I had the opportunity to take Redhawk Firearms's "The Test" this past weekend. It's a bit of an odd-ball course, one that I'm still digesting, but overall I came away with a pretty positive experience. "The Test" is not a shooting class -- the expected round count for two days was 250. It isn't a class about tactics either. Rather, it's a class about performance. Samuel Middlebrook, the lead trainer for Redhawk, has an extensive background in music performance at a pretty high level. He also spend many years as a pastor. Both of these elements inform the type of class that he runs. Basically, "The Test" is a class where you're asked to perform a task (let's say it's a draw to a head box at 15 yards), and then think about what it was you saw, you felt, you thought you saw, etc during the course of executing that task. Samuel might ask yo.u a specific question like "What did your support hand do while driving the gun to the target?", or whatever he perceives to be most relevant, and you're left to integrate that into your cogitations. I struggled with the class at times -- I told Samuel I felt like at times the questions were leading, or playing mind games, 'cause he'll ask you the question, but he won't necessarily discuss your answer to it -- it's yours to ponder. I got caught up a few times thinking about whether Samuel's questions were leading, or honest, and whether I really saw what I thought I saw or if I thought I saw what I thought I was supposed to see. It's a bit of a mind game. The goal is to let you try a bunch of tasks and reason through your shot process on those tasks that you're left with a pretty solid dry fire journal that you can try and integrate into your every day practice (BTW, Samuel runs a pretty damn good and underappreciated dry fire channel on YouTube). Overall, it was a very interesting, cerebral and arguably somewhat Socratic approach, and one that I enjoyed. I tend to analyze things in detail anyway, so this was right up my alley. I had moments in that class where I felt that I was walking on air, and moments where the I was running to catch up to the struggle bus, but the class was different enough to make that worth it.

The class doesn't give you any gimmes. You spend a lot of time shooting steel C zones at 13-20', or Throom targets a bit closer, but there's none of the blazing away at a target from three yards. We shot as far out as 35', which I thought really approached things that are a little more challenging well. I'll acknowledge that we had a bit of an unusual class -- the Lynden range is Samuel's home range, so it's easy for him to run a smaller class. We were definitely such a smaller class, with just four students. Ten or twelve is a more typical size if you take a class with him as a traveling trainer. So, we got to shoot a bit more, had some more 1:1 time, and got a bit more feedback than the average bear. Having said that, if you approach the class from an open mindset, and you think about what you can learn to help improve your shooting practice, you'll find this class to be right up your alley.