Yep that's SN! Quick on the verbal arts.
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Yep that's SN! Quick on the verbal arts.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
AKA: SkyLine1
I was completely unaware I was bleeding until someone told me - the helmet rubbed off the scab during the 2:1 on day 2
Duke said I was Odin the one eyed, haha.
The first time I took the class I told my wife "These things that look like hickeys on my neck and ass? They aren't really hickeys..."
Nice!Originally Posted by phil_in_cs
I was completely unaware I was bleeding until someone told me - the helmet rubbed off the scab during the 2:1 on day 2
Duke said I was Odin the one eyed, haha.
The first time I took the class I told my wife "These things that look like hickeys on my neck and ass? They aren't really hickeys..."
My forehead didn't actually bleed, and the cut under my eye only bled a little. Thankfully his thumb didn't hit my eye, but it was probably too big to fit in my eye socket anyway
Don't know if he took a pic or not, but the OP did his evo's in just a t-shirt and undershirt; after taking several sims rounds it looked like he had about 6 nipples.
Now that's hard core!
I'm telling you guys. Those of us with our little "Bo Bos" know this...but get some Second Skin from a drug store. I use it all the damn time for mat burns. I put some on my Bo Bo when I was up at the class in OK...no worries the rest of the week and no infection....
Add it to the packing list...lol
ECQC is a winner, I'll take it again next year either up with spencer or down here in College Station...
Chuck
Class started at approximately 0830 on TD3. The weather was similar to yesterday, albeit with slightly more cloud cover and wind. We unfortunately lost two students due to heat exhaustion, one of which had come down bad enough to have vomited in the morning.
We started the day off by drawing and firing at the “-0” on the targets. After doing that for ten rounds, we then tried the same thing, but this time, compressing to the three after firing at the “-0”, and firing a shot, so as to see where it would land. Relaxed shoulders could cause such shots to land low, while heeling the gun could push it left or right. A potential remedy for heeling issues is to have the strong hand thumb ride on the outside of the base of the weak hand thumb, rather the traditional over.
Most of my shots were in the lower part of the A zone and the upper part of the B zone on the bottom side. I had turned my laser off for this part of the drill, as it would influence my shooting; this way, I could get a good feel for my index, which turned out to be decent, though nowhere as tight as some people’s were.
We then executed the table drill: sit down in the middle of a table, very close to it, with a person to your left, to your right, and a person behind you with their hands on your shoulders. You would then draw and fire one shot at the target about 7 yards away, and then re-holster. The point being reinforced in this drill was to watch your muzzle discipline. During a draw from the strong side, if one does not flag the thumb out and track it up your chest, but instead simply floated the gun, it can be quite easy to flag the person on your right. On the re-holster, it can be quite easy to muzzle the person behind you, so don’t try to just feed the holster in without looking. On appendix carry, don’t arc the gun out, as this will muzzle the person to your left. Also, clear the cover garment behind the muzzle, rather than in front of it. In general, bringing the shoulders up can help you clear the gun of any horizontal obstructions.
Due to the possibility of muzzling your fellow students in this drill, it was executed at a very slow speed, with Craig observing you while standing on the other side of the table, to your right (so, yes, Craig was indeed in front of the firing line, but considering the nature of the drill and the emphasis on slow, deliberate movements, Craig has never had an issue with safety on this drill yet).
Craig stated that one of the reasons he places a very strict emphasis on trigger finger control (hard register point) and muzzle awareness is that, during a buy during his undercover days, he was almost shot by friendlies. While sitting in the car with a dealer, waiting to be arrested with the dealer so as to maintain a degree of cover, the officer that came up to Craig to “apprehend” him, by all accounts a very competent officer, accidently touched off a round and had the bullet miss by mere inches and bury itself into the dash.
Everyone went through the drill with very slow and deliberate movements. The main issues seen were issues with floating the support hand during the draw, rather than having it high up on the chest, and fumbling for the holster on the re-holster, which is solved by looking down at the holster. I personally had to be very deliberate about my drawing and re-holstering, as I had a tendency to do some mild arcing of the gun. This drill really hammered home the importance of not arcing the gun, and I made sure to keep the muzzle straight down during the re-holster at all times for the rest of the class.
