1-Day Combat Focus Defensive Handgun Course 05/12/12

Bearco Training is holding a 1-Day Combat Focus Shooting Defensive Handgun Course on Saturday, May 12th in Covington, LA Cost $200.00



Check out www.CombatFocusShooting.com or my website at www.BearcoTraining.com for more information.

Sorry I can't make this but I just did the Rangemaster class and pretty much blew my budget and my days off from work for a while. That said, I really hope others take advantage of this chance to get some good training so I coppied and pasted this to a thread in the TRAINING section of the LOCAL forum. I'll probably post it to the LOCAL webpage later too.
The thread is at http://laopencarry.freeforums.org/1-day-combat-focus-defensive-handgun-course-05-12-12-t1046.html
I hope you get plenty of students and I'll save my pennies for one later in the year.

Really liking the sound of this. PMing with a couple of questions.

Thanks!

Thanks Steve.

I may be able to make this one, will def spread the word.

Crap, I'll be working. I really need to get into one of these classes soon.

Plan on making it to this class.

Rob is a superb instructor. I took his class in Detroit several years ago and loved it.

If I were home (BTR) I would most certainly like a refresher.

AAR:

I had read and been told that this was a unique and specific offering amongst the myriad training classes out there today, and I was not disappointed.

Most classes seem to be offering a "system"; you hear a lot of folks talking about "tools for the toolbox". The vast majority of the techniques and mechanics one learns are fairly universal, although different terminologies, slight alterations, or even trainer-specific versions that are not found anywhere else.

Combat Focus Shooting is different.

The program itself has been designed in light of all of the available data on civilian gunfights, with information taken from LEO and FBI sources when it's equally applicable. It's coupled with aspects of physiology and basic psychology, with the end goal of better understanding the types of dynamic violent confrontations that the average student is the most likely to encounter. From that foundation, a series of drills have been derived and assembled in order to enhance the necessary skill sets to deal with those situations. In essence, the theory seems to be that the training should mimic as closely as possible the conditions and circumstances of the most statistically probable scenarios and common human responses, in order to hone in on and sharpen the necessary mind set and the most intuitive (i.e. likely to happen under stress) solutions to the problem.

As do most courses of this level, the course starts out with some basic marksmanship and weapon manipulations, both to establish the competency level of the class and to brush up on/improve the key fundamentals of shooting quickly and accurately. The template is that of the "Balance of Speed and Precision"-- get effective hits as quickly as possible being the mantra. One at a time, challenges and responses are added to the foundation until everyone is essentially on the same page. And then the really interesting stuff begins.

Without going into full detail (can't spoil the course), suffice it to say that Combat Focus Shooting presents the students with often discussed but rarely practiced situations that ring so true to the shooters on the line that they are likely to ask themselves, "Now why didn't I think of that?" The approach is straight forward and logical, and "intuitive" is a fabulous description of the things that students are asked to do; for the most part, the course isn't offering new techniques, but rather applying the most effective ones in such an easy to perform fashion that it can best be described as organic. Unlike many of the complex and structured drills out there today, which dictate "run here, shoot this, run there, shoot that and this, reload, run back here, shoot that to slide lock, scan and assess, holster", the relatively free form approach of Combat Focus Shooting serves to simultaneously stress that no one knows what's going to happen in a gunfight while providing universal and simple solutions to the troublesome aspects that make real world violent encounters so unpredictable (and subsequently dangerous).

Now, about our class in general...

Barret is a GREAT dude, and one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He's also a pretty darn fine instructor as well. His passion for the material is obvious, and there's no doubt that he fully grasps the "bigger picture" behind the concepts that he teaches. His ability to articulate these underlying themes, provide specific detail as to how and why they exist, and then illustrate what the most effective solution will be makes the course easy for the students to comprehend and execute. He told us at one point that the minute he went through the class (under Mr. Pincus I believe) that he saw the value in it and wanted to be able to bring it to Louisiana. Coming from someone who has trained all across the country and with countless "big names" in the industry, that's a pretty ringing endorsement from someone with enough exposure and experience to know WTF they're talking about!

"Big Bear" showed up this morning while fighting through the first stages of a cold; his mood didn't (visibly) sour when 3 or 4 of us told him, "We had it, it's gonna really suck in a few days, and you'll have noticeable traces of it pestering you for the next three weeks." What a trooper! Fortunately, the rain that we were all expecting actually held off throughout the vast majority of the day; I'd say we were forced off the line for a grand total of 30 minutes at most. The projected round count was 500+; my buddy and I went through almost exactly 675 rounds each. Needless to say, we got a lot of repetitions in!

I'm downright pooped; I'm not sure what sick man came up with windsprint shooting drills, but I know for sure that they were challenging-- especially on sopping wet gravel overlaying ever-slickening clay. I shot several drills with a cigarette in my mouth today, and Barret didn't say a word; he probably figured out within the first twenty minutes that I'm VERY likely to be in such a condition if trouble ever finds me. On the other hand, I couldn't stop laughing when his fading voice (first victim of the cold) continued to crack at random intervals as he was screaming out commands; "Five!" never struck me as a comedic word until it split my ears on several occasions throughout the day as if bellowed by a kid just hitting puberty.

To sum it all up, the course and the instructor are both worth experiencing. Having taken countless training classes in the past year and a half, both "real world" and competition focused, as well as one-on-one instruction and training with a couple of HSLD friends, I've come to realize that you typically find yourself reminded of some things you've forgotten, achieving a better understanding of some of the concepts that were a bit vague in your head before, and coming away with fewer and fewer new ideas or notions. This course was a distinct exception; I found myself experiencing several revelations about why certain techniques and skills are the accepted norms, and took home several fresh considerations (and drills to address them) that had otherwise been absent from my training.

That's pretty impressive for a single day course!