What was your "aha" or breakthrough moment?

[Gun Mutt]

Another great thread and I've nothing to add to the topic as the OP framed it, but the title did spur a reply I thought I'd share.

Growing up as an Indiana farm boy, I'd been shooting most of my life. I had a hand me down copy of The Shooters Bible (a gift from our pastor, no less), read all the glossies, watched every training video tape I could lay hands on, got my CCW at 21 (it would be another 5yrs before I made it to Thunder Ranch), you know, the usual fare for the latter 1900's. I was an okay pistol shooter, but I was I horribly inconsistent. While I could usually keep everything in the black, my target still looked like a shotgun pattern.

When I was 23, my good friend, Frank, lived a couple miles away and he got deep into bow hunting, which, of course, led to me getting my first compound bow. Shooting diagonally across his backyard with the shed as a backstop to our target bags, we had lines at 25,35 & 45yds to shoot from. At those ranges, we were soon shooting each other's arrows so often that we had to make a gentleman's agreement not to do it anymore...just too damn expensive for the momentary grins.

A couple of months in, Frank took me to my first proper outdoor archery range. We started at the 25yd line and worked our way back to the 75. I distinctly remember the 60yd line as it was the first time I'd had to actually adjust and use anything other than my top two sight pins. Once sighted in, it blew me away how well we grouped 5 shot clusters at those distances. Way, way farther than I'd ever successfully shot a pistol. It was like some kind of wizardry; at 75yds, it didn't matter that the bow was damn near pointed at the sky, if you held the sight pin steady while you triggered the release and practiced good follow through, the arrows magically appeared in the bull.

Later that same week, I was at the indoor pistol range with Frank and two others. My edc back then was a BHP that I was seriously considering trading out of as I didn't shoot it any better than the 92 I'd previously carried. As you probably suspect, I loaded up a mag of ball ammo and promptly shot the center out of my target. As the session progressed, I moved to the other three bays and out shot all three of them with their own pistols: Frank's Sig 228, Johnny's Smith 59 and Larry's recently acquired Colt Gold Cup.

Frank was genuinely butt hurt at my sudden leap in skill. Wtf, bro? Seriously, how? He wasn't much mollified to learn that he'd been the cause.

I've had a lot more instruction, training and competition in the intervening 27yrs and I've learned so much in that time...but my 'Aha moment' was shooting a compound bow at 60yds.

[Sauer Koch]

My ah-ha moment was the weekend I spent in the @Gabe White PSS class, and earning a Dark Pin, and realizing that the simple act of doing the basics over and over can lead to great things.

I had known of him for a while, but never studied anything he did. I saw an excellent video review of this class, by Mickey Schuch (Carry Trainer) & his friend Donovan, who is a high-level SF guy. They raved about the quality of Gabe’s class, and at the time, I was wanting to take a training class from a top tier instructor, not that I belonged there, but to simply get a feel for where I stood, and to find out what I was capable of, by being challenged by someone like Gabe. Their comments about the class sealed the deal for me, and after seeing this video, I got a notification from my local range, that Gabe would be there in just 6 weeks, so it was meant to be, and I signed up immediately.

My foundation at this point was three yrs of static, accuracy-based shooting, working on the fundamentals of grip, and trigger control (lots of DA pulls), and rarely ever trying to shoot very fast, and 98% of this was with a Sig 226 & 229, with some CZ 75, and 1911 at times.

Prior to this class I had taken a full day formal Pistol class, and some private training classes with a local trainer, but never did anything with a top tier instructor. My draw work sucked, simply because most of my shooting was at indoor ranges, and it just wasn’t something that I devoted much time to at the outdoor range that I joined. After reading the required skills from Gabe’s site, and knowing how fast he is, I was intimidated, and didn’t think I’d be able to keep up with the class, but after training Judo for 20+ yrs, I wasn’t afraid of a challenge, and looked forward to it.

This class seemed to be a perfect storm for me. I was shooting my new P30 LEM, which only had about 800 rounds through it with no issues, but was considering using my 226, which was my primary pistol for the last 3 yrs, but I was really liking the HK, and took a chance on using it, and it paid off well in the end.
On paper, everything was against me, but I attribute Gabe’s excellent instruction, and class structure to my success, as he seemed to be the perfect instructor and the perfect class structure, in the form of a challenging experience that brought out the best in me, and what a fun weekend it was; thanks Gabe! Practicing the four drills, then shooting them for time, then for the ‘record’, in front of my classmates, was an excellent process for me to go through, and I ended up shooting way better than I ever thought I could.

Honestly, coming into the class, I had seen his Pin standards, but I had never shot any of them for time, and with my draw work being pretty crude, and with it being from concealment, I simply showed up wanting to learn as much as I could, but never thought for a second that I’d even come close to earning a pin, and I was fine with that, as that wasn’t why I was there.

“there is no magic”…so true! (other than intelligent & consistent application of the fundamentals of shooting…and for me, thousands and thousands of rounds).

Currently, that particular range has since closed and my holster work has suffered, so I need to get busy with dry-fire and draw work at home. I could not shoot well enough right now to earn that Dark Pin, and that’s okay, I’ll stick with the basics and get back there.