AAR - Valhalla Combat Focus Shooting - September 5-6, 2007

[John Chapman]

Day one is over, and we are all beat. 

Today was fun filled, informative and long.  Sorry, we will tag team the AAR tomorrow.

[Troy Price]

Here are my observations from Day One:

Rob and his instructors are true professionals. They are great hosts and they articulate the skills, concepts, and techniques of CFS very well.

My quick assessment is that CFS is a great course for a anyone wanting to learn defensive handgun skills.

I initially had some problems in the beginning because some of the CFS skills are completely different than what I have trained to for the last twenty years. Don't think that I don't see value in CFS. I think Rob Pincus has developed a great system with some really good concepts. After my slow start I was able to grasp all of the concepts/skills and really began to have some fun learning and performing the techniques in CFS.

I think someone with no defensive shooting skills can learn CFS in an incredibly short amount of time and be well served by the CFS system.  I know I learned some skills that I plan on incorporating into my personal training plan. Many of the "intuitive skills" taught with CFS have real validity in defensive shooting and should be explored by anyone who carries a gun as part of their daily life.

If you ever get a chance to come to Valhalla or take a Combat Focus Shooting course you should do it.

More tomorrow.

[John Chapman]

I attended the Valhalla Training Center combat Focus Shooting course, taught by Rob Pincus, with excitement.  I have heard good things about the system, and was curious about the program. 

Day one began at Valhalla’s AWSOME facility with a lecture.  Rob spoke at length about his personal journey which lead to the development of CFS.  He spoke about training to fight vs shooting etc.  It was all things I have heard (and I myself teach), but Rob is a master of what I call memorable articulation.  He has the ability to make his points forcefully and well, in a manner which is easy for new trainees to grasp.

Once we began shooting, I was a fish out of water.  After 18 years of training to focus on my front sight, I was completely unable not to do so for a while.  It became necessary to tape over my sights so I wouldn’t focus on them.

Let me say a word here about Combat Focus.  Combat Focus Shooting, in my opinion, IS NOT point shooting.  A great amount of time and explanation was dedicated to the use of sights when necessary.  What CFS seems to allow you to do is take advantage of body mechanics to make fast “combat accurate” hits at close range in order to end the fight quickly.  Rob and his cadre, John Brown and Jeremiah Miles, continuously stressed the need to use your sights if you had to for accurate hits, ie: extended distance from the target, moving targets, etc.  For more detail on this front, take the class and buy Rob’s book.

The rest of day one consisted of square range exercises intermingled with live fire shoothouse / maze scenarios; and a 5 star lunch served by Chef at the range (mmmm mmm good). 

Day two was much of the same, with heavy emphasis placed on repeated drilling of fundamental skills in both range and maze applications. 

Things I liked about the course:

-   Heavy drilling on key skills
-   Quality, well thought out, polished curriculum
-   World class instructors
-   New material

My challenges during the course were:

-   Overcoming 18 years of training to look at the front sight at close range.
-   Shooting while standing still.  I have programmed myself, especially in a CQB role, to shoot on the move always.  CFS stresses planting your feet to shoot.  I am still thinking about this one.
-   Target transitions.  Rob’s technique for target transitions is awesome, but is completely counter-intuitive for me.  John Brown, one of Rob’s instructors, comes from the same type of training background as Troy and I, and was very helpful in guiding me through the CFS system. 
-   Weapon handling.  CFS stresses limiting your weapons handling options, with simplicity in mind.  I am going to be experimenting with this over the next few weeks.

In conclusion, Valhalla’s Combat Focus Shooting was the best pistol course I have attended in quite a while.  I learned several things, and will be incorporating some of them into my personal dry fire sessions. 

Also, LMS Defense will be completing the certification process to teach Rob Pincus’ Combat Focus Shooting under our banner.   If that doesn’t say it all about what I thought about the course, nothing will.

[MaceWindu]

CFS stresses planting your feet to shoot.

 

  I'd like to hear more about this...


Mace

[Troy Price]

The long and short of it ,Mace, is that you are not interfering with the threat's ability to hit you if you are moving forward or backwards. CFS teaches you to move to the left or right to interfere with the threat's decision making process but once you are ready to shoot then plant your feet, extend, touch, then press.

I still wanted to close to the threat, when in the mazes. I really had to fight to not move towards the threat while shooting. We had several discussions about the ability to maintain momentum if you stop to shoot. It is a topic I am going to have to think about long and hard.

Like Chappy I really enjoyed CFS and will be incorperating some of the techniques into my own skillset. Some of the techniques will probably find their way into future LMS classes also (with Rob Pincus and Valhalla getting the credit of course ) .

[Tony Siciliano]

I've read through most of CFS, and I look forward to some practical application.  I'll need to see it in action before I make any decisions...

From what I have read so far, it's counter to some of what I've been taught and have taught...

Question (and sorry if I've missed this somewhere else):  Have there been any real-world incidences with someone using the CFS technique? 

[John Chapman]

Tony,

I'm not sure if any non-mil Valhalla alumni have been involved in a shooting incident.  Rob?

