pfaria
07-16-07, 14:04
Attendees: 4 students, comprised of 3 police officers and 1 civilian
Instructors: Ken Hardesty, Todd Nielsen (2nd day)
Although I've had a smattering of pistol and rifle courses over the past couple of years from other schools, this is my first LMS Defense course. Originally, this course was the Defensive Medicine/Two Man Tactics combo but was later changed to only Two-Man Tactics as the course materials for both curriculums was deemed too large for two days of instruction.
We met at the San Benito County Sheriff’s range, located a few miles North of the town of Hollister, just off of Hwy 25. Ken Hardesty, our instructor, provided the morning lecture where we introduced ourselves and dove right into the material.
Ken covered the safety briefing and instructed us that no one was to be injured during the course. In case an injury did occur, his vehicle was parked on the 25yd line, with a fully stocked medkit. We identified who had medical background and agreed upon a plan to get the injured to the local hospital as quickly as possible.
Next the lecture covered topics about the OODA loop, mindset, the differences between “tactics” vs “skills”, how one will operate to their level of training, etc, all of which was the foudnation leading into the subject of two-man tactics.
Among other things, there are three points that are key to working with your partner:
1) Communication
2) Communication
and
3) Communication
This was continually drilled into us throughout the two days and the drills that we went through required us to communicate via verbal and physical contact with our partner while being safe, having good situational awareness, and thinking while under stress.
Both days were sunny with the temps in the mid-to-high-ish 90’s but with no humidity. Hydration, electrolytes and sunscreen were the order of the day.
The students ran a combination of carbines and pistols, with some only with pistols. The option of running either type of weapon was up to the student. The focus was on tactics so it didn’t matter if the student was employing either type of weapon.
We completed the 1” dots at the beginning and end of each day. It sucked shooting it cold on Day 1 but you could see the improvement of trigger control by the end of Day 2. The courses of fire were designed to build upon each other, allowing you and your partner to develop the level of communication required to move onto the next exercise. Instructor Ken always asked us for feedback, both positive and negative on the material, but most importantly whether or not we wanted to run through the drill “dry” one more time before going “hot.” I felt this communication between instructor and student was key as we were working nuts-to-butts/close contact and if a student was unsure of what to do, then he had the opportunity to work on it until he was ready.
As was noted earlier, communication between you and your partner was the objective of the day. We developed simple keywords to communicate: loading/gun down/issue; moving; injured but still in the fight; out of the fight; ready/in place; threat and threat location; moving to 360 coverage; and so on.
One of the exercises that I enjoyed and took me out of my comfort zone was the threat identification drill (my apologies but I can’t recall the actual name of the drill). Each pair had two targets. Each target had six shapes: two triangles, two squares and two circles. The shapes were randomly colored either blue, red or yellow (with no similar shape having the same color). Lastly, each shape had a number associated with it.
When a color or shape was randomly called out by the instructor, our two-man team was required to process the instructor's input, discern the pairing that was being called out and communicate to our partner which of the two targets you were going to shoot at. Later on we ended working with targets that were images of bad guys/gals and when the threats presented themselves we would call out to our partner which threat we were going to take down and the location on the threat’s body i.e. “Threat left, chest”, etc.
Later on we learned different shooting positions such as rollover prone, kneeling, sitting, prone, supine; one partner kneeling and the other standing; one partner in prone with the other standing; how to communicate to your partner to work together getting into and out of these different shooting positions; fighting your way from supine/prone to your feet; etc.
We also covered movement both in the forms of two-man stacks and working patch-to-patch/shoulder-to-shoulder. The exercises consisted of moving towards the threat, moving backwards from the threat and laterally to threat. The last day ended with bounding drills whereby we applied our course learnings by assaulting the bad guys using simulated cover while providing covering fire for our partner. We also executed the same drill but withdrawing from the threats.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the class. The instructors were knowledgeable, gave constructive feedback, made sure the students were absorbing the material and ensured we were safe on the range. The camaraderie between the instructors and students was really good and made for quite a few laughs while topping off mags and hydrating. I’m happy to say that I made some new friends today. And just from my own observations, I can tell that the three police officers (all from the same department) that attended this class, will be able to use these valuable tactics during their shifts. The four of us used the same keywords (described earlier) since more than likely they would be rolling to the same calls while on duty. I could see they were already thinking on how to apply the learnings to their job.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend this course to others looking to learn two-man tactics. I'll definitely be signing up for additional courses with LMS Defense in the near future.
