A fine day at KR Training. Basic Pistol 2 in the morning, Defensive Pistol Skills 1 in the afternoon.

Rain was predicted, and we saw none of it. Some darker clouds would roll in and out during the morning, but no rain. In fact, a lot of sun by afternoon — I’m sunburned. I didn’t put on sunscreen expecting to be under a raincoat all day, since the forecast was saying the rain chances would pick up in the afternoon. Silly me for believing the weatherman. 🙂

Since Tom and I will be teaching these classes sans Karl in October, we did a lot of the teaching this time around to help get our heads more aligned towards running things vs. just assisting. My personal take-home there is we need to keep moving, mind the clock and our pacing, and remember that we don’t need to dump every bit of information on the students at this time. They have enough to swallow, enough pressure, enough nerves… get them to focus on the basics, to lay the groundwork even if we have to leave out details, even if we have to kinda allow some things to be learned “wrong” and re-/un-learned later on.

Case in point, reloads. At this point, we just need them to reload their gun. Officially we don’t teach reloads until Defensive Pistol Skills 2, but reloads do happen and we just want them to remember if the gun is dry, get it running again. That’s the key. Some important points like the basics of how to reload are important, like proper positioning of the magazine in the pouch, use of the “shooters workbench”, looking at the magwell, and so on. But there’s so many other things that CAN be involved in reloads, but honestly, they’re not important right now. Again, only so much time, so much information overload already for students, and they likely won’t remember this minutia anyways so just focus on the gross effort, skills, and mindset changes for now. And then, that keeps the class better on track.

It’s just tough… we love what we do, we just want to share that information. We want to enlighten as much as possible and have no vested interest in withholding information. It’s not like we’re some secret martial art society that withholds the true art until you’ve paid thousands of dollars and invested 20 years of your life. We want you to have knowledge… we just have to sometimes remember a steady drip is better than a flood. 🙂

Otherwise, a fantastic day.

Classes were full.

Basic Pistol 2 was majority women.

Defensive Pistol Skills 1 had about 1/4 women, which is good for such a class. I have been seeing a small increase in female enrollment in the intermediate-level classes, and I’m happy to see that. I hope to see a continued rise in such enrollment.

Lots of returning students too. Thank you all for that complement and believing in us.