Originally Posted by
45dotACP
I took this class primarily because my only training before it was the IL CCW class. 16 hours of mostly nothing interesting and a few shots from a range stall. I figure if I'm going to suggest to people to buy a Glock 19, a case of ammo, and a class with a good instructor, I probably ought to do that myself. So I also ran my Gen 5 Glock 19 from appendix. I figured, "technical timmie class=technical timmie gear".
I don't have a lot of experience with training classes so i don't feel like I have a lot of perspective from which to judge but I figured I'd tack on my take.
I found Gabe to be energetic and intelligent. Like Les was saying, the portion on drawing from AIWB and "gliding" into a shooting position was well worth the price of admission. Even more so was the shooting on the move section of the class, which I have never trained before. Even as a casually interested gamer, I am more of a "run to the places, then shoot the things." or a "Scoot and shoot" kind of gamer. The man on man steel challenges were pretty awesome and there was also a section on the use of cover which was a very intelligent discussion about the use of cover (turns out, it's harder than IDPA makes it seem), but my one huge takeaway was this...
As far as a discussion of sights and sight focus goes, I always figured I got a decent front sight in focus when I was shooting. Turns out, the level of focus I had on the front sight was much less than it could have been, and that kinda came to be a lightbulb moment to me after a discussion by Gabe about vision, I kinda dicked around with the idea of focal depth shifting on a few drills we did, and I found that ultimately, I really like the technique and it could very well lead to some gains in my shooting game with more practice on the subject. I really think this new lightbulb could lead to me really starting to enjoy the process of getting better, as opposed to being goal oriented.
It was super cool meeting Gabe and shooting with some of the P-F crew and the rest of the class, who were a bunch of very solid shooters. Alpha is an awesome range, and the members there are awesome people, who ware very welcoming, even of non members (like myself). There was coffee and donuts both mornings, which was awesome, and I wound up with the light pin. I definitely felt a little inconsistent in a few drills and and could definitely see where my weaknesses are. Cleaning up the draw a little, running a little faster on the splits and sharpening my front sight focus. Fortunately, there are some good drills to practice and some new dry fire techniques to practice and matches to shoot while I wait for it to warm up enough that I can practice at my main range.