I came across this thread and thought I should reply.
I'm the Director of Sayoc Tactical Group (STG) and one of the persons mentioned on many of these post. First let me explain STG's take on firearm training. We analyze very closely the teaching methodology and relevance of the curriculum. And then the progression of the training. Making sure it pertains to the goals of the course and fits the skills of the people attending. We do not teach firearms competition training, all training must be relevant to real world situations. We primarily teach Elite Military and or Government Law Enforcement, the public classes we teach are more of an aside for us. We do not try and build up our instructors with bio's or talk about their LEO or Mil backgrounds because that is not important, the curricula and process for improving is the main goal. What is most important is, are they good teachers and is what they are teaching correct.
As for my personal background, I decided at a young age to focus on fighting and lethal skill sets and developing my knowledge in these areas for my whole life. I have done over 25 years of training in Kali, Silat, boxing, wrestling and MMA to improve my skill sets. I have been in a lot of fights of all sorts, many of these fights while working as a bouncer for much of my 20's into my 30's. If you bounce in bars with the idea of working in bars that you will get you in a lot of fights, anyone would have hundreds of fights in over ten years, not hard to do, I'm not sure why that is so surprising to people, do the math.
Even though I had been a shooter my whole life, it was not until about 15 years ago, I really started looking hard into Pistol training and studying the methodology behind current training and at that time started working with the military for the integration of combative skill sets. As most of you are aware, there will be multiple disciplines used in a very small time window, during a real life violent engagement. And yet all of these skill sets are not always trained and even when they are trained, they are not integrated in training. If we take the given that training should mirror as closely as possible, what we are training for, it is a mistake not to do so. In our 1.0 classes it in marksmanship and weapon manipulation, in 2.0 it is working from concealment and looking at other weapons integrating with the pistol, and all classes from then on are more of that progression. We have standards for each level, when you can execute the standards %100 you can move on.
From what I read on this thread, most of you seem very knowledgeable and serious, but if you still have any real doubts about training with us, you should find a different shooting class to attend.
Thomas Kier
Director of Operation
Sayoc Tactical Group