Thanks to the very generous @Paul D who offered his seat in the class as a karma when a work conflict came up, I got the chance to attend Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions class this past weekend. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Paul, and thanks go to @Mr_White for allowing the student change less than 48 hours before the class.
After getting all my weekend plans and responsibilities shifted, I got to bed after 11pm Friday, got up at 3am, finished loading the car, and got on the road at 4am to drive 4 hours to Phoenix. The drive was pleasant, there was no traffic to speak of since it was early Saturday morning. I was the last to arrive, which was counter to my intent, but it was what it was. I spent Saturday night at a very nice Air BnB in nearby Anthem, and was quite a bit earlier arriving at the range on day 2.
The class was organized and hosted by John Correia, who you may know from Active Self Protection (he has a ton of YouTube videos and is a trainer in his own right), and was held at the huge Ben Avery Shooting Facility in north Phoenix. The only larger facility I’ve ever seen was Whittington Center in New Mexico. Our class was held on a 100 yard DPS-leased range which they allowed us to rent for the weekend.
9 students attended the class. I thought I would be the one coming from furthest away, and for those in Arizona I probably was, but one student flew in from Virginia. All the students in this class were male, which is a first for me. Every match or class I’ve ever attended included at least one female. Life experience and employment varied, but the unifying theme for all of us, as Gabe pointed out several times, is that we are all “enthusiasts”. In addition to myself and Gabe, @Yung and @Tokarev were also there, so 4 PF members out of the ten people present. If I missed somebody from PF, I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to connect.
Gun geek stuff:
Firearms and holsters: two shooters used strong-side belt holsters, while everyone else used appendix. There were quite a few electronic dot sights. Two shooters used HKs (and after trying out John’s light LEM P30, I can see the appeal), a variety of Glocks, one M&P, Yung’s Beretta, two Shadow Systems G19 analogues, and Tokarev’s Sokol custom Browning HP, which is a superb, beautiful gun he ran some nice Light Pin runs with after he switched to it from his Shadow Systems gun that was giving him some slide bite that drew blood. Nice leather pancake holster with the BHP as well.
I used my G19X carried in an RCS Phantom for the first part of the class, and in my Comp Tac for the rest of it due to the Phantom losing a screw I forgot to tighten partway through day 1. The gun is all stock except for the addition of an SCD. I don’t recall seeing a Glock this weekend that didn’t have an SCD, and IIRC, both Shadow Systems did, too, but I might be mistaken on that. I ran my 19X with the large backstrap with beaver tail on Saturday, but screwed up my draw at speed a few times on the beaver tail, so I tried it with the large backstrap with no beaver tail on Sunday. Draw interference eliminated, but slide tracks returned. I only got one tiny bit of skin worn off during the last exercise of the day, so it wasn’t a big deal. I got my typical Glock trigger guard hotspot on my trigger finger next to the fingernail - which actually turned into a blister this time.
Gabe recommends bringing a full case of 1k rounds, and estimates that a student will use 950. I took 1600 rounds, and used 953, counting the three Wolf misfires/light primer strikes (650 rounds of Wolf and Barnaul were in my ammo box, so I decided to use them).
I took 10 magazines, six of my own and four a friend loaned me b/c I didn’t have time to get more after I found out I was going to the class. Unfortunately, two of the loaned magazines had Taran extensions on them which didn’t work with the 19x lanyard loop. I didn’t feel like pulling the lanyard loop, so I ran the class with eight magazines. Gabe has a number of exercises that will run through more than 60 rounds before you get a chance to refill magazines, so it is important to make sure you bring enough magazines so you can have at least enough loaded rounds to complete an exercise. Having 8 meant that I never came close to running out while I was on the line.
My primary goal going into the class was focused on one simple thing: I want to learn to shoot faster. What I mean when I say that is, going into this weekend, I knew how to do a lot of different drills. Some of them, I’ve practiced and have developed some skill. Especially lower round count drills such as draw to a single or pair to a 3x5 card, I have some familiarity and can do with a bit of speed and precision. On the other hand, more extended drills can be problematic: I can shoot a fast Bill Drill, but get garbage hits, or I can shoot a completely clean, tight Bill drill, but it’s slow as molasses. Even shooting a faster Bill, typically I’m not all that fast.
This course work seems specifically geared to helping people move past those mental roadblocks or plateaus. I say mental, because “if one person can learn to do it, another person can learn to do it”. Gabe repeated that over and over again. Different blocks of instruction focused on different components of the physical and mental aspects of effective shooting, and then those got connected with the tactically significant aspects.
Gabe spent almost all of the class moving, exhibiting a high level of energy. He is a positive, encouraging, motivated instructor who is passionate about his craft and effective at engaging his students with that passion. He clearly wants each student to succeed, and is effective at finding ways to help them do so.
When I say all of that about Gabe, I want to be clear that it is not fluff. I have been an education professional for 15 years. I have been a supervisor who did classroom performance reviews on over 30 other teachers. I have two masters degrees. I have taught a lot of classes, observed a lot of teachers, and been through a lot of classes as a student. I only say that about myself in order to qualify what I say about Gabe as a teacher: Gabe is a very good teacher, and I highly recommend him. The class is expensive. It is worth the money.
I also say that as “that guy” in this class. I got 2/8 runs for score that were good enough to qualify for a pin, so I didn’t get one since the minimum is 4/8, and I was the only student this weekend, out of all those very good enthusiast shooters, who didn’t get one. (I did get a man-on-man challenge patch, though).
That wasn’t the point of the class for me. Maybe if I take it again someday, I’ll be more focused on that, but what I wanted was what I got: I can shoot better fast, I can hit a target while running, which each of us learned how to do, and I have tools in my training box now to continue to improve.