YammyMonkey
Member
CSAT Tactical Pistol Instructor
There was a great group of guys at this class. We ended up down one Todd Green because of the weather on the east coast. The student instructors were motivated to learn, pass the standards, help each other & do a good job when it came time to teach their blocks on Sat & Sun. We came from a range of backgrounds from current & fresh out of the military to everyday joes & a few contractors.
The facilities were great & Paul & Eric did a great job making sure the place was well set up & comfortable. After driving through a downpour north of Houston the driving directions I had led me past the CSAT facility & down the (post-rain) mud road that was a bit Deliverance-ish in the dark. Most of us stayed at the CSAT barracks & I think this helped us jell as a group & improved our ability to work together as the week progressed.
We started off in the classroom with some basic introductions, paperwork & handouts. After that we moved into how the classes would progress, what was expected of us & the CSAT methodology. After lunch we moved out to the range, went over how to set everything up & started in on the range instruction. The day ended with Paul video taping us shooting 3 of the standards drills. Paul is a big advocate of using video in a class because it allows the students to see what they’re doing without having to challenge the student & play the “No I didn’t” “Yes you did” ego game.
Day 2 started off in the classroom again with a review of our taped drills from the day before. It was interesting to see what I was doing from the outside & get Paul's input. I've videoed myself during dryfire practice before trying to catch any cheating or developing bad habits but even though it was a somewhat familiar tool it was good to get Paul's input on the use & my shooting technique. We also broke into two instructor teams & assigned instructional modules.
We were more or less on a schedule that stretched out the 2-day Tactical Pistol course over 4 days & allowed the class to run the standards that we had to pass in order to earn a hat & have “completed” on our course certificate. We usually started off each range session with an explanation of one or more of the class modules & then went into shooting the standards. We had 5 (fortunate) instructor students pass the standards on the first day possible (Wednesday) two of them on the first time through. Evenings were a mix of studying, prepping for our instructional modules & talking about everything from gun magazine BS to cheating military spouses.
The weather went from cool on Tuesday to cool & partly cloudy on Wednesday to fabulously craptastic on Thursday & Friday. During a cold, rainy, sleety morning we shot the 25yd ball & dummy (from high ready, holstered & kneeling from holstered) & barricade drills. After that it was on to the remedial drills & more standards for those of us who hadn't passed yet. I don't remember if it was before or after lunch that I passed. What I do know is that either way it was still cold, a little wet & felt damn good. I think we shot the standards on IPSC targets covered with shirts on Thursday, but the sequence of when we shot different drills is kind of a blur. The shirts gave us a chance to shoot without the usual reference points we have on paper targets. Some of the instructor students were pretty shocked at how their groups turned out vs. the paper. I don't remember if we picked up another instructor Thursday afternoon or if it was on Friday. Thursday night brought us more cold & SNOW. We ended up with a few inches on the ground on Friday morning. Not what I expected from Texas.
Friday morning had us running the MK drill which involved moving around our classmates with weapons in Sul & engaging 5 targets of progressively increasing difficulty. Learning how to safely move around others with a gun is an absolutely critical skill in my opinion & this drill helped build good muzzle control, situational awareness & allowed everyone to see how much precision they were capable of. We also ran a vehicles-as-cover bounding drill that helped reinforce the points from the MK & barricade drills. After that it was on to...more standards for the guys who hadn't yet passed. All of the guys who were still shooting kept at it & while they were getting frustrated at times, they stuck with it & we picked up one (or was it 2?) more late in the afternoon.
For the weekend Paul continually emphasized that our demos need to be mechanically perfect. It was less important to him that we shoot our demos to the standard time but we had to shoot them correctly & get our hits because that’s what the students would see & try to emulate. If they saw us cheating & getting sloppy then they would cheat & get sloppy & think it was okay.
