AAR Langdon Gasa Grande Oct 15/16

[ChrisLapre]

I am not a big poster of AAR's but this class was excellent. It is a must take and I am fortunate to have guys like Ernest and Pannone close by. This is a outline of the notes I took from the class last week. I missed tons of stuff during the class so don't take this a s a complete list of what was covered.
Thanks and hope you can decipher it.
Chris

Langdon Tactical Pistol Skills Course
Casa Grande PD Range October 15/16, 2016

Introduction
Ernie learned most of what lead him to where he is today while assigned the USMC High Risk Personnel course. While there he was fortunate enough to attend about every shooting school in existence at the time.
He taught at the USMC HRP course and USMC Scout Sniper School. He is also a graduate of the USMC’s CQB Program.
Ernest also started shooting competition in USPSA matches around this time. Both at a local and national level. Once IDPA was born, he began to compete in it also.
Ernest believes that competition is the key to getting your weapons handling to a sub-conscious level. More on this topic is explained below.

Fundamentals of Shooting
Verbiage- understand who you are teaching and the culture. Different words mean different things to people. This applies across the world and even varying across state lines here in the U.S. Example; student didn't understand squeeze but understood mash. Mash is usually a bad description when discussing trigger control.
“A good instructor is a great thief.” Meaning we can all learn from one another? And anything of value, don't get upset when it's used by others.

Theory of Training
Gun Fighting- performance under stress. Attempts at duplicating stress can be done by drills, competition, and force on force. None of which will be an actual replication, but it's the best we have.
3 Rules Apply
• Awareness- cognitive awareness to see the potential threat coming. And attempt avoidance or prep for the possible fight.
• Cooper’s Color Code
o White – unaware, oblivious
o Yellow- general awareness.
o Orange- heightened awareness, specific threat that catches your attention, make a plan.
o Red- the fight, execute the plan.


• Combat Mindset- acceptance of death
o Take the fight to the enemy/ bad guy
o Accept the fact you may kill someone. If you can't accept it, you have no business carrying a firearm, at all!
o NEVER GIVE UP
• Sub-conscious Performance- train to the ability to run you firearm without cognitive thought.
o Techniques must work without thinking
o The brain can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Training to this level must be done at a slow pace & done correctly
o Stress training force sub-conscious execution of skills.
o Make the drill so difficult or complicated you don't think about the shooting aspect.
o Competition forces self induced stress
 Timed, scored, watched
 Force on force
• 3 dimensional, moving, thinking targets.
• Stance
o Weaver
o Modern isosceles
o Isosceles
 Most common taught today
• Grip
o Controls recoil. Leverage is key
o Grip as high as possible with as much meat as possible- 360* coverage on the grip
o Grip hard but this will also make trigger finger movement more difficult
o “Grip as hard as you would a hammer.”

• Four Phases of Trigger Movement
1. Pre-travel (slack)
2. Firing
3. Over travel- built in to minimize movement of firearm during firing
4. Resetting- allow gun to reset trigger in recoil. Do not pin the trigger and reset on alignment of the sights
*Learn the ability to prep the trigger during firing. This is extremely important when both targets are moving. Also reduces split times which is gun dependent based of the cyclic rate of the specific pistol being shot.
Do not shoot to reset, shoot to release
Drills Day 1
• 10 shot group fired on 2” dot x2
• 1 shot every second, 5 shot group on 2” dot, 5 yards
• 1 shot every half second, 5 shot group on 2” dot, 5 yards
• 1 shot every quarter second or as fast as your trigger rest (with hits) allowed, 4” circle, 5 yards
o There were more but I did not write them down
 This stressed the importance of drawing with pressing and firing at the extension point. Going fast to the target doesn't make you fast. Pressing he trigger during a smooth consistent press makes 1st shot hits fast. Proven over and over on the timer.

Reloads
• Most shootings are accomplished in very short amounts of time with 5-8 rounds fired. Reloads are not common but can/do occur. If a gunfight does happen that is out of the “norm” than a reload is extremely important.
• Reloads are a four step process
1. Both hands move at the same time the gun. The primary hand brings the pistol into the work space. Support hand moves to the spare mag.
2. Both magazines move at the same time. Empty is dropped from the pistol; spare magazine is moved toward the pistol.
3. Look and partial insert ( pressed into magazine channel)
4. Push magazine in, drop slide using slide release/stop, rotate and shoot
• Drop slide with strong side thumb or support side thumb. Approximately ½ second faster than the overhand release method.
*Do not trust the auto forward technique
I. Slide lock reload drills


One Handed Shooting
• Utilize as much bone support as possible
• Slight cant of the pistol
• Still keep body square, natural body alignment assists with muscular input

Multiple Targets
• Keep shooting platform as close to accurate (square relaxed muscular input) as possible
• Use legs and calves to move the body
• Eyes are the fastest part of the body. Eyes move first
• Break the shot and move the gun to the next target under recoil.

