Vickers Tactical Three Day Carbine/Pistol AAR; North TX; 04/03-05/2009
We just finished hosting Larry Vickers in North Texas at the Adrenaline Proving Grounds Range, Greenville, TX (www.apgtraining.com) for a three day combined carbine and pistol class. In attendance were a total of sixteen students, with an unusually high proportion of cops (both active and retired), several IT types, a PhD microbiologist, a very hard shooting USAF active duty guy and the one obligatory lawyer. Most folks were from Texas with one displaced Texan flying in from New York City and we also allowed one Okie! It was a great bunch and much learning occurred throughout the course.
The training weather was overall, pretty decent, with the first day being on the cold side. I don’t know what kind of mojo Larry has, but he seems to always bring at least one cold day for his classes. We stayed dry, but 35-45 mph winds were a factor at times.
Carbines consisted of Colts, Rock Rivers, LMT and Noveske. Problems were few, with the LMT showing some serious issues. The USAF dude, Stephen Hanley, shot an iron sighted AR and kicked butt with it. I recall having the eyesight to do that long ago, but Stephen was solid in all respects, including when he shot a Beretta M92FS on the pistol side of things and was excellent with that also. An old saying about the Indian and not the arrow springs to mind when you watch this guy shoot.
Pistols were the usual ton of Glocks, some M&Ps, one HK USP Expert, the Beretta and three 1911 pattern pistols. Larry shot a fairly new and very nice Wilson Combat CQB in 9mm. Pistol function was excellent overall during the class.
TD1 was entirely devoted to pistol work because as Larry pointed out, if you can execute fundamentals reliably with a pistol, the carbine becomes a piece of cake. The Larry Vickers safety briefing is not theoretical but is a “big boys” set of rules. The four big rules are covered and then LAV rocks the world of some folks by pointing out that a traditional range sets us up for failure in real world shootings because there is no berm and the real world is a two-way range. Vickers especially emphasizes to keep the trigger finger straight and in register unless actually engaged and to maintain muzzle awareness at all times. It’s a very useful briefing and one that works so much better than one from somebody who’s never seen any action other than that on TV or YouTube.
After the brief, we started work on the most important of the fundamentals: trigger control. Larry teaches and proves up through a variety of drills the importance of proper trigger control over sight alignment/sight picture and points out that most trainers only talk about this fundamental instead of providing a “feel” experience of what proper trigger control is. Pursuant to this goal of exorcising our “El Snatcho” demon or virus, a variety of both dry and live fire trigger control drills were then undertaken. I’ve done these drills now in four separate LAV classes over the past 15 months with experience numbers three and four happening on successive weekends this month. I find the drills to be extremely effective from both the student and trainer viewpoints in that you actually experience from both the “feel” and visual standpoints what proper trigger control looks like and what a snatched trigger press looks like. If you really desire to be a great pistol shot, these drills will get you a long way down the learning path to achieving that goal.
Larry then demonstrated that we all wobble as we hold and shoot a pistol and that as long as we maintain reasonable sight alignment and properly press the trigger, good hits will result. This was done by having a student hold and align sights while moving their pistol in a circular or figure eight motion while Larry actually pressed their trigger and delivered the hits and lots of them. This was some myth busting at its best about practical pistol shooting.
The Vickers approach to both pistol and carbine training is no doubt driven by Larry’s extensive training and operational experiences in the US Army’s 1st SFOD-Delta. Larry demands a high degree of accuracy from students in his classes and this is facilitated by his use of an NRA 25-yard slow fire bullseye target overlaid on an IPSC or IDPA cardboard silhouette. Gone are the “-0” or “A” zones in favor of a 5.5” bullseye, which is the new full value zone. Hits on the bullseye target paper outside the bull take you down a point during assessments and competitions. On occasions, the actual scoring rings of the bull itself were used, requiring even more discipline. This stringent standard is based on that fact that the only reliable fight stopping hits are the ones placed in critically vital areas and not just anywhere on a torso. Also driving this demanding standard is Larry’s opinion (which I think may be a bit optimistic) that in an actual fight your shot group size will double. Therefore, training is done to a harder standard to ensure at least adequate performance in a fight.
Shooting commenced at three yards and worked back to about 20-25 yards with a bread and butter drill being a one-shot/two shots/three shots from ready position exercise. Later, a timer was introduced with a five second standard for one, two or three shots no matter what the range. Competitions, both individual and team type were introduced for bragging rights or various swag prizes and this had the desired effect of ratcheting up the pressure on the class. I think that shooting under any kind of pressure is much more valuable than simply blasting rounds and this was some great pressure shooting!
