My first AAR so go easy on me.
This time last week I was packing bags, cleaning guns, weighing ammo and practicing my draw and reloads so as not to make a fool of myself in front of Rob Leatham. Tuesday, August 7th, I arrived in Phoenix, AZ with all of my gear and declared bags in good order, got a rental car quickly (no thanks to Hertz, and much thanks to Thrifty) and checked into the hotel with no problems.
After a quick lunch, we headed out to the Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club for the Tuesday Night Steel match where I was to meet Rob. If you haven’t seen Rob shoot on video, you need to… it’s quite impressive. But if you haven’t seen him shoot in person, it’s quite amazing. He finished first in the Production Division (a fairly stock Springfield XD) and third overall (competing against Grand Masters with tricked out guns). My goal was to get all of the BS’ing out of the way on Tuesday so that my lesson the next day wouldn’t be dominated with conversations about who we know, don’t know, like, dislike, and war stories. Mission accomplished.
I should mention at this point that Arizona in August is quite unpleasant. It literally felt like a hairdryer was blowing in my face the whole time I was there. God bless the poor people that live there. I’ll take Alabama’s 90 degrees and 80% humidity any day. I was warned by Rob and everyone else at the range to consume more water than I thought I should. I did. It helped.
I got to the range at 0645 for my 0700 lesson. We quickly exchanged pleasantries and got to work. The first thing he wanted me to do was shoot groups at 15 yards. I believe this was to make sure I wasn’t a knucklehead and was safe with a weapon, and make sure I knew how to pull the trigger without disturbing the sights. Mission accomplished. My Wilson Combat Tactical Supergrade was up to the task and kept an 8 shot group in a two inch area while shooting slow-fire off hand. Instruction began at this point.
When shooting groups, I was in a relaxed, upright stance. When he told me to pick up the pace, I did not change my stance and he corrected that. He wanted me to bend more at the waist and knees, put my strong side foot back a little and get in more of a fighting stance. No problem. I’ve done that many times and naturally go to it from the draw. Then he asked me a question that would lead to the resolution of a problem I’ve had with major calibers for a while…”Do you sometimes have to reposition your hands before you’re done with a mag?” I answered in the affirmative and he asked which hand I thought was the cause of it. Obviously, the support hand. Wrong answer. When he showed me how to tightly lock up my strong hand wrist and tighten my support hand grip on the rear of the grip panel, the problem went away for good. I had been taught to squeeze the grip more with my fingers, but his instruction was to pinch the rear of the grip between the heels of my hands. This worked well.
I was still letting the gun push me around a bit (causing vertical stringing during fast fire) and he had me lean into the gun a bit more. A good rule of thumb is that you should be able to always lift your rearmost foot’s heel off the ground when shooting. That’s when you know you’re leaning into the gun enough. We also worked on the push-pull and inward pressure on the gun while in the isosceles stance. I also needed to bend my support elbow a bit more since it was inadvertently locked out.
From there, we moved on to the draw, where he was successfully able to remove about a half second from my previously SLOW draw. My Blade-Tech holster was not to blame. Over the years, I had built in a momentary pause when my hand first grasped the gun. This was causing major problems when trying to beat his shot timer. I was also taking a less than ideal path from the holster to my shooting stance, which he corrected. One thing to note if you’re in a similar situation… he said most people do a perfect draw in reverse when they are reholstering. If you can reverse the direction of the path you take when reholstering, you are probably close to an efficient draw.
As we began shooting faster and adding more elements to shooting, the wheels would come off and we’d take a step back and work on whatever problems he saw. His constant feedback and question asking really helped me figure out what I needed to work on when I left.
Probably the most interesting instruction he gave me was that I needed to learn how to not use the sights so much and how to jerk the trigger correctly.
WHAT?
Jerk the trigger and don’t use the sights?
This is the exact opposite of most instruction I’ve ever heard. In his estimation, jerking the trigger is the only way to shoot as fast as you need to in certain circumstances and if you do it correctly, it won’t hurt accuracy. When he showed me that if I was “locked up tight” on the gun with a rigid grip and aggressive stance, I could get away with jerking the trigger without killing accuracy. He proved it to me and made me prove it to myself on the range. I agreed I was overusing my sights, looking for too much sight picture feedback before I pulled the trigger.
While I naturally sucked at most things he had me do, he said one thing I did was exceptionally good… I had a faster reaction to the buzzer than he did. Start with the finger on the trigger and fire as soon as I heard the first sound of the beep. My first attempt produced a .15 second reaction time and his best was a .16 second. Something to hang my hat on I guess. (probably not LOL)
The last thing we worked on was reloads. I SUCK AT RELOADS. I especially suck at reloading a single stack gun. However, I had two things helping me out a bit… I was using the new one piece magwell from Wilson Combat, and Rob Leatham was standing next to me. I think Ray Charles could find the new one piece magwell from Wilson as it’s huge and adds no more size to the gun than their previous generation of magwells. Rob showed me how to simply put the gun at an optimal position to receive the magazine and then guide the mag into the gun in such a way that my shooting grip is easily regained with a quick movement. My reload times did get better, but I still need a lot of work in this area.
Overall, was this private instruction worth $250? YES! I learned more in just a few hours of one on one time with Rob than I could have on my own in several months. Think of all the time and ammo I would have wasted! If you ever get the chance to study with Rob Leatham, you should do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Stay tuned for a very interesting Rob Leatham class that he’s planning… more on that when I’m allowed to tell you.