Eyes up Drill
*This technique clarified this for me. Numerous instructors have discussed this technique but never demonstrated it in a drill. This was a light bulb moment.
I will not discuss the drill as I think it is that important to get the info direct from Ernie.

Barnhart X-Drill
• Taken from Jerry Barnhart
• Excellent drill to build pistol target to target transition

Shooting on the Move
• Use the legs to absorb bumps and uneven terrain
• Use the brain to align the pistol
• Move legs in narrower. Hips and legs in line with the sockets
• Heel to toe
• Pull the body with the feet- do not push. (This was another little point that turned a bulb on for me. I know I'm simple minded)
• Shooting while moving should be at a brisk pace
*Retreating armies get run down and slaughtered. Learn to fight moving backwards

Shooting on the Move Drills
• Forward
• Rearward
1. Barrel Drill
2. Snake Drill
3. Lateral Barrel Drill


Use of Cover and Concealment
*standing and kneeing positions were discussed. A lot of “why” was answered during the lecture/demo. Very informative portion of the class
• Cover stops incoming rounds. For a period of time
• Concealment hides you from the enemy. Darkness is a form of concealment
• Visible target- exposed enemy
• Available target- exposed portion of the enemy
• Always stay 1 weapons length away from cover
• Crowding cover cause visual advantage to the suspect in certain situations
• When using cover, geometry is king
• Learn to be spatially aware
• Set and take ground
• Harder the angle of the incoming bullet, the less angle of ricochet. The less angle of the bullet, the greater angle of ricochet. Move off corners 2 foot if possible in CQB
• The closer to cover the less visual acuity
* The best cover is rapid accurate shots on target

This class stressed rapid accurate shot placement on minimal targets. I would not count this as a beginner level course but with careful gun handling skills you can attend with no issues. It identified a lot of key weaknesses I knew I had, but did not know how to address and correct. This class provided that information. There are numerous key points I missed because I was either listening or trying to apply what was taught, or missed it as I was writing. It's a gunfighter class that had many “gems” when it's hard to find some after attending numerous classes.

The fallacy of shooting a firearm utilizing reset is the biggest point taken. I understand why it's taught as a training aide. In doing so we are creating huge training scars along with other issues. If you utilize that technique, it will come to light in this class. It did for me and was a huge issue to overcome. But I recognize it and will fix it as best I can. It will be a long process. Shoot the gun and loosen the finger to allow the system to reset under recoil. If you're a believer in pinning the trigger, take this class and learn the negatives behind it. It is an eye opener.

I've always been a bit slow in target to target transitions. Ernie’s method of teaching this is without comparison. He calls it the “eyes-up””drill. It was awesome to show how to transition from target to target. His explanation of how to do it, combined with the drills, demonstrate the technique perfectly. The two key points above are worth attending the class alone. At least for me anyway.

The bullet points on the cover/concealment portion is all wrote down while listening and watching. I could probably explain it better in person but, but I'm not writing it. It's all about angles.

Over the two days I shot at least 1000 rounds. It may have been slightly more. The .40 I shot provided nothing other than more recoil over that of a good 9mm. 1000+ .rounds of full power .40 shot mostly for speed and accuracy, left me with sore hands, elbows, and shoulders.

[OnionsAndDragons]

Ernest is sooooooo good at teaching deep skills.

I have to agree that this class isn't really a beginning/level 1/foundational class. A person would probably get the most out of it having taken a solid pistol class and absorbed that info beforehand. I did that backwards. Ernie was my first class a few years back. I wouldn't say I struggled or had to tread water at any point, but I really had to put all my effort into the class. I was blasted mentally and physically after each day.

But after a month of absorption and some of Ernie's recommended practice, when I benchmarked myself on a few key skill drills I had made the largest gain in performance in the shortest amount of time so far. His class was worth at least 6 months of practice to me by my estimation.

[Mr_White]

Thanks for posting that very interesting report, ChrisLapre!

[Drang]

Good write-up, you took better notes at yours than I did at mine!

ETA: If it's OK, I would like to link to this AAR in my own AAR, which will be posted on my blog.

[ReverendMeat]

Just took the same class up in Washington. OP summed everything up nicely, I don't have a whole lot to add to his excellent write-up. My take, it was my first class so I don't have anything to compare it to but I didn't feel like I was struggling or "drinking from the firehose", I thought it was very well paced. Showed me areas where it turns out I'm actually pretty decent at, and areas that I really need to practice more. Totally worth the time and money IMO.

Total roundcount for me was about 950, shooting a 92G from AIWB.

[ChrisLapre]

Feel free to use as needed. Thanks for the comments