Ok... At the behest of several people, here's my actual review:
I was trying to figure out how to write an AAR so that it conveyed my feelings accurately, especially since a bunch of people seem to really really like Dave.
I'll point out things as objectively as I can before discussing a few stories and my take on things, in general.
Logistics
- There was very little communication before the class started - A generalized curriculum was present, but start times/end times, etc was unknown until ~2 days before the class.
- The instructor is pretty non-responsive via email and has a limited Facebook or social media presence. I had some questions that never got answered, so a few potential attendees didn't bother.
- The dimensions of our particular range were communicated ahead of time, but these constraints weren't thought through and the class was essentially overbooked. (13 students - two relays)
Curriculum
- There was no written curriculum - Note taking was encouraged, but the curriculum jumped around so much as to be useless.
- The curriculum was supposed to be progressive, building on items coming before it, but, other than the concept of acquiring & using sights, this didn't happen.
- Curriculum called for ~2,000 rds. We got through, maybe, 650?
Coaching
- People with obviously horrible technique were not stopped, corrected and admonished to do the right thing. This is number 2 on my list of eye-twich inducing things. There were several people shooting with a tea-cup grip, for example. It was related, via the class contact person, that the instructor felt he wouldn't be able to fix their technique in one class. Maybe. Maybe not. I've seen other instructors correct horrible grips, trigger press, etc.
- There was no real feedback given for the drills - either you passed them or you didn't, but that didn't really matter, since there wasn't a point most of the time anyway. Eg, you were told to shoot from 15 yards 10 shots into the bullseye, but the instructor didn't really help anyone get any better.
- We shot a "stage" at the end - there was no coaching, no feedback given. In fact any feedback he had about "tactical priority"/"slice the pie" was totally out the window. Some of us were baffled by this.
Safety
- This is number 1 on my list of eye-twich inducing thing: Shooting steel from too close. He was going to do a walk-up drill and shoot steel from ~4 yards. Dude. No.
- Even after being informed about the ranges minimum safe steel distance policy, there were a few close calls where the range owner or I had to ask him to heed the policy.
- There was some real hinky gun-handling encouraged among people I didn't know/didn't trust. Dude, I'd trust Mr White or Tom Givens, having never met them, to chamber check their pistols behind me in a dark room, but I wouldn't trust a few of those attendees to make ready while I was behind them outside. Nobody got hurt, but I think luck had a big element to play there... In the end, I'm not sure it added anything at all to the class anyway.
Was there anything I liked?
- I will carry a reload from now on, not for the extra ammo, but because it could help clear a stoppage.
- I forgot how awesome front-lighting the sights are when shooting in the dark (I don't have nighties on my gun) - it pretty much makes it impossible not to understand "calling your shots".
- I like shooting precision pistol and haven't done that in a while... Will do that some more.
- I usually don't get emotional when I shoot, but it was tough to shoot while angry because I felt like could be hanging out with my 1st and 2nd favorite people on the planet: my wife and 6 mo daughter.
This is a bit of short list, so here's two stories that may tie things together:
It is Saturday night, after dinner, we're standing around in the dark talking about night sights, Harries-technique, etc. I've been standing all day, since 5AM, when I cleaned up the range. I sat down and fell asleep for ~15 minutes. I woke up and the instructor was still talking. I moved over to my ammo can, mainly just to stand and someone asked him about an equipment question and they started debating the topic for an additional half hour.
On Sunday, we did a lot of unloaded start drills and spoke about Israeli-carry and how, in some contexts, it may be warranted (large non-permissive crowds, etc...) It isn't that I don't agree, rather, it was like: we're civilians trying to learn the fundamentals of marksmanship where some people need to learn how to grip the pistol right, hit the F'n target and reholster safely. WTF does some of that ninja-discussion have to do with any of this? I pretty much checked out, right then and there...
I think a lot of folks may dismiss my review, chalking it up to "he's a gamer" or perhaps "he's a GM, what does he expect to learn...", but the truth is I actively seek out training from other instructors because I'd like to further my competence and because I'd like to learn alternate ways to explain techniques/insights/motivations. I like keeping an open mind to see what else I'm missing. In the beginning of the class, Dave asked what stage we all thought we were at - Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced - and I answered "Beginner". While I know how to shoot my gun, etc, I like to "suspend disbelief" and absorb and insights a trainer can lay on us. In essence, approaching things from the "beginners mind".
Some interesting lessons in the recent past have come from a tactical appreciation, a technical discovery, refinement of techniques I know next to nothing about (like shooting "long open guns", aka, "rifles") - these are the smaller nuggets I'm hoping to learn about... The little refinements, the explanation that makes something you read 5 years ago all of a sudden click.
Speaking about this course, specifically, I think 15 years ago, before I even knew what shooting was like, a class where people were challenged to shoot 2K rounds in a weekend was really something. I think that an average guy couldn't help but shoot 2K and learn some insight into the shooting process. These days, however, I think the state of the art in training has greatly changed: Getting a few drills really squared away, with high round counts andultra-specific pass-fail mentalities seems to have given us a generation of guys that are cracking USPSA GM quickly (this implies some form of technical competence). There are more and more guys reloading volumes of ammunition and shooting thousands of rounds a week for months at a time. I think people are looking not only for the pass-fail guidelines, but are looking for insights on how to develop the knowledge-side of the equation, answering the "why" questions. To this end, without much feedback and without much guidance, a lot of us left the range wondering what we were doing.
Dudes, think what you may, but I'm already over it.