Pistol Shooting Solutions with Gabe White, Culpeper, VA, June 10th and 11th, 2017 AAR

[AsianJedi]

I'm pretty sure he's including all of all of the "head to head" competitions that I won plus my manly beard.

Well then my facialy hairless mug didn't stand a chance....

[LittleLebowski]

Oh.....and your first round hits on the first movement drill were unreal today. Very impressive.

Thanks, man. It's a bloody shame I didn't continue those to my testing, but I don't care too much about formalized testing. I dig me some person to person competitions though, as you could tell. So much fun banging on steel, head to head.

[Failure2Stop]

Looking forward to the class summary and review.

[Mr Pink]

Instead of creating a new thread, I'll just add my review here:

Green Ops (www.Green-Ops.com) had the pleasure of hosting Pistol Shooting Solutions with Gabe White in Culpeper, VA, June 10th and 11th, 2017

There were 14 shooters in attendance and all were on time! Gabe started off by giving a quick intro of himself and a little about his training and accomplishments. http://www.gabewhitetraining.com/instructor-bio/

Gabe also asked everyone to give their own introduction, background, pistol, holster, and position of carry they were using. Everyone had previous training and based on their gear, appeared to be safe and competent shooters.

Next Gabe went into detail on the safety rules and Emergency Medical plan.

Gabe gave credit to many of the instructors that shaped him and the course, to include Todd Green. http://pistol-training.com/bio

The goal of the course was to Improve Technical skills, but individuals needed to have a clear understanding of the basics before taking this class. He referred to this as an “Enthusiast” orientated class. I found this to be an interesting reference to someone desiring to improve their technical shooting skills. It made perfect sense since I’ve worked with many individuals charged with carrying a firearm, but think of it as “work”. Webster’s dictionary describes an “enthusiast” as one who is ardently attached to a cause, object, or pursuit or one who tends to become ardently absorbed in an interest. Gabe said something you care about requires a lot of discipline to get better and I agree.

Gabe talked a little about using competition to test your skills and how he liked that in USPSA there are no “do overs” and you must perform “On demand”.

He gave an excellent lecture on Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset and Lazy Talent vs Dedicated Training.

Gabe explained that for the drills we would practice, focus on speed, dial it back, then focus on accuracy and finally test. We then did a live fire skills inventory of several different drills for a total of about 30rds.

After Gabe talked about Grip, Sight focus, Target focus and sight picture. Instead of the conventional 1 shot 2 sight pictures, he suggested that you want a sight movie. Mind blown!
Next he discussed Outcome focus vs process focus to obtain the outcome.
Gabe talked about Trigger reset, seeing what you need to see and feeling what you need to feel.

One of the items I found most interesting was his dry-fire, trigger drills. We did 3 diff start positions, finger straight (register), finger inside trigger guard but off trigger and trigger partially prepped. While doing this, I noticed how much the sights moved and how much this drill could potentially improve someone’s shooting.

Gabe talked about the draw and preparing for it. He used Todd Green’s analogy of moving to the gun like you just touched a hot stove…fast. Snap into motion quickly, then fluidity.

We conducted several live fire drills and then started another impressive dry-fire drill to simulate recoil, while resetting the trigger.

We then live fired Shot calling drills and sight tracking drills.

During lunch Gabe gave a talk about his vision article. http://pistol-training.com/articles/vision

After lunch consisted of more Dry fire, followed by several drills and the first of our Technical Skills Testing. We then continued with some movement drills, shooting around friendly targets, multiple targets and shot our second Technical Skills Test. We ended the day on some fun movement drills.

Day 2:
Began with a quick talk and overview of upcoming events for the second day.
We did some warm up drills and then Gabe discussed shooting in relation to taking the “head shot”. We practiced for a good while and then we were tested on our third Technical Skills Test.

Gabe gave a very thorough and interesting Dry Fire lecture. He discussed the Dry/Live gap, trigger reset, using a timer and recommended both Ben Stoeger and Steve Anderson’s books on dry-fire. I personally went from B to M class in less than a year using Steve Anderson’s book, “Refinement & Repetition”.

Next we went into Gabe’s “Move, run and shoot” drill that many of us have seen here:
Gabe gave an excellent class on how to quickly pickup your feet and turn in order to get loaded. I’ve played with different ways to get from point A to point B and have found this to be one of best ways to move. I’ll practice Gabe’s technique more as I see this as being a very practical way of quickly moving.

