed the use of barricades as it related to some real world incidents; nor was this a basic handgun course, you need to be well grounded in the basic fundamentals of handgun shooting. This was a pretty much a pure shooting course. Most drills were shot from 5-15 yards with the majority of the shooting done at 7 yards. We shot mostly at IPSC cardboard targets and a little steel. Targets were taped often and replaced as needed. The challenging part of the course was the speed standards and the reduced head zone of the target. Getting hits at 7 yards isn't that hard when you have unlimited time to do so; but, inject a shot timer, with shortened time limits, and even good shooters will start experiencing problems.
His man-on-man drills were what he called “Asymmetrical” or “Parallel Universe” contests. 2 different stages were set up. They were each were different from the other, but designed in such a way to be accomplished in nearly the same time. A couple of them needed some tweaking, but eventually, it worked out. These were a lot of fun and each one related back to an earlier drill or drills. Students ran these against each other several times, with each student running switching back and forth between each stage.
As I said earlier, this wasnÂ’t a tactics course, but when you think about it, good tactics demands that you draw your pistol and get the hits as fast as possible. Whether this is done in real life shootings, combat or gun games, the desired end result is the same. When you finish Pistol Shooting Solutions, youÂ’ll be better prepared to either win the gunfight, or win the match.
You can find Gabe’s accomplishments at his website, and his standards for his pin awards as well. He also tracks his pin awards by class, so you can see just how many pins get awarded. I believe he limits his class size to 14; we had 13 in the OKC course. If you get a chance to train with Gabe, you need to get signed up. One more thing, I hope Gabe can find time to do a little shopping when he gets home. The pants he wore (same pants on both days) were looking a little worn and threadbare.
