Aim Fast Hit Fast Review - Pittsburg, KS March 24-25

[Lomshek]

Bone Creek Gun Club in Pittsburg, KS hosted Todd Louis Green of pistol-training.com for a two day Aim Fast Hit Fast pistol class March 24 & 25.

Todd is very clear that this is not a gun fighting course but a gun technique course. His methodology is clear, concise and focuses on economy of motion, accuracy and speed. The speed is only stressed when the demanding accuracy standards are met. The class is billed as not for beginners and has clear skill prerequisites laid out for prospective students to evaluate their ability. Prospective students are warned in advance that if you can’t keep up the class will not be dumbed down for you.

If anyone missed this class but would like to be notified about future training opportunities in Pittsburg, KS send an email to me at roger AT tailwindcyclists DOT com. Your email will only be used by me for notices when we host Todd and other pro instructors from time to time (once maybe twice per year).

I can’t imagine a better weekend for some hard training. In the days leading up to the class we had torrential rains bordering on flooding in some areas then the sun broke through. Both days at the range were 70+ and sunny.

We had 10 shooters total. Originally the class filled up at 12 but two of the students had to bail due to family & work. Hopefully they can hit another AFHF elsewhere or hit Pittsburg the next time we host Todd.

Students ran the gamut from at or near retirement age to 24, backgrounds ranged from a few USPSA shooters, solid mindset civilians, military and at least one LEO who doubles as a local instructor. We had students from all over the Midwest and beyond with our youngest coming from Minnesota, others from Nebraska and the furthest drive was from the NYC area (20 hours).

First off Todd was the consummate professional instructor and the class was everything I had hoped for. Todd’s explanations and demos were clear and concise. When he did a demo Todd would run it exactly as he described, varying his speed to match the accuracy requirements just as he expected us to do. The rare miss or flub on his part was handled with aplomb and self deprecating humor.

To keep us shooting and minimize student down time Todd has us split into two squads (squad 1 and squad alpha because no one wants to be #2). That way while one squad is firing the other can be loading mags. It worked great and had the added benefit of keeping the student/instructor ratio at 5:1 so Todd could focus more attention on each student.

Safety was absolute and well controlled. Todd was clear on his requirements and was polite but rock hard in correcting any potential issues before they became a problem. We couldn’t have been clearer on his expectations and had no major issues.

I look forward to inviting Todd back in the future for more quality training.

On to the photos & videos…

Todd showing proper reload technique with a field stripped Glock frame for safety when facing the crowd.

JTHhapkido, Grant, Ben & Ken working the reloads

Yours truly slapping leather

Ben giving a great example of the press out method. He was the “kid” in the class and from what I saw did the best job out of all of us putting Todd’s lessons into practice. Ben’s slow motion pressout was the best example by far I saw of what Todd wanted us doing.

Local shooters Jeff & George getting some rounds downrange.

Our local master class USPSA shooter, Shawn, worked it hard all weekend. His biggest struggle, from my viewpoint, was tightening up his accuracy requirement while dialing his speed about 5% down.

Shawn’s a phenomenal shooter and has so many rounds ingrained that changing anything is very difficult. To his credit he never quit trying Todd’s methods and time will tell what he incorporates. I’ll let him add anything else he thinks about the weekend.

Todd's graded test is the F.A.S.T. Students shoot it at the start and end of each day to test themselves. It's a great guage of a shooter's fundamentals. Another drill we did was the Dot Torture which will beat any bad trigger habits out of you.

Here’s a video of JTHhapkido showing off some incredible footwork and control during the barrel drill. That dude knows how to move!

I also taped Todd as he demonstrated the Triple Nickel drill and then we all tried it a couple times.

Another drill we tried was the Hackathorn 3 Second Headshot Standards. I'm proud to say I cleaned it from concealment on day two.

 

[Lomshek]

My experience…

Personally I was pushed hard and learned a lot. I’ve been shooting USPSA for almost 10 years and am just scraping the B level. I had no illusions of being the best shooter in class but was amazed at how much I learned!

Just a few of the many things I changed or improved significantly with Todd’s lessons; grip & stance were the biggies followed by a much improved draw. I have a long way to go but the press out method noticeably sped up my accurate first shot time from the draw which was especially noticed on the low probability targets. Todd noticed I was "taking my time" on the draw and encouraged me to be more aggressive. With his pushing I took significant time off my draw (~1/2 second).

I went from a 12+ second FAST on day one (counting miss penalties) to 7.04 clean at the end of day two. I keep thinking of ways I could have done something faster to get under 7 (advanced score) but the reality is that was everything I had to give at that time.

