I was at Tactical Response's "The Fight" force-on-force course this past weekend and got a huge eye-opening experience out of it.
Safety
The class started with safety protocols to prevent live weapons from being introduced into the scenarios - everyone, including instructors, gets frisked twice - no one goes to car or gets anything out of a bag without a buddy watching. Even with this, they went over a plan in case something did happen. I really appreciate this "defense in depth" for safety.
Basics
The first drills were a getting-to-know activity for the UTM marker pistols (Glock 19's) we would be using - everyone shoots and everyone gets shot. They set it up as one-shot "duels" between students at 5 yards. Even as simple as it was, the stress level really jumped - I've done IDPA, and even the competition stress isn't the same, racing a clock is self-paced, here someone else is trying to dictate pace (OODA loop). I rushed - too much. I didn't see my sights the first two exchanges - and I didn't hit my opponent. Even for those who did, the point was made that they immediately dropped from ready after shooting - their opponent was still standing, why weren't they ready for that? Many people didn't think to use verbalization skills they had been taught.
Movement got added to this, and I realized a gap in my training - I'd practiced moving and shooting, and shooting moving targets, but never moving and shooting a moving target that is trying to shoot you. The marker rounds sting, and will break exposed skin - but much of the time you don't feel them under the stress.
The Scenarios
These are the core of the course. I'm not going to go into details about the individual scenarios, so as not to ruin some for future students (some stay relatively similar from class to class, others get changed for the specific group of students). The scenarios were realistic - everything would be something that I'd call an activity of daily life. It is important as the student to do these realistically - don't approach every scenario in orange, it isn't how you live your life. The role-players were AWESOME. They immersed me in the scenario to the point where I didn't notice the face-shields. The stress is real - people got "the shakes" afterward, and we were drained at the end of each day (imagine going through several life-threatening situations in a day).
Each person experienes them individually and each finds their own solution - we had several scenarios where the some people shot and others didn't - each unfolds in it's own way. Also, scenarios don't end when the bad guy is down; dialing 911 for help (fake phones) under stress and talking with dispatch is part of the situation.
Lessons
The lessons learned are individual too - you learn something about yourself. Here are a few of mine and some that others in the class shared during the debriefings:
Most important for me: Make sure you test what you think you know. Some of the things I had been taught, and thought were good ideas - didn't pan out.
Movement is good, but it is not enough by itself. It should be purposeful in getting you to safety - find cover.
Make sure you are in a safe location to call for help - several times I lingered at the "scene" where the criminal could have shot me with the weapon in his hand (and did one time, "killing" me).
Make the call yourself - you are the trained individual, and the bystanders have been stressed too. This was a flaw in LFI-I teaching to ask a bystander to call for help (a relic of the days where cell phones were uncommon) - what do you do if a bystander, whom you've just asked to call for medical and police assistance tells dispatch "Some guy just murdered another guy in front of me!" and gives your description as the perp? I tried to talk to the bystander and to get the phone to talk to 911, but that resulted in an believable "Oh, s---! He's coming at me with a gun!" and bolting from the scene.
Shut up. Trying to follow LFI training to talk to responding police, ended badly for me (there may be people for whom it works), but I found that once I started talking I kept talking and said things in the heat of the moment. Keep in mind that I practiced the LFI doctrine regularly, but found that I couldn't keep to it.
Know you got shot, but stay in the fight. One of the other students trained in a martial art where you move with the strikes to absorb the impact - this had gotten so reflexive that he knocked himself over when shot with simunitions. Don't train in something that gives you bad habits.
Know how to use (shoot, reload, clear malfunctions) one-handed. Most of the class opted to use gloves, even though they didn't in real life, because of the frequency with which hands got lit up. I had a situation where I had a double feed (type 3 malfunction) when I only had one hand left.
Keep your gun topped off - especially for me as a 1911 guy (for now, at least, this may change as a result of this course). You run through rounds fast and several times I was asked at the end of the scenario how many rounds were left in my gun - I didn't know (turned out to be 2, 1 and 0
remaining), and I still had a full, spare mag on my belt.
There are more, but these are the big ones.
Overall
Excellent course 10/10, I really enjoyed it - even though it showed me that some of my prior training wasn't useful. It taught me a lot about myself under stress and areas of training I need to address. I'd recommend it to anyone who carries. It lets you see your mistakes, and learn from them - life is not so forgiving.
