What a gorgeous day we had at KR Training (2014-02-15). Unseasonable warmth — while my friends elsewhere in the nation were commenting on how much snow they were digging out from, I was out in the sun enjoying a fantastic day on the range. I’ll enjoy these mild days while I can, since July and August will be here soon enough.
Classes were Basic Pistol 2 in the morning and Defensive Pistol Skills 1 in the afternoon. We had a great number of students enrolled in both classes, which was useful because we could press on and not have to do so much remedial work in DPS1. Of course, that makes for long, information-overload days, but no question the students progressed well and were better at the end of the day than the start.
Quick hits for those in class.
- Trigger control was the biggest issue across the board. Yanking and slapping, slapping and yanking. Really work on the “slow, smooth press” of the trigger. Dry fire will be your friend. Wall Drill. It’s just about learning it and getting used to it.
- Speed matters, but correctness matters more — especially at this stage. I’d rather you be slower but correct, smooth, accurate. Speed will come.
- Note that speed doesn’t always mean “go faster”; sometimes it’s about using what time you have more efficiently. Consider if it takes you 1 second to press the gun out and 1 second to press the trigger. If you do these consecutively, that’s 2 seconds to complete the action. If you do them simultaneously, it’s only 1 second. In fact, consider you could go even a hair slower, like 1.5 seconds, yet it’s still less overall time.
- Habits are hard to break. I saw many working to break old habits, which is great!
- Don’t beat yourself up over old habits. Don’t tell yourself “don’t do that”. Tell yourself what new habits to ingrain; what TO do. Instead of saying “don’t yank the trigger” say “slow smooth press”. Instead of saying “don’t rush” say “slow down”.
- Again, dry fire helps with this. Be sure when you do anything and everything with your gun to do it correctly. Everything is a rep, everything is a chance to ingrain the right way to do things. Even things like unloading your gun before dry fire, do the unload correctly (how you hold the gun, safe direction, how you rack the slide, etc.). Training economy is about using every opportunity to do things right and ingrain the right way to do things.
Updated: Student Tracy Talbot wrote up her experience in the classes. Thank you for sharing, Tracy!
Stuff From Hsoi 
It was a jam-packed and challenging day of learning, and I feel like I walked away with some new skills, awareness, and a better idea of where I need to go from here. Thank you for the reminders and your help on Saturday.
Awesome! Glad it was a good day for you.
I attended these same classes last year. Jam packed indeed. I came away a better shooter and learned a lot more than I expected. You don’t know what you don’t know. Ya know? 😉
Hsoi, that’s a really good tactic to use. Not beating yourself up when you make a mistake. Just changing the things you tell yourself (going from negative terms to positive) is pure gold and I will be using that tactic both in my practice and when I’m helping others with their shooting.
I learned that due to parenting.
I would always encounter parents yelling things like “don’t run!” at their kids. Then the kids would do something else (e.g. skip, jump, crawl), which still annoyed the parent because the parent wanted them to walk. Well, if you want the kids to walk, tell them to walk; else there’s still a zillion things they can choose to do and likely they will choose one of those other things instead of the thing you wanted.
Tell yourself what TO do. Makes a big difference.
The classes last Saturday far exceeded my expectations. I had a fantastic time, learned an incredible amount of valuable information and skills, and am excited about practicing and learning more. As a female, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but all of the instructors at KR Training were amazingly helpful and professional and made me feel welcome and valued as a student. I’m recommending KR Training to every person I know interested in learning how to shoot. Top notch facility, trainers and curriculum!
Thank you for the kind words.
We don’t look at students as male or female, except when we must. I know there’s a lot of this gender issue in the gun world, but we just want to treat you as a student, someone that was willing to come learn so we’re going to do our best to teach. There are times when gender issues matter — like holster selection (IWB just doesn’t work for most women due to the fact you are female and thus have different anatomy; this is a place where gender matters). But gun fit often gets classified as a gender issue when it’s not: it can be a hand size issue, it can be a finger length issue, it can be an arm/hand/grip strength issue. And while one could generalize gender there, it’s really not right to classify any of those things as gender issues because they aren’t gender issues.
When it comes to student comfort, we want everyone to be comfortable… except when we don’t, like during the DPS1 class. 😉
I’m glad you had such a positive experience. We look forward to seeing you again at the range!
My girlfriend and I were out for BP2 that day (talk about great weather!) and had an awesome time. We had a great AAR on the drive home and enjoyed recapping our experience. I’m almost certain I’ll be getting my CHL within the year whereas she just wants to become a more competent, safer shooter and approaches shooting from a hobbyist perspective. With our different approaches in mind, it was interesting to hear her take-aways compared to mine.
I really liked the classroom portion of the day. I really enjoy mindset training/discussions but also was happy to find out that my grip and stance were not as good as I thought. I mostly had the right idea, but you guys really helped me fine tune both.
The shooting portion of the day rocked! We only shot 100+ rounds, but I have to say, that’s the first time the rounds felt like an investment. Before this, I’d go to the range and burn 2-300 rounds and not have much to show for it. I always left the range feeling slightly unfulfilled, thinking more rounds down range would somehow make the range day feel more productive. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After all, when you don’t know what to practice you’re really just poking holes in paper. And wasting money and ammo!
In short, BP2 gave me much to think about and now I have more of a blueprint to apply at the range to keep those fundamentals where they need to be. So, thanks for that.
Looks like someone got the training bug, I’ll be out on the 22nd for DPS1, can’t wait!
Glad you both had an awesome time!
I think that’s a great breakthough you had regarding your training and practice: round count is fun, but not necessarily productive. You end up finding that dry fire is really where it’s at… which truly isn’t as much fun as making a lot of noise and feeling a lot of recoil, but certainly it’s where the skills really come up. You wind up finding that dry fire is where you improve your skills, and live fire just becomes confirmation of what’s getting better and what needs more work.
Thank you for the kind words, and I’m glad to hear we made a positive impact. Glad to hear you’re coming back for more!