I'm on my next adventure to finish up my Sig Master Pistol and Rifle Instructor courses after completing the basic courses last year (https://2ahawaii.com/index.php?topic=22710.0).  These are 2 day each instructor development classes at their academy in Epping, New Hampshire.  Weather looks a little cold and wet, but it'll be better than last year's courses I took a month earlier.  Classes start next week.  I'm excited to take them as I made it my goal 5 years ago to pass them.  The shooting exams are difficult as not everyone passes and I feel a little under-prepared, but I'm still confident I'll get em done.

Tomorrow I'm stopping in Atlanta, Georgia to attend the NRA Annual Meeting where 80,000 members congregate for membership meetings, events, conferences, and exhibit halls.  It'll be my first time there.  This event is meant for everyday people versus SHOT show is meant for businesses.  President Trump will be attending the meeting so hope I get to see him.

https://www.sigsaueracademy.com/productdisplay/sig-master-pistol-instructor
https://www.sigsaueracademy.com/productdisplay/sig-master-rifle-instructor
https://www.nraam.org/

My NRA Annual Meeting pics and notes can be found at https://2ahawaii.com/index.php?topic=27477.0

Primary Goals:
1.  Pass SSA Master Pistol Instructor- GO!
2.  Pass SSA Master Rifle Instructor -GO! (with a patch) /color]

Secondary Goals:
1.  Learn how to organize grassroot efforts- GO!
2.  Learn about legislation on CCW and suppressors- NO GO!, That event costed $175 and I'll get the notes from one of the attendees.
3.  Learn about Eddie Eagle and youth education - GO!

Tertiary Goals:
1.  Shake President Trump's hand - NO GO!
2.  Eat a McLobster - Finally got one...in Hawaii.
3.  See Hickok45, IraqVeteran8888, Jessie Duff, Kirsten Joy Weiss, and other celebrities. -NO GO!  Ran out of time so I'll see em next time.

Lucky bugga you.

I left the NRA Annual Meeting a day early and flew out to New Hampshire for my class tomorrow.  I made a stop at the Manchester Firing Line Range which is an indoor commercial range that I used last year.  100 rounds of 9mm, targets, and range time cost $60 (inc $5 mil discount).  Ammo cost was a bit expensive, however you can bring outside ammo if you wish.  I practiced drawing from the holster and shooting controlled pairs with reloads as a warmup for tomorrow.  I think I'm all set.

Update:  dammit I should've gone to Walmart first.  $10 a box and no tax.

I'm using my Glock 22 w/9mm barrel and bladetech holsters like I did last year.

The thing that throws most guys is the 25.  If they drop 2 and are still in it you often see the pressure make them miss on the other stages which may not be usual for them.  If they drop zero or just 1 at the 25 they pressure out much less.  If you are on the edge after the 25 just take the rest deliberate.  Be quick on movements and manipulations and don't try to make up for time on the trigger pulls, cause it ain't gonna happen there.  Update us with who the instructors are.  Most of all have fun!  I'll be updating my quals next week.

Its a cold day, 45 degrees and overcast.  I was hoping it would be warmer as I only have a light jacket.  Instructors are Scott reidy and Jim Meyers (my prev instr).  Scott is flying to Hawaii

New thing is you can buy hot sandwiches for $12.  Looks good.  Eating in my car to get warmed up.

I was there once in May.  It was also cold and rainy the last day in the am then it actually got colder in the day and snowed on our sorry asses.  Wet then snow sucked.  Anyway will be seeing Scott and Dave next week, at least they will get a chance to warm up. 

Nice looking sammich, have fun!

Right on Zippz!

Bbq roast beef sandwich today.  I was on a diet before I came up here.

Been sick for the past few days...I have to remember to bring the purrell. Post more stuff later.  Completed the pistol class and started the rifle class today.

