The following is a review told from my unique perspective of the Gabe White Pistol shooting solutions class held in Waverly TN October 27-28 2018. It is not like nor was it intended to be your standard review....
Gabe White Pistol Shooting Solutions Waverly TN Oct 27-28 2018
Gun: Gen 4 Glock 34 with Warren/Sevigney Competition Fiber Optic Sights and Ghost 3.5# Connector. Otherwise COMPLETELY Box Stock. (This pistol is my IDPA Stock Service Pistol Gun)
Holster : Dale Fricke Archangel modified for slightly more forward cant worn strong side just barely forward of my hip bone.
Mag Pouches : Blade Tech Single Mag Pouches
Belt: Graith Shivworks Specialist Belt
Cover Garment : T shirt on Saturday Polo Shirt on Sunday
Shoes: Vasque Juxt
Lunch: Subway and Walmart Deli
Get ready.... it is a long and winding road to Waverly.....
History
I first became aware of Gabe White from lurking here at Pistol Forum in 2013- 2014 when he still posted as OrigamaAK. I found the parallels interesting that he was shooting competitively in USPSA with a Glock 34 from AIWB at the same time I had started shooting higher level IDPA matches with a Glock 34 in IWB holster with closed front garment. In the Master Class IDPA world of starched Armadillo vests, shooting from under a T shirt from IWB is just about as much a quaint oddity as shooting USPSA from concealment is. Sure you still see people shooting that way at local matches but NOBODY is shooting that way in the higher divisions at major matches. I could certainly relate to the comments he must have gotten from other shooters and ROs at matches. I can't count the number of times I reported to the line to shoot and was asked if I forgot my gun or told "this stage requires concealment"....even though they could not see any of my gear under my shirt. But I'm not a gamer at heart. I'm a serious gun carrier and professional instructor who plays the games in order to compete with and test my skills against good shooters. I also found Gabe's "Competitive Timmy" persona very familiar too and though I'm pretty opinionated I rarely disagreed with anything that he posted...
Shooting the 2014 IDPA Nationals. Glock 34 from IWB with closed front garment.You'd have thought I was from a different planet....
I followed along reading the posts like the rest of us here as Gabe went to the Rogers Shooting School in 2014...and on 4/19/14 I was texting Ronnie Dodd at Rogers right after the twin 125s were achieved with Gabe and Manny Bragg. A 125...TWO 125s ...on the SAME test ! That's pretty freakin' amazing...especially for a "Timmy" shooting from concealment ! For years John Hearne had been pestering me to finally get to Rogers so in 2015 I finally made the pilgrimage to Ellijay and got my Advanced ranking and Red Pin. No I did not shoot a 125 but my 115 is at least respectable as far as Advanced scores go. Now having been there I had an even deeper appreciation of what it took to shoot a 125, so when Gabe started offering a travelling class I made mental note to hit that class at some point in the future.
Ronnie Dodd congratulates me after my 115 score in August 2015 .
So in late December 2017 I saw on Pistol Forum that Gabe White was going to be in Waverly TN in October 2018. Waverly is only about 3 hours from Chattanooga so I decided to sign up quickly before it was full. My good friend Mike Swisher attended the class in McHenry Illinois in January and scored a light pin (with a couple of Turbo runs) and got me all excited about the class...well as excited as I get about anything..... John Hearne then contacted me in February to see if I was going to the class and to see if I wanted to share a room. He had just done Gabe's class in Florida with Tom Givens and had just missed Turbo by ONE run. So he was coming back to claim his pin.
Hearne and I have a long history of room sharing at training events to the point that John says our wives probably think these trips to obscure places like Harrisburg Pa, Shawnee Ok, and Waverly TN are romantic getaways for us....Seriously though Hearne and I have been bouncing ideas off of each other since we first met at the Warriortalk Symposium in Memphis back in 2006 about training, tactics, how to better motivate and educate students (and ourselves) and discussing what historically has been deciding factors in winning and losing gunfights (and the answer damn sure isn't more Molle gear). John is also a voracious reader of the same type books that I read and he's just a wealth of information and makes for very stimulating conversation in the "training nerd" realm. We can talk Hickok and John Wesley Hardin , McGivern , Bryce, Jordan, Askins, Kruger -Dunning Effect , training industry history or why the Comanches were able to raid all the way to the Texas coast in 1840.... Oh crap...maybe these ARE romantic getaways....
OK back on task here....So after I signed up I pretty much just went on living my life for the next few months. The only "Gabe White class specific practice" I did was at my late January training group I had one of my students run the timer while I knocked out 1 run each of the 4 tests. Those results are below.
