YammyMonkey
Member
Other reviews & pictures can be found at GOTX
Fighting Pistol
This was my first class with Tactical Response & for those with short attention spans it was a great class, I picked up some good coaching & I would highly recommend it to anyone.
For those of you still with us the following should be consumed with a sense of humor… My training background is mostly with Andy Stanford & SouthNarc over the last few years. I’m also an instructor for a local training company & will hopefully be helping Andy teach some of the OPS courses here in Colorado this year.
Day one started off cool & a little windy. We started with the usual introductions, a course description & safety briefing that included Yeager tossing his G-19 about 20 yards during the let it fall lecture. On the range we started working the drawstroke dry & while practicing the 2 position I think Brian was tempted to pistol whip me with Yeager’s red Glock. I was trying to be a good student & practice what we were being taught but my previous training with Andy & SouthNarc kept creeping in. I’m not sure if I got it or he gave up. We went hot & worked the draw on DEA Dot targets to see where everyone was at skill-wise. We were encouraged (“I told you to slow down!”) to slow down & make sure we were doing things correctly. I really liked that we taped up only the misses, eventually creating a negative target. This caused us to stop looking for our hits & it was easy to see where you consistently put your shots over multiple courses of fire. Think of patterning a shotgun with multiple shots- eventually you wear out a solid hole where most of the shots are going. During lunch Yeager worked with a couple guys who were having some problems & although I didn’t pay much attention to a before & after comparison they all seemed to be very happy with the results.
After lunch we swapped over to the silhouette targets & spent the rest of the day working malfunction drills & shooting from a bunch of different positions. A couple students with prior training from other schools mentioned that we did drills live fire that they were only allowed to practice with dummy rounds, if at all, in those schools. We shot from supine, sitting, kneeling & standing then practiced transitioning from supine all the way to standing. I think we also did some one handed shooting around this time including such highlights as shooting with your support side, one hand malfunction clearing & having Yeager walk on the gun you just dropped.
The second day started in the classroom for the Mindset & legal lecture. As Yeager put it, the shooting is just a way to get people to come to this lecture. It was nice having a Colorado judge in the class to bounce things around with & Yeager did ask for his opinion on some points. Obviously James can’t know the laws of all the places he visits & his willingness to ask a local expert speaks to his overall competency as a teacher. This was the highlight of the class.
After lunch we hit the range with the Allen Dots which quickly showed errors in our fundamentals. I found that I was shooting better once we were allowed to shoot the dots on our own instead of adding pressure when Yeager’s smooth jazz voice told us to. I think the constant steady increase in pressure made me less able to anticipate the shot as opposed to adding pressure on command. After the dots we moved on to shooting from retention. When we stepped away from the line mine was the only target that wasn’t torn up from the muzzle blast & I think it was because I reverted to the High 2 retention position that SouthNarc teaches. If you look at the retention pictures from this class on GOTX & compare Steve (white shirt) to me (orange shirt) you can see the difference. After the retention shooting we worked shooting on the move & while using cover, ending with a couple drills that required us to shoot while moving to cover & then shooting from cover.
I really liked the simplicity of the drills & the Tactical Response methodology that stressed the ability to perform tasks in less than ideal conditions.
Things to work on: I need more practice, especially moving. I tossed a couple shots that I shouldn’t have- one of them over the shoulder of my target. Bad Monkey. Shooting from different positions is good mmkay? I need to set up simulated cover at the range & work on staying back a little more.
A Couple general comments:
Yeager let a student shoot one of the rental guns for the first day to try out the Big Dots & installed a set for him during lunch the first day. His willingness to share info, time & effort outside of the class curriculum was impressive. If someone asked the question was answered. The speed of the drills & increased performance of the students was impressive. We ran each drill a few times & then moved on. The pace of the course was fast but I don’t think it would be overwhelming even for someone with relatively little training/experience.
Fighting Pistol
This was my first class with Tactical Response & for those with short attention spans it was a great class, I picked up some good coaching & I would highly recommend it to anyone.
For those of you still with us the following should be consumed with a sense of humor… My training background is mostly with Andy Stanford & SouthNarc over the last few years. I’m also an instructor for a local training company & will hopefully be helping Andy teach some of the OPS courses here in Colorado this year.
Day one started off cool & a little windy. We started with the usual introductions, a course description & safety briefing that included Yeager tossing his G-19 about 20 yards during the let it fall lecture. On the range we started working the drawstroke dry & while practicing the 2 position I think Brian was tempted to pistol whip me with Yeager’s red Glock. I was trying to be a good student & practice what we were being taught but my previous training with Andy & SouthNarc kept creeping in. I’m not sure if I got it or he gave up. We went hot & worked the draw on DEA Dot targets to see where everyone was at skill-wise. We were encouraged (“I told you to slow down!”) to slow down & make sure we were doing things correctly. I really liked that we taped up only the misses, eventually creating a negative target. This caused us to stop looking for our hits & it was easy to see where you consistently put your shots over multiple courses of fire. Think of patterning a shotgun with multiple shots- eventually you wear out a solid hole where most of the shots are going. During lunch Yeager worked with a couple guys who were having some problems & although I didn’t pay much attention to a before & after comparison they all seemed to be very happy with the results.
After lunch we swapped over to the silhouette targets & spent the rest of the day working malfunction drills & shooting from a bunch of different positions. A couple students with prior training from other schools mentioned that we did drills live fire that they were only allowed to practice with dummy rounds, if at all, in those schools. We shot from supine, sitting, kneeling & standing then practiced transitioning from supine all the way to standing. I think we also did some one handed shooting around this time including such highlights as shooting with your support side, one hand malfunction clearing & having Yeager walk on the gun you just dropped.
The second day started in the classroom for the Mindset & legal lecture. As Yeager put it, the shooting is just a way to get people to come to this lecture. It was nice having a Colorado judge in the class to bounce things around with & Yeager did ask for his opinion on some points. Obviously James can’t know the laws of all the places he visits & his willingness to ask a local expert speaks to his overall competency as a teacher. This was the highlight of the class.
After lunch we hit the range with the Allen Dots which quickly showed errors in our fundamentals. I found that I was shooting better once we were allowed to shoot the dots on our own instead of adding pressure when Yeager’s smooth jazz voice told us to. I think the constant steady increase in pressure made me less able to anticipate the shot as opposed to adding pressure on command. After the dots we moved on to shooting from retention. When we stepped away from the line mine was the only target that wasn’t torn up from the muzzle blast & I think it was because I reverted to the High 2 retention position that SouthNarc teaches. If you look at the retention pictures from this class on GOTX & compare Steve (white shirt) to me (orange shirt) you can see the difference. After the retention shooting we worked shooting on the move & while using cover, ending with a couple drills that required us to shoot while moving to cover & then shooting from cover.
I really liked the simplicity of the drills & the Tactical Response methodology that stressed the ability to perform tasks in less than ideal conditions.
Things to work on: I need more practice, especially moving. I tossed a couple shots that I shouldn’t have- one of them over the shoulder of my target. Bad Monkey. Shooting from different positions is good mmkay? I need to set up simulated cover at the range & work on staying back a little more.
A Couple general comments:
Yeager let a student shoot one of the rental guns for the first day to try out the Big Dots & installed a set for him during lunch the first day. His willingness to share info, time & effort outside of the class curriculum was impressive. If someone asked the question was answered. The speed of the drills & increased performance of the students was impressive. We ran each drill a few times & then moved on. The pace of the course was fast but I don’t think it would be overwhelming even for someone with relatively little training/experience.
