JEFF_WATCH
.38 Special
ONSIGHT FIREARMS TRAINING
Defensive Pistol AAR
Ridgeline Training Center
oftllc.us, ridgelineshooting.com
May 9, 2020
Instructor: Ben DeWalt
Location: Ridgeline Training Center, Dalton NH
Weather: COLD low 30’s, SNOWY, WINDY! Heavy winds (20-35mph) wind chill was around 10-15 degrees
Clothing: Heavy base layer tops & bottoms, LL Bean wool insulated guide pants, extra heavy Carhartt hoodie & down vest and jacket. KEEN Summit County Winter hiking boots.
Round Count: 600 +/- PMC 9mm 115gr
Class size: 7 students
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HOLY SHIT, its frigging May and we are having a snowstorm with heavy winds and I am outside on the top of a mountain in a pistol class. WTF? After two-plus months of being quarantined in my home with my family I was extremely happy to be in a class with these conditions.
We did our introductions, had our safety briefing, medical briefing, and were given instructions on what to do if there was a training accident. Students were given certain responsibilities.
We started off with cold guns, going over the holster draw, how to clear all the layers we all had on to keep us warm. We loaded our guns and walked back to 25yds and did a couple of strings in a B8 target. Ben would say we were only as good as our first cold shot, in a real-world encounter there would be no warmups. It made sense to me, this was a humbling way to start off the class on a super windy snowy cold morning where at times the blowing snow was whiting out the target. I was rusty, it had been several months since my last class and it showed. OH WELL, IT’S ALL GOOD!
We moved closer to and ran the same drill from 5, 7, and 10 yards working on our grip, front sight concentration, and trigger press with reset. There was never a time constraint with any of the drills all day. I seem to have always been the last one done with the string.
Before each drill, Ben would explain it, demo the entire drill, and explain it again. I like that teaching approach. I like to hear the instructions and then see it being done correctly. There was absolutely NO ego. We analyzed our target misses as possibly killed good guys by accident. Ben made you really think about what happened on each shot, the real world has consequences. Don’t be a good guy active shooter!
We incorporated movement into our draw (getting off the X) shooting the heart and the face. The student body was all experienced shooters so we moved pretty fast and most of the work was in the 15ish-25ish yard. Ben found the right way to get each student to push their skill a little past their comfort zone so each of us was learning. He did it in a professional, kind, patient way treating each student with respect and no one was made to feel embarrassed or humiliated on the line. Not all instructors are like that. Ben is a professional teacher and he has the experience, confidence, and competence to know how to get more out of you than you think. Good job Ben!
At the lunch break, I went into my car to get out of the blowing snow and get some heat in my body. It was SOOO NICE to get warm. It was weird to eat lunch alone, all of the classes I have been to part of the learning experience was eating and bullshitting with the instructor and the other students at lunchtime. You gain a lot of information and experiences from their stories and recommendations ‘outside” the class curriculum.
After lunch the snow seems to slow down to a flurry, the wind was still fierce, and blowing over the target stands no matter how many large rock and steel targets we stack on them.
We ran drills with “HOT WORDS” Ben would give us a few words that if he said them we would shoot into the heart and face of the bad guy. He made us think before we acted. We incorporated a command to have the bad guy stop what he/she was doing and sometimes not to shoot and other times when we were given the HOT WORD…we would shoot the MF’er!
We learned how to safely turn and engage the bad guy from facing sideways or having our backs to the threat. We would incorporate all the things we learned by moving off the X, drawing, a command to stop doing bad shit, and maybe fire a string of bullets into their heart and face. As we were all not beginner shooters we practiced drawing our pistol while we were not facing the target and turning with the pistol pointing down (making sure we were not flagging anyone else or ourselves) while orienting towards the threat and giving two in the heart and two in the face.
We did one hand shoot both strong hand and weak(er) hand. Transitioning from left to right hand while trying to still hold ourselves to combat effective accuracy. Another new thing I liked in this class was Ben showed us a few different ways to shoot one-handed and more specifically a few different ways to shoot weak(er) hand. He gave us some really good methods and tips that improved my left hand to be much more accurate. Other students in the class used other methods he showed and it worked better for them. Ben’s understanding that each of us is different and certain things work better than others for different people is awesome.
We learned how safely run with our gun, how to steady ourselves before taking the shot as we were responsible for every miss in the real world. Ben talked about getting to the skill point of only thinking about your sight picture and holding steady. Everything else should just happen itself allowing most of your concentration to the sight picture when pulling the trigger.
We ended the day shooting steel, drawing from concealment, and getting the shot off as fast and accurately as we could at about 20ish yards. We went one by one and went through the line three times. With all the big winter bulky layers clothes I was wearing my times were not so great. I ran 2.46 -missed the steel, a 2.16 hitting center mass, and a 2.10 with a throat shot.
At about 4:30ish we were done with the range portion of the class. We had a debrief went around the group and talked about things we learned and discussed each of the points. It was a very good class, it was so great to get back out there and get back to training. The weather sucked shit, we all took in stride, all had a good sense of humor and made the best of it. There is something about suffering together with a bunch of people you know that bonds you. I really like Ben. He is super knowledgeable, skillful, funny, humble, and sometimes appropriately inappropriate. As the day goes on his jokes go downhill. He is a down to earth dude, that is easy to talk to fun to be around. I like to say I think Ben DeWalt and OnSight Firearms Training is one of the best training companies and best-kept secrets within the training community. Absolutely take his class if you have the opportunity.