Saturday started at 7:00 at the range prepping targets, painting lines & getting the incoming students parked & over to Paul for registration. After some brief introductions we got on the range & started hitting the same drills we ran on Tuesday- mostly getting everyone set up with the proper grip, stance & manipulation skills they'd need while getting familiarized with the individual standards. With 20 students, 10 instructors & Paul & Eric out there everyone got some good one-on-one coaching. The first day ended with some sun & videotaping the students for the classroom review on Sunday morning.
All the feedback I heard from the students on the video review & critique was positive & I think it was a real eye opener for a lot of them. Things look a lot different on the wall (video screen) than they do from behind the sights. After the video review Paul went over his choices for CCW & then it was back to the range & the shooting. We ran the students through the ball & dummy, barricade, MK, vehicle cover, shirts & finally the standards. Paul bounced back & forth between the two student groups to make sure we were hitting everything he wanted covered & to run his teaching modules. Before the students shot the standards Paul explained how he trains on them & then shot them for score, giving out info on each one.
After the standards we gathered up, debriefed & passed out certificates. Some of the guys had to take off & some mingled around for a while but the weather had turned cold again & most people wanted to get back to some place warm.
This class is about learning to teach the CSAT 2 day Tac Pistol class the way Paul wants it taught & working on shooting his standards. There wasn’t as much instructor development or how to be a good teacher/coach from Paul as I was hoping for. That said, the sooner you passed the standards the sooner you got to coach the other instructor students. Taking the initiative to be a coach instead of just standing there observing, scoring & making a timer go beep was up to each of us as we helped our classmates work on the standards. Same goes for working our individual teaching modules for Sat & Sun. Paul had us all run the modules with him before we got in front of the students as a QA check, but it was up to us to make sure it was a good end product. It would be tough to add more how to teach stuff in without adding a day & cutting back on time spent with other drills & shooting the standards.
I also would have liked more in the way of an in-depth description & rationale behind the drills & techniques. Paul mentioned that it all fits together in more advanced classes like the Basic SWAT & Shoothouse Instructor courses, but for those of us who don’t have the opportunity to attend those, a more thorough explanation would have helped. A lot of the “why” element can be deduced from (gasp!) thinking about the techniques, but hearing it from Paul- with his experience & expertise would have been nice since my (useful) training background is entirely as a civilian who pays for training. I’m big on being able to explain the why behind the techniques. Depending on your personal experience & training this may not be an issue at all.
I think the ideal student for this course would be someone with some teaching, coaching & diagnostic skills already in hand who can meet the standards & who is interested in what Paul teaches. While some of the students proved that you don’t need those particular skillsets to be successful in this class you need to realize that you’ll be expected to teach the class on Saturday & Sunday. Paul is relying on the students to hold up their end of the deal. It makes you less credible if he has to step in & take over your module of instruction or your coaching of a student. The way I look at it, you’re paying Paul for the opportunity to spend a week training with him & for the opportunity to teach HIS students, under his watch. Then you’re released on the world to teach his material without his supervision. Considering Paul’s background & reputation, that’s a damn big commitment on your part.
This was the class that had the “problem child” student for the weekend. I wasn’t there when he & Paul had their interaction so I’ll refrain from commenting on it except to say that when Paul called us all together to let us know what was going on his demeanor had us all thinking he was going to light us up for something we had done. We were all relieved to learn that we weren’t the source of his…displeasure.
This class was back in Feb. & I wrote out a lot of this on the airplane ride back home. It’s taken me this long to post it up because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the class & talking to others about the experience. There was a lot of material to take in & process & some of the things that seemed important at first have become less so over time. For instance, all of us were concentrating on passing the standards, but in the end it was more important to present good training modules & provide good coaching to the students. While an instructor’s ability to perform on demand is important, it is much more so to be able to impart knowledge & ability on the students. One of the things that helped clarify that for me was the Magpul Dynamics Dynamic Carbine class I took in April where Travis said something like “It’s okay to fail. You’ll all fail at something this weekend. We’ll fail at things this weekend. That’s how you know you’re pushing yourself.”
