This past Saturday I was out at KR Training assisting with Basic Pistol 1 and Defensive Pistol Skills 2 classes. Overall it was a good day. I do think students were challenged and they all took home something to work and grow on. That’s good, it’s what school is all about.

I’ll just hit a few take-home points that are good for everyone, even you folks that didn’t take the classes.

• Slow down. Yes, speed is important and this is stressed heavily in DPS2. However, throwing lead really fast downrange and hitting nothing of merit… that’s meaningless, that’s useless, and it could get you killed. If it takes you half a second more to get the sights aligned and press off a solid shot that goes exactly where you wanted it to? Then take that extra half second and do so. You will spend more time realizing your mistake and correcting it than it would have taken to just correct things the first time around. Meantime… there’s still someone shooting at you and you’ve been ineffective in stopping them. Shoot only as fast as YOU can shoot and make good hits.
• When shooting a timed drill that you’re struggling to get 100% on, try shooting the drill with no time. Take all the time in the world and shoot the drill accurately and correctly. Clean it, and repeat it. Just shoot it without time pressures. If you can consistently clean the drill without time pressure, then you know you’ve got the skills needed to shoot the drill (if you can’t clean the drill, there’s likely another fundamental skill you need to work on first). Once you can clean the drill with no time pressure, shoot it again with a stopwatch. See how long it took you to shoot the drill at that “slow” speed. Original par time might be 3 seconds but it takes you 8. Fine. Now you know how long it takes you to do it cleanly. Now set a timer for your own par time and see if you can shoot it. You should be able to because you’ve already demonstrated you can, but the knowledge you’re shooting with a timer puts some different psychological stress on you. If you know that’s doing fine, now start to pare down the par time. Try 7.5 seconds and see how you do. Try 7.0, and so on. Make sure your technique and form doesn’t get sloppy. You do have to push yourself, but you need to be correct first, fast second.
• Ball & Dummy drill is your friend.
• When shooting one-handed, keep your other hand up on your chest.
• It’s not a race to get the gun back in the holster. Reholster with the same amount of discipline as you draw; or perhaps, reholster with more discipline… but never less.

Karl had been working on a new skills assessment test for the end of class. There was some refinement of the test prior to class, but it turned out well and a good measure and challenge of things for the (DPS2) students. So yes guys… get ready for DPS3 in August. It’ll be tougher. 🙂

And finally…

It was a nice day. A little warm, a little humid, but we haven’t had rain in ages and things are dry and dusty. Then when you have 20-30 MPH winds all day long with dust blowing everywhere? Well…..

That’s my calf. No, that’s not a tan, that’s not a sunburn. The darker “skin”? That’s dust that built up over the course of the day. The picture doesn’t even do it justice as to how much was blowing around and collected everywhere. I have to clean out all my gear because there’s grit in everything. 🙂

Oh, and got to help Hogel sight in an EOTech on his Remington 870 shotgun. Ah… nothing like the feel of slug recoil. 🙂

A good day.