AAR: Performance On Demand 2 Day Pistol / Carbine class Sept 18th & 19th, 2015

[Clay1]

This is my first After Action Report: I would love to hear what else I should have included and what you really didn't need to hear in this report.

I used Dustyvarmint's AARs as a template to work off of and then modified to fit my own needs.

Provider: Performance On Demand Shooting
Owner: Adrian, Mike, Pete
Phone / Web: 608-512-8061 / http://www.podshooting.com/
E-mail: info@podshooting.com
Dates: September 18 / 19, 2015
Location: LE training range, Janesville, WI
Course Description from the POD website:
"Two-Day Pistol and Rifle for Law Enforcement
September 18-19, 2015
Janesville, WI
$225 – LEO/MIL Only
This course combines skills and drills from our Carbine 1 and Pistol 1, at an accelerated pace, designed specifically for the law enforcement officer. We will cover the material in each course, honing the fundamental skills of marksmanship and gun handling required to efficiently and effectively run both platforms in an encounter on the street.
On day two, students will practice these skills in dynamic drills that incorporate transitioning between both platforms – moving, shooting from cover and communicating. The range provides shooting up to 300 yards, and we intend to push the distance back with the carbine to provide officers instruction and experience shooting at extended ranges. Upon completion, students will receive a course certificate for both Pistol 1 and Carbine 1, completing the pre-requisites to take our advanced level shooting courses.
We have not offered these courses together before in a combined fashion. This is a unique opportunity to practice not only the skills covered in our Carbine 1 and Pistol 1 courses, but to gain additional instruction through running the two systems together and at extended ranges.
Topics covered during Two-Day Pistol and Rifle for law enforcement:
PISTOL
-Fundamentals of pistol marksmanship
-Improving the efficiency of the draw-stroke
-Improving the speed and efficiency of the reload
-Shot cadence, timing, improving speed
-Fixing malfunctions
-Long range pistol shooting (out to 100 yards)
-How to dry-fire & train at home
CARBINE
-Fundamentals of basic rifle marksmanship
-External ballistics and zeroing
-Shooting beyond 100 yards
-Increasing the efficiency of carbine manipulations
-Shooting positions
-Barricade positions
-Multiple targets and close quarter engagements
-Moving and communication
-Deployment considerations and rifle setup
-Typical malfunctions
-Transitions between carbine and pistol
Requirements: Semi-automatic carbine with tactical sling, minimum three magazines, mag pouch or carrier. Duty handgun with minimum three magazines, sturdy belt, holster and mag pouches. Appropriate range / duty gear. 350 rounds rifle, 350 rounds pistol."

Gear used:
Pistol portion of the class I ran a Glock 34, Comp-Tac Kydex paddle holster, and magazine pouches, Wilderness Tactical instructor belt, factory Glock magazines, and Federal Aluminum cased 115 grain ammo.
Rifle portion of the class I ran a Sig M400 hanging from a Blue Force Gear Vickers sling with Magpul Gen 3 Pmags in ITW FastMag pouches mounted on the Wilderness belt. I shot PerFecta, brass cased, 55 grain ammo which is distributed by Tulammo. It's Italian ammo thought to be manufactured by Fiocchi.

Personal experience: Number of firearms related training classes attended: As a student 6. I've been an NRA Basic Pistol instructor since 1996 and teach the Wisconsin Concealed Carry Classes for my local gun store since 2011. I do live fire classes for those students as well. I don't teach SWAT team members, I teach first time shooters to not put a hole in themselves. I've been a USPSA RO and an IDPA SO.

Safety: Good review of the safety rules. Everyone gets different things out of the same class. As a guy who teaches safety type classes, I really liked the review of the 4 safety rules. I always teach, per curriculum, rule number one is "treat every gun as if it is loaded" and "don't do anything with an unloaded gun, that you wouldn't do with a loaded gun" then later talk about dry firing. Since 1996 I've only had one student challenge me on the inconsistency there. POD brought up something that I like much better: "Know the status of your firearm at all times" . They gave credit for this rule to Pat McNamara. I will use this in my next class.

Food: Brats and hamburgers on the grill were provided by the training facility host with chips and soda and they were much appreciated.

Instructors’ Competence: Mike and Pete both have a professional, effective way of presenting the material and they could demonstrate the techniques in a very effective way. The personal feedback and ability to guide each student independently was superb. They were able to bounce off of each other's comments in a smooth concise way that worked well for the class.
In my limited experience I find that there are good teaches who can't shoot and there are good shooters who can't teach. I found the balance between being an effective teacher and shooter very well represented by POD.

Course Certificate issued: Yes

Class length: 16 hours

Instructor to student ratio: 2/10
It was marketed toward LE and Responsible Law Abiding Citizens. LE to citizen ratio was 7/3.

Total Round count: 461
Round count Pistol: 236
Rounds count Rifle: 225

Would you recommended: Yes

General comments: This was POD Performance On Demand's first two day class. As we ran the drills, the drills themselves were explained well but more importantly the reason behind the drill and what skill it would assess was explained.
As we were shooting and after the shooting, each student was given feedback. I found the ability of the instructors to recognize what each student was doing and providing specific feedback was exceptional. I won't go into the specific drills that we ran.
This was my second class with POD this year. I plan on training with them again.

[Ptrlcop]

I was one of the hosts for this class. Unfortunately, another work commitment prevented me from being there on day 1.

There is a significant problem in LE firearms training in that mid level shooters are not being given any tools to improve their skills and are left to stagnate in the realm of passing quals but never really excelling. Myself and another officer have trained with the POD guys before and knew that they are doing good work to address that shortfall. This was our motivation for hosting the class.