I started my Master Pistol Instructor class on Monday at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH at range Area 51.  It was a overcast and cold 45 degrees all day.  I thought it would've been warmer so I just had a light jacket and was freezing all day.  Leading the class were my old instructors Jim Meyers and Scott Reidy.  There were 17 students in the class.  A special forces from Norway, counter terrorism unit from Canada, Swedish defense forces, SWAT and special ops, and veteran law enforcement and military instructors.  I was the junior guy in experience.  Most of the students didn't take the regular pistol instructor class and instead took it elsewhere.

New for this class is there are no teachbacks anymore, where the student instructors teach a lesson.  Those take up too much time so the class focuses on coaching, diagnosing, talking points, and other techniques on the the firing line.  Another change is there is only one certificate given for completing the class.  Previously there were certificates of attendance and completion.  Students instead get a SIG patch if they pass the skills test.

We head out to the range and start the initial appraisal test right off the bat.  Failure to stop, malfunctions, reloads, strong/weak hand shooting, and other basic drills that instructions should be able to do.  My groups were disappointing as I couldn't make the time while keeping all of my shots in the 8 and 4 inch circles.  Half of the shooters were lightning fast and accurate.  A couple of them were like Miculek machine guns rapid firing.  Something new that gave everyone a hard time was the Z drill.  There are 2 silhouette targets, left and right.  Draw a fire 1 round each on left body, right body, left head, right head then right body, left body, right head, left head in 8 seconds.

Next we went over each skill with tips and things to look for to correct.  Some things mentioned:

Holster draw - Instead of going through and explaining a 5 or 6 step process, just draw and shoot safely with the least amount of movement.
Efficiency - Get rid of extraneous movement like hunching shoulders and turtle necks.
Bring the gun up to your eye level instead of lowering your head to gun level.  (keep your head straight up)
A low grip can cause a gap (under the tang) which can cause the gun to point naturally muzzle low.
To avoid pushing and pulling the on the trigger, ensure there is full contact with the face of the trigger.
Keep arms slightly bent for greater control and less bounce shooting from the low ready position.
Use a target focus within 15 yards with float the dot and flash sight pictures.
When shooting drills for time, don't call out the time if there are any missed shots (don't reward them for misses).  Don't rush for time versus getting a good shot.
Practice at 50% speed for correct form and accuracy, then speed up.
User a timer to figure out your draw time, splits, and reload times to see where you need to improve on.

A few drills we practiced:
Wall drill - hold the gun about 1/2 inch away from a wall or blank target and dry fire press the trigger.  The coach or shooters can more easily see muzzle movement this way.
One hole drill
Follow Through - The shooter focuses after pressing the trigger to see if they can see the muzzle flash or brass exiting the ejection port.  This makes them focus harder on the follow through and ensures they are not blinking when firing.
Shoot 1 dryfire 1 drill - chamber a round, remove the magazine, fire 1, dry fire 1.  Repeat
Shooter focuses on the sights while the coach slowly shakes the gun.  Shooter presses the trigger when sights are on the target.

Then we got a lot of practice at the 25 yard line.  After all the best way to shoot better at 25 yards, is to practice at 25 yards.  We had to draw and fire 2 rounds in 4 seconds.  My shots were horrible.  We went over the drills above and after a while I could get my shots within the 8 inch target in 4 seconds.

My shooting improved a lot during the day and I felt  more confident in my abilities.  A lot of it was a refresher from my last class since I don't have many opportunities to practice and I usually need to go through things a few times to remember them.

One of the shooting drills on Day 2

Thanks for taking the time to post that!  25 yds is what generally kills people in the quals, but like you said once dialed in, it only becomes a matter of how the shooter reacts to the pressure of time and positions in a qual.

The different certificates is new to me, they must have recently changed that.  I know with the percentage of those who didn't pass quals was high and that was a hot topic of what the paperwork stated.   

At what distance did they have you run the Z drill and what was the target spacing?  We use variations of that one. 

