I've been interested in taking a class from Larry for a few years and finally decided to give it a try last January. He was coming to Lincoln, Illinois relatively close to where I live so I decided to sign up for his basic handgun class (two days) and his advanced class (one day). I'll review the class day-by-day here.
DAY ONE
The facility in Lincoln is fairly basic but more than adequate, in fact, a great facility for handgun training. The town of Lincoln is classic Americana. Check out the Blue Dog Inn for a great pub experience!
Impressions of Larry Vickers
I've followed Larry for a good number of years and have always enjoyed his videos and various other activities and his recommended equipment has always been top-notch, from Glock upgrades to slings. In person, LAV is a real hoot. Seriously, the guy is funny. He is salty, smart and dead-on accurate with his shooting tips. He enjoys joking with his students and has a "tough love" approach to corrections. If you are being an idiot on the line, he will let you know. If you are shooting badly, he will let you know and coach you out of it. Very approachable. Give it back to him as good as you get and he seems to like that. Great guy, good sense of humor and a skill at color vocabulary and phrases that had us laughing out loud. Somebody should write his Vicker-isms down. LAV is the real deal, people. He tells it like it is. If you don't like it? Too bad. Man up and get yourself an attitudinal adjustment. If anyone comes into his classes thinking they are hot-sh*t LAV will set you straight in a hurry, simply by showing you how well it is possible to send rounds down range accurately. LAV has the street cred and experience to instill confidence in what he is teaching and why. I've taken a LOT of training classes and LAV knows his, er, "stuff."
DAY ONE AAR
Larry rolled in by 8:30 a.m. and we were up and running live firing fairly quickly, no laborious safety briefings and endless lectures on what to do and not to do. Very straightforward safety briefing. First thing was simply a basic assessment of where everyone in the class was at in terms of basic ability. LAV expects you not to be a total idiot with gun safety and if you are not, no problems. I appreciated the fact that we did not have to waste time with endless safety techniques. If anyone f-ed up, he let them know, quick, fast and in a hurry.
The key take-away today for me was mastering trigger control. Larry has some great tips and techniques for helping you learn how to press the trigger and we went through those with a partner. Over and over, Larry reinforced how important it is to focus on the trigger press. He demonstrated how the sight picture is not nearly as important as trigger control through a variety of creative drills and techniques. Take the class for more info, bros.
What continuously impressed me through the day was how Larry would participate in every drill and was, always, by far the best in the class. The man can really shoot his handgun, which, today, was his new HK VP9. He shot it for the first time after a trigger upgrade and he was drilling groups that were simply amazing.
Larry ran us through reloading drills, accuracy drills, shooting from the holster drills and so forth.
He split us into two groups and thankfully while Group 1 was shooting Group 2 could grab some shade and hydrate on a very hot day here in Central Illinois.
We broke for lunch and after lunch we worked on a variety of drills, again, focusing on accuracy and speed but ALWAYS accuracy first. It's all about accuracy with LAV. We have all heard him say, "Speed is fine, accuracy is final." He never said it today but that was a point that was painfully made clear through the drills he uses, which are incredibly effective.
Larry made the class fun by splitting the whole group into three teams and we enjoyed competing against each other...accuracy was the final judge of every competition. Very effective teaching technique. I'm really impressed by what a great instructor LAV is.
It was intense training and by the time we ended we were all pretty much fried from the intensity of the focus on accuracy combined with the high heat and humidity.
I'm looking forward to day two tomorrow.
More later.
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