I'm sure Rob would say (and I can agree) that based on his research, people have been using CFS for years in shootings, it just didn't have a name.

[John Chapman]

Alot of fun was had during the course as well.  Elk Mountain is simply amazing.

[longtab]

memorable articulation... 

And how!

Rob and his staff very effectively articulate what they wish to communicate. The entire staff is "on the same sheet of music" which is very effective in reinforcing the tenants of CFS. Unfortunately every time I'm at Valhalla I'm doing it for work and am unable to fully dedicate myself to the CFS while we're there to practice our TTP's. I would love to stop by for a few days of CFS dedicated training when I’m off the clock.

During my personal range time during this deployment I've been using Valhalla's CFS skills. I've incorporated the CFS mindset into our CQB. CFS helps you "cut corners" and basically helps you fight more efficiently.

Once you “get” that CFS isn’t point shooting and learn when to slow down and speed up your trigger press you’ll be hooked.

[Rob Pincus]

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys... I managed to stay offline for a few days while out of town... but I'm back.

Mace:

Outside of world-class competitors with trick guns and known stages of fire, I've never seen someone keep the same volume of fire and accuracy percentage while moving. My take is that someone is better off standing still and stopping the threat faster than they are being "15%" harder to hit and shooting "30%" worse/slower... (estimated numbers based on observation).

Tony,

As Chappy guessed, my standard response is that dash camera and otehr videos prove that people have been "using CFS" naturally... in fact, I point out that it is the observation of real incidents and high level simulation responses that contributed significantly to the codification of CFS.

Longtab,

When you coming back??

[longtab]

Longtab,

When you coming back??

Hopefully in time to go Trick-or-Treating...

[Rob Pincus]

I head to Europe on the 20th of OCT.... Schedule is goofy-full until Turkey-day..... pass the word, I'd like to get your crew booked soon for dates between Nov 15 and Jan 30th....

Be Careful.

[Simple Machine]

First off, my apologies to Rob, John, and Jeremiah for taking so long to get this done.  We'll look at this as a learning retention test and hopefully I won't screw up the description too much.


AAR - September 5-6

Class: Combat Focus Shooting

Location: Valhalla Shooting Club - Montrose, CO

Instructors:
- Rob Pincus
- John Brown
- Jeremiah Miles


The class started with a lecture that was based on the material covered in Rob's book.  A side note about the book; get it, read it. 

Basically, at it's essence Combat Focus Shooting is what you would tell your wife or child that needed to shoot someone breaking through the bedroom door and you were only given only 30 seconds time to explain it.  Would you go into stance, grip, sight picture, sight alignment, yada yada?  You only have 30 seconds to tell them how to defend themselves, what do you say?   1. Point the gun at the bad guy.   2. Touch the trigger.   3. Press the trigger.

It is NOT Col. Applegate's point shooting.  It is an intuitive shooting method, based on the foundational goal of Combat Accuracy.  Combat Accuracy is your ability to quickly put enough rounds into a threat that will make the threat stop.   Obviously if you are too far away, or shooting too fast, your Combat Accuracy will decrease.  You will learn in this class how far away without using your sights you can be AND how fast you can shoot before you have to slow down to still be Combat Accurate. 

Rob explained how the training center was essentially a good lab.  Let me explain; due to the nature of the shooting club residing on the Elk Mountain Resort, they get some people that are not there for the training center.  They have a number of people that visit that have never trained before and take advantage of Valhalla while they're at the resort with their families.  Rob went on to explain that in the years that he has been running this "experiment" he has seen complete handgun neophytes come in, learn the system, and by the end of class are doing well.

It IS a class that absolutely requires an open mind of those that have had prior training.  But, I was in the class with some top tier trigger pullers with 15-20 years of deep training, and they provided a good example of how to take this class with an open mind.

Some of the items that I struggled with most were the weapons manipulations and my "happy feet".  The weapons manipulations are done at reference point called the "high compressed ready".  It does make sense in the context of the shooting method taught.  You have to trust them enough to learn it.

The instructors are all top notch.  They are very articulate, knowledgable, and experienced.  They provide the training at your level, which with this class was quite a challenge for them.  We had the complete range of experience in the class, from novice to combat-proven shooters.  The instructors were able to keep all the cats in the herd, and insure everyone was getting what they needed to learn in the class.

Facilities:

I have no frame of reference for the shoot house.  It was the first time I've ever been in a "shoot house".  I can tell you this, it is way freakn cool.  (That is a technical term)  Lighting effects, pop out targets, 3D reactive targets, hostages, innocents, cars, bars, bedrooms, living rooms, stores, it is a freakn disneyland OD'ed on testosterone.

Hotel:

The hotel is first class.  The rooms are at a bargain rate if you're taking a class.  Don't stay in town, stay at the resort.  The staff will absolutely take care of you.  The chef is fantastic, and can make you look forward to dinner time.


Conclusion:

You owe it to yourself to take a vacation, get out to Colorado and take this class.  It is worth well more than the money and time you will spend.  No matter your experience, you will learn a lot about how to shoot and a lot about yourself.