Just shot a two day handgun course at Paul Howe’s CSAT facility in East Texas. My background is former USMC grunt/current LEO and have trained prior to this with Travis Haley, Pat McNamara, Northern Red, TigerSwan, and Jeff Gonzales. I ran a gen 4 glock 23 out of a g-code holster and had no problems all weekend with the setup. The 19 students ranged from SWAT guys, regular Patrolmen and Contractors to a Doctor and a young college girl that had never shot before.
Day One- Made the drive up from Houston to Nacogdoches in a little over two hours. Paul’s facility is located on over 300 acres of land, a few minutes off of 59 North. CSAT has multiple ranges, a shoot house and Paul even provided access to his team house for students to stay at for the duration of the course. This saved me from having to pay for a hotel for a few nights and was a pleasant surprise.
Day one began with admin tasks, safety briefing and a “group hug” to introduce everyone. Paul runs his Operator course at the conclusion of a week long Instructor course, so each student shooter has an Instructor to observe them for the duration of the course. My instructor was an extremely squared away Boise, ID SWAT officer, who helped me tweak some small things that lowered my times and got me more accurate. I really liked the attention that was given to each student and have attended courses before where the instructor to student ratio has been to high for individual attention/diagnosis of the students.
The course was mainly shot from CQB distance at Paul’s CSAT target, which is similar to an IPSC target, with the CSAT A-zone representing the brain stem and spinal column. Paul preaches accuracy over speed and taught that speed would come with practice, but wanted students to concentrate on making good hits. Paul is a proponent that he wants to hit “switches” with his hits and wants to eliminate a threat in under three hits. This called for hits to the brain stem, upper thoracic cavity and spinal cord.
Course was taught from the feet up, fist covering stance, moving up to full lock out with the arms, sight picture/alignment and trigger control. A series of ten CSAT standards where drilled continuously to enforce the skills instructed to show how deviation from the fundamentals leads to misses. The day ended with some 25 yard bullseye work and the standards being shot, while each student was videotaped for analyzation by Paul and the instructors.
Day 2 started with the students and the instructors watching the video of the prior days shooting. This really showed students, such as myself, where we were losing time on our drawers, reloads, etc. This is an excellent tool to help visual based learners self diagnose their shooting. Paul observed that i wasn’t shooting with a “dead chest”, which makes the shooting platform more stable and that I had a tendency to “hang” my gun while getting on the front sight. Both problems were subsequently corrected and my times lowered.
We then moved back to the range to work 25 yard ball and dummy bullseye work to show the effects of trigger control. The class then shot the standards and compared results to the prior days times, all students improved considerably.
We then shot a string of moving fire on steel from 25 yards, working around a series of parked vehicles. Paul taught position sul for movement and also wanted tac reloads down in the open, as to be able to get rounds downrange faster than having to come back out from cover.
We then did some 25 yard barricade work on steel. Paul is a fan using angles to minimize your signature to the bad guy. He taught if you don’t have a good angle, then move to better cover in order to gain the angle that you need to get hits.
My favorite part of the class was the surgical shoot on a unique hostage target. Different targets showed smaller portions of the bad guys head behind the hostage’s and the fundamentals of the class were put to the test in order not to hit the hostage.
We then shot the standards on the targets covered by dark colored t-shirts and saw how important landmarking is for getting good killing hits.
The day ended with a graduation ceremony and a round of good byes.
I really liked this CSAT course and would recommend it to any pistol shooter wanted to improve themselves. Paul is a great American, great teacher and all around good dude. He was constantly up and down the line helping students and asking if anyone had any questions and offered use of the bunkhouse to all students. The individual instruction received was unique to the classes I have attended and am looking forward to coming back to CSAT if a level 2 course is made available. I purposely did not include the standards and the associated times, because if you want them take the class lol. Also, if you do take the course watching Paul’s Panteao DVD and shooting the standards prior to the course will help as well.