Instructors: Ken Hardesty, Todd Nielsen (2nd day)
Although I've had a smattering of pistol and rifle courses over the past couple of years from other schools, this is my first LMS Defense course. Originally, this course was the Defensive Medicine/Two Man Tactics combo but was later changed to only Two-Man Tactics as the course materials for both curriculums was deemed too large for two days of instruction.
We met at the San Benito County Sheriff’s range, located a few miles North of the town of Hollister, just off of Hwy 25. Ken Hardesty, our instructor, provided the morning lecture where we introduced ourselves and dove right into the material.
Ken covered the safety briefing and instructed us that no one was to be injured during the course. In case an injury did occur, his vehicle was parked on the 25yd line, with a fully stocked medkit. We identified who had medical background and agreed upon a plan to get the injured to the local hospital as quickly as possible.
Next the lecture covered topics about the OODA loop, mindset, the differences between “tactics” vs “skills”, how one will operate to their level of training, etc, all of which was the foudnation leading into the subject of two-man tactics.
Among other things, there are three points that are key to working with your partner:
1) Communication
2) Communication
and
3) Communication
This was continually drilled into us throughout the two days and the drills that we went through required us to communicate via verbal and physical contact with our partner while being safe, having good situational awareness, and thinking while under stress.
Both days were sunny with the temps in the mid-to-high-ish 90’s but with no humidity. Hydration, electrolytes and sunscreen were the order of the day.
The students ran a combination of carbines and pistols, with some only with pistols. The option of running either type of weapon was up to the student. The focus was on tactics so it didn’t matter if the student was employing either type of weapon.
We completed the 1” dots at the beginning and end of each day. It sucked shooting it cold on Day 1 but you could see the improvement of trigger control by the end of Day 2. The courses of fire were designed to build upon each other, allowing you and your partner to develop the level of communication required to move onto the next exercise. Instructor Ken always asked us for feedback, both positive and negative on the material, but most importantly whether or not we wanted to run through the drill “dry” one more time before going “hot.” I felt this communication between instructor and student was key as we were working nuts-to-butts/close contact and if a student was unsure of what to do, then he had the opportunity to work on it until he was ready.
As was noted earlier, communication between you and your partner was the objective of the day. We developed simple keywords to communicate: loading/gun down/issue; moving; injured but still in the fight; out of the fight; ready/in place; threat and threat location; moving to 360 coverage; and so on.
One of the exercises that I enjoyed and took me out of my comfort zone was the threat identification drill (my apologies but I can’t recall the actual name of the drill). Each pair had two targets. Each target had six shapes: two triangles, two squares and two circles. The shapes were randomly colored either blue, red or yellow (with no similar shape having the same color). Lastly, each shape had a number associated with it.
When a color or shape was randomly called out by the instructor, our two-man team was required to process the instructor's input, discern the pairing that was being called out and communicate to our partner which of the two targets you were going to shoot at. Later on we ended working with targets that were images of bad guys/gals and when the threats presented themselves we would call out to our partner which threat we were going to take down and the location on the threat’s body i.e. “Threat left, chest”, etc.
Later on we learned different shooting positions such as rollover prone, kneeling, sitting, prone, supine; one partner kneeling and the other standing; one partner in prone with the other standing; how to communicate to your partner to work together getting into and out of these different shooting positions; fighting your way from supine/prone to your feet; etc.
We also covered movement both in the forms of two-man stacks and working patch-to-patch/shoulder-to-shoulder. The exercises consisted of moving towards the threat, moving backwards from the threat and laterally to threat. The last day ended with bounding drills whereby we applied our course learnings by assaulting the bad guys using simulated cover while providing covering fire for our partner. We also executed the same drill but withdrawing from the threats.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the class. The instructors were knowledgeable, gave constructive feedback, made sure the students were absorbing the material and ensured we were safe on the range. The camaraderie between the instructors and students was really good and made for quite a few laughs while topping off mags and hydrating. I’m happy to say that I made some new friends today. And just from my own observations, I can tell that the three police officers (all from the same department) that attended this class, will be able to use these valuable tactics during their shifts. The four of us used the same keywords (described earlier) since more than likely they would be rolling to the same calls while on duty. I could see they were already thinking on how to apply the learnings to their job.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend this course to others looking to learn two-man tactics. I'll definitely be signing up for additional courses with LMS Defense in the near future.