Also, the instructor for the class Shay VanVlymen, is a member here under the name: ShackleMeNot.
Safety
The class started with safety protocols to prevent live weapons from being introduced into the scenarios - everyone, including instructors, gets frisked twice - no one goes to car or gets anything out of a bag without a buddy watching. Even with this, they went over a plan in case something did happen. I really appreciate this "defense in depth" for safety.
Basics
The first drills were a getting-to-know activity for the UTM marker pistols (Glock 19's) we would be using - everyone shoots and everyone gets shot. They set it up as one-shot "duels" between students at 5 yards. Even as simple as it was, the stress level really jumped - I've done IDPA, and even the competition stress isn't the same, racing a clock is self-paced, here someone else is trying to dictate pace (OODA loop). I rushed - too much. I didn't see my sights the first two exchanges - and I didn't hit my opponent. Even for those who did, the point was made that they immediately dropped from ready after shooting - their opponent was still standing, why weren't they ready for that? Many people didn't think to use verbalization skills they had been taught.
Movement got added to this, and I realized a gap in my training - I'd practiced moving and shooting, and shooting moving targets, but never moving and shooting a moving target that is trying to shoot you. The marker rounds sting, and will break exposed skin - but much of the time you don't feel them under the stress.
The Scenarios
These are the core of the course. I'm not going to go into details about the individual scenarios, so as not to ruin some for future students (some stay relatively similar from class to class, others get changed for the specific group of students). The scenarios were realistic - everything would be something that I'd call an activity of daily life. It is important as the student to do these realistically - don't approach every scenario in orange, it isn't how you live your life. The role-players were AWESOME. They immersed me in the scenario to the point where I didn't notice the face-shields. The stress is real - people got "the shakes" afterward, and we were drained at the end of each day (imagine going through several life-threatening situations in a day).
Each person experienes them individually and each finds their own solution - we had several scenarios where the some people shot and others didn't - each unfolds in it's own way. Also, scenarios don't end when the bad guy is down; dialing 911 for help (fake phones) under stress and talking with dispatch is part of the situation.
Lessons
The lessons learned are individual too - you learn something about yourself. Here are a few of mine and some that others in the class shared during the debriefings:
Most important for me: Make sure you test what you think you know. Some of the things I had been taught, and thought were good ideas - didn't pan out.
Movement is good, but it is not enough by itself. It should be purposeful in getting you to safety - find cover.
Make sure you are in a safe location to call for help - several times I lingered at the "scene" where the criminal could have shot me with the weapon in his hand (and did one time, "killing" me).
Make the call yourself - you are the trained individual, and the bystanders have been stressed too. This was a flaw in LFI-I teaching to ask a bystander to call for help (a relic of the days where cell phones were uncommon) - what do you do if a bystander, whom you've just asked to call for medical and police assistance tells dispatch "Some guy just murdered another guy in front of me!" and gives your description as the perp? I tried to talk to the bystander and to get the phone to talk to 911, but that resulted in an believable "Oh, s---! He's coming at me with a gun!" and bolting from the scene.
Shut up. Trying to follow LFI training to talk to responding police, ended badly for me (there may be people for whom it works), but I found that once I started talking I kept talking and said things in the heat of the moment. Keep in mind that I practiced the LFI doctrine regularly, but found that I couldn't keep to it.
Know you got shot, but stay in the fight. One of the other students trained in a martial art where you move with the strikes to absorb the impact - this had gotten so reflexive that he knocked himself over when shot with simunitions. Don't train in something that gives you bad habits.
Know how to use (shoot, reload, clear malfunctions) one-handed. Most of the class opted to use gloves, even though they didn't in real life, because of the frequency with which hands got lit up. I had a situation where I had a double feed (type 3 malfunction) when I only had one hand left.
Keep your gun topped off - especially for me as a 1911 guy (for now, at least, this may change as a result of this course). You run through rounds fast and several times I was asked at the end of the scenario how many rounds were left in my gun - I didn't know (turned out to be 2, 1 and 0
remaining), and I still had a full, spare mag on my belt.There are more, but these are the big ones.
Overall
Excellent course 10/10, I really enjoyed it - even though it showed me that some of my prior training wasn't useful. It taught me a lot about myself under stress and areas of training I need to address. I'd recommend it to anyone who carries. It lets you see your mistakes, and learn from them - life is not so forgiving.
Also, the instructor for the class Shay VanVlymen, is a member here under the name: ShackleMeNot.