Did you happen to catch the name of the SF Guy from Norway?  Wasn't named Bjorn by any chance?  Ask him if he was an 80's rockstar.  If that's him, tell him the other guy from Hawaii said hello and I still lay claim to his countries flag that I still wear on my dump pouch to this day.  lol 

Yeah, thank you for taking the time to share your experience and posting that video.  That looks like a fun drill to run.  I love shooting steel.

Dressing for the weather and having the appropriate layers is always one of my biggest concerns when I (used to) travel for firearms classes on the mainland.  That often forced me to overpack so that I would have a range of clothing options.  On one trip to Alaska, I ended up wearing pretty much all the layers I had for one day when the temps were in the teens. 

Again, thank you for posting the updates.  I know after a class, I just want to head back to the hotel/home and chill out and relax. 

Looking forward to more updates.   

No Bjorn in the class.  There was a Magna, Afram, Christian, and forgot the last one.  I think the Z drill was done at 5 or 7 yards.  I got through the cold with my light jacket.  I had to pack light since I was I made stops in 4 states and had to pack all of those NRA convention brochures.  I also had to transport a few Advantage Arms 22lr kits back home since they don't ship to Hawaii.

We started off Pistol Day 2 reviewing video footage from the previous day using the Coaches Eye app for ios and android (https://www.coachseye.com/) which is used in any sport to review technique.  The instructors used a tablet to take videos of us drawing, rapid firing, and reloading.  Like football playbacks on TV, you can slow and freeze the video, draw lines to show pushback from recoil and head/gun position, and you can sync up side by side videos to compare techniques.  A common bad habit most people had was dropping the head (like a turtleneck) to the gun and hunching the shoulders which adds unnecessary time.



We also went over recommended books to read.  I took pictures of a few that I may get to go over technique, mindset and competitive application.  Competitions like IPSC and IDPA are useful for improving techniques and working under pressure, with the caveat that it can induce bad habits to game the system.

On the range, we worked on injured shooter drills working both strong and support side only hands.  Drawing, reloads, and self applying tourniquets.  A person hit in a vital arm or leg artery can bleed out in as little as 30 seconds.  They discussed a story of a police officer was shot through an artery while driving in a patrol car.  They were able to rapidly self-apply the tourniquet before losing consciousness.  They had a tournaquet that I've never seen before, the SOFTT.  It improves on the more common CATs by removing the velcro which can catch on clothing and patches, and uses an aluminum windlas which is stronger than plastic.  It also has a catch system so you can wrap it around an appendage instead of having to thread the appendage through the loop.  It was recommended to use the blaze orange tournaquets with tactical setups instead of traditional black as medical personal may cut the black straps thinking it's part of your tactical rig.  The Norwegians said it was common for the plastic CAT windlass to crack in below zero temperatures.  The newer CAT tournaquets now made with a thicker windlass so consider updating yours.

We started off Pistol Day 2 reviewing video footage from the previous day using the Coaches Eye app for ios and android (https://www.coachseye.com/) which is used in any sport to review technique.  The instructors used a tablet to take videos of us drawing, rapid firing, and reloading.  Like football playbacks on TV, you can slow and freeze the video, draw lines to show pushback from recoil and head/gun position, and you can sync up side by side videos to compare techniques.  A common bad habit most people had was dropping the head (like a turtleneck) to the gun and hunching the shoulders which adds unnecessary time.



We also went over recommended books to read.  I took pictures of a few that I may get to go over technique, mindset and competitive application.  Competitions like IPSC and IDPA are useful for improving techniques and working under pressure, with the caveat that it can induce bad habits to game the system.

On the range, we worked on injured shooter drills working both strong and support side only hands.  Drawing, reloads, and self applying tourniquets.  A person hit in a vital arm or leg artery can bleed out in as little as 30 seconds.  They discussed a story of a police officer was shot through an artery while driving in a patrol car.  They were able to rapidly self-apply the tourniquet before losing consciousness.  They had a tournaquet that I've never seen before, the SOFTT.  It improves on the more common CATs by removing the velcro which can catch on clothing and patches, and uses an aluminum windlas which is stronger than plastic.  It also has a catch system so you can wrap it around an appendage instead of having to thread the appendage through the loop.  It was recommended to use the blaze orange tournaquets with tactical setups instead of traditional black as medical personal may cut the black straps thinking it's part of your tactical rig.  The Norwegians said it was common for the plastic CAT windlass to crack in below zero temperatures.  The newer CAT tournaquets now made with a thicker windlass so consider updating yours.