Craig then went over the fending positions while drawn in the thumb pectoral index, with the usage of the vertical elbow shield and the horizontal elbow shield. For the vertical, have your hand on your back left side of the head, the shoulders raised up, and the bicep on the cheek. For the horizontal, with the fingers straight out, have it touch the other shoulder, chin tucked in and behind the crook of the elbow. The vertical is a much more defensive position, while the horizontal can also be used offensively, e.g., going around a corner this way to fend off a possible ambush, in confined spaces, etc. Craig stated that he had accidently broken a fairly large suspect’s sternum this way. For the drills, we actually drew, and then got into the shield position; Craig noted that this was strictly for reps, and that one generally would not do that.
I had a tendency to tilt my head when doing the vertical elbow shield, which was probably brought on by the fact that I would place my hand too far toward the middle; I tried to get rid of this issue, but I never got a chance to check if I really retained the lesson, since the usage of the FIST helmets during the evolutions kind of precluded the proper usage of it.
We then went over the idea of appropriate compression, by which Craig meant the idea of pushing the gun only far enough out or bringing it in close enough in to keep it out of the opponent’s reach while moving backwards or forwards. The drills covering this started out in a shield, and then transitioned into a count four position while stepping backwards, emphasizing the need to collect the gun with the weak hand on the chest. The opposite was also practiced, in which we moved from full extension into compression and then a shield, while advancing on the target (somewhat simulating a target advancing on us).
Again, the safety manipulation was something I had to work on, and it definitely made its presence felt during one handed shooting. Also, some shooters had issues with doing a sudden shield at the end, forgetting to compress appropriately while moving in. There were also issues with shooters standing still to reload, which was not only dangerous while on the line, but also a huge issue if someone was indeed advancing upon us. However, we also noted later on that during the evolutions, no one actually stayed still while trying to clear a malfunction or reload; still Craig stated that he had seen in the past people just standing there in evolutions, trying to troubleshoot the gun while an opponent was oncoming.
We then did a final, culmination drill that would be the last live-fire exercise of the day: Starting at a vertical shield close to the target, draw, fire, and move back using the appropriate compression, then moving forward again, using the appropriate compression, and ending in a horizontal elbow shield.
I had a lot of issues with this drill, primarily when moving in, and moving from count three to count two: I had trained myself to flip the safety on whenever taking the weak hand off the pistol, as this was good for safety in re-holstering, moving without shooting, reloading, etc. However, this meant that I would try to fire a handgun on safe at the pectoral index, and had to then think about flipping the safety off again. Speaking with Craig after the course, he stated that this was probably just a familiarity issue, and that with training, I could easily overcome it.
We then broke for lunch.
After lunch, we then started the second evolution: the 2v1. The primary person will be armed; the secondary person will then approach the primary; the tertiary person will be held in reserve by Craig until he deemed it appropriate to loose them. Craig stated that it would be a free for all role-play, in which any scenario was game, and that the evolution did not end until he called it. If safety equipment worked loose, there would be a pause (and work loose they did; the FIST helmets came off quite often) to get the equipment back on, but then the evolution would continue. After the evolution ended, we would then go over what happened, primarily focusing on the primary, although everyone got a say. Then, roles would switch, until each person in the trio got to play every role.
