Yesterday was a long but satisfying day.

I spent it at KR Training helping with 3 classes: Basic Pistol 2, Defensive Pistol Skills 1, and AT-1A Low Light Shooting. It was a long and busy day, but overall a good one. Students were shooting well, worst thing really was helping some people break long-ingrained (bad) habits. Students were challenged, pushed, and they performed well.

One very cool thing was the weather — literally. It was quite cold, with a strong arctic wind blowing. It made being outside quite miserable. Consequently, Karl adjusted the course to utilize dry fire within the classroom. All the tables and chairs were cleared away, then the students made 2 lines back-to-back. Instructors walked behind the students and thus we always had safe directions. Various drills were worked on in the classroom dry. When we finally went out to the range, the student performance was higher than usual. We’re pretty sure it was due to the dry practice. We were able to hear each other better. We could give a lot more personal instruction. I think the big part as well was the students got more trigger time. Think about it. Depending upon the drill, in a live fire exercise a student would only get to fire a limited amount of shots per drill, just due to the nature of the drill and all the logistics of working on the range and having to rotate groups on the line. Working dry, a student could press the trigger a few hundred times per drill. They can work it over and over without any sort of time lost to administrative whatnot. There’s no question the dry fire paid off as a teaching technique. Yes it threw off the schedule a bit, but it was well worth it. Hopefully as well the students saw the value of dry fire and will continue to practice that way on their own.

I also got to do something I hadn’t done before. The AT-1A class contains a scenario to introduce students to a different mode of thought. You see, we spend all this time training and teaching people how to shoot and shoot well. Then when they get to this more advanced level of training we teach them not to shoot. That is, first we work on the mechanical skills, then we start to add in the mental skills. Is this situation worth dying over? Is there anything in there that’s worth your life? This is the lesson of the scenario. And…. I got to play the “person” in the scene. I don’t want to say too much and spoil the scenario, but it was a lot of fun to play the role. Didn’t hurt that I got to be inside the whole time out of the cold. 😉

Very good day. Many satisfied students. Got to see some familiar faces. Had a great time.

Oh, and TXGunGeek gave me some presents! A big box of .38 brass and a box of OC spray. Thanx!!