This was a really great class. We had only 3 students with one of the greatest instructors in the world.
Dave was really polite, professional, approachable, and humble for a man of his experieance and seemingly limitless knowledge. He demoed the material and then wither participated in the drills with us or watched us. Although, even when he was on the line with us, he didn’t miss a thing we did (or did not do). You could tell that he cared about the students and wanted them to gain knowledge and skill. At no time did he ever have an ego or brag about his background. He only once spoke of it when we asked him about a holster and he said he found it worked better for him when he was teaching at a certain facility.
We did a LOT of excercises and drills. He could take something that seemed so basic and add to it, making it more complex each time. We of course did the “Iron Cross” which was new to me, but I started to really dig it and it will now be standard in my own practice time. We worked excercises with both hands, primary hand only, and support hand only. We worked dry fire from contact to 10 yards (max allowed with the space we were in). We worked live fire from contact to 25 yards (max space again).
The first day started at 8am and went to 5pm, and was dry fire only. I used my duty rig set up with my issue G17RTF2 and G26 as a BUG. The second day was dry fire from 8am to 2om dry fire only and I used a G19 from concealment. We then ran live fire from 3pm to 5pm. After that we went back to Talon Tactical world HQ and Dave sat down with us for a QandA session. He gave us a lot of useful skill building drills, talked about the value of shooting bullseyes and groups to increase accuracy, and opened the floor to anything we wanted to know about tactics, shooting, and gear from him. This man owns his material and he can shoot like nobody’s business. He is a wealth of knowledge.
I know that some people I talked to did not want to go to the class because it was going to be a “dry fire only” event. They missd out on a hell of an opportunity. I learned more from this two day class than I ever have anywhere else, except for maybe training with Jeff Cooper or Mario Martinez in a one on one environment. I got my money’s worth and then some. I vary rarely agree with everything an instructor teaches in a class, just because some things don’t always work as weel for me as they do te instructor. I keep an open mind, but will discard what I don’t think will benefit me.
Dave took the best of everything I have learned and put it all together for me. He also pointed out a few things that I was doing that I could improve on if I did it a dfifferent way, and he was right. He also showed me things taht I had discarded in the past that I am going to look at going back to, because they work better for me.
He also helped me look hard at my duty belt set up and gave me some pointers on equipment placement. I found out that I needed to move some things around and look at some different equipment in certain areas. I am going to move my primary mag puches to a diferent location (to put them more in line with my off duty set up) and place a spare mag in front of my gun for easier one handed access.
I am also going to be taking a hard look at the M&P. I spent two days practicing with my Glock’s and did better live fire than I have in some time. However, I shot a M&P 9 and did even better with it, after two days practice with the Glock. I am going to compare it to my G17/19 in a more contrrolled comparrision when I have the time.
Many thanks to Bryan for setting up the class and doing a great job as a host, too Mike Benedict of Talon Tactical for te hospitality and world class kydex, and to Dave fro doing what he does.