I was in a group with “French Jesus” and “Dog the Bounty Hunter” (I’m fairly terrible with names, and only remember their nicknames). In the first round, I was the secondary, while French Jesus was the primary. I approached him speaking in Mandarin, stating that there was a car accident and that I needed his help or at least his phone. I also pantomimed out a phone, but he consistently rejected me; while he moved around a fair bit, he often let me get very close. Eventually, Craig loosed Dog, who proceeded to try to solicit help for me from French Jesus; I assume that he figured out that I needed a phone. Again, French Jesus demurred and kept moving, and at this point, I also asked Dog if he had a phone I could use, but mostly focusing on Jesus. Eventually, Dog simply stated “well, you’re going to help us one way or another” (or something to that extent, in which a link between Dog and I seemed to be established), and attacked French Jesus. I responded by trying to break-up the fight, albeit half-heartedly. Jesus drew a gun eventually, at which point I decided to side against him; my role-play rationale was that many people would see the drawing of a gun in a “simple” fist fight while both parties were still upright and there didn’t seem to be any clear winner at the point was uncalled for, and that Jesus was liable to kill Dog at this point. I drew my knife and waded into the fight, and got a fair bit of sticks in without much issue. Jesus was eventually able to work free and get a couple of shots off before the evolution ended. Afterwards, Jesus stated that when Dog said “us”, he automatically assumed that the both of us were hostile, and acted accordingly. Others noted that my speaking of a foreign language made it very difficult to discern my intensions; as Justin stated, it’s very difficult to smoke a guy when you have no idea what he was saying.
When I was the primary, Dog was the secondary. He approached me with a piece of scrap paper, saying that I had dropped it. This is where I made the first of very many mistakes: I let him get way to close, and did my moving away and arcing very half-heartedly. Eventually, Jesus was loosed, and he made the statement that he, too, saw me drop the piece of scrap paper. At this point, Jesus had probably been loose less than five seconds, when Dog lunged in and basically had me on the ground in seconds. However, I made the conscious decision not to draw a weapon at this point, as it seemed to be just a fist fight, and the utilization of lethal force seemed disproportionate; it later dawned on me how easily he could have had a blade out and simply cut me to ribbons while I was down before I would have any chance to react. At this point, I had a magnificent stroke of luck, as Jesus became one of the very few tertiary people to side with the primary, rather than the secondary. While on the ground, Dog was able to feel out my gun and draw it out. At around this point, he also got entangled with Jesus, and I was able to escape. At this point, I had free reign to simply escape while Dog was tied up with Jesus; however, I instead re-entered the fray, trying to get my gun back (although the decision to help out Jesus, who had no reason to help me, was also part of it). I was able to wrest the gun away, and eventually wound up turtled up over it, while Dog was on my back. I actually rested there for a bit, for Dog simply kept me down, but didn’t really attack me; I assumed that he was busy with Jesus, although Craig also noted that this was actually a terrible position to be in if Jesus ever stopped the attack and Dog got a free reign to attack me. Eventually, Dog was able to wrest the gun back, but while he was doing so, I realized that I would lose the gun, and ejected the mag and managed to throw it outside the ring. Dog got the shot off on Jesus, emptying the chamber, and the evolution ended; interestingly, Dog did not realize that the gun was empty until the evolution ended.
With Dog as the primary, Jesus approached him to complain about Dog stealing his parking spot. This led to Dog evaluating Jesus as being hostile, and he seized the initiative by throwing a beautiful elbow right into Jesus’s FIST helmet visor. Dazing him, pushing him back, and giving Dog time to back up and draw. I was loosed at about this time, and I simply made a beeline for Dog while drawing my knife. The Sim gun malfunctioned at this point, and Dog made a couple of attempts to clear the gun before simply changing his grip and using the butt of the gun as a hammer. He had excellent mobility, and never stayed on the ground longer than a second or so. Jesus and I were unable to effectively get entangled with him at any point in time.
All of the repeat students tended to perform quite well, with one student never going to ground, as he was able to keep good distance, get a horizontal elbow shield up, and draw into count two. Another had excellent mobility, and only wound up on the ground because Craig purposely tripped him; even then, his ground work was good enough that he was able to prevail in the two versus one scenario (he was an avid practitioner of ju-jitsu). The amount of malfunctions that occurred throughout the evolutions with the Simunitions also made me very leery of depending on them on evolutions; I had already been leaning toward using a blade for anything this close, from all the reading I did, and the unreliability of the Sims and the difficulties in clearing the malfunctions (mostly double feeds) while entangled only reinforced my feelings about getting away from the gun at this close range.
