AAR: TigerSwan 1-Day Intro Pistol Class - 2 April 2011 - Autryville, NC

[bgoltra]

Date: 2 April 2011
Company: TigerSwan booked via Grey Group
Instructors: Leon Bracy (retired US Army special operations) and Jeff Freuler (NC State Highway Patrol and USMC veteran). Both were friendly, professional, and utterly without ego.
Location: TigerSwan Training Collaborative Center in Autryville, NC
Weather: 65F, sunny, and VERY windy; felt like 50F

Background:

I grew up around firearms and bought a pistol when I graduated college. I have done a TON of reading on LF.net, M4C.net, and a few other Web sites and soon realized how paramount training is. With this in mind, I took advantage of TigerSwan’s holiday 2010 10% off special and secured slots for my father and I in their 2 April Intro to Pistol course. I selected TigerSwan based on their sterling reputation, proximity to my house, and availability of the holiday discount. I am a cubicle-dwelling analyst living in Northern Virginia and my father is a jet turbine technician living in South Jersey. Although this was the first formal training experience for either of us, it would be hard to imagine a better way to start off. Both TigerSwan and Grey Group earned two repeat customers.

Course:

Please bear with me as this is my first AAR. I was unable to take detailed notes during the class so I may miss a few things or present them out of order. The class began with introductions of the instructors, review of the first aid plan, and a safety brief. We then moved to the 25m line and began firing strings of five shots at a bulls eye, the goal of which is to expose flaws in technique which may not be evident at shorter ranges. One of the best things about this class was how thoroughly the “why” was covered in addition to the “how.” I had several light bulb moments immediately upon hearing the whys. We went over the fundamentals of stance, grip, sight picture, trigger control/prep, and press out. Each lesson was carefully explained and then demonstrated dry and live by the instructors. The instructors would walk behind students during strings of fire to make spot corrections and then assess the targets before we pasted them up to get an idea of what each shooter was doing wrong. I was jerking the hell out of the trigger, aptly explained to me by Freuler as a software problem. One round often would be a total miss. As I focused and absorbed what the instructors taught, I noticed the rounds creeping towards where they belong. Executing the fundamentals flawlessly was stressed.

We took a little over an hour for lunch and returned to the range this time at the 10m line firing at IPSC targets using ball and dummy drills, draw by numbers, and dry fire with the stated goal of being able to place two well-aimed shots in the A zone of the target as fast as possible by the end of the day. Everyone I observed was able to do this pretty much on demand by the end of instruction. We moved on to 2x2x2 drills, tempo/rhythm work, and some eventual work on speed at the 3m line. Reloads and malfunction clearance was also covered and worked into drills. Every bit of instruction built upon what we just learned. I regret to say I’m skipping a lot but I don’t know the correct terminology for some of the drills we conducted. We closed out the day shooting four targets twice each spread far apart from 3m. The class then received a short de-brief and received our t shirts and certificates of instruction. TigerSwan later e-mailed a skill builder sheet and an anonymous satisfaction survey.

Equipment:

The class seemed split about 50/50 with Glocks and M&Ps with a SIG, an HK, a full size Beretta, and a 1911 of dubious provenance thrown in. I shot a little over 500 rounds of Federal American Eagle 9mm with a third generation G19 equipped with 10-8 Performance sights and a Vickers-TangoDown magazine release. My dad fired about the same number of rounds of the same ammo through a 2006 vintage CPO P226 on which Bruce Gray performed his Reduced Reset Comprehensive Duty Package and installed Trijicon three dot sights. Neither pistol suffered any malfunctions and was fed with factory magazines exclusively. We both used CompTac belt holsters and magazine carriers on Wilderness Tactical 5 stitch instructor belts. The only piece of cool guy clothing I wore was an Arc’Teryx Gamma SV hoody. Bringing this proved critical because of the high wind and it greatly enhanced my comfort when worn over a Capilene long sleeve base layer, a short sleeve cotton t shift, and a long sleeve cotton t shirt.

Random Notes:

The class had about 12 people in it, 3 of whom I would not consider “gun people,” meaning they had little familiarity with firearms before attending. These three were carefully attended to by the instructors and did not slow the class too much. Two of whom, both female, might have been better suited in an NRA first steps pistol course. One however, started off the day at 25m with one round of five landing anywhere on the target and showed significant improvement by the end of the day, being able to draw and fire two rounds into the chest A zone and one into the head A zone of another target with regularity from 10m.

I felt safe the entire time.

We did not have to pick up brass at the end of the course.

The class was very busy, but not rushed, from 8am to 5pm.

