Recently, Bill Wilson hosted a Robbie Leatham group class, and gushed about how good an instructor Robbie was. That jived with what I had heard from others, and I suggested Bill set-up a tutorial in Mesa. Bill, a friend of his named Cody, my wife, and I, just finished two days with Robbie. A PF member, LHS, was in the area and joined us for day one.
Robbie's teaching method is different than I have experienced. If you are expecting that he will have a preset series of drills, you will be surprised. After a one minute safety brief, of essentially "don't point a gun at me or your fellow students," he said everyone get up there and "shoot me a group so we can see if you can shoot (a group). Then one at a time, he instructed us to get up and shoot at speed.
Robbie wasn't looking at what you did well, but what you didn't do well. For each of us, that started with our weight distribution. Robbie isn't petite, and explained that his ability to control recoil, would require less effort than a smaller person, like my wife. He had each of us shooting standing on just our support leg, with the other foot in the air. That exercise quickly underscored the amount of CG shift necessary for each of us for optimal recoil control.
With the effort I have invested lately, trying to figure out how to manipulate the Glock trigger, I asked Robbie about how to work the trigger. His response was to "jerk the ____ out of it." When I asked him to elaborate, he offered, "jerk it back without disturbing the sights." Since being able to jerk the trigger back without disturbing the sights is essential to Robbie's view on how to shoot faster, he had us start aimed in with the finger on the trigger, and react to the beep, with a shot to the head box. I asked him about prepping to the wall versus a one press method, and classic Robbie, he offered we needed to find out. The timer said it took me .18 to jerk the whole trigger in one motion, and .13 to jerk it from the wall. (When I say jerk, I mean press the trigger without displacing the sights.) Everyone was hitting the head box, so the jerking was not displacing the sights.
Robbie has an interesting teaching style, in that he wants you to ask questions that he can answer with yes or no. His reasoning is that forces you to ask the question in a way that shows him that the student understands what they are asking. In response to my question, Robbie commented on the traditional advice to be smooth with your movements, and press the trigger carefully. He commented it was all wrong, and that what matters is your speed and hits, period, and that there is often nothing smooth about high level shooting. He wants you to harness the tension, and also learn to jerk the trigger at a subconscious level.
Not being the sharpest knife in the draw, my reaction to a few of the next drills was to shoot my best approximation of how Robbie shot the drills. It worked out about as well as you might imagine. Within minutes, Robbie was on me like a cheap suit. His yes/no question to me was did I want to learn to shoot. He said if I did want to learn to shoot well, I needed to learn shooting discipline. That eventually prompted a demo by Robbie. He first demoed a drill, shooting as quick as he could mechanically fire the shots. Then he repeated it, making all good hits. The mechanical demo was about 3 seconds, and the A hit run almost twice that time. The teaching moment was his comment the mark of a great shooter is knowing how hard to step on the gas without crashing on the curve. The problem was I didn't have an exact method for knowing how hard to press the gas, which leads to some fantastic performance intermixed with crashes.
Robbie explained to me his method. It goes like this -- "stop the pistol on the target, AIM (appropriate to the target), and jerk the crap out of the trigger without disturbing the sights." My first attempts were inconsistent, which lead Robbie to administer remedial training. That remedial training was that I was allowed to fire just one shot, transition, but wasn't cleared to shoot until Robbie said "go," which he based on seeing me stop the gun and settle the sights. Guess what, it led to all A hits.
Here is an aside on Robbie on shot calling, which he does differently. His method is to call the shot BEFORE he fires the shot, based solely on what he sees in the sights before pressing the trigger. If he is making a second shot on the same target, he sees the sight lift as part of making the second shot. If he is transitioning, he is off to the next shot without waiting for the sight to lift "since the bullet has already left the barrel." When I asked him about the possibility of the trigger press causing a bad shot, after he had called the shot based solely on sight alignment, his response was he knows how to jerk the trigger without disturbing the sights. He believes, at the speed he is shooting, most of his bad shots are a result of issues with sight alignment prior to the shot, but he is going so fast that he can't fix it prior to shooting.
Here is Robbie on how he shoots close and far targets. He shoots, in relative terms, close targets slow and far targets fast. His reasoning is a 5 point A at 4 yards is a sure bet, where a A at 25 yards is not a sure bet, so he might as well collect the low hanging fruit (the closer, easier targets) reliably. Robbie is all about hit factor or maximizing score in the game he is playing. This means he will shoot an IDPA target, which are based on a 2 or 2.5 hit factor differently than a 10 hit factor USPSA target. Don't doubt Robbie's ability to make a difficult shot, as we witnessed amazing accuracy from him, time after time. He believes that understanding and maximizing hit factor or the game's scoring method as critical to his long term success. He says he is slower than many of the young shooters in movement, no faster is shooting speed, so his secret to success is wringing the most points out of a given target array. Robbie shoots like he has a hand on the cruise control dial. He will demo a 4.50 pace for a given array, and the timer will say 4.48 or 4.51. Then he demos at 4.20, and again he is spot on. Repeated again at 3.75. Often, he would shoot next to us on a similar array, and pick a shooting pace that would drag us along with him at the pace he wanted us to shoot for a teaching reason.