After the evolutions, Craig stated that going toward weapons too early may work against you, presuming you survived, as it could make it look like you were the one that escalated the fight. His standard was to ask what the fight would look like on a cellphone or CCTV video with no sound. Obviously, every person has to make their own decisions based on their comfort and skill level, but it was something very important to consider.
The evolutions highlighted the need for knowing weapons retention. The easiest way to do this is, when the opponent has their hand on your gun, pin their hand onto the gun with your elbow; essentially, their hand should be trapped between your elbow and your hip. After pinning their hand, a level change will maximize your weight on the gun, and keep them from drawing the gun, as their arm is essentially fighting against your whole body. Afterwards, footwork can be used to get them into a tie or whatever and have them get off your gun. When grounded, the same idea applies; get into the standard butterfly guard, but with the elbow on the gun, then use your legs to push the opponent away.
This worked extraordinarily well; at several points, my partner was able to pull hard enough on the training gun that I was actually lifted off the ground, yet the gun stayed firmly tucked into my waist.
We then went over retention of a drawn gun and a disarm. Both worked off the same principle: strip the gun through their thumb, as that is definitely the weakest part of the hand, since there’s only the thumb there, versus fighting all four other fingers going the other way. For retention, one should use the bony edge of their wrist of the hand that is not holding the gun, place it against the opponent’s, and using your wrist as a fulcrum, twist the gun out by going in the direction their thumb is holding it. For disarms, we were only taught how to defend against one handed grips. There are two important steps: don’t get show, and get the gun out of their hand. To not get shot, move both the body and the muzzle, not just one. There is no rule as to which way to strip the gun, both in or out works, depending on the position you’re in. Generally, one should always assume that the enemy’s gun is loaded and functioning while they hold it; however, once you have disarmed them, one should assume that the gun is unloaded and non-functioning, given the poor quality of maintenance many criminals have on their firearms.
The disarms were a bit unintuitive; I would have to think about which way to torque the gun out, so it would leave me having of moved both myself and the muzzle, and then I would be standing there, staring at the gun for a moment, before moving onto the next step.
We then started what was supposed to be the final evolution of the day: fighting in a car, or in this case, the cab of a small pick-up. Both parties would be armed: the driver would have a gun in their holster, while the passenger (a hitchhiker) would have a gun under their right thigh. The hitchhiker would initiate a carjack or whatever, and, ideally, the driver would do a disarm and the struggle would be on.
The first evolution went quite well, and the guys wound up in the back seat both times, if I recall correctly. However, the second evolution killed the evolution for everyone, as seconds after a gun went into play, the front windshield had a hole kicked in it, and we had to stop the evolution. Craig stated that this was the first time it had ever happened.
We then moved on to the double gun grapple, in which both parties had their gun out, and both parties had their weak hand on the other’s gun. One was on the ground in a butterfly guard, while the other would be leaning over them.
During this evolution, we had what might be a serious injury, which would be the third time one had happened in the nine years Craig had been teaching ECQC: Craig partnered one of the strongest guys against one of the very skilled ju-jitsu guys. While on the ground, the ju-jitsu guy was able to get a good hold on the strong guy’s right arm; it was not a true arm lock, but the ju-jitsu guy had basically his whole body wrapped up in controlling the arm. The strong guy tried to get out of it by powering through it, and possibly tore a bicep tendon attempting to do so. We stopped the evolution, and had the secondary doctor (as the strong guy was the primary) look it over; he decided to leave in the end, and head over to the local hospital to take care of it.
I was the last guy to go, and because of the uneven number of students left, I only did half the evolution, starting on the ground. I attempted to get my gun out of play (somewhat reminiscent of another ju-jitsu guy’s play: he ejected his mag as early as possible to get it out of play so that he could just focus on his opponent’s gun) by getting a shot off on my partner Benny, and letting the gun go out of battery. I was unable to keep Benny from getting on top of me, but I was able to keep his gun out of play for some time, while being able to draw the BoB and get many good stabs in. However, in the end, he got positional dominance on me and ended the evolution with three point blank shots to the visor of the FIST helmet.
