Calengor
wishes he were spike
First, I'd like to thank AJ, Ed, Ted, and everyone else at Engage for holding this class. Prior to this I had taken an NRA basic pistol about 5 years ago after buying my first pistol, and in Mar2012 I had taken Northern Red's (now part of the Invictus Alliance) basic pistol course. If I already had these under my belt, why take another basic pistol class? First and foremost, a friend who had no pistol instruction wanted to take the class and wanted me to take it with me. Secondarily, I believe you can always keep learning even from revisiting basic courses.
Weather: It started off gray and with some scattered light rain, but the sun eventually came out. The weather was never terrible for us, as the classroom portion was inside an air conditioned room and the range portion was under a cover, which was great. This was part of AJ's mantra that in order to keep the students learning properly, they had to be comfortable. It's enough to keep all the different things about sight alignment, sight picture, stance, trigger press, etc in your mind without also worrying about overheating, getting sunburned, or being wet and miserable.
Equipment: The pistol I used was an M&P9 with Apex DCAEK and RAM installed. My friend used a Gen 4 Glock 17 provided by Engage. We both used Remington UMC ammo which worked as expected.
Classroom portion: The classroom portion went by quickly, and AJ and Ed covered everything from the different types of pistols, actions, the cycle of operations, and safety rules to stance, grip, sight picture, sight alignment, and trigger press. Not a lot of questions were asked by the students, as most had had several years of pistol experience even if little formal training. My friend had reviewed the Army marksmanship unit pistol guide prior to taking the class. There were two neat exercises we did inside, one with throwing and catching tennis balls to show us how our stance should be. The other was to present our grip to the instructors for them to critique and help us improve.
Live fire portion: After a delicious pizza lunch, we took our equipment down to the range. The range rules were reviewed and AJ started us off with 6 rounds on a target at about 7 yards. Like the rest of the exercises we performed, we repeated this for a total of 2 repetitions. This was to let the instructors assess what each of the students was doing. From there we shot on another target while focusing on feeling/hearing the trigger reset. After this we shot on some vertical and horizontal trigger stripes to help us learn to control how we were squeezing the trigger and learn the height over bore of our pistols.
After a short break, we shot on some more bulls-eye type targets to help us put everything together as well as circles of different diameters to help us work on focusing. We then shot at a hanging gas tank at about 25 yards while putting all the fundamentals into it, which was a lot of fun, especially due to that wonderful DING when you score a hit. The last thing we did was shoot a drill (twice) focusing on cadence.
After this, AJ did a supplemental class on cleaning a pistol, in which he focused on how this should not take a very long time, 10 minutes at max with modern pistols.
What I noticed about my own shooting throughout the day is that when I rushed or held the pistol out for too long is when my shooting suffered. I'd often start with the first two rounds of a drill in the center and then as I kept the pistol out or rushed the next shot, I would forget something and throw a shot. While taking this class (and probably because of the previous classes I've taken) I noticed I could call when I threw a shot. I might not know exactly where it went, but I could tell as soon as it went off if I'd ****ed it up.
Throughout the class, AJ and Ed stressed consistency in shooting. Especially consistently shooting while properly applying the fundamentals so as to not get stuck in bad habits which are hard to break. As the class went on, and I became more consistent, I got better. At the same time, there was another student whom I noticed was changing what his thumbs were doing pretty much every drill and his shooting seemed to be getting worse as the day went on.
There were 2 other takeaways I got from this class:
1) Don't go shooting without a purpose. Work on something every time, get better. Apply the fundamentals consistently and work on improving something every time.
2) It's never a waste of time to take basic classes over (or even a first time). My friend got a lot better throughout the day, and I also learned things and improved.
Once again, thanks to AJ, Ed, Ted, and everyone else involved in holding this class.
Weather: It started off gray and with some scattered light rain, but the sun eventually came out. The weather was never terrible for us, as the classroom portion was inside an air conditioned room and the range portion was under a cover, which was great. This was part of AJ's mantra that in order to keep the students learning properly, they had to be comfortable. It's enough to keep all the different things about sight alignment, sight picture, stance, trigger press, etc in your mind without also worrying about overheating, getting sunburned, or being wet and miserable.
Equipment: The pistol I used was an M&P9 with Apex DCAEK and RAM installed. My friend used a Gen 4 Glock 17 provided by Engage. We both used Remington UMC ammo which worked as expected.
Classroom portion: The classroom portion went by quickly, and AJ and Ed covered everything from the different types of pistols, actions, the cycle of operations, and safety rules to stance, grip, sight picture, sight alignment, and trigger press. Not a lot of questions were asked by the students, as most had had several years of pistol experience even if little formal training. My friend had reviewed the Army marksmanship unit pistol guide prior to taking the class. There were two neat exercises we did inside, one with throwing and catching tennis balls to show us how our stance should be. The other was to present our grip to the instructors for them to critique and help us improve.
Live fire portion: After a delicious pizza lunch, we took our equipment down to the range. The range rules were reviewed and AJ started us off with 6 rounds on a target at about 7 yards. Like the rest of the exercises we performed, we repeated this for a total of 2 repetitions. This was to let the instructors assess what each of the students was doing. From there we shot on another target while focusing on feeling/hearing the trigger reset. After this we shot on some vertical and horizontal trigger stripes to help us learn to control how we were squeezing the trigger and learn the height over bore of our pistols.
After a short break, we shot on some more bulls-eye type targets to help us put everything together as well as circles of different diameters to help us work on focusing. We then shot at a hanging gas tank at about 25 yards while putting all the fundamentals into it, which was a lot of fun, especially due to that wonderful DING when you score a hit. The last thing we did was shoot a drill (twice) focusing on cadence.
After this, AJ did a supplemental class on cleaning a pistol, in which he focused on how this should not take a very long time, 10 minutes at max with modern pistols.
What I noticed about my own shooting throughout the day is that when I rushed or held the pistol out for too long is when my shooting suffered. I'd often start with the first two rounds of a drill in the center and then as I kept the pistol out or rushed the next shot, I would forget something and throw a shot. While taking this class (and probably because of the previous classes I've taken) I noticed I could call when I threw a shot. I might not know exactly where it went, but I could tell as soon as it went off if I'd ****ed it up.
Throughout the class, AJ and Ed stressed consistency in shooting. Especially consistently shooting while properly applying the fundamentals so as to not get stuck in bad habits which are hard to break. As the class went on, and I became more consistent, I got better. At the same time, there was another student whom I noticed was changing what his thumbs were doing pretty much every drill and his shooting seemed to be getting worse as the day went on.
There were 2 other takeaways I got from this class:
1) Don't go shooting without a purpose. Work on something every time, get better. Apply the fundamentals consistently and work on improving something every time.
2) It's never a waste of time to take basic classes over (or even a first time). My friend got a lot better throughout the day, and I also learned things and improved.
Once again, thanks to AJ, Ed, Ted, and everyone else involved in holding this class.