In March I finally met Gabe in person at the Rangemaster Tactical Conference in Little Rock Arkansas where we both (along with John Hearne) were presenters. Gabe and I talked briefly at an instructor get together at the hotel but I didn't want to monopolize his time and besides I rarely get to talk to Gary Greco so John and I spent the next several hours monopolizing HIS time. That dude has been there done that and then some all over the world and is just a cool old cat to talk to. So I got far too little sleep that night and then had to get up and teach my block of instruction the next morning. This is proof that Tom Givens either has a warped sense of humor or a wicked mean streak as he had scheduled Gabe and myself to be teaching during the exact same time slot. Thanks Tom. So I was not able to get to see any of what Gabe was doing as I , along with the much appreciated assistance of Lee Weems and Mike Swisher (JLW and MVS from Pistol Forum) presented my block on "Point Blank Pistol Skills.
Me and my crew. (MVS, Me, Scott, JLW, Adam)....Lee was certainly not going to get accidentally shot because he couldn't be seen....
When we were done and I was all packed up I headed over to be a spectator at the final 16 shoot off ( I had a bad trigger press at the 15 yard line on Saturday and missed getting into the shoot off. Stuff happens. Even squirrels and monkeys fall out of trees sometimes. Adversity builds character.) Not surprisingly I watched Gabe win the shoot off and filed that away as not only motivation but as further reason to be glad I was signed up for the October class.
So the months went by, I worked my day job, I taught classes, shot an IDPA match or two ( finishing 3rd overall in the BUG division at the Sand Gnat Challenge Southeast Regional BUG and CCP match in Savannah GA) , led training groups, attended a Sons of the American Revolution grave marking for a Revolutionary War veteran 5th Great Grandfather of mine , went to Mexico with my fabulous wife, taught some more classes , and attended the Rangemaster Instructor Reunion in Athens GA in June. I turned in the best score on the bullseye course of fire but I had a couple of sub 300 runs (292 and 296 IIRC) on the Rangemaster Instructor course of fire and was a point down on the FBI Qualification for the first time ever....between the Tac Con match disaster and this performance my confidence was in free fall. Those lower than normal runs had me questioning my eyesight, my trigger control my choice of front sight and just about everything else....but as my wife says..."you do know that sometimes people just have a bad day?". I really should probably listen to her more often..... I was just concerned that I seemed to be having a run of way too many bad days in a row lately....So I did my daily dry work and just went on living my life until September. In September the wife and I took a MUCH DESERVED 2 week vacation to Fort Walton , Destin and then over to Pensacola to hit some historical sights.....
John Wesley Hardin Capture Marker in Pensacola
( Leon Metz's "John Wesley Hardin : Dark Angel of Texas" is a great book recounting this)
Fort George in Pensacola. The British fort built in 1778
The Battle of Pensacola monument where Spaniards under Bernardo Galvez took Pensacola (and Fort George) from the British in 1781. An excellent book about this is "Independence Lost " by Kathleen Duval .
I came home mid September and taught a Low Light Pistol Class and then the bottom dropped out of life....I had a kidney stone episode that lasted for TWO WEEKS , I missed 6 days of work , had to cancel a class I was scheduled to teach and had to have a procedure done to break up the stone since it was clearly not going to pass without medical intervention. Then after my procedure my wife also got a kidney stone but fortunately that was not as bad as mine. All of this led to me not being able to make it to the range to shoot any live ammo from Sept 22 until the morning of Gabe's class.....so I was going to pretty much go into Gabe's class with just my regular walking around skills and the dry work regimen I had been using to get me through. The week of the class was my "long days" week at work where I go in at 8:30 AM and get off at 7:30 PM which means that it is dark by the time I'd be able to get to the range. While I still felt pretty solid you just never know how things will play out. Some days you eat the bear and some days he eats you. I would have felt a lot better about it if I'd been able to shoot some live ammo the week leading up to class. I asked Tom Givens for any last minute advice and he said this.... "Don't worry about your shooting. You'll practice each drill before shooting it for score. I suggest you watch and listen closely to how Gabe teaches. He is very organized and methodical. I was VERY impressed. Send me your pic of your Turbo Pin after class".....Thanks Tom..no pressure there or anything.....
So I drove to Waverly on Friday the 27th and met up with Gabe, John and the class host Sherman House for dinner at the Loretta Lynn Country Kitchen. Thanks again to Sherman for dinner. John and I then rolled to the Imperial Lodge and caught up, and then got some sleep......