So I guess I'll throw down a review. Be aware I am a very pessimistic person, I'm gonna attempt to reign that in. I'm gonna include a brief mention of the night before because it sucked and probably didn't help anything. This is long.
I got off at 2230 Friday, hit the road from W-S to Oxford because I didn't want to do it in the morning, this would prove probably unwise. I decided to forego a hotel room for Friday night since it was just gonna be a few hours and attempted sleeping in the truck at the Granville County rest area this was flat dumb. Place was just about empty but the world is full of stupid people, myself included this day, and they were drawn to me, one group decided to park beside my truck to argue and another a little later shout at every passerby for jumper cables, I think I managed an hour of sleep, and was in a great mood. Enough of that.
Get to the range about 0800 for an 0830 start, Ben and Darren are setting up the stage and the drill bays along with a couple other folks that got there early, naturally pitch in, naturally miss a rebar post and smack my left hand with a 4lb maul.
Ben gives a run-down on the format, shoot drills here with me, run each other thru the stage when you're not doing that. Every drill was preceded by a discussion of the point, appropriate sight picture(s), a demo by Ben, a question period, and then usually several minutes running it dry, before going live.
Day one, first thing, everyone runs the sample stage with Ben running the timer, he doesn't really say much, then shows us how he'd do it smashing the best of class by at least 10 seconds then takes some questions. He asks me while we're walking to the drill bay, "you're C class right?" I dunno if he's done homework on the students or just guessed from what he saw.
In the drill bay we all get on line for some marksmanship stuff, starting with groups at 20? yards no time limit 10 rounds, there's a lot of other than alphas and not groups, so we move up, he addresses some individual issues, zeros some people's guns, and we work our way back. Then do some rapid fire drills followed by controlled pairs starting close and working back for each, Ben walking the line and pointing out issues, when we got back around 20yds shooting fast he diagnosed I'm having some minor issues from too much strong hand grip, somewhere in there he asked, "WTF are you doing in C class?" my response was something like, my transitions and movement are awful and my reloads require a calendar to time.
Once he gets everyone to the point of mostly alphas and close charlies and seeing/feeling when a shot goes wrong we split the class and work on some distance change up/transition drills. My first run on it, Ben asks how'd that feel, I reply, "Not great, I spent too long on the partial" Lesson one, and probably the most important for me to embrace: Dude, your feelings are completely irrelevant. He again asks WTF am I doing in C class, and points out that was a 10HF run, hmm. He also pointed out going hard-easy I need to be more aggressive on the easy.
We finished up the day's drills with some one handed stuff, my trigger press was awful and Ben really hates to see a gun tilted at all.
Everyone gathered on the sample stage and ran it again under Ben's watch, I think everyone showed improvement, I knocked about 6 seconds off, and it was pointed out I had a tendency to overshoot my positions slightly and should come in wider so I could lean a little instead of having to shuffle if that happens, and also when that happens and a target becomes obscured, act just like it's hard cover (you know cause it is) and don't be afraid to eat some Charlies don't try for some heroic shit.
Day two, change up the sample stage without injury, yay. Run it cold, Ben ROs. Today there's 4/5 major variations in student stage plans, FYI mine was retarded, never plan to go to 11 in production at least not with long shots on steel. Only one plan really seemed to bother Ben and he discussed why, but the proponents where entrenched in it so he shot it their way after showing us his plan and while it was a little slower he did say something like even a stupid plan you can execute well is better than one you can't.
Drills for the day, long and short movement both directions, SOTM perpendicular both ways, position entry, and a little classifier skill type drill.
Some weirdness here, my R-L entry I end up with a jacked stance, Ben seriously said he'd seen some dumb shit in his time, but never anything like that and I needed to fix it, now. He's also very big on a 50/50 weight distribution, I'm not doing that consistently, I'm a little late getting my weak hand back on the gun, and way late braking/slowing when coming in, and that all translates into not near stable enough to be shooting as soon as the gun/sights are lined up, the slight positive he did say overrunning is a good sign as it shows I'm getting to speed and it should be easy to address.
Shooting on the move, I need to work on moving faster.
We ended the day with another run on the stage, I beat my cold time by about 8 seconds by incorporating some of what we worked on, and had the fastest time among the students by several seconds, we didn't score it, but I at least didn't have any penalties. Ben said he still didn't understand why I was in C class.
We got a copy of dry fire reloaded and he discussed which drills he thought would give the most gains and how to use them, he stuck around to chat, I bailed.
Thoughts, it's fundamentals and that is what we did. I'm guessing it is tailored somewhat to who shows up that day. I learned some stuff for sure about my shooting and places to focus, I like Ben's instruction style, I probably should've asked more questions, he will answer them. I think I may have gotten a lot more out of the class a year ago, I am considering the Skills and Drills class if he comes back by next year.
Logistics/tips, make sure your gun runs, make sure it's zeroed, make sure any screws are loctited and/or have spares. I'm a mechanic, I think I my hands were in a minority that weren't bleeding somewhere day two, by the end of the day my right palm was sore and below my thumb on my left hand looked and felt like it'd been hit with a belt sander. Stretch, I pulled my right quad before lunch day two, that sucks on movement day. If you don't handle profanity this might not be the class for you. Get a good night's sleep, the Econo Lodge in Creedmoor won't suit a clean freak or wow you with amenities, but it's cheap and 15/20 minutes from the range.
