AAR Super Dave Harrington at Alpha Range, McHenry, IL - December 12&13, 2015

[Sal Picante]

Ok... At the behest of several people, here's my actual review:

I was trying to figure out how to write an AAR so that it conveyed my feelings accurately, especially since a bunch of people seem to really really like Dave.

I'll point out things as objectively as I can before discussing a few stories and my take on things, in general.

Logistics

• There was very little communication before the class started - A generalized curriculum was present, but start times/end times, etc was unknown until ~2 days before the class.
• The instructor is pretty non-responsive via email and has a limited Facebook or social media presence. I had some questions that never got answered, so a few potential attendees didn't bother.
• The dimensions of our particular range were communicated ahead of time, but these constraints weren't thought through and the class was essentially overbooked. (13 students - two relays)

Curriculum

• There was no written curriculum - Note taking was encouraged, but the curriculum jumped around so much as to be useless.
• The curriculum was supposed to be progressive, building on items coming before it, but, other than the concept of acquiring & using sights, this didn't happen.
• Curriculum called for ~2,000 rds. We got through, maybe, 650?

Coaching

• People with obviously horrible technique were not stopped, corrected and admonished to do the right thing. This is number 2 on my list of eye-twich inducing things. There were several people shooting with a tea-cup grip, for example. It was related, via the class contact person, that the instructor felt he wouldn't be able to fix their technique in one class. Maybe. Maybe not. I've seen other instructors correct horrible grips, trigger press, etc.
• There was no real feedback given for the drills - either you passed them or you didn't, but that didn't really matter, since there wasn't a point most of the time anyway. Eg, you were told to shoot from 15 yards 10 shots into the bullseye, but the instructor didn't really help anyone get any better.
• We shot a "stage" at the end - there was no coaching, no feedback given. In fact any feedback he had about "tactical priority"/"slice the pie" was totally out the window. Some of us were baffled by this.

Safety

• This is number 1 on my list of eye-twich inducing thing: Shooting steel from too close. He was going to do a walk-up drill and shoot steel from ~4 yards. Dude. No.
• Even after being informed about the ranges minimum safe steel distance policy, there were a few close calls where the range owner or I had to ask him to heed the policy.
• There was some real hinky gun-handling encouraged among people I didn't know/didn't trust. Dude, I'd trust Mr White or Tom Givens, having never met them, to chamber check their pistols behind me in a dark room, but I wouldn't trust a few of those attendees to make ready while I was behind them outside. Nobody got hurt, but I think luck had a big element to play there... In the end, I'm not sure it added anything at all to the class anyway.

Was there anything I liked?

• I will carry a reload from now on, not for the extra ammo, but because it could help clear a stoppage.
• I forgot how awesome front-lighting the sights are when shooting in the dark (I don't have nighties on my gun) - it pretty much makes it impossible not to understand "calling your shots".
• I like shooting precision pistol and haven't done that in a while... Will do that some more.
• I usually don't get emotional when I shoot, but it was tough to shoot while angry because I felt like could be hanging out with my 1st and 2nd favorite people on the planet: my wife and 6 mo daughter.

This is a bit of short list, so here's two stories that may tie things together:

It is Saturday night, after dinner, we're standing around in the dark talking about night sights, Harries-technique, etc. I've been standing all day, since 5AM, when I cleaned up the range. I sat down and fell asleep for ~15 minutes. I woke up and the instructor was still talking. I moved over to my ammo can, mainly just to stand and someone asked him about an equipment question and they started debating the topic for an additional half hour.

On Sunday, we did a lot of unloaded start drills and spoke about Israeli-carry and how, in some contexts, it may be warranted (large non-permissive crowds, etc...) It isn't that I don't agree, rather, it was like: we're civilians trying to learn the fundamentals of marksmanship where some people need to learn how to grip the pistol right, hit the F'n target and reholster safely. WTF does some of that ninja-discussion have to do with any of this? I pretty much checked out, right then and there...


I think a lot of folks may dismiss my review, chalking it up to "he's a gamer" or perhaps "he's a GM, what does he expect to learn...", but the truth is I actively seek out training from other instructors because I'd like to further my competence and because I'd like to learn alternate ways to explain techniques/insights/motivations. I like keeping an open mind to see what else I'm missing. In the beginning of the class, Dave asked what stage we all thought we were at - Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced - and I answered "Beginner". While I know how to shoot my gun, etc, I like to "suspend disbelief" and absorb and insights a trainer can lay on us. In essence, approaching things from the "beginners mind".

Some interesting lessons in the recent past have come from a tactical appreciation, a technical discovery, refinement of techniques I know next to nothing about (like shooting "long open guns", aka, "rifles") - these are the smaller nuggets I'm hoping to learn about... The little refinements, the explanation that makes something you read 5 years ago all of a sudden click.

Speaking about this course, specifically, I think 15 years ago, before I even knew what shooting was like, a class where people were challenged to shoot 2K rounds in a weekend was really something. I think that an average guy couldn't help but shoot 2K and learn some insight into the shooting process. These days, however, I think the state of the art in training has greatly changed: Getting a few drills really squared away, with high round counts andultra-specific pass-fail mentalities seems to have given us a generation of guys that are cracking USPSA GM quickly (this implies some form of technical competence). There are more and more guys reloading volumes of ammunition and shooting thousands of rounds a week for months at a time. I think people are looking not only for the pass-fail guidelines, but are looking for insights on how to develop the knowledge-side of the equation, answering the "why" questions. To this end, without much feedback and without much guidance, a lot of us left the range wondering what we were doing.