At this point, the class essentially ended, and we had a hot wash before everyone left. The comments from first timers were pretty much unanimous in its praise and evaluation that, after some basic marksmanship classes, this would be, by far, the most relevant coursework for any CCWer. Tim, the lone LEO, stated that this was also something that every person going through the academy should go through. The repeat students were much more muted in their praise for the most part (perfectly understandable, as repeating the course alone should implicitly be very heavy praise), and instead focused on what went wrong, and what they could improve upon during the evolutions. This ended at 1830.
I personally stated that the main difference between this class and all other courses that I had taken up to that point was that I went in to the previous courses knowing what I didn’t know; here, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. While I had certainly read up on the AARs and the such prior to coming to the class, my knowledge of hand to hand was so lacking that I simply never understood much of the material that I had read before in the context that it needed to be understood in.
I was definitely one of the poorest fighters in the class, and the lone evolution in which I was able to come out not obviously dominated was done so through sheer luck. I will most certainly be getting in contact with one of the ju-jitsu guys who was in the class, and seeing if I can’t start training with him regularly. On the other hand, I was very happy with the fact that, while I often simply ran out of strength in my upper body, I never truly gassed out; that is to say, I never felt out of breath, even if I simply couldn’t muster enough strength to get my arms or neck or whatever moving. I suppose the cardio regime I had started a couple months ago did have some effect. I also never really panicked, which was something I had read about before in AARs; I actually don’t think this was an advantage for me, as it thus never really gave me a sense of danger (to me, the evolutions were like roller coasters; seemingly scary, but I “knew” that I was perfectly safe), and it thus did not give me a chance to see how I would react under real stress. Then again, given my abysmal performance even while relatively calm, I’m sure it wouldn’t have made a big difference. To be sure, I will most certainly be attending ECQC again in the future.
In terms of the class outside of the material, there was a definite need for hydration; I was consistently slightly dehydrated through the whole class, which was not helped by the fact that I totally forgot about the need to use sunblock on the second day, and wound up burned pretty bad on my neck and a bit on my face (I had never done a class in the summer before, and I’d always been the indoors-y type). The second day was also by far the most physically strenuous; while there were more evolutions on the third day, the evolutions were actually not that bad, since most of the time was spent resting as you observed the rest of the class go.
Gear-wise, the main issue was the safety on the P30LS digging into the base of my thumb when shooting at the thumb pectoral index; however, I see this as a fairly mild issue, and will not alter my plans to stick with this platform and get a couple more for backup. There was also issues with the TekLok attachment on the BoB sliding around on the belt, although this was mainly an issue from a concealment point of view rather than a fighting point of view.
Overall, 269 rounds were expended, all of which were Freedom Munitions 115 gr. RN New (note that Craig had the round count for the class set up to be exactly 275 rounds; I most likely did not shoot a full five or ten round string a couple of times). No malfunctions occurred.
Last edited by Default.mp3; 05-23-2013 at 08:44 PM.
Ugh, just realized I have 2012 instead of 2013 as the thread title everywhere I posted this AAR.
Trust me, there's a good 20% that I can't decipher in my notes. I need to bring a laptop or something, 'cause I type a Helluva lot faster than I write. Also, good MUC when I tried to bum a cig off of you at the end of class, though I think you could have arced a bit more.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Next time, I should be better; I've already gotten in contact with a dude that's willing to sell me anabolic steroids.
You've convinced me to get a headband or beanie or something for the next time I'm attending the class.
No pics, but other guys took some, so I'm sure they're floating around out there, maybe on Facebook with NSFW tags.
Do you mean: http://www.spenco.com/products/healt...oist-burn-pads? If so, it seems like a damn good idea.
Wow, thanks for the great note-taking/recap Default!
This was my first ECQC also, and it was definitely a worthwhile experience!
It was great meeting everyone and hopefully we will train together again in the future.
Great meeting you too Jared. I hope my helmet didn't beat up your hands too badly
(JaredW was the nice gentleman who gave me a good beating on Saturday)
HAHA!Great meeting you too Jared. I hope my helmet didn't beat up your hands too badly
(JaredW was the nice gentleman who gave me a good beating on Saturday)
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