Who; Ernest Langdon
What; Langdon Tactical Advanced Tactical Pistol Skills
When; Oct. 3-4, 2015
Where; Danville, IN
Weather; 45 degrees and on and off rain on Sat, Sunny and 75 on Sunday.
Equipment; Glock 19 Gen3 w/RMR in Dale Fricke AIWB Archangel, Glock 17 Gen4 with Ameriglo Pro I Dots as backup. 900 rounds of Magtech 115 grain FMJ.
I attended Ernest's Tactical Pistol course last year at this same location. Other INGO members were in attendance at that class, but not this one. That class was a solid 2 day fighting pistol class, however there was nothing that set it apart from many others I have attended. Bear in mind that I have taken around 40 + (closer to 50?) firearms related classes in the past number of years. I think there was quite a jump from that class to this and not only did I do some things I haven't done before, but had a number of takeaways. The class was capped at 12 students which I appreciated after having been to other big name classes where 20+ students were allowed.
TD1
Day 1 started where most do, Introductions of the students and Ernest giving us his background and qualifications. He also talked about being troubled by something that I have been noticing quite a bit of myself lately. He is trying to figure out a way to see that only people who are ready to be in an Advanced level class are there. It not only slows the class down to have people there who can't perform at a high enough level, it can also be dangerous. Ernest talked about having prereq's and maybe even a shooting test to get into the advanced level classes. It is something many instructors seem to be struggling with including Mike Pannone as I have noted elsewhere.
Next up was Ernest's theory of training. Much of this was was review from last year and very similar to many other instructors out there. One of the things that was different, or at least had much more emphasis this year was his take on trigger control. Like most of the instructors out there Ernest feels this is the most important part of firing the gun. Where he has taken on a new passion is with his disgust for the commonly taught pin and reset method. In this method, often taught to beginners, shooters are taught when they fire a shot to pin the trigger to the rear and once you recover from recoil let the trigger out just to the reset point. IMHO this is not a bad way to teach beginners, and eventually they grow beyond that. What Ernest teaches, and I first saw it with Spencer Keepers, is something different. After pressing off the shot, you would reset the trigger during recoil and actually have the trigger prepped and ready to fire by the time your sights are back on the target. Ernest had a very good saying to illustrate this, "the reset should never be the gas pedal, the sights should". It should be noted that many times during the weekend Ernest caught many of us not resetting the trigger until well after the sights had already settled. This article explains it better than I am willing to do here.
After safety and medical issues were addressed it was time to head out to the range. Up first was group shooting on 2 inch dots from a relatively close distance. This helped establish a baseline and see if everyone was up to speed. To my pleasant surprise looking up and down the line I could see we had a pretty good class of shooters who at least had a handle of shot to line up the sights and press the trigger. There was what would be a recurring theme throughout the weekend to my left. Walt was shooting VERY well. Walt was in the class last year and by his opinion was bad enough to slow the class down. Apparently he had taken this seriously as he had clearly improved. A LOT. SO much so that I pretty much queried him all weekend on what he had done to improve so much. Long story short, Properly planned and executed live and dry fire which supplemented his entrance into competitive shooting (USPSA). After running a bunch of fairly standard drills to warm up and check for week areas we ran the first "hat" shoot off of the weekend. It was 10 rounds in 10 from about 13 yards on a bulls eye target. The first hat went to Walt. IIRC he had thrown a round into the 9 ring and myself one into the 8. John Johnston from Ballistic radio was right in there as well, and he would be the whole weekend.
During the afternoon we got into multiple target drills using what our very own Coach would call the snap the eyes method. Ernest has a specific drill for this called "eyes-up". Most of the rest of the shooting from the afternoon was on steel moving around obstacles as we were doing it. This is something I don't do a lot of, but things were still going quite well.