Photos will follow.
There was a great group of guys at this class. We ended up down one Todd Green because of the weather on the east coast. The student instructors were motivated to learn, pass the standards, help each other & do a good job when it came time to teach their blocks on Sat & Sun. We came from a range of backgrounds from current & fresh out of the military to everyday joes & a few contractors.
The facilities were great & Paul & Eric did a great job making sure the place was well set up & comfortable. After driving through a downpour north of Houston the driving directions I had led me past the CSAT facility & down the (post-rain) mud road that was a bit Deliverance-ish in the dark. Most of us stayed at the CSAT barracks & I think this helped us jell as a group & improved our ability to work together as the week progressed.
We started off in the classroom with some basic introductions, paperwork & handouts. After that we moved into how the classes would progress, what was expected of us & the CSAT methodology. After lunch we moved out to the range, went over how to set everything up & started in on the range instruction. The day ended with Paul video taping us shooting 3 of the standards drills. Paul is a big advocate of using video in a class because it allows the students to see what they’re doing without having to challenge the student & play the “No I didn’t” “Yes you did” ego game.
Day 2 started off in the classroom again with a review of our taped drills from the day before. It was interesting to see what I was doing from the outside & get Paul's input. I've videoed myself during dryfire practice before trying to catch any cheating or developing bad habits but even though it was a somewhat familiar tool it was good to get Paul's input on the use & my shooting technique. We also broke into two instructor teams & assigned instructional modules.
We were more or less on a schedule that stretched out the 2-day Tactical Pistol course over 4 days & allowed the class to run the standards that we had to pass in order to earn a hat & have “completed” on our course certificate. We usually started off each range session with an explanation of one or more of the class modules & then went into shooting the standards. We had 5 (fortunate) instructor students pass the standards on the first day possible (Wednesday) two of them on the first time through. Evenings were a mix of studying, prepping for our instructional modules & talking about everything from gun magazine BS to cheating military spouses.
The weather went from cool on Tuesday to cool & partly cloudy on Wednesday to fabulously craptastic on Thursday & Friday. During a cold, rainy, sleety morning we shot the 25yd ball & dummy (from high ready, holstered & kneeling from holstered) & barricade drills. After that it was on to the remedial drills & more standards for those of us who hadn't passed yet. I don't remember if it was before or after lunch that I passed. What I do know is that either way it was still cold, a little wet & felt damn good. I think we shot the standards on IPSC targets covered with shirts on Thursday, but the sequence of when we shot different drills is kind of a blur. The shirts gave us a chance to shoot without the usual reference points we have on paper targets. Some of the instructor students were pretty shocked at how their groups turned out vs. the paper. I don't remember if we picked up another instructor Thursday afternoon or if it was on Friday. Thursday night brought us more cold & SNOW. We ended up with a few inches on the ground on Friday morning. Not what I expected from Texas.
Friday morning had us running the MK drill which involved moving around our classmates with weapons in Sul & engaging 5 targets of progressively increasing difficulty. Learning how to safely move around others with a gun is an absolutely critical skill in my opinion & this drill helped build good muzzle control, situational awareness & allowed everyone to see how much precision they were capable of. We also ran a vehicles-as-cover bounding drill that helped reinforce the points from the MK & barricade drills. After that it was on to...more standards for the guys who hadn't yet passed. All of the guys who were still shooting kept at it & while they were getting frustrated at times, they stuck with it & we picked up one (or was it 2?) more late in the afternoon.
For the weekend Paul continually emphasized that our demos need to be mechanically perfect. It was less important to him that we shoot our demos to the standard time but we had to shoot them correctly & get our hits because that’s what the students would see & try to emulate. If they saw us cheating & getting sloppy then they would cheat & get sloppy & think it was okay.
