AAR - Vickers 2 day pistol course, Eagle Lake Texas - 6/13 & 6/14 2016

5W’s and 1H
• Who – Larry Vickers & Falcon Tactical
• What – 2 Day Level 1 Handgun Class
• When – May 13-14 2016
• Where – Eagle Lake, Texas
• Why – Improving shooting skills
• How – Discussion, Practical drills & Exercises

Instructor
• Larry Vickers

Students
• 15
• Background – Novice shooters, experienced shooters, and 3 shooting instructors.

Student’s Equipment
• Most students were running modern double stack service pistols – primarily a mix of SIG and Glock. One 1911, one BHP, and one weirdo running an H&K long slide. (guilty as charged)

Topics Covered
• Range Safety/familiarization brief from Falcon Tactical
• Firearms safety brief from Larry Vickers
o Four rules of firearm safety, as applied in the real world.
o Guidelines for safe gun handling in the class
• Heavy emphasis on mastering the fundamentals and accuracy – because “the only thing that will bring a gunfight to a successful conclusion is accurate hits on target”.
• Dry fire and live fire pistol drills that emphasized sight alignment and trigger control
• A mix of deliberate and timed drills designed to gradually increase speed once good fundamentals and accuracy are established
• Live fire drills to build confidence in correct fundamentals once established
• Live fire drills to hone pistol presentation and draw
• Slide lock reloads
• Malfunction drills
• Some drills were performed two or three times throughout the course to measure each student’s performance against the benchmark that they achieved on the first iteration of the drill.

Course Overview
The course was relaxed and informal throughout. Because I’ve delivered a moderate amount of training throughout my professional life, I’m generally very critical of instructors – and I was deeply impressed by the casual and seemingly effortless way that Larry maintained control of the class throughout both discussions and practical exercises.

I enjoyed the course immensely, and because of the way that it was structured I was able to hold my own performance up to the same “yardstick” multiple times during the course. This allowed me to prove to myself that what we were doing was in fact improving my shooting performance in a meaningful and measurable way. As I mentioned I have trained at a few different places – but my experience in this LAV pistol course was so good that I would happily pay full price to take the exact same course again.