TD2
Right from the start we could see it was going to be a much nicer day weather wise than the previous one. It was a good thing as I had only shot about 300 rounds out of a stated 1,000 rounds for the class, so I knew there would be a lot of shooting in store. We warmed upon the dots again with Ernest reminding us about not waiting on the reset. We would work cadence drills from 1 second down to about .25 to .3 splits. We also did some reloading drills at this time. Next up was the FAST drill challenge. Ernest has inherited this much loved mantle from Todd Green. Ernest does not make a real big deal out of it, but none the less many of the students were eager to try for if not a coin at least a hat pin. No coins were awarded, I believe there were 3 hat pins awarded. Unfortunately one of them was not to me. I had a time of 6.41, which while slow, would have been good enough if I had not cost myself a 1 second penalty by throwing one of the body shots wide right. Yes, Walt got a pin and wasn't far off from a coin.
After the FAST test we started working various components of what would be the theme for most of the rest of the day, shooting and moving. We started out by doing some WHO and SHO work. That work culminated into another drill that I will be stealing from Ernest. This was the 6X6X6 drill. So called because you have three mags with six rounds in each. The drill was shot from 7 yards. You fire the first mag Freestyle, reload, second mag SHO, reload third mag WHO. Ernest demo'd the drill in just a little over 13 seconds, but it was not clean, which is the goal. There were a couple of 16 ish second runs, Walt and John J, but they were not clean either. I had the fastest clean run at a not exactly blistering pace of 20 seconds. We finished up with shooting from cover and concealment before going to lunch.
During lunch myself and a couple of other students who had hung around helped Ernest set up his moving target contraption. It is basically a line that runs from one end of the range to the other with a target hanging from it moving laterally. Ernest ran along with the target to show us that it was moving at a pretty good clip. We started out by shooting one round at the target while it passed by. Not bad. Then it was two rounds. Stil fairly easy. At three it became a little difficult. this was big fun and we shot it from three different distances. About 5, 7, and 13 yards. Me and the RMR were doing pretty dang good on this part. Pride goeth before the fall. Now it was time for us to move as well as the target. We moved forward and back, we moved diagonally, we moved laterally and we moved in ways that you had to use just one hand on the gun unless you wanted to crawl. Through all of this the red dot got pretty hard to find. For me anyway. Walt seemed to be doing pretty well with his. Did I mention he was shooting a Glock with a RMR as well? He was and apparently the shooting in open class was paying off for him here.
Mercifully that fiasco ended and it was on to one more "hat" drill that I felt I could be competitive in. It is the 9 shot close speed drill. You stand facing three targets relatively close together, and you at only about 2 yards away. This is a mechanics drill that allows you to perform at close to your absolute speed limit. Shooting order is 1-1-2-1-1-H-H-H. Ernest demoe'd it in somewhere under 3 seconds. Walt messed up his draw and had to finish it one handed and still did quite well. I shot it in 3.59 seconds, not enough to beat John Johnston's 3.36 seconds. He finally won his hat, or did he. John being the strange duck he is wanted to run the drill again to see if he could make it in under 3 seconds. It was pretty unlikely as going from a 3.3 to a 3 is a huge jump, but after everyone agreed that we would do it again, if the hat went back on the table, we ran it again. Walt played it safe and made a 5 second run. I ran it fast but missed a head shot. I don't recall what John ran it in this time but he was beaten by a man shooting a Glock 43 with the TT mag extensions to just get him 9 rounds in the gun. He ran it in 3.31 seconds and went home with a LTT hat.
Conclusions.
If you missed this class, you missed a pretty good class. Ernest is a genuine nice guy who has the creds both real world and gamer. He seems to truly be interested in the advancement of his students skills. I picked up a number of things in this class some of which I listed above. I also am faced with a dilemma of sorts. The RMR clearly makes me a better shooter in many areas, one of those areas is not while shooting on the move. Now I am not talking about a pace that is just a tactical walk. I still do fine there. When you have to move at a good clip the wheels come off. If you are close enough for point shooting, no big deal. If not, well then I may just be hurrying to the nearest cover where I can lay down some deadly accurate fire.
Edited to add, INGO member John N was not only at the class, he hosted it.