I’m gonna drill the fundamentals until my hair hurts because I saw and felt in one weekend how much I improved when I did what Todd was teaching.

Here’s my change in form between day one and day two. I’ve felt pretty solid in form and technique the last few years but under Todd’s patient tutelage I saw a huge difference in accuracy, control and recovery.

Day one

Day two

Guns used.
My original plan was to use an M&P 9 FS but that gun got returned to me just two days before the class after its second trip to S&W for lousy accuracy (8+ inches at 25 yards) and poor QC (unfinished chamber & muzzle crown on the first replacement barrel). Having no desire to make my primary shooter a gun I hadn’t shot much with such a questionable history made me put the M&P in benchwarmer status.

I shot my old reliable Ruger P94 90% of the time from either a CTAC IWB at 3:30 or a Safariland Custom Fit OWB at 3:00 both under an untucked shirt. For those not familiar the P94’s controls mimic the M9. Even when the M&P is proven I will keep the Ruger as a back-up. The older Rugers are just on the ergo side of a 2x4 but are proverbial brick **** houses.

I spent a little time shooting a Kel-Tec PF9 to see how I did with it on some drills. The PF9 was a challenge; I felt like I shot it pretty well but still struggled with the trigger & tiny grip. Mini-poppers at 15 yards were easy enough but hits on low probability targets (3x5’s and such) were maybe 50% which is not enough for me to carry it. The gun was hitting at least 4 inches high at 7 yards so if I carry it I’ll get that fixed. So far I’ve run about 500 rounds through the gun including using it for a 180 round USPSA match and a couple hundred rounds in this class. A couple failures to feed due to the mag not pushing the round up fast enough are my diagnosis. I’ll see if I can isolate it down to a single magazine but my initial impression is the mag springs (new) are still on the weak side.

The Ruger had one failure to extract on day one. That evening I detail stripped the slide, cleaned out the FP channel & extractor groove and re-tensioned the extractor. I went a little overboard on extractor tension which caused a few failures to return to battery early on day two. After a hundred rounds or so that went away. I plan to replace both the firing pin and extractor as they are the originals and have well over 50,000 rounds through the gun.

Out of almost 1000 rounds fired I had a less than 5% light strike issue with the Ruger & Kel-Tec. The ammo I loaded for this class had Remington small rifle primers which in spite of passing my limited testing ahead of class were just too hard for 100% ignition. The M&P striker failed to ignite a single primer when I tried it so no love there. My experiment was looking for a hotter flash to get a more complete powder burn (fewer unburned kernels) with a bonus (if it worked) of only having to stock a single small primer instead of rifle and handgun.

The DA/SA manual safety Ruger was not a problem for me and the slide mounted safety did not add .001 of a second to my draw. Years of practice working the safety have made that an instinctive part of the draw/ready motion. I’m very comfortable with my accuracy on the first DA shot and am able to make fast headshots with no problem (as long as I use my sights).

One area I did have trouble was modifying my draw motion to the press out method. In the past I brought the gun up to chin level and pushed it out at a slight upward angle so I could get a sight picture as the gun is coming on target always waiting to pull the trigger until my arms were at extension.

My DA trigger method is one fast, continuous stroke from start to finish with no staging or milking. Trying to slow that down and work the trigger as I did the press out in slow motion was excruciatingly difficult for me and I don’t feel like I am even close to getting that down. I totally understand the need for a slow motion “by the numbers” (so to speak) practice to master the press out but as I have read many times it is not something that is mastered over a weekend.

It will take a while but I am going to put some serious work into incorporating what I learned at this class. If you ever get a chance Todd is a great instructor and can help anyone take their shooting up to the next level.

I really don’t think Todd did anything wrong. He was able to keep the pace moving fast enough that the better shooters were challenged and still kept the slower shooters moving and on task. My one wish was that we had spent more time on additional diagnostic drills. I felt like doing the ones we did and seeing how others did them helped me break through some performance ceilings.

 

[Seadog]

Great read n cool pics! Thanks

 

[henschman]

Hey Roger, good to see you on OSA!

Sounds like a great class -- thanks for the review. I always enjoy my trips up to Bone Creek Gun Club... maybe I'll see you at the next Appleseed up there.

 

[Lomshek]

Thanks! It would be great to have you up there. We have one scheduled for the fall if it works for you.

 

[henschman]

We've got a pretty busy schedule here in Oklahoma, but I'll try to make it!