As the day progressed, Larry would emphasize various manipulations of the pistol. He taught his version of the draw, three ready positions for various tactical situations and some very efficient techniques for reloads and slide management. Some of the information undoubtedly challenged the conventional wisdom currently held, but LAV always had a solid basis for his stance on his TTPs. I’ve seen many so-called “trainers” out there that simply vomit forth what they’ve heard before without any real frame of reference of their own to back their stances and Larry is not one of them. Do I agree with everything he says? No, but I am unable to say that he’s wrong, just that his frame of reference is well based and different than mine and that’s really more valuable to me than simply hearing what I’ve heard before.
Larry has more drills than Carter has pills and what I found impressive was his ability to devise a drill on the fly to teach or test a skill. We left at the end of TD1 physically and mentally whipped, which is the sign of a useful training day to most, I think.
TD2 was mostly a carbine day and we moved to the rifle bay of APG’s range facility. This range has a 300-yard capability, but we stayed inside 100 yards all day. The day started with zeroing all weapons at 100 yards, which is the LAV preferred method for a carbine. I’ve noted that there is a general preference by LE trainers for a 50 yard zero and by former Delta guys for a 100 yard zero. When you really get to thinking about how, when and where a carbine gets used today, I doubt that there is enough difference to matter between the two. I know that damn few folks can shoot well enough in stress situations to show a difference between the two preferences.
Most of the carbines had a dot sight of some sort although there was one ACOG and one Nightforce 1-4x to go with the Aimpoints, EOTechs and the aforementioned iron sight gun. Larry is very strong in his support of a red dot sight, preferably an Aimpoint.
Rifle drills commenced with what I call the LAV standards which consist of ten shots at each of the following distances, positions and time limits: 100 yards – standing to prone in 60 seconds; 75 yards – standing to sitting in 45 seconds; 50 yards – standing to kneeling in 30 seconds and finally 10 rounds at 25 yards standing in 15 seconds. This is a great standards drill to test yourself on, especially when you consider that the bullseye is the full count zone!
A variety of rifle drills followed from close to extended ranges with turns, pivots, support side shooting and transitions to handguns. Larry has a pattern of teaching a point, running a relevant drill from close to extended range and then running an individual or team competition covering the topic and it makes the training day move along smartly.
After an extended dinner break, we returned for a handgun and carbine night fire session. Discussed were light usage techniques, movement, light hardware, night sights, laser sights and flashlight techniques. There was some frank discussion of what does and does not work and no punches were pulled. Some of the most popular options in gear were pointed out as less than optimum or even tending towards junk. It’s nice to be around somebody who isn’t wholesale pimping somebody’s gear brand!
Larry ran the class through various drills with pistols and carbines and even included a limited use technique of aiming a pistol at night without use of night sights or flashlight. Most of us found the method useful to about 15-20 feet before accuracy fell off. Notice I didn’t call it a “point-shooting” technique, but it’s about as close as you’ll get LAV to such a thing.
TD3 combined pistol and carbine and was a total integration day of manipulations, transitions, turns, pivots and shooting on the move. Larry pointed out that he feels that a serious shooter should always practice trigger control, bullseye level precision shooting and shooting on the move whenever they undertake a practice session. Larry taught some fairly standard forward and reverse moving techniques and a “shuffle-glide” lateral movement technique. Drills and competitions continued and culminated with a four direction box drill with both carbine and pistol done clockwise and counter-clockwise movements that burned most of the class to the ground! There were plenty of examples of both excellent and ugly shooting performances to be seen and experienced by all.
A two-gun assessment from three to fifty yards followed for a final exam. Following the test, certificates were awarded to the students.
Many thanks to Larry for his continued energy and dedication to bringing the good guys this kind of valuable information and experiential training to get in a better place for the challenges that our future likely brings.
Also thanks to Blue Force Gear (slings) and Tango Down (Vickers magazine catches) for their donation of “swag” prizes.
Most of all, many thanks are due to the Training Section of the Garland, TX Police Department for handling the administrative details to get TCLEOSE training credit for all the Texas LEOs who were in attendance and for producing the course certificates for all.
If you want a really challenging LAV pistol class, see the link below for an upcoming Advanced Handgun Marksmanship class to be held at APG in the fall.