What; Langdon Tactical Advanced Tactical Pistol Skills
When; Oct. 3-4, 2015
Where; Danville, IN
Weather; 45 degrees and on and off rain on Sat, Sunny and 75 on Sunday.
Equipment; Glock 19 Gen3 w/RMR in Dale Fricke AIWB Archangel, Glock 17 Gen4 with Ameriglo Pro I Dots as backup. 900 rounds of Magtech 115 grain FMJ.
I attended Ernest's Tactical Pistol course last year at this same location. Other INGO members were in attendance at that class, but not this one. That class was a solid 2 day fighting pistol class, however there was nothing that set it apart from many others I have attended. Bear in mind that I have taken around 40 + (closer to 50?) firearms related classes in the past number of years. I think there was quite a jump from that class to this and not only did I do some things I haven't done before, but had a number of takeaways. The class was capped at 12 students which I appreciated after having been to other big name classes where 20+ students were allowed.
TD1
Day 1 started where most do, Introductions of the students and Ernest giving us his background and qualifications. He also talked about being troubled by something that I have been noticing quite a bit of myself lately. He is trying to figure out a way to see that only people who are ready to be in an Advanced level class are there. It not only slows the class down to have people there who can't perform at a high enough level, it can also be dangerous. Ernest talked about having prereq's and maybe even a shooting test to get into the advanced level classes. It is something many instructors seem to be struggling with including Mike Pannone as I have noted elsewhere.
Next up was Ernest's theory of training. Much of this was was review from last year and very similar to many other instructors out there. One of the things that was different, or at least had much more emphasis this year was his take on trigger control. Like most of the instructors out there Ernest feels this is the most important part of firing the gun. Where he has taken on a new passion is with his disgust for the commonly taught pin and reset method. In this method, often taught to beginners, shooters are taught when they fire a shot to pin the trigger to the rear and once you recover from recoil let the trigger out just to the reset point. IMHO this is not a bad way to teach beginners, and eventually they grow beyond that. What Ernest teaches, and I first saw it with Spencer Keepers, is something different. After pressing off the shot, you would reset the trigger during recoil and actually have the trigger prepped and ready to fire by the time your sights are back on the target. Ernest had a very good saying to illustrate this, "the reset should never be the gas pedal, the sights should". It should be noted that many times during the weekend Ernest caught many of us not resetting the trigger until well after the sights had already settled. This article explains it better than I am willing to do here.
After safety and medical issues were addressed it was time to head out to the range. Up first was group shooting on 2 inch dots from a relatively close distance. This helped establish a baseline and see if everyone was up to speed. To my pleasant surprise looking up and down the line I could see we had a pretty good class of shooters who at least had a handle of shot to line up the sights and press the trigger. There was what would be a recurring theme throughout the weekend to my left. Walt was shooting VERY well. Walt was in the class last year and by his opinion was bad enough to slow the class down. Apparently he had taken this seriously as he had clearly improved. A LOT. SO much so that I pretty much queried him all weekend on what he had done to improve so much. Long story short, Properly planned and executed live and dry fire which supplemented his entrance into competitive shooting (USPSA). After running a bunch of fairly standard drills to warm up and check for week areas we ran the first "hat" shoot off of the weekend. It was 10 rounds in 10 from about 13 yards on a bulls eye target. The first hat went to Walt. IIRC he had thrown a round into the 9 ring and myself one into the 8. John Johnston from Ballistic radio was right in there as well, and he would be the whole weekend.
During the afternoon we got into multiple target drills using what our very own Coach would call the snap the eyes method. Ernest has a specific drill for this called "eyes-up". Most of the rest of the shooting from the afternoon was on steel moving around obstacles as we were doing it. This is something I don't do a lot of, but things were still going quite well.