I have the bottom 2 books
Will have to look for the top one on Amazon


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sounds like you had a good time!

The Coaches eye is a great tool, especially if you are really aware of the fine details of what your looking at.  I never really had a coach so to speak and about 17 years ago when I was getting really serious about my training and shooting, video became my #1 training tool when it came to my own self remediation.  I have a ton of video from way back and it is kind of neat to be able to look back and to see where I have come today.  I figured that since we used video for football and watched films and we used video to analyze baseball and golf swings, I figured why not do it with shooting?  And it works amazing for that!  So definitely use video and stills.  Students will flat out deny that they might be doing something or not just get it.  But video doesn't lie. 

I used to do the exact same thing that Coaches eye does now with the slow motion and drawing lines on stills and analyzing angles and movement, but it was a big production back then.  It was HUGE for me since I mostly worked by myself.  Of course as the training world started gaining traction around the 2008 time frame and I was taking courses and teaching all over the place.  I saw that whole training industry grow from infancy to what it is today.  The circuit has morphed itself today into a bit of a training circus and is a bit of a monster, but there are solid organizations.  On the other side of it there are soooo many people out there who have no business being in the business or should just stick more within their own "lane" so to speak.

I remember a day even only as little as about 10 years ago that if you had a video camera and a timer on a range in my shooting community you were almost shunned.  That is "gamer" shit.  Now it is common and LE / Mil while slow to learn are catching on.  I was more than a bit of an outlier 15 years ago in that I was infusing a lot of concepts from the competition world into "tactical shooters".  I used to get a lot of grief from big training groups / agencies, until my guys were dominating "tactical courses" everywhere we traveled.  People never thought we had guns in Hawaii much less knew how to shoot them.  Heck even a major LE agency has been using my 3 gun stage of fire for the past few years for their "top shooter" award.  A "3 gun stage" using a timer for a top shooter award would have been heresy 10 years ago.

Pretty cool to see Sig incorporating some medical stuff, even if it is basic tourniquet application.  That is a new one.  The medical side of things is about THE most overlooked thing that people should learn.  In my 27 or so years and I can't even count how many courses I have been through.  However THE #1 favorite course that I ever attended (twice) was not even a shooting course.  It was the LTTT combat medic course with the US Army.  It was back in the live tissue days, which I feel was invaluable to a course like that as it is nearly impossible to replicate those "bleeder" conditions even with hunks of meat and tubes.  Trach's, pneumothorax, carotid IV, transfusion, chest cracks, etc are hard for our soldiers to replicate without certain training.  Most people have no clue how hard you actually need to apply a tourniquet.  I sure as hell didn't know it would take that much pressure in certain areas.  No one will know how hard it is to stop some bleeders with quick clot, celox etc, without doing it live.  I might have given up under live conditions without live training.  But PETA is powerful. 

So glad to see you putting in so much time into your training!  I will be getting together with Scotty and Dave later today and look forward to this upcoming week!  As they probably mentioned in the course, trainers often don't have as many opportunities to be on the firing line, and are mostly behind it.  So when I do get the chance to be "on the line", I really try to take advantage and to this day I still enjoy every minute of it, even when my back and feet don't!   

I have a copy of TAPS if you want to borrow. 

I have some video of when I shot IPSC/USPSA matches and used them to critique myself as well as get feedback from others.  A number of courses that I took, the instructors had iPads to analyze and show/prove do you what you were doing.  Even still photos here and there show things that you think you are doing, but not.  Support arm position for shooting AR was one that I found that I needed to be mindful and build good habits.  That and I think when the mind is focused on the shooting part, then things tend to sort of revert to old habits.