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1046512#Post1046512
We just finished hosting Larry Vickers in North Texas at the Adrenaline Proving Grounds Range, Greenville, TX (www.apgtraining.com) for a three day combined carbine and pistol class. In attendance were a total of sixteen students, with an unusually high proportion of cops (both active and retired), several IT types, a PhD microbiologist, a very hard shooting USAF active duty guy and the one obligatory lawyer. Most folks were from Texas with one displaced Texan flying in from New York City and we also allowed one Okie! It was a great bunch and much learning occurred throughout the course.
The training weather was overall, pretty decent, with the first day being on the cold side. I don’t know what kind of mojo Larry has, but he seems to always bring at least one cold day for his classes. We stayed dry, but 35-45 mph winds were a factor at times.
Carbines consisted of Colts, Rock Rivers, LMT and Noveske. Problems were few, with the LMT showing some serious issues. The USAF dude, Stephen Hanley, shot an iron sighted AR and kicked butt with it. I recall having the eyesight to do that long ago, but Stephen was solid in all respects, including when he shot a Beretta M92FS on the pistol side of things and was excellent with that also. An old saying about the Indian and not the arrow springs to mind when you watch this guy shoot.
Pistols were the usual ton of Glocks, some M&Ps, one HK USP Expert, the Beretta and three 1911 pattern pistols. Larry shot a fairly new and very nice Wilson Combat CQB in 9mm. Pistol function was excellent overall during the class.
TD1 was entirely devoted to pistol work because as Larry pointed out, if you can execute fundamentals reliably with a pistol, the carbine becomes a piece of cake. The Larry Vickers safety briefing is not theoretical but is a “big boys” set of rules. The four big rules are covered and then LAV rocks the world of some folks by pointing out that a traditional range sets us up for failure in real world shootings because there is no berm and the real world is a two-way range. Vickers especially emphasizes to keep the trigger finger straight and in register unless actually engaged and to maintain muzzle awareness at all times. It’s a very useful briefing and one that works so much better than one from somebody who’s never seen any action other than that on TV or YouTube.
After the brief, we started work on the most important of the fundamentals: trigger control. Larry teaches and proves up through a variety of drills the importance of proper trigger control over sight alignment/sight picture and points out that most trainers only talk about this fundamental instead of providing a “feel” experience of what proper trigger control is. Pursuant to this goal of exorcising our “El Snatcho” demon or virus, a variety of both dry and live fire trigger control drills were then undertaken. I’ve done these drills now in four separate LAV classes over the past 15 months with experience numbers three and four happening on successive weekends this month. I find the drills to be extremely effective from both the student and trainer viewpoints in that you actually experience from both the “feel” and visual standpoints what proper trigger control looks like and what a snatched trigger press looks like. If you really desire to be a great pistol shot, these drills will get you a long way down the learning path to achieving that goal.
Larry then demonstrated that we all wobble as we hold and shoot a pistol and that as long as we maintain reasonable sight alignment and properly press the trigger, good hits will result. This was done by having a student hold and align sights while moving their pistol in a circular or figure eight motion while Larry actually pressed their trigger and delivered the hits and lots of them. This was some myth busting at its best about practical pistol shooting.
The Vickers approach to both pistol and carbine training is no doubt driven by Larry’s extensive training and operational experiences in the US Army’s 1st SFOD-Delta. Larry demands a high degree of accuracy from students in his classes and this is facilitated by his use of an NRA 25-yard slow fire bullseye target overlaid on an IPSC or IDPA cardboard silhouette. Gone are the “-0” or “A” zones in favor of a 5.5” bullseye, which is the new full value zone. Hits on the bullseye target paper outside the bull take you down a point during assessments and competitions. On occasions, the actual scoring rings of the bull itself were used, requiring even more discipline. This stringent standard is based on that fact that the only reliable fight stopping hits are the ones placed in critically vital areas and not just anywhere on a torso. Also driving this demanding standard is Larry’s opinion (which I think may be a bit optimistic) that in an actual fight your shot group size will double. Therefore, training is done to a harder standard to ensure at least adequate performance in a fight.
Shooting commenced at three yards and worked back to about 20-25 yards with a bread and butter drill being a one-shot/two shots/three shots from ready position exercise. Later, a timer was introduced with a five second standard for one, two or three shots no matter what the range. Competitions, both individual and team type were introduced for bragging rights or various swag prizes and this had the desired effect of ratcheting up the pressure on the class. I think that shooting under any kind of pressure is much more valuable than simply blasting rounds and this was some great pressure shooting!
