AAR: Ernest Langdon 2-Day Pistol Course, Waterman, IL, 10/9/2010 - 10/10/2010
AFTER ACTION REPORT: Ernest Langdon 2-Day Tactical Pistol Course
October 9th &10th, 2010 at Aurora Sportsmen's Club in Waterman, IL
Introduction
First off, sorry that this AAR is coming a bit late: Last week got away from me and I had to drive from Chicago to Las Cruces, NM to compete in the New Mexico State IDPA Match (It was a total blast!). Anyway, on with the show...
Mr. Langdon needs little introduction here - if you haven't heard of Ernest, then check out some of his background/credentials: http://pistol-training.com/archives/3363
Over the summer, a few members from the McHenry (Illinois) IDPA club got out to the Illinois State IDPA Match and, unbeknownst to us, one of our members was in the USMC with Mr. Langdon and asked him to come out and shoot the match. Those of us fortunate to be squadded with Mr Langdon got a chance to pick his brain on the principles of performance, stage breakdown and other minutiae of pistol shooting.
(He won the match, overall…)
Since we had asked so much during the course of the day, and seeing that there was more to learn/deeper levels to dig into, we decided to ask about the possibility of Mr. Langdon coming back for more formal instruction. Early on, it was decided that holding a course geared towards the fundamentals of pistol shooting was probably more beneficial than a course oriented towards competition.
This AAR gives a brief overview of the course with regards to topics covered, presentation style, and things that I found most interesting.
My Background
Growing up near Chicago, I was exposed to handguns fairly late in life - I started shooting revolvers when I was ~25 years old - and purchased my first semi-automatic 3 years ago with the intent of starting USPSA, PPC and IDPA competition. Currently, I'm a SSR Expert in IDPA and mid-B Production Division competitor in USPSA. I've taken about 8-10 course: LFI/Mas Ayoob, Team Spartan (John Krupa), etc.
Class Statistics
-Weather was perfect for both days: Clear, upper 80's with a gentle breeze and mild humidity.
-The Aurora Sportsmen's Club (hence forth "ASC") is a great range: Excellent facilities, 600 yd Rifle range (in Illinois, that is a treat!), clean and well maintained. They're really looking to grow an IDPA club… Additionally, it is close to the Ho-Ka Turkey farms - Thanksgiving is right around the corner!! (Insert "bunch of turkeys" joke here... :p)
Attachment 6310
-Originally, we had 10 participants, but one had to cancel for a medical emergency.
-All used semi-automatics:
3 CZ 9mm (One well-maintained, high round count 75 SAO, one older 75 DA/SA, and one compact DA/SA)
2 Glock 9mm
1 Glock .40 with AmeriGlo tritium sights (Mine)
1 XD 9mm
1 XD in .45
1 S&W M&P 9mm with Warren 2-dot Tritiums.
1 Sig 229 in .357 Sig
-Mr. Langdon instructed using a .357 SIG S&W M&P with Speer 125 gr ammunition. The pistol was sporting Warren 2-dot Tritium sights. Additionally, he was running Arredondo magazine extensions.
Attachment 6308
-Most folks ran kydex holsters, three of us were using retention holsters (2 Serpas and 1 Safariland ALS). I didn't catch what Mr Langdon was using.
- One older CZ 75 B had a lot of problems and the user switched to a new stock DA/SA CZ compact that functioned well throughout the day.
-Round count was roughly 1000 rds. I shot 950 rounds and some shot as many as 1100.
-All shooting was done on paper (diagnose the hits), on IDPA targets. When targets were shot up, we'd glue on a paper IDPA target overlay. Sometimes Langdon would spray paint dots into the target which were used for transition drills.
-Cost was $400.00 for 2-days of instruction.
-Roughly 3 hours classroom/10 hours range.
AAR: Ernest Langdon 2-Day Pistol Course, Waterman, IL, 10/9/2010 - 10/10/2010 Day1
Day 1
Classroom
The day began with some paperwork (waivers, etc) and quickly developed into a discussion regarding Mr. Langdon's background and experience. After discussing safety, we started covering the principles of performance, reactions under stress and how to best learn pistol-craft from a perspective of it supporting the natural bodily responses that people are seemingly hardwired for.
Repeatedly, Mr. Langdon would examine the parameters controlling what event were were learning about/training for ...
1.) A fast paced gun-fight at short distances...
2.) … with an huge helping of stress!!
… and, from those premises, would present techniques that would support the body's natural responses.
One of the questions that was asked early on, was how best to test those responses; ergo, how does one prepare for a violent confrontation without having to involve oneself in gunfights? Langdon's answer to that was simple, "Competition", though the reasons behind it merit a bit of discussion: Since the body's stress response is the same to almost any stressor (it is a physiological event), learning how to operate under even low-to-moderate amounts of stress will help to ingrain the patterns practiced.
Personally, I've got to agree: how many many times have you heard someone say that their brain "turned off" when the buzzer came on?