TD2
Right from the start we could see it was going to be a much nicer day weather wise than the previous one. It was a good thing as I had only shot about 300 rounds out of a stated 1,000 rounds for the class, so I knew there would be a lot of shooting in store. We warmed upon the dots again with Ernest reminding us about not waiting on the reset. We would work cadence drills from 1 second down to about .25 to .3 splits. We also did some reloading drills at this time. Next up was the FAST drill challenge. Ernest has inherited this much loved mantle from Todd Green. Ernest does not make a real big deal out of it, but none the less many of the students were eager to try for if not a coin at least a hat pin. No coins were awarded, I believe there were 3 hat pins awarded. Unfortunately one of them was not to me. I had a time of 6.41, which while slow, would have been good enough if I had not cost myself a 1 second penalty by throwing one of the body shots wide right. Yes, Walt got a pin and wasn't far off from a coin.
After the FAST test we started working various components of what would be the theme for most of the rest of the day, shooting and moving. We started out by doing some WHO and SHO work. That work culminated into another drill that I will be stealing from Ernest. This was the 6X6X6 drill. So called because you have three mags with six rounds in each. The drill was shot from 7 yards. You fire the first mag Freestyle, reload, second mag SHO, reload third mag WHO. Ernest demo'd the drill in just a little over 13 seconds, but it was not clean, which is the goal. There were a couple of 16 ish second runs, Walt and John J, but they were not clean either. I had the fastest clean run at a not exactly blistering pace of 20 seconds. We finished up with shooting from cover and concealment before going to lunch.
During lunch myself and a couple of other students who had hung around helped Ernest set up his moving target contraption. It is basically a line that runs from one end of the range to the other with a target hanging from it moving laterally. Ernest ran along with the target to show us that it was moving at a pretty good clip. We started out by shooting one round at the target while it passed by. Not bad. Then it was two rounds. Stil fairly easy. At three it became a little difficult. this was big fun and we shot it from three different distances. About 5, 7, and 13 yards. Me and the RMR were doing pretty dang good on this part. Pride goeth before the fall. Now it was time for us to move as well as the target. We moved forward and back, we moved diagonally, we moved laterally and we moved in ways that you had to use just one hand on the gun unless you wanted to crawl. Through all of this the red dot got pretty hard to find. For me anyway. Walt seemed to be doing pretty well with his. Did I mention he was shooting a Glock with a RMR as well? He was and apparently the shooting in open class was paying off for him here.
Mercifully that fiasco ended and it was on to one more "hat" drill that I felt I could be competitive in. It is the 9 shot close speed drill. You stand facing three targets relatively close together, and you at only about 2 yards away. This is a mechanics drill that allows you to perform at close to your absolute speed limit. Shooting order is 1-1-2-1-1-H-H-H. Ernest demoe'd it in somewhere under 3 seconds. Walt messed up his draw and had to finish it one handed and still did quite well. I shot it in 3.59 seconds, not enough to beat John Johnston's 3.36 seconds. He finally won his hat, or did he. John being the strange duck he is wanted to run the drill again to see if he could make it in under 3 seconds. It was pretty unlikely as going from a 3.3 to a 3 is a huge jump, but after everyone agreed that we would do it again, if the hat went back on the table, we ran it again. Walt played it safe and made a 5 second run. I ran it fast but missed a head shot. I don't recall what John ran it in this time but he was beaten by a man shooting a Glock 43 with the TT mag extensions to just get him 9 rounds in the gun. He ran it in 3.31 seconds and went home with a LTT hat.
Conclusions.
If you missed this class, you missed a pretty good class. Ernest is a genuine nice guy who has the creds both real world and gamer. He seems to truly be interested in the advancement of his students skills. I picked up a number of things in this class some of which I listed above. I also am faced with a dilemma of sorts. The RMR clearly makes me a better shooter in many areas, one of those areas is not while shooting on the move. Now I am not talking about a pace that is just a tactical walk. I still do fine there. When you have to move at a good clip the wheels come off. If you are close enough for point shooting, no big deal. If not, well then I may just be hurrying to the nearest cover where I can lay down some deadly accurate fire.
Edited to add, INGO member John N was not only at the class, he hosted it.
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