As the day progressed, Larry would emphasize various manipulations of the pistol. He taught his version of the draw, three ready positions for various tactical situations and some very efficient techniques for reloads and slide management. Some of the information undoubtedly challenged the conventional wisdom currently held, but LAV always had a solid basis for his stance on his TTPs. I’ve seen many so-called “trainers” out there that simply vomit forth what they’ve heard before without any real frame of reference of their own to back their stances and Larry is not one of them. Do I agree with everything he says? No, but I am unable to say that he’s wrong, just that his frame of reference is well based and different than mine and that’s really more valuable to me than simply hearing what I’ve heard before.
Larry has more drills than Carter has pills and what I found impressive was his ability to devise a drill on the fly to teach or test a skill. We left at the end of TD1 physically and mentally whipped, which is the sign of a useful training day to most, I think.
TD2 was mostly a carbine day and we moved to the rifle bay of APG’s range facility. This range has a 300-yard capability, but we stayed inside 100 yards all day. The day started with zeroing all weapons at 100 yards, which is the LAV preferred method for a carbine. I’ve noted that there is a general preference by LE trainers for a 50 yard zero and by former Delta guys for a 100 yard zero. When you really get to thinking about how, when and where a carbine gets used today, I doubt that there is enough difference to matter between the two. I know that damn few folks can shoot well enough in stress situations to show a difference between the two preferences.
Most of the carbines had a dot sight of some sort although there was one ACOG and one Nightforce 1-4x to go with the Aimpoints, EOTechs and the aforementioned iron sight gun. Larry is very strong in his support of a red dot sight, preferably an Aimpoint.
Rifle drills commenced with what I call the LAV standards which consist of ten shots at each of the following distances, positions and time limits: 100 yards – standing to prone in 60 seconds; 75 yards – standing to sitting in 45 seconds; 50 yards – standing to kneeling in 30 seconds and finally 10 rounds at 25 yards standing in 15 seconds. This is a great standards drill to test yourself on, especially when you consider that the bullseye is the full count zone!
A variety of rifle drills followed from close to extended ranges with turns, pivots, support side shooting and transitions to handguns. Larry has a pattern of teaching a point, running a relevant drill from close to extended range and then running an individual or team competition covering the topic and it makes the training day move along smartly.
After an extended dinner break, we returned for a handgun and carbine night fire session. Discussed were light usage techniques, movement, light hardware, night sights, laser sights and flashlight techniques. There was some frank discussion of what does and does not work and no punches were pulled. Some of the most popular options in gear were pointed out as less than optimum or even tending towards junk. It’s nice to be around somebody who isn’t wholesale pimping somebody’s gear brand!
Larry ran the class through various drills with pistols and carbines and even included a limited use technique of aiming a pistol at night without use of night sights or flashlight. Most of us found the method useful to about 15-20 feet before accuracy fell off. Notice I didn’t call it a “point-shooting” technique, but it’s about as close as you’ll get LAV to such a thing.
TD3 combined pistol and carbine and was a total integration day of manipulations, transitions, turns, pivots and shooting on the move. Larry pointed out that he feels that a serious shooter should always practice trigger control, bullseye level precision shooting and shooting on the move whenever they undertake a practice session. Larry taught some fairly standard forward and reverse moving techniques and a “shuffle-glide” lateral movement technique. Drills and competitions continued and culminated with a four direction box drill with both carbine and pistol done clockwise and counter-clockwise movements that burned most of the class to the ground! There were plenty of examples of both excellent and ugly shooting performances to be seen and experienced by all.
A two-gun assessment from three to fifty yards followed for a final exam. Following the test, certificates were awarded to the students.
Many thanks to Larry for his continued energy and dedication to bringing the good guys this kind of valuable information and experiential training to get in a better place for the challenges that our future likely brings.
Also thanks to Blue Force Gear (slings) and Tango Down (Vickers magazine catches) for their donation of “swag” prizes.
Most of all, many thanks are due to the Training Section of the Garland, TX Police Department for handling the administrative details to get TCLEOSE training credit for all the Texas LEOs who were in attendance and for producing the course certificates for all.
If you want a really challenging LAV pistol class, see the link below for an upcoming Advanced Handgun Marksmanship class to be held at APG in the fall.
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1046512#Post1046512