Robbie respects bullseye as a separate shooting sport, says you need to be able to slow fire to test a barrel or load, but thinks much slow fire is counterproductive to shooting USPSA or a pistol on the street, since he doesn't want his brain to adapt to a pace that will be unlikely to be practical. He wants you to be able to shoot accurately, but in a time frame that is useful, while not building the mental baggage that an accurate shot can only be fired without time pressure. At the same time, Robbie does much of his practice using a timer only as a start signal, but ignoring the time. He wants to use his method of stopping the gun, AIM and jerk the trigger, regardless of whether that is fast, slow or in-between. He believes that gives you a method that will work in a noisy match, man on man competing, or in an emergency. I asked him about shooting one platform. He thought that was a good idea for a new shooter, or for example, a police officer that doesn't shoot much. His belief was that good shooters are learning to shoot, as opposed to learning to shoot a 1911, Glock, etc. He said in ten trigger pulls, he is comfortable to shoot a totally new platform. I watched him transition from a 1911 .40, to an XDM, to a a different 1911 9mm, and never detected a bit of difference in performance.
Robbie is really good at shooting into and out of position. I won't review each element of this, but he believes he makes up time going in and out of position, which offsets foot speed on longer runs. Robbie shoots steel slower than paper. On paper, a missed A will likely be a C, but on steel, a miss is a miss, and can really screw things up in a stage. He uses his stop the gun method on the draw, and invests time on the AIM part. A number of times initially, my draw might be faster to a first steel. However, he didn't miss. That would be a clue to invest more time in stopping the pistol and aiming on the draw. Robbie just doesn't drop hardly any shots, based on watching him demo a lot over the last few days, so stop the gun, aim and jerk the trigger is working well for him at all speeds.
I asked Robbie if he wanted to read my review, in case I had made an error in describing his philosophy. He said he actually preferred not to influence me, because it was more important to report what I thought he was saying, and took away from the training, rather than what HE thought he was saying. Robbie also thinks the answer for each person is individual. What might be key to me different than what works and is necessary for someone else. Robbie is a complete hoot to be around. Completely opinionated, fairly irreverent, constantly poking you, but in a great way. Self doubt doesn't appear to be a failing for Robbie, as he reminded me when I asked him about his support hand shooting -- "what support hand, I have two strong hands!" He isn't kidding, as he signs his name with either hand, and actually switched hands from his natural left to right to match primary shooting hand with his dominant eye.
By the end of day one, I felt like I had gone backwards in my shooting, but resolved to start this morning following the stop the gun, aim, jerk the trigger method. Well it works. I came out of the box using this, and it provided me with an easy way to set the gas pedal, as opposed to the shoot slower, shoot smoother, shoot gooder methods I have tried in the past.
Here is Robbie on shooting speed. If you have trouble, going slower does nothing except guarantee you will be slower in time. What Robbie does it figure out why you are having problems, and then attack solving them. Where my natural tendency is to race, Bill Wilson's comfort zone is to shoot A zone hits deliberatively. Well, Robbie wasn't go to let that be, and pushed Bill through and out of his comfort zone, and then gave him tools to figure out how to operate at a new level. It was really funny to watch Robbie unlock Bill's inner gamer spirit, and I wouldn't be surprised if Bill is perusing the Wilson Combat website tonight, looking to order more mag pouches. Bill's friend, Cody, is a talented young shooter. Robbie proclaimed he had a great draw .. for an old woman. In just a few minutes, I saw him transform Cody's draw into a much faster, more efficient presentation. My wife flourished with Robbie. She has always wanted to go faster, but didn't have a method to know exactly how much faster to go without the wheels falling off. As a very analytical person, she latched onto stop the gun, aim and jerk the trigger. By the end of today, she was pushing the rest of us around, and a threat to win each drill, a number of which she did.
Robbie has an interesting method for shooting targets obscured with no shoots. While he generally picks the spot on the available target where he likely to get the most points for the least danger, he avoids the no shoot by watching the sights after he stops the gun, and as he aims, by ensuring there is distance between the front sight and the no shoot. He doesn't necessarily shoot for all A's, as he said the speed to guarantee those hits is SO slow, as to make it not worthwhile. He will ride the area of highest scoring, that is safe with front sight separation with the no shoot, and take the points as they fall.
This class was a complete joy. Robbie is a hoot to be around. He is an amazing diagnostician. He believes in things that make perfect sense, while defying much "common wisdom." My wife and I got a specific method for running the gas pedal that addresses the biggest thing we have been struggling with -- balancing speed and accuracy. Can't wait to come back. Even our dog, Astro, enjoyed the class.
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Originally Posted by YVK