Saturday started at 7:00 at the range prepping targets, painting lines & getting the incoming students parked & over to Paul for registration. After some brief introductions we got on the range & started hitting the same drills we ran on Tuesday- mostly getting everyone set up with the proper grip, stance & manipulation skills they'd need while getting familiarized with the individual standards. With 20 students, 10 instructors & Paul & Eric out there everyone got some good one-on-one coaching. The first day ended with some sun & videotaping the students for the classroom review on Sunday morning.
All the feedback I heard from the students on the video review & critique was positive & I think it was a real eye opener for a lot of them. Things look a lot different on the wall (video screen) than they do from behind the sights. After the video review Paul went over his choices for CCW & then it was back to the range & the shooting. We ran the students through the ball & dummy, barricade, MK, vehicle cover, shirts & finally the standards. Paul bounced back & forth between the two student groups to make sure we were hitting everything he wanted covered & to run his teaching modules. Before the students shot the standards Paul explained how he trains on them & then shot them for score, giving out info on each one.
After the standards we gathered up, debriefed & passed out certificates. Some of the guys had to take off & some mingled around for a while but the weather had turned cold again & most people wanted to get back to some place warm.
This class is about learning to teach the CSAT 2 day Tac Pistol class the way Paul wants it taught & working on shooting his standards. There wasn’t as much instructor development or how to be a good teacher/coach from Paul as I was hoping for. That said, the sooner you passed the standards the sooner you got to coach the other instructor students. Taking the initiative to be a coach instead of just standing there observing, scoring & making a timer go beep was up to each of us as we helped our classmates work on the standards. Same goes for working our individual teaching modules for Sat & Sun. Paul had us all run the modules with him before we got in front of the students as a QA check, but it was up to us to make sure it was a good end product. It would be tough to add more how to teach stuff in without adding a day & cutting back on time spent with other drills & shooting the standards.
I also would have liked more in the way of an in-depth description & rationale behind the drills & techniques. Paul mentioned that it all fits together in more advanced classes like the Basic SWAT & Shoothouse Instructor courses, but for those of us who don’t have the opportunity to attend those, a more thorough explanation would have helped. A lot of the “why” element can be deduced from (gasp!) thinking about the techniques, but hearing it from Paul- with his experience & expertise would have been nice since my (useful) training background is entirely as a civilian who pays for training. I’m big on being able to explain the why behind the techniques. Depending on your personal experience & training this may not be an issue at all.
I think the ideal student for this course would be someone with some teaching, coaching & diagnostic skills already in hand who can meet the standards & who is interested in what Paul teaches. While some of the students proved that you don’t need those particular skillsets to be successful in this class you need to realize that you’ll be expected to teach the class on Saturday & Sunday. Paul is relying on the students to hold up their end of the deal. It makes you less credible if he has to step in & take over your module of instruction or your coaching of a student. The way I look at it, you’re paying Paul for the opportunity to spend a week training with him & for the opportunity to teach HIS students, under his watch. Then you’re released on the world to teach his material without his supervision. Considering Paul’s background & reputation, that’s a damn big commitment on your part.
This was the class that had the “problem child” student for the weekend. I wasn’t there when he & Paul had their interaction so I’ll refrain from commenting on it except to say that when Paul called us all together to let us know what was going on his demeanor had us all thinking he was going to light us up for something we had done. We were all relieved to learn that we weren’t the source of his…displeasure.
This class was back in Feb. & I wrote out a lot of this on the airplane ride back home. It’s taken me this long to post it up because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the class & talking to others about the experience. There was a lot of material to take in & process & some of the things that seemed important at first have become less so over time. For instance, all of us were concentrating on passing the standards, but in the end it was more important to present good training modules & provide good coaching to the students. While an instructor’s ability to perform on demand is important, it is much more so to be able to impart knowledge & ability on the students. One of the things that helped clarify that for me was the Magpul Dynamics Dynamic Carbine class I took in April where Travis said something like “It’s okay to fail. You’ll all fail at something this weekend. We’ll fail at things this weekend. That’s how you know you’re pushing yourself.”
Photos will follow.
