My first training class is coming up in the next few days. I’ll be taking fighting pistol with TR up in camden. Knowing that I was having serious performance anxiety and so that I wouldn’t be completely unprepared for it; Miller took me under his wing and showed me a few things.
we didn’t get started till late due to my jacked up work schedule. We made our way out to the spot He picked out last time. He had found a dried up creek bed with ample slopes on each side. We set up the targets to fire down into the creek bed.
Miller did a good job of explaining/demonstrating a strong draw technique that i guess i’ll be shown further in class. Once all the initial instruction was given we moved to the firing line. we worked mostly from 10 feet and closer.
I was running an OSOE Tapered war belt, Emdom 6o4 pistol pouch and safariland 6004 drop leg holster.
We did a series of sight picture drills, using full magazines. When we first engaged the targets I was shooting about a 5 inch group. With the instructors help we were able to close it up to about 2 inches. (sorry. forgot to do some shots of the targets during).
Once we got the sight picture to the good enough point we went into some threat assessment drills. The instruction given was 2 center of mass, 1 head, muzzle up, 360 degree threat scan, top off, and holster.
Since I was in boot, this was the first time i had someone yelling at me while i was firing. It was pleasantly un-nerving. I’m sure it’s not anything like a fire fight, and a very toned down version of what the class will be; but it really made me realize where i was fucking up.
First off, when stressed my draw went to shit. Instead of one hand going to the pectoral muscle, I found it going to the side with my other hand, raising and presenting the weapon with both hands. After that I was rushing my shots instead of making them counts. the first two center of mass shots were good (or so i thought) but my head shots were off.
Apparently, unbeknown to myself, I’ve had formal ballet training. Or so it would seem. I was pulling beautiful pirawets (sp?) while doing the 360 degree threat scan. This was a two part issue for me 1) i was doing the threat scan entirely to fast and wouldn’t have been able to go to arms immediately should there have been another threat 2) for whatever reason i’d forget to re-access the initial target and go straight to holstering the weapon after the top off. This cause a bit more yelling, and for whatever reason i found myself paying more attention to the instructor instead of what he was saying and the target.
Something i thought of today, is the next time we go out there I want to set up some “threats” around the area. I won’t know what they are, and the object of the exercise would be for the instructor to quiz the shooter on what they saw during the scan. and then eventually move into shooting at the threats. This is a part problem for me.
Being the gear whore that I am, of course i had to take as much kit as i could. We had three different osoe rigs, a chicom rig (miller’s) and a handful of first line set ups. Running through some initial drills made me realize that, even after months and months of research, you can’t perfect your rig till you run it. I <thought> I had everything set like i wanted. Ernt. wrong. Turns out the placement of two pouches was completely impeding my draw stroke.
after all the pistol work, we went to doing some rifle work. well miller did anyways. He helped me sight in my primary arms micro-dot on the ak.
Due to technical malfucktions with my ak, i stopped shooting and miller demonstrated some transitions and some low light shotgun work. He also got to play with the new 12ga pull out pouch.
Lessons learn:
1- Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I really need to slow it way up and access and re-access the situation a lot more thoroughly.
2- finding the holster without looking for it.
3- I need to do a lot more three round drills.
4- stress is a good thing. it pushes you to fuck up and to learn from those fuck ups.
5- i need to stop pay attention to the instructor while they are shouting commands and keep focused on the threat.
6- high speed gear is not for low speed folks. I’ve got some serious gear changes coming up. the tapered war belt rocks out, but i need to ditch the emdom pouch and replace it with some manga pouches.
7- 100 rounds of .45 goes QUICK. i’m going to have to work a second job just to buy all the ammo i plan on going through.
next time:
I’d like to work on threat assessment, moving and firing, and some different firing positions. i think i was the cleanest person out there when we left.