Electronic hearing protection is a huge benefit and I can understand why some instructors mandate it.

My dad didn’t really know what to expect going in. The instructors pretty much tore down and reconstructed his grip and trigger control which yielded greatly increased accuracy and speed. He walked away very impressed and kept saying what a value the course is.

Although the course overview required students to bring a cleaning kit, we did not cover this. This was totally fine with me as the result was more time learning to shoot. Cleaning a modern service pistol isn’t rocket science and can be learned else where. Bracy quickly covered pistol lubrication after lunch by indicating that most modern service pistols don’t need to be babied only kept lubed.

*Pictures to follow*

[VA_Dinger]

bgoltra, outstanding AAR. Thanks for posting it.

As many have figured out you cannot go wrong attending a TigerSwan class.

[BSAGCA]

Great review bgoltra. It was good shooting beside you and your father.

I had this AAR finished before I saw yours. I think there is enough different information that I am posting it, too.

Summary: This was a very good basic pistol class. There were 2 instructors for 12 students. The course met the goals and my expectations. The corrections (support hand placement and finger placement on the trigger) given to me by both instructors helped me decrease the size of my groups and to move them into the black / A zone. Getting the why behind what we were being taught was very helpful in understanding the instruction. I would highly recommend this class for new shooters or for shooters who need to get back to the basics.

My impetus for going back to the basics was seeing how shitty my pistolero shooting was at a Pat Roger’s carbine class at the end of last year and a Defensive Concepts NC night handgun class earlier this year. After this class, I feel confident if I have to transition to my hand blaster at 25 meters, I will hit the body A zone; and <15 meters the head A zone. From the class, I have new drills to continue to practice and improve before taking the Tactical Pistol class.

The TigerSwan methodology of Brilliance in the Basics stresses “there is no such thing as ‘advanced tactical skills’ – there is only perfect execution of the fundamentals under stress.” The instructors stressed repeatedly that we were starting with the building blocks that all skills need to be successfully implemented. Anytime our shots were not hitting the black or A zone, we were coached on which building block(s) we were not performing appropriately. Since it was a basic class more time was spent insuring the basics were ingrained than adding stress. We did run drills in the afternoon under the timer to add some stress, though.

Pistols and equipment: There were Glocks, Sigs, M&Ps, a Berettas, a H&K USP, and a Taurus 1911. There were few issues that I saw. There was one ammo related failure with Winchester white box 9MM in a Beretta. I did not see it but heard the case was rolled back and it looked like it came from the factory that way. A couple of guns started getting hard to seat the mags towards the end of the day’s shooting.
A few pistols needed some oil late in the day. The round count got up to 410 per my count.

My M&P 9 with Apex duty action kit and Warren three dot night sights ran like a champ on Federal brown box 115 gr FMJ bullets. I purposefully did not add any oil to see how it would perform dirty.
I wore a Safariland 6377 ALS holster. This worked very well. There is great retention with a fast draw. After just a few practice draws I could grip the pistol as if there was no retention, draw, and my trigger finger away from the trigger.

Students: A mix of some people who had been shooting for awhile but may not have had a basic class or needed a refresher of the basics, relatively new shooters, and a couple of very new shooters with almost or no experience.

Instructors: TigerSwan’s cadre - Leon Bracy and M4CARBINE’s own GLOCKMASTER

Location: TigerSwan’s training facility in Autryville / Stedman, NC. This is a nice facility. Currently there are two 100 meter ranges and two new 1000+ sf shoot houses. There is plenty of room to grow.
WX: Very windy. There were some issues with the targets getting blown off the stands.

The Training Day:
I have to caveat this that I did not take good notes as I had intended so I may be leaving things out or getting the timing off.
The day started with a safety briefing, introductions, and general admin tasks. Going into the class I was concerned with safety during the class. I saw no safety issues during the day and safety was continuously stressed.
We began at the 25 meter line for instruction. Leon started discussing the 4 main points of shooting with target shooting to practice/focus each point as the points were building off each other.

Stance – boxers stance, feet shoulder width or so apart, knees bent, weight on the balls of your feet so that a dime could slide under your heels.

Grip – two handed, strong hand as high on the grip as you get it, not squeezing the grip excessively so you can isolate the trigger finger pressure / squeeze.
Support hand angled so the thumb is pointing straight ahead so it will point at the target when shooting, support fingers covering the strong hand fingers, gripping the strong hand as tight as possible.