Dudes, think what you may, but I'm already over it.

[LSP552]

Les

Thanks for taking the time to write such a straightforward, detailed review.

[Al T.]

Appreciate the review, that was obviously painful to write.

[rob_s]

Too often "truthful" or "honest" reviews get perceived as "negative". I solute you for having the balls to tell the truth.

One reason I got out of the writing business is because I was starting to feel like I couldn't tell the truth and still continue getting paid to write, so I stopped. I can't tell you how many classes I've taken with "name" instructors that had similar issues to the ones you describe above. Because of that, my short list is Randy Cain, Pat Rogers, Kyle Lamb, and Kyle Defoor. Most of the other people I've trained with either aren't really teaching anymore or I wouldn't bother with, or bother recommending to anyone else.

The training industry, as a whole, has become largely a joke. People are out there teaching things they aren't qualified to even discuss (like "how to win a gunfight" by guy-who-has-never-had-a-gunfight) or are rejecting decades of establishment for no other reason than to make a name for themselves, only to have some similarly ignorant bozo come behind them and announce they've got it all figured out and start saying something that Cooper said decades ago as if it was new information.

Again, thank you for the honest review. I haven't attended a class in quite some time, but am considering trying to do so again, and my training hours are far more precious to me now than they used to be and it's only through honest reviews of courses that I can figure out where to allocate those precious hours.

[Urban_Redneck]

Thanks for the honest review.

It certainly has crossed my mind every time my has hovered over the BUY button.

[dgg9]

My assessment of a 3 day Super Dave pistol class is favorable with only one real caveat.

He has several of these empty-gun manipulation drills, almost like kata, that extend to a dozen manipulations in sequence that I found REALLY helpful as a take-home exercise. They are innovative and I'm not aware of anyone else offering that. The shooting segments are not very different from other instructors. One instructor and at least 14 students.

On the non-technical side: he really cares about this stuff, and is authentic. The negative for some people is that his inter-personal approach really requires a thick skin.

[Sal Picante]

I totally get going in with an open mind and a desire to learn, but why did you tell him that you are a beginner?

Part of course description reads:

A balance will be struck between the technical requirements to become a
better shooter and the tactical application of the pistol based on your
operating environment and your rules of engagement.
Training participants will be required to conduct themselves professionally
and safely at all times.

There seems to be some real difficulty in addressing a standard for vetting. (This I completely agree with Dave about) I think competition serves some purpose here...

That said, I know little about tactics, operating environments and rules of engagements, so, in the context of the class, I thought of myself as more of a beginner.

Perhaps, instead of asking the students where they imagine they are, the class could do "rating poker": "That dude is newb", or "Nah, she's an intermediate" or the instructor could just ask, "Do you hold a USPSA, IDPA, IPSC, CMP, or NRA Action classification?"

[rob_s]

There seems to be some real difficulty in addressing a standard for vetting.

This is a MAJOR problem across the board in firearms classes. Instructors (and those that manage and schedule them) do not want to limit their enrollment by eliminating potential customers. The excuse for this, that I've heard, is that even if they try to set a standard some mouth-breathing tea-cuppers will still show up. Fair enough, but LESS of them will show up, thereby reducing the negative impact on those of us that know which end the bullet comes from.

Additionally, nobody wants to turn away shooters at the line, although I personally think that would be f-ing hilarious. If the instructor has posed a standard such as "must be able to put X rounds in a Y-sized target in Z seconds", you should know ahead of time if you can perform or not, and I have ZERO sympathy for anyone who shows up and then gets sent home for failing to meet the standard.

On a related note, I continue to be dismayed by the number of instructors and courses that do not offer any method of measuring improvement. When I was teaching we started the class with a scored standard and we ended the same course with the same measured standard. Any student that wasn't happy with the results between the two was entitled to a refund, on the spot if asked (we had no takers, and virtually no students that didn't show improvement outside a few that arrived at the higher end of the competency scale).

Jeff Gonzales used to issue certificates for attendance as well as certificates of completion. I suspect this may no longer be the case. I would have loved to have seen the look on a tea-cupper's face (although I don't believe Jeff would have allowed that to continue un-corrected either) when he got to the end and got a participation award. As it is, that's all any other certificate I'm aware of really is.

the instructor could just ask, "Do you hold a USPSA, IDPA, IPSC, CMP, or NRA Action classification?"

I'm pretty sure I've seen this on someone's application, but I can't remember who. Hell, we may have even had it on our sign-up sheet.

[Sal Picante]

My assessment of a 3 day Super Dave pistol class is favorable with only one real caveat.

He has several of these empty-gun manipulation drills, almost like kata, that extend to a dozen manipulations in sequence that I found REALLY helpful as a take-home exercise. They are innovative and I'm not aware of anyone else offering that. The shooting segments are not very different from other instructors. One instructor and at least 14 students.

On the non-technical side: he really cares about this stuff, and is authentic. The negative for some people is that his inter-personal approach really requires a thick skin.

I didn't find his personality unbearable or etc. He was far less abrasive than I'd been lead to believe. He is an intense guy, for sure.

The empty gun manipulations were interesting, but kinda limited, IMO. Once a person builds reliable competence with a pistol, I'm not sure what else the drills offer...

[Sal Picante]

I continue to be dismayed by the number of instructors and courses that do not offer any method of measuring improvement.

This is spot on - there has to a be a yardstick of sorts. Maybe the improvement is dramatic in one session, or maybe it takes several sessions, but the standard should be clearly defined, IMO.