pwoolford
AR15's make me :-)
Took the class this past weekend and (learning from Hogarth) wanted to get some notes down before I forgot them all!
Class was full of team and individual drills focusing on shot placement over anything else. All shots were fired on head sized bullseye targets and we taped up misses after almost every drill. Larry would demo a drill then we would shoot it. He would then offer suggestions on how you could do something better/differently. He is definitely an accuracy first trainer. There were 19 students for the class but 2 couldn't make it back Sunday.
Day 1 - All handgun. Started with a couple simple drills like 5 shots off hand, 5 shots strong hand, 5 shots both hands to give us a reference point for later. I believe this was done at 7 yards. We then went into Larry's method of prepping and resetting the trigger for each shot.
LAV most certainly hates the trend of teaching where you fire then hold the trigger back, then slowly release the trigger waiting for the click then take your follow up shot. This is exactly how I was taught. He thinks it is among the top training scars that causes LEO's to crank off so many misses during an engagement. I probably won't do the explanation justice but he thinks that method causes people to focus too much on that reset "click" that they then crank off the next shot immediately after hearing the click when the need arises to shoot quickly. Instead he teaches to release the trigger during recoil (which your finger naturally likes to do anyway) then prep the trigger to the "wall" and focus on your next shot. Subtle difference but I see where he is coming from.
He also teaches to use the slide stop to drop the slide after reloading. It is certainly faster and if LAV hasn't worn out his slide I doubt I'm going to wear out mine. We asked about the gross motor skill versus fine motor skill and I honestly don't remember his answer but it probably had curse words and something to the effect of use what you like and practice it. I should say one of LAV's favorite responses was "What the Fu** do I know". Umm 15 years in Delta and millions of rounds down range I'd say he knows more than most.
Day 2 was mostly AR until the afternoon then we mixed in transition drills. We started by zeroing our AR's the went into shooting from prone/kneeling/sitting and standing at 50 yards. I forget the timing but he has a cool drill where you start at 50 yds and have to get off 5 or 10 shots from each position then as you move closer the time limit drops for the same shots. (this is where taking notes would help). He also had some team drills that I liked where you start with the person furthest to the left. They would fire 5 rounds then the person next to them and so on. When it reaches the right end of the line that person would fire 10 rounds then you go back to the left. We did that drill with AR's and handguns and combinations of both. Also did variations of that drill as 2 larger teams and 3 smaller teams.
All in all this was a great two days of drills and practice for me. Vickers is a character and I'd love to train with him again. Just seeing him ride Dan's (Gun Connection Dan) ass was worth the price of admission! I should also note that he told us he would gear the class to our collective skill level and there wasn't any set schedule we had to stick to. We spent a lot of time shooting and running drills versus other classes where I've spent considerable time doing mag change or malfunction drills. I’m sure that ratio would have change if needed. I think I went through 250-350 rounds handgun and 350-400 AR.
Class was full of team and individual drills focusing on shot placement over anything else. All shots were fired on head sized bullseye targets and we taped up misses after almost every drill. Larry would demo a drill then we would shoot it. He would then offer suggestions on how you could do something better/differently. He is definitely an accuracy first trainer. There were 19 students for the class but 2 couldn't make it back Sunday.
Day 1 - All handgun. Started with a couple simple drills like 5 shots off hand, 5 shots strong hand, 5 shots both hands to give us a reference point for later. I believe this was done at 7 yards. We then went into Larry's method of prepping and resetting the trigger for each shot.
LAV most certainly hates the trend of teaching where you fire then hold the trigger back, then slowly release the trigger waiting for the click then take your follow up shot. This is exactly how I was taught. He thinks it is among the top training scars that causes LEO's to crank off so many misses during an engagement. I probably won't do the explanation justice but he thinks that method causes people to focus too much on that reset "click" that they then crank off the next shot immediately after hearing the click when the need arises to shoot quickly. Instead he teaches to release the trigger during recoil (which your finger naturally likes to do anyway) then prep the trigger to the "wall" and focus on your next shot. Subtle difference but I see where he is coming from.
He also teaches to use the slide stop to drop the slide after reloading. It is certainly faster and if LAV hasn't worn out his slide I doubt I'm going to wear out mine. We asked about the gross motor skill versus fine motor skill and I honestly don't remember his answer but it probably had curse words and something to the effect of use what you like and practice it. I should say one of LAV's favorite responses was "What the Fu** do I know". Umm 15 years in Delta and millions of rounds down range I'd say he knows more than most.
Day 2 was mostly AR until the afternoon then we mixed in transition drills. We started by zeroing our AR's the went into shooting from prone/kneeling/sitting and standing at 50 yards. I forget the timing but he has a cool drill where you start at 50 yds and have to get off 5 or 10 shots from each position then as you move closer the time limit drops for the same shots. (this is where taking notes would help). He also had some team drills that I liked where you start with the person furthest to the left. They would fire 5 rounds then the person next to them and so on. When it reaches the right end of the line that person would fire 10 rounds then you go back to the left. We did that drill with AR's and handguns and combinations of both. Also did variations of that drill as 2 larger teams and 3 smaller teams.
All in all this was a great two days of drills and practice for me. Vickers is a character and I'd love to train with him again. Just seeing him ride Dan's (Gun Connection Dan) ass was worth the price of admission! I should also note that he told us he would gear the class to our collective skill level and there wasn't any set schedule we had to stick to. We spent a lot of time shooting and running drills versus other classes where I've spent considerable time doing mag change or malfunction drills. I’m sure that ratio would have change if needed. I think I went through 250-350 rounds handgun and 350-400 AR.
We had a couple people run into issues due to not enough (or poor quality) lube. Larry said that was another thing he is seeing more and more of. People showing up thinking their gun can run dry or nearly dry and ending up having problems. He likes lube and agrees with you that pistols and ARs should have plenty of it.