The SOFTT has been around for a while.  That was one of the first that I bought.  TCCC is a course that I was always interested in.  Redback One does one that I have been wanting to take and they do spend some time on it in their level II and higher rifle courses.  Yeah, it surprised me at how much pressure it does take to "secure" a bleed.  We practiced on each other to the point where we couldn't feel the radial (I think that's the correct term) pulse.  We also were tasked to come up with improvised tourniquets and we had to test them as well.  When my partner tested his on me, he chose thigh application.  It was tough to get it tight enough such that they couldn't feel the pulse at the top of my foot and it was pretty sore. 

I have some medic (Army and EMT) friends and they were showing me some "tricks" when it comes to having the CAT ready to go as well as application.  I do have an older CAT, but I have that to practice and show people how to use.  I haven't touched the SOFTT in a while.  I recently bought a few CATs, I think the Gen 7.  I'll have to see if I can notice differences.  Good tips though. 

Thank you again for sharing.  Hope things continue to go well and safe travels.

Pistol Day 2 Continued.

The rest of the day was shooting on the move and oblique angles.  We weaved around barrels, walk a Z course (previous video), run shuffle run, and other exercises.  Some tips for these exercises and competitions:
- Bring the gun up before reaching your shooting spot
- When shooting on the move at angles, pivot your hips instead of your upper body.
- Keep your eyes on the target
- Running quickly to a spot and taking time to setting up for the shot is sometimes slower than moving slower but setting up quickly.


Final thing for the day was our skills test to get the Master Patch which required 22 out of 25 hits in the scoring area.  The test consisted of drawing and shooting from 5 to 25 yards in the standing and kneeling positions, strong and weak hand, reloads/malfunctions, and shooting on the move.  My first run was terrible as I rushed my shots and missed 6.  My second run was much better since I took an extra tenths of a second to aim but still missed 4 shots.  My final third run went great just missing one shot until I got a couple of failure to extracts which took me out of the running.  I used a box of Federal Aluminum cased ammo (was accidentally thrown in my case of ammo at walmart) for my third run which didn't like my Glock.  This ammo later failed to extract from a Sig320 so it may have been a bad lot of ammo.

I got my Master Instructor certificate but no patch.  I wasn't disappointed since my shooting improved and I learned a lot of teaching techniques in the two days.  8 out of 17 students got the patch, which is higher than usual but not unusual for the makeup of this class.

I'm in Colorado now and toured around a bit.  Went to the Olympic Training Center which is a very nice facility where our athletes live and train full-tie for the 2020 olympics in China. They have a nice indoor firing range setup like the Olympic events.  One of the hardest Olympic events to train for is the Pentathlon which consists of 5 events modeled after a Soldier escaping capture.  The olympian has to do fencing, equestrian, swim, run, and shoot all in a single day.

I also visited a couple of commercial gun ranges.  The Magnum shooting center was huge, looked like a Costco building. An indoor range with 24 pistol lanes and 6 100 yard rifle lanes.  I wanted to visit the outdoor multi-use Cheyene Shooting Complex right outside of Fort Carson, but it was closed.  Colorado is starting construction on a world class shooting range, Cameo Shooting Complex, which should rival Nevada and Arizona's range.  http://cpw.state.co.us/cameo

No Bjorn in the class.  There was a Magna, Afram, Christian, and forgot the last one.  I think the Z drill was done at 5 or 7 yards.  I got through the cold with my light jacket.  I had to pack light since I was I made stops in 4 states and had to pack all of those NRA convention brochures.  I also had to transport a few Advantage Arms 22lr kits back home since they don't ship to Hawaii.

All good, Scotty related that Bjorn was there.  He is pretty much the guy that brings all the Vikings to NH to train.

We put day 1 into the books.  Virtually identical format.  Skills evals out of the gate, drills etc.  They did say to bring tourneys tomorrow and I do know they have a full bullets and bandaids class.  Not sure I agree with the new Certification and patch thing, but that is not for me to have a say anyway.