Sight alignment – aligning the front sight level with the top of the rear sights and in the center of the rear sights. The front sight should be aligned on the center of the bullseye. There will always be some wobble – figure 8. We need to gain experience so we know what amount of wobble we can live with for the different ranges we will be shooting, i.e. larger wobble for close in and less so at more range.

Trigger control – take up the slack in the trigger as the sights are coming on target, align the sites on the target, get the wobble (my term) as small as possible knowing it will never stop and learning where your happy wobble is for the range. Make sure you have a good sight picture, continue to squeeze smoothly until the shot breaks, calling your shot placement from the sight picture when the shot broke. Follow through with a second sight picture.

We dry fired for a good bit and had our coach partners evaluate us as the instructors walked the line giving guidance to each shooter.
It was nice to have a 1 to 6 ratio for instructors to get a lot of one-on-one attention.

We shot several strings of 5 shots from the 25 meter line at 25 yard pistol targets. After each second string, the line went cold and holstered. We evaluated the targets with the instructors looking at each one before we taped them. In addition to giving guidance on the line, the instructors gave additional guidance based on where the shots were hitting on the target. I was consistently hitting at the 9 o’clock outside of the black. The issue was ID’ed as not having enough finger on the trigger. I concentrated on this and my groups moved to my point of aim.

After getting the hang of the 4 basic points and getting better, consistent groups in the black, we moved on to the presentation from the ready position. We focused on driving the pistol as fast as possible straight out, keeping our heads up (looking out the center of our eyes vs. scrunching up and looking out the tops of our hours).

We ran the ball and dummy drill. You would dry fire some. While you were doing this your coach partner would either load a round in the mag or not – not letting you know which. You would hand the pistol your partner who would load the mag with their back to you and then hand the pistol back. (Pistols were always pointed down range with additional safety instruction stressed before and during the drill.)

Next we moved to the draw from the ready position (as if you were firing a rifle and needed to transition to the pistol). There were 3 main steps to this.
1) Support hand goes to your chest, strong hand drops to grip the pistol in the holster
2) The strong hand brings the pistol up from the holster to the support hand. The two hand grip is formed at the end of this step.
3) Drive the pistol straight ahead as fast as possible to the target without shoveling (sweeping the pistol up from the holster) or casting (bringing the pistol up past the target so it has to be dropped back down to get on target.)

I think it was at this point we discussed reloads – tactical and at slide lock. It was stressed that using the support hand thumb to release the slide was quicker and did not have some of the issues that slingshotting the slide does. It was also stressed not to rely on the autoforward when inserting the mag for releasing the slide. We were told why to keep the pistol in towards the body and at eye level in our work space to be able to keep a visual on the target and to also get the mag seated as quickly as possible.

We went over the malfunction corrections. We started with rap rack, bang. Discussed sweeping stove pipes to clear and locking the slide back and dropping the mag to clear a double feed.

Drills: We moved to the 10 meter line from the 25 meter at this point and then to the 3 meter line.

Calling our shots placement and getting one more sight picture than the shots taken was continuously stressed during the drills. Leading from target to target with our eyes and bring the pistol to align with our eyes was discussed several times.

We started with putting two aimed shots on the target in the body A zone of the IDPA targets.

Next we moved to putting two aimed shots in the body A and one aimed shot in the head A.

Then on to two aimed shots to the body A and two to the head A of the same target.

Next to two aimed shots to the body A of two targets.
Then we moved to two aimed shots in the body A and/or head A of three targets.

The last drill was an extreme spread of 4 targets about 6-7 meters from the far right to the far left target. We had to place two aimed shots to the body A’s for the left outside target, then the extreme far right target, then the second target from the left target, then the third target while being timed.

We ended the day with a final Q&A.

On Monday after the class, as promised, we received an email with dry fire drills from Leon.

[VA_Dinger]

Must have been one hell of a class.

We received this email from a very pleased student yesterday;

"Thank you so much for the course on Saturday. I honestly was extremely intimidated in the first hour. Having never fired a handgun before, it was quite a lot to take in. Leon and Jeff were very patient with me and made the experience an incredible one. By the end of the day I felt pretty confident that I could put two rounds into one or two bad guys pretty quickly. (maybe not quite in the A zone but close!)

I have been singing your praises to all of the guys I work with. I know all of us will be signing on for more classes in the future. I also am going to get the wife down there as well. My goal is to get a concealed carry class under my belt and progress towards the home office defense pistol course.

Man I am fired up about learning more and putting in the time and taking the courses required to get better. Thanks for giving me a good start and I look forward to working with you and Tiger Swan in the near future."

[VA_Dinger]

TigerSwan
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