DustyDawg48
Master
A few forum members and I recently took part in a Combat Focus Shooting course offered by instructor James Ashby of First Action Self-Defense.
The Combat Focus Shooting Pistol course is a 2-day 16-hour class that picks up where a standard basic handgun class would leave off. It was as much a science and philosophy class as it was an instructional course designed to push yourself to failure and then to assess what it is you can do to push beyond. We finished at roughly 6pm on Wednesday the 17th and only really today have I started to fully realize what it is that happened during those 2 days.
The emphasis during the course is always about pushing yourself, teaching yourself and assessing yourself. It seemed very fluid since they wanted nothing choreographed and you would do, then assess, then do again to come to discover the how on your own instead of just mimicking in the instructor. I believe Rob, the founder and designer of Combat Focus Shooting, had spent a lot of time studying how people learn and retain information and tried to incorporate it in each instructor's style of teaching as to have each student retain what they learned much longer.
The course itself was a mixture of fun, frustration and education. At a shade over 1100 rounds I never once felt like I didn't get enough trigger time on a particular drill to where I couldn't assess a strength or weakness. Nothing was overly repetitive that didn't need to be and even though some of the drills seemed similar they did need a slightly different approach and that helped to shine a light on a particular part of your shooting, moving or gun handling skills that needed refinement. There were some drills where once you were finished the heat from your gun would just about burn through your clothing you had fired so many rounds so rapidly; it was a great test of both man and machine. The term 'combat accurate' was the phrase of each day and Rob's philosophy behind achieving those 'combat accurate' hits as rapidly as humanly possible is what drives those drills.
I would, without hesitation, take this exact course again and will work towards taking their advanced version plus the carbine course when offered. The design of Combat Focus Shooting and James' instruction gave each shooter the ability to take away exactly what they needed and to chuck anything that wasn't working for them provided what they were using was just as efficient. I may not pick up a few seconds during my IDPA matches from this but I do feel that it set me on a new path to becoming a much more competent gun owner.
I'm sure some of the other shooters will go into more depth on the 'balance of speed an accuracy' drills or the 'volume of fire' drills (just about everybody but Mudcat's favorite drill) so I'll leave with just this as an overview of how I felt about my first time taking any sort of self-defense instruction.
The Combat Focus Shooting Pistol course is a 2-day 16-hour class that picks up where a standard basic handgun class would leave off. It was as much a science and philosophy class as it was an instructional course designed to push yourself to failure and then to assess what it is you can do to push beyond. We finished at roughly 6pm on Wednesday the 17th and only really today have I started to fully realize what it is that happened during those 2 days.
The emphasis during the course is always about pushing yourself, teaching yourself and assessing yourself. It seemed very fluid since they wanted nothing choreographed and you would do, then assess, then do again to come to discover the how on your own instead of just mimicking in the instructor. I believe Rob, the founder and designer of Combat Focus Shooting, had spent a lot of time studying how people learn and retain information and tried to incorporate it in each instructor's style of teaching as to have each student retain what they learned much longer.
The course itself was a mixture of fun, frustration and education. At a shade over 1100 rounds I never once felt like I didn't get enough trigger time on a particular drill to where I couldn't assess a strength or weakness. Nothing was overly repetitive that didn't need to be and even though some of the drills seemed similar they did need a slightly different approach and that helped to shine a light on a particular part of your shooting, moving or gun handling skills that needed refinement. There were some drills where once you were finished the heat from your gun would just about burn through your clothing you had fired so many rounds so rapidly; it was a great test of both man and machine. The term 'combat accurate' was the phrase of each day and Rob's philosophy behind achieving those 'combat accurate' hits as rapidly as humanly possible is what drives those drills.
I would, without hesitation, take this exact course again and will work towards taking their advanced version plus the carbine course when offered. The design of Combat Focus Shooting and James' instruction gave each shooter the ability to take away exactly what they needed and to chuck anything that wasn't working for them provided what they were using was just as efficient. I may not pick up a few seconds during my IDPA matches from this but I do feel that it set me on a new path to becoming a much more competent gun owner.
I'm sure some of the other shooters will go into more depth on the 'balance of speed an accuracy' drills or the 'volume of fire' drills (just about everybody but Mudcat's favorite drill) so I'll leave with just this as an overview of how I felt about my first time taking any sort of self-defense instruction.
