Larry Vickers 1-Day Basic Handgun Class - Feb 8, 2014 - Carthage, NC

[Dan.]

Too short and I mean that in a good way...looking for the next opportunity to train. This was my first formal pistol training class and I spent enough time to review all the pertinent AARs I could find in order to prepare. My thoughts are that working on trigger control and ball and dummy were a big help in progressing up the learning curve. We covered the proper trigger press and sight picture then worked on shooting at 3, 6 and 9 yards with each student receiving help where needed. Team competitions were added in as skills were introduced. A walk back on reduced idpa steel to about 85yds where about 25% of the class were able to make contact took us into lunch. After lunch we resumed the skills learned in the morning with the addition of draw, reload and shooting on the move. Larry made time to answer any questions throughout the day. I left feeling great and ready for more.

Dan

[Aaron_B]

Class was a great time and I was pretty happy the weather cleared up with no rain.

Larry is excellent instructor and put a lot of things into perspective when it comes to shooting. His focus on accuracy was real priority and made proper trigger control demanding over everything else. The very first thing we did was focus on trigger control by balancing a dime on the front sight and working the trigger. After a few goes of that drill and he decided to up the pressure a little bit and add a timer to it. The goal here was to break the shot when timer went off which just added more task to accomplish forcing more focus on trigger control.

As we finished up doing the dry fire, we took it all in and started working the line with some live fire at the 3, 6, and 9 yds. Emphasis was put on keeping rounds fired in the black of the NRA B6 target(I think) centered on a IDPA cardboard target. Larry had mentioned at the end of class the reason he does that with the targets is that if he gave us the entire target to aim at thats what we would do, if we only focus on the black even the misses were not that far off center mass. Team drills were added in where each team lined up and I think 5 shots were fired by each person. Each shot out of the black was added a second, off the B6 circle target was 3 seconds, and I think anything on cardboard was 5 seconds and obviously we were going against the clock for fastest time. On a side note, if you have to come up with a team name and can't think of anything Larry will give you one, we were deemed team "Short Bus". Upon completing the team drill we had a little time before lunch and he decided to have us do a confidence walk back drill. Starting I guess around the 25 yd line and going back 10-15yds each time, I was surprised that I was getting hits out anything past the 25. Plenty of people made it all the way out to around 75-85 yds which was pretty impressive even a shooter with a G19 and plastic factory sights making it that far.

After lunch, we got right back into it. Taking everything from that morning and adding the draw to the mix. Seemed for the most part that everyone had a good handle on the draw. When he got to me, he gave me a few pointers of what I was doing as I was drawing basically straight up then kind of punching out(basically bringing the pistol to high up). He gave a good demonstration of how to properly draw just by pointing out with your finger naturally. We had another team drill after a few sets of practicing the draw. If I am not mistaken which is very possible this drill was the team lined up facing two steel targets. Each person had to draw and fire 2 shots on each target and get hits before moving to next person. The team with the fastest time won. Following this we began working reloads. I guess I had no issues there as he watched me and moved on. We practiced on this a bit running the drill with round in the chamber and empty mag in which forced us to do slide lock reloads. Larry made it pretty clear that he is not a fan of tap, rack, bang when the slide is locked back and that its a better idea to just go for a reload automatically instead of checking for malfunctions. That way if the gun was empty you are already reloading and if there is in fact a malfunction to address it at that time.

Taking a water break after the draw/reload we went into Shooting On The Move(SOTM). I am actually pretty glad he went over this, as I have attended another basic course before and they deemed it not necessary. The way Larry put it is that it is a basic skill to have because when bullets start flying in a active shooter situation that there is not a damn person just standing there. Focusing on heel to toe movement was not all that bad. SOTM definitely makes you put a lot of focus on proper trigger control.

Overall the class was great and there was a lot of great people there. Larry is truly a great instructor and I look forward to taking more classes with him in the future. He keeps things simple and is pretty damn funny also. And if anyone reads this that was at the class and sees I got events out of order feel free to make corrections. I blame it on lack of sleep that night.