I did get to hang out on day two and even shot some of the group drills. It was fun to drop into the middle of a class, cold and preform in front of a bunch of people who I didn't know.

[Ptrlcop]

Here is a slow mo video of our newest SWAT member shooting a recoil control drill. I wish I had taken a video before Pete made some corrections to his stance and grip because you would see significant improvement.

https://vimeo.com/140817233

[Ptrlcop]

This was my first time hosting a class and learned a lot about that end of things. I was glad we were able to provide lunch as I think it enhances the training experience to be able to stay on site.

This class was advertised as mil/LE only but we ended up putting some vetted citizens in the class. We are working on making open enrollment the standard in the future this was just the easiest way for us to dip our toes in that realm and convince those who need convincing.

For any of the citizens(or cops) in the class, it would be helpful if you dropped a thank you to my Chief as this would make classes easier for me to host in the future. He really likes catch phrases like "positive police/citizen contacts" and "building relationships". The more PC it sounds the better. Chief Moore's email: moored@ci.janesville.wi.us

[mikem]

This was our first class down at the Janesville range and we were very happy with the facility. It is a good size for our classes and only about 50 miles from home. The range is wide enough that we could run the entire class at the same time and with some rearranging of the vehicles we could have pushed the class back to about 150+ yards if we had wanted too. As it was we were able to easily get to 100 without moving anything. The weather cooperated with us and it only rained right before and right after class on TD1. While we were on the range it was dry and partly sunny. The fact that the lunch was provided by the guys from Janesville was outstanding. It makes things quicker when no one is leaving the range and allows students to talk over the break.

This was also our first 2 day class. We incorporated much of our Pistol 1 and Carbine 1 classes but we were able to work through some additional items as well and even worked in some carbine to pistol transition training. We were very happy with the end result and as always we work at the pace of the class. Both training days were split the same. Pistol in the morning and carbine in the afternoon. This worked very well and all our time spent on pistol trigger control paid dividends when we started shooting groups with the carbines. Ultimately the round count was somewhat lower than we had originally planned but we were going more for the quality of the drills rather than reaching a certain number of rounds downrange. One of our goals with Performance on Demand Shooting is that we are able to provide individual feedback to every shooter as the drills go by. This does take a little more time but for us it is worth it to address individual items. Every shooter is at a different point in their journey towards mastering the weapon system and spending a little extra time is worth it to us.

I used my regular gear for this class. My stock S&W MP9 Full size in a Comp-Tac holster with Ready Tac mag pouches. This gun has about 7500 rounds down range and is a boringly reliable. For a portion of TD2 I broke out my 2nd M&P. It has a Trijicon RMR mounted directly the slide by L&M Precision Gunworks and an APEX Duty trigger. That gun has just over 4000 rounds with the RMR and runs absolutely great. My carbine is a BCM 14.5" ELW barrel with the 13" KMR. I have an Aimpoint H1 on a Daniel Defense mount and a VTAC sling. This is a fairly new gun and only has about 350 rounds through it. I love the lightweight set up and the ease of carrying this gun all day is great.

Gear issues in the class-
As noted in Clay's review this was not a high round count class. That being said we did see some gear issues. Both were with carbines and both occurred on the afternoon of TD1. We were probably only 50 or so rounds into the carbine portion of the class.

1st failure - as we got prone to started a scored drill one of the local cops had his Dept issued Vortex Sparc II stop working. We had to show him how to flip up his MagPul sight and he drove on with irons. About 10 minutes later the Sparc II started working again. On TD2 he borrowed a different carbine with an Aimpoint. This really drove home some lessons about knowing your equipment and how to use it. Additionally as he changed to his irons he told us he didn't know when they had been zeroed or at what distance. Lessons learned. This is also a lesson about getting out and testing your stuff. Depts don't always give you the time to zero both optic and irons. Take it on yourself to make sure you know your gun.

Optic down and irons (plastics?) up.


2nd failure - One of the shooters is a big 3 gun shooter. He was running his 3 gun carbine and had the set screws that secured his rail and his receiver extension nut work loose during the afternoon on TD1. We were able to get everything tightened up to get him through the afternoon and he went through the whole gun that night so the problems would not reappear on day 2. This is the 3rd or 4th time the receiver extension wrench on my Multi-tasker tool has been used on the range. Staking that nut is necessary for any gun that is going to do more than sit in your safe.

We also saw 1 EOTech that seemed to be experiencing a zero shift. The shooter was putting down some very good groups but they suddenly shifted about 1.5" to the right. Groups remained tight but just moved. I have experienced this with several EOTechs before but it was new for this shooter and this specific EOTech. I have seen Aimpoints break in the past but nowhere near the rate of the EOTech. I have very little faith in the Vortex red dots. They, as a company, are very interested in improving the product but I am still skeptical of them being used on work guns. There is a reason Pete, Adrian and I all run Aimpoints.

With both systems we spend a lot of time on accuracy. Pistol skills are still generally lacking in this department. Not understanding trigger control and not having a strong enough grip continue to be the common theme. We work hard to address both issues.

We were able to work in a walk back drill with both pistol and rifle in this class. We used a B/C steel for both. Our pistol walk back started at about 30 yards and we pushed back to 100 yards. We got a lot of good hits out to about 60 before we saw people start to drop off. Hitting a the 100 really requires perfect fundamentals. The rifle we started standing at the 100 and pushed back from there. We ended up out to the 300 and still had 2 students with hits at every range. We went back up the 200 and had a shoot off from kneeling.

Clay shooting from the 300.


We ended the class with some barricade shooting and timed drill against some steel from about the 75 yard line. We will be back to Janesville again if we can work it out with Ptrlcop and his admin.