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Thread: Tactical Pistol Skills - Langdon Tactical. Yale, VA. April 7-8, 2018

  1. #1

    Tactical Pistol Skills - Langdon Tactical. Yale, VA. April 7-8, 2018

    I took Ernest Langdon's Tactical Pistol Skills course this past weekend in Yale, Virginia. On the first day, it was freezing cold and raining and on the morning of the second day it was freezing cold and then got nicer out. I will keep this short, informative, and honest. I have taken a few handgun courses from other instructors such as Jeff Bloovman, Steve Fisher, James Yeager, and Aaron Cowan and consider myself to be an acceptable pistol shooter, IMHO about 65% as proficient as I would like to be eventually. Also, I am a very quantitative person and sometimes overly analytical when it comes to the finer details.

    Gear used : Agency Arms Gavel 17 with RMR on Lonewolf frame, olight pl mini valkyrie, bigfoot holsters AIWB. NSR tactical spare mag appendix holster. Farage precision EDC belt. Winchester white box 115 grain ammo.

    Day 1 - Started off with classroom instruction from Ernest about his theory of training and what we would cover, and why. Emphasis on the why - which I really liked. We were inside for a while which wasn't too bad because the weather was ugly as sin, however as it creeped up on 3.5 hours of sitting down inside, I started to get antsy. What I had come to realize from this classroom portion was that Ernest successfully closed the loops on all of the "why's" that I had been wondering about without me needing to sit there and ask him specifically and interrupt. His presentation was very well thought out and I would come to understand that his theory of training is not some BS he just spews out. His entire curriculum is genuinely aligned with his mission statement and values of training which was awesome (will touch on this again later.) So, once again, I will put this into numbers so hopefully you can understand what I am trying to say. My experience learning how to shoot a handgun and learning the why's behind certain fundamentals and manipulation/techniques left me at about 85% satisfaction. That is to say, I was taught the why's behind much of what I had already known, yet there were still some aspects that I would question others further to find out that remaining 15% as I would think of other ways and things didn't always add up in my mind. That is where I would receive the answer "well, just because." That was never good enough for me, and always left me with that nagging loose end, and being an overly analytical person, just ask @deathblossom if you know her, this would send me into a disarray of trying to perfect certain aspects and unintentionally ignoring the more important things. Ernest finally, and organically tied those loose ends for me, and I was able to immediately put that knowledge into practice on the range. Ernest's theory focused on similar concepts to progressive overload in weight training, and the skills built and stacked on each other, going from simple to more complex, to so complex that your shooting must be subconscious so your mind can focus on the task - AKA his ultimate goal for all of our training. This was clear as the day went on, and especially clear when he induced some stress with his timer and friendly class competition. I won the hat with a perfect 100 on his 10x10 test in 5.64 seconds despite having a water droplet on my emitter blooming my red dot. Why was I able to do this? Because I focused on my grip as he taught and trigger prep likewise. Simple, but effective.

    Day 2 - Since it was unsafe to shoot on the move in the slippery mud on the previous day, we moved the firing line back to the drier area and made up for this on day two. We worked on target transitions, and did very useful drills that forced us to look with our eyes before transitioning with the gun. Once again, these new learned skills and techniques built upon each other, the complexity increased and we were forced to subconsciously perform the shooting while our minds were thinking through the requirements of the drill. We did another individually timed drill that consisted of a draw from concealment (it was cold, so this was through like 4 layers for me) headshots, a speed reload and then body shots. My performance on this earned (5.96 s) me a neat hat pin, but I fell short of the ultimate goal - which is a rare coin that apparently only few people have. After ramping up in intensity throughout the day, Ernest would have us "re align ourselves" by shooting tight groups at 5 yards before longer breaks.

    Comments on Ernest as an instructor - He is friendly and attentive, constantly roaming the line to help people on an individual basis. If he found something applicable to everyone, he would show us as that person redid the drill again and then explain. If it was a person specific issue, he would have us holster up, and then spend a minute or two directly with the individual. This was great in a class of 16 people (should have been 18 but 2 bailed) because there was never at any moment an "assembly line" class feel. While it was freezing cold and raining, at one point all of the students were huddled under the tents and since Ernest knew that not everyone would have a great view of his next demonstration if he stayed under the tent, he was the one who walked out from under the tent into the rain to demo it (not a huge deal, but to me, this shows that he values his students more so than his own personal comfort and is a sign of respect.) Also to note, his use of breaks and mag jamming was great and he remarked this was to relieve some tension allow us to joke around, have fun, so that we wouldn't be high strung the whole time, all in his effort to keep us in a good mental and physical state for learning. It worked ( and yes, I have been in classes where horrible time management for breaks caused us to be fatigued and concentration suffered.) Everyone was shooting different guns and at the end of the day, he encouraged us to try out each other's stuff - which was cool.

    I will certainly be training again with Langdon Tactical in the future and I highly recommend his Tactical Pistol Skills course.

  2. #2
    Nice review man!!
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Prdator View Post
    Nice review man!!
    Thank you!

    Feel free to post up any additional questions you may have that I haven't covered in my short synopsis. I took pretty detailed notes too.

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