After demonstration and lecture we each got the chance to live fire this drill, one person at a time with Gabe. With the heat, this was a much-needed break for everyone and an opportunity for students to interact with each other more.

After everyone completed the drill, Gabe had us compete head to head with each other on steel while we were moving to cover, using the same technique we had just practiced. I’m sure everyone could’ve done this drill the whole day, but Gabe made us stop for a lunch break.

Lunch

After lunch we shot a few warm up drills and then began practicing our final Technical Skill. After practicing we were tested on the last Technical Skill, the Split Bill Drill.

Next the use of cover was discussed and interesting things that many do not bring up, such as line of sight, angles and developing a pattern while shooting/searching from around cover. One of the more interesting things to me was when Gabe said being efficient will gain you small amounts of time to create an advantage over an opponent. When teaching use of cover, I don’t usually discuss time, but I found this to be a useful and practical way of helping to reinforce use of cover.

We live fired the cover drills, shooting from multiple positions (high, low, left, right). We ended the day with flanking competition drills, similar to the head to head competitions we did before lunch.

Gabe demonstrated every drill and it was impressive to see him shoot in person. He is a self described “Tactical Timmy” and it is very obvious that he is a serious student of shooting. Overall a very challenging course and highly recommended for serious enthusiasts. We hope to have Gabe come out next year.

[AndyL]

AAR Andy from NRA here.

I'm going to echo a lot of what Mr. Pink said so I won't post much.

Gabe has a unique way of doing things. Gabes's class was truly enjoyable. The dry fire practice ideas and exercise was worth the price of admission. Gabe clearly knows his craft and is truly a life long student of the gun and practitioner of the martial art of shooting. I will say this course is not for those that have had minimal training. This would be a more of a Masters/ PH.D level course to maximize what you will get out of the course.

Drink Water folks, Find shade, and make sure your Pee=Clear. Enjoy, I certainly did.

[Mr_White]

I just want to say thanks to the Green Ops crew (77grOption, Mr Pink, AndyL, and others) for hosting me, and to all the students for attending. It means a lot to me to have the trained, knowledgeable, and experienced folks in class that I did. People went to a lot of trouble to arrange the class and be there and I deeply appreciate it!

It was also great to meet LittleLebowski, AsianJedi, nycnoob, and all the students who I didn't know from the internet. Fantastic to get to meet and train with everyone, and make a bunch of new friends too!

Many thanks to those who offered/will offer their comments about the class - your feedback is invaluable. I spent the plane ride home making notes to the class manifest for revision, so I can keep making the whole thing sharper for the next time.

Gabe

[Failure2Stop]

Damnit, now I have another pistol class I am going to have to attend.

[BJXDS]

The only thing I can add to the AAR's, is Gabe was like the Energizer Bunny! I looked around during a break and everyone looked Toasted, Gabe was running around preparing for the next subject we were going to work on. I said to Gabe, DAMMMMM DUDE, you have worked your ASS Off! He looked at me serious as a heart attack and said, Well that's what you paid for, Right!

He was NON STOP

[benoitd]

This was truly a great class and a fantastic teacher. Although I was crushed by the heat, I learned a lot in that class. What I wanted to get out of the class was how to read and follow my sights better, and I am starting to do this correctly. A few months of practice and I will master it.

I really liked the idea of using 4" white round stick-on labels to put in the middle of the target's head. This helps make our shooting much more precise. Hitting an IDPA target's head at speed is difficult, but hitting a 4" white circle in the middle of the head is even more difficult and great for training. The first thing I did when I came back home was to buy a roll of those 4" white round labels (Amazon has them). I have already started to use them for training and it makes a huge difference.

It already helped me identify a problem that I failed to identify during class. My recoil spring was completely finished, leading to much worse vibrations in the gun, greater difficulty to follow the sights and loss of accuracy at speed. I replaced it with a new spring and my 1911 is back to great performance. Recoil is smooth again, the sights are actually MUCH easier to follow, and accuracy at speed is back to normal. I just did a bunch of under 4 sec Bill Drills on the 4" white circle at 10 yards (from a low ready position).

I was really lucky to get a spot in the class. My friend who recently took the class in Georgia texted me once he found out about Gabe's class at this location closer to my home, and told me to register on the spot without hesitation. I did it and grabbed the last spot in the class! Lucky break!