After that discussion, Mr Langdon discussed staples such as the Cooper color codes and combat mindset. There are better resources available than what I can summarize, so I defer to them for interested parties (link to Amazon).
What was fascinating, though, was that Langdon's class was the first one where I've ever heard an instructor delve into adult learning and the process of sub-conscious performance. This is something key: if a shooter has learned to perform at a subconscious level, then complex actions, such as trigger control, sight alignment, drawstroke, etc at largely automatized. A large part of this is focused, conscious control over the motions/actions and developing habituation through repetitions.
However, once learned, it was interesting to hear Langdon say that conscious control would only slow a person down and make them error prone. Instead, he summarized the central thesis of Lanny Bassham's method: the concept that the mind can only hold one mental picture at a time and that the subconscious will direct the person towards that picture. Interesting stuff, really…
Mr Langdon did touch on the concept of simmunitions and FOF training in aiding people - essentially habituating their mind to "see that movie" so that when the ballon goes up, they're mental at least familiar with what is going on…
Attachment 6312
Range
We headed out to the range on that wonderful, sunny, breezy, warm day and after a safety review (4-laws of safety, hot range, keep guns loaded), began to work out the kinks starting with stance, grip and trigger control. While these are hugely fundamental topics, I won't dwell here much since they're well described elsewhere.
Stance - was presented as largely isosceles, with weight on balls of feet, slight forward lean, shoulders shrugged (stress response and to support the head), one foot slightly in front of the other, Elbows high and bent to leverage recoil.
Grip - thumbs forward grip, as high on the gun as possible without getting bit. (Note - I got dinged a few times by my Glock and as my had swelled, it was impossible to shoot without some duct tape… This usually doesn't happen…) Support hand: under the trigger guard, meat of the hand pressing strongly onto the stock of the gun with the angle of the wrist (pre-load) keeping it from buckling.
Trigger Control - "Prep the trigger", take up slack and control the break. Learn to quickly reset the trigger. No staging on DA/SA guns - keep the trigger moving! Some discussion about "slapping", which works for larger, heavier guns that aren't as disturbed by violence of the motion.
Concept of "Pinning and Reset" - "Pinning" a trigger is extension of "follow through", keeping the trigger back for precise shots. "Reset" is concept where trigger prep begins RIGHT AFTER the shot breaks.
Langdon had the class running drills focusing on examining the maximum speed with which we could engage targets of various size - small to large, large to small, right to left, left to right. Additionally, we covered reloading - slide, speed, tac, retention.
A few notable drills and concepts really stick out:
-The "X-Drill": Described here, which really works the kinks out of transitions. The goal is to push to the point where the shooter is beginning to drop about 20% of the shots - then training to raise the limit.
-"Eye Transition": Langdon was huge on the concept training the eyes to transition to the next target before moving the pistol. The alleviates tunnel vision on the front sight only and allows for the shooter to look at what they're going to shoot, drive the gun to that point, then focus on the sights. Learning to see quicker is the key to learning to shoot faster.
-Driving transitions with the legs. The muscles are larger, stronger and as long as the eyes lead the way, the gun will get there smoother.
-"Press-out": Learning to drive the gun, while prepping the trigger, then at extension, break the shot.
We finished the day by running all shooters through "El Presidente" - Mr. Langdon running it in 7.04 or something with perfect hits…
(Link to YouTube)
AAR: Ernest Langdon 2-Day Pistol Course, Waterman, IL, 10/9/2010 - 10/10/2010 Part 3
Day 2
Range
The class started out by shooting the "Zebra Drill", a 6-shot drill moving further and further back to 25 yards. (I need to adjust my sights - they are consistently an inch to left at ~20 yards! This would bite me in the ass at the NM match since I was down 2 on a 30 yard target!) The focus in this was to work the "press out" on the draw and learn to work the trigger consistently.
Here's a video (youtube) of Mr. Langdon.
We'd transitioned to use of cover, strong-hand and opposite-hand only shooting, and examined opposite-hand only draws and reloading, shooting on the move, and finally finishing with shooting wide open transitions of very close targets as a drill to examine peoples natural limits.
While I'm obviously glossing over a lot, it is only because most readers are probably familiar with the concepts. Suffices to say that learning them from Mr. Langdon is a way to learn them correctly and efficiently.
A few notable points were the alternative way of handling gun transitions, instead of the method that Enos had described. Langdon's method involved shifting the grip on the handle and creating a gap under the beaver tail. It seems more secure, allowing for a more solid grip while transitioning.
Final Thoughts
I think I'm at a point where my mechanics of performing action pistol related skills are getting there - I was most interested in Mr. Langdon's presentation of eye training, working cadence, and mental development. I feel that I really got my money's worth out of this class. Additionally, I think that he helped the other shooters an incredible amount - Mr Langdon's clear presentation style and one-on-one coaching really helped them to push past "square range" only techniques.