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Defensive Pistol AAR
Ridgeline Training Center
oftllc.us, ridgelineshooting.com
May 9, 2020
Instructor: Ben DeWalt
Location: Ridgeline Training Center, Dalton NH
Weather: COLD low 30’s, SNOWY, WINDY! Heavy winds (20-35mph) wind chill was around 10-15 degrees
Clothing: Heavy base layer tops & bottoms, LL Bean wool insulated guide pants, extra heavy Carhartt hoodie & down vest and jacket. KEEN Summit County Winter hiking boots.
Round Count: 600 +/- PMC 9mm 115gr
Class size: 7 students
-----
HOLY SHIT, its frigging May and we are having a snowstorm with heavy winds and I am outside on the top of a mountain in a pistol class. WTF? After two-plus months of being quarantined in my home with my family I was extremely happy to be in a class with these conditions.
We did our introductions, had our safety briefing, medical briefing, and were given instructions on what to do if there was a training accident. Students were given certain responsibilities.
We started off with cold guns, going over the holster draw, how to clear all the layers we all had on to keep us warm. We loaded our guns and walked back to 25yds and did a couple of strings in a B8 target. Ben would say we were only as good as our first cold shot, in a real-world encounter there would be no warmups. It made sense to me, this was a humbling way to start off the class on a super windy snowy cold morning where at times the blowing snow was whiting out the target. I was rusty, it had been several months since my last class and it showed. OH WELL, IT’S ALL GOOD!
We moved closer to and ran the same drill from 5, 7, and 10 yards working on our grip, front sight concentration, and trigger press with reset. There was never a time constraint with any of the drills all day. I seem to have always been the last one done with the string.
Before each drill, Ben would explain it, demo the entire drill, and explain it again. I like that teaching approach. I like to hear the instructions and then see it being done correctly. There was absolutely NO ego. We analyzed our target misses as possibly killed good guys by accident. Ben made you really think about what happened on each shot, the real world has consequences. Don’t be a good guy active shooter!
We incorporated movement into our draw (getting off the X) shooting the heart and the face. The student body was all experienced shooters so we moved pretty fast and most of the work was in the 15ish-25ish yard. Ben found the right way to get each student to push their skill a little past their comfort zone so each of us was learning. He did it in a professional, kind, patient way treating each student with respect and no one was made to feel embarrassed or humiliated on the line. Not all instructors are like that. Ben is a professional teacher and he has the experience, confidence, and competence to know how to get more out of you than you think. Good job Ben!
At the lunch break, I went into my car to get out of the blowing snow and get some heat in my body. It was SOOO NICE to get warm. It was weird to eat lunch alone, all of the classes I have been to part of the learning experience was eating and bullshitting with the instructor and the other students at lunchtime. You gain a lot of information and experiences from their stories and recommendations ‘outside” the class curriculum.
After lunch the snow seems to slow down to a flurry, the wind was still fierce, and blowing over the target stands no matter how many large rock and steel targets we stack on them.
We ran drills with “HOT WORDS” Ben would give us a few words that if he said them we would shoot into the heart and face of the bad guy. He made us think before we acted. We incorporated a command to have the bad guy stop what he/she was doing and sometimes not to shoot and other times when we were given the HOT WORD…we would shoot the MF’er!
We learned how to safely turn and engage the bad guy from facing sideways or having our backs to the threat. We would incorporate all the things we learned by moving off the X, drawing, a command to stop doing bad shit, and maybe fire a string of bullets into their heart and face. As we were all not beginner shooters we practiced drawing our pistol while we were not facing the target and turning with the pistol pointing down (making sure we were not flagging anyone else or ourselves) while orienting towards the threat and giving two in the heart and two in the face.
We did one hand shoot both strong hand and weak(er) hand. Transitioning from left to right hand while trying to still hold ourselves to combat effective accuracy. Another new thing I liked in this class was Ben showed us a few different ways to shoot one-handed and more specifically a few different ways to shoot weak(er) hand. He gave us some really good methods and tips that improved my left hand to be much more accurate. Other students in the class used other methods he showed and it worked better for them. Ben’s understanding that each of us is different and certain things work better than others for different people is awesome.
We learned how safely run with our gun, how to steady ourselves before taking the shot as we were responsible for every miss in the real world. Ben talked about getting to the skill point of only thinking about your sight picture and holding steady. Everything else should just happen itself allowing most of your concentration to the sight picture when pulling the trigger.
We ended the day shooting steel, drawing from concealment, and getting the shot off as fast and accurately as we could at about 20ish yards. We went one by one and went through the line three times. With all the big winter bulky layers clothes I was wearing my times were not so great. I ran 2.46 -missed the steel, a 2.16 hitting center mass, and a 2.10 with a throat shot.
At about 4:30ish we were done with the range portion of the class. We had a debrief went around the group and talked about things we learned and discussed each of the points. It was a very good class, it was so great to get back out there and get back to training. The weather sucked shit, we all took in stride, all had a good sense of humor and made the best of it. There is something about suffering together with a bunch of people you know that bonds you. I really like Ben. He is super knowledgeable, skillful, funny, humble, and sometimes appropriately inappropriate. As the day goes on his jokes go downhill. He is a down to earth dude, that is easy to talk to fun to be around. I like to say I think Ben DeWalt and OnSight Firearms Training is one of the best training companies and best-kept secrets within the training community. Absolutely take his class if you have the opportunity.
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