I made a post back in August asking for recommendations for in-depth CCW classes in the Mid-Atlantic area and someone suggested checking out SpecDive Tactical's pistol shooting courses. I just got back from taking their Defensive Shooter Course this weekend and I figured I'd write a review/detail my experience in case anyone else might be interested. I also posted this on r/VAGuns in case there's any weird shit that happens from me pasting it over here. TL;DR and way too much detail below. Go train.TL;DR: I highly recommend this class for anyone that wants to get better with your gun you carry every day if you live within a few hours of Winchester, VA. I took CarryTrainer's S12 class in Nov 2020 in Nashville (I would write a review for that if there's interest) and it was great, but didn't have the same level of 1 on 1 instructor time and feedback. Each shooter got to run every drill with an instructor looking at them specifically and were challenged to the maximum of their own ability. Especially valuable was the block of training we did involving shooting, moving, and communicating with a partner while having a difficult shooting problem in front of us. The instructors were all great dudes that were really in tune with what each student needed work on and what they did well. I'll definitely be taking it again and bringing some friends with me.Pre-Day 1: The class takes place on a huge range complex, Echo Valley Training Center, in West Virginia, near Winchester, VA. All of the students and instructors stayed at the Courtyard Marriot in Winchester and they have a discount rate for you when you give them the code for taking the class.Day 1: Everyone gathered in the lobby of the hotel and drove out to the range together. Our class had 6 shooters and 4 instructors. There are no prerequisites for this class, so the first block of instruction was 30-45 minutes in a trailer introducing the instructors, safety brief, basic draw stroke breakdown, etc. to set the table for the day for everyone. Day 1 is planned to be all OWB work, meaning no concealment garment (again because they have no prerequisites, they feel working OWB is less complicated and safer for newer shooters, I guess). Before Day 1, I'd never shot from any holster other than one similar to my appendix rig I wear every day, so drawing and shooting from OWB was new to me.The first shooting we did was a skills assessment they used to diagnose any issues each shooter had with stance, grip, trigger press, presentation, drawstroke, etc. I had to shoot this OWB part of the course with my Glock 19, because that's the only OWB holster I could find in time for the class, so my issue most of the day was getting a good sight picture with the iron sights on my 19. I hadn't shot irons in a long time and my red dot lives on my EDC Walther PDP now.Things escalated pretty quickly from there. We went into doing Box drills (2 targets, 2 to the body on each, 1 to the head on each), then moving backward and shooting (from ~3 yards to 25 yards). We switched to shooting steel at about 25 yards moving parallel to the targets with the instructor you were paired with calling color targets for you to engage while on the move.We worked on drawing and shooting from kneeling, on your back, and on your belly, then went into applying that with the white VTAC barriers you can see on the sides of the range. We were moving through all the drills they had planned for the day pretty quickly due to the small class size so the instructors made up a drill for us to do that applied all that we'd done that day. It started at the 50 yd line with you paired with an instructor, wandering around the range and talking about whatever (where you're from, what you do, etc) and then they would randomly call out targets to engage. It was on the shooter to decide if they should seek cover behind the VTAC barriers or keep moving if they were caught in the open.At that point we'd gotten through all the Day 1 material they had planned, but still had time so they had us change gear and get into concealed work. We went through the same process going through drawstroke, presentation, reholstering safely, etc. Then, we did the same walking and shooting the shit drill from concealment. This was a lot of fun and I got a lot out of shooting most of the day at 25+ yards. Most training I see on YouTube and have experienced myself in the CCW arena is less than 10 yards, which is realistic, but you can get away with a lot more at those close distances. Day 1 showed me that I have to do the fundamentals of shooting on every single shot.Day 2: Same thing as day 1 gathering at the hotel lobby and starting with a block of lecture. This lecture was on mindset for a Concealed Carrier and legal stuff. I do a lot of work on myself with mindset so this was mostly things I've thought about, but would be a lot of good information for a someone that's completely new to this area of the shooting world.We started shooting with a basic warm up and shooting from alternate positions again. I could be getting the order of events wrong here, but I think the next thing we did was shooting the steel targets in their day 1 arrangement (in a straight line) while using the red car as cover and the instructor calling colors to engage. It was left up to the shooter to determine the best position and which order to engage the targets.Next thing was a demonstration of ballistics. They brought out a gel torso and had sections of walls behind them to demonstrate how different rounds can still have a lot of energy after passing through a person. If you watch a lot of YouTube like me, you will have seen all of this before, but it was pretty cool to see the wound paths in the torso in person.The best and last drill we did was next: partnered shooting starting buckled into a car with a complicated field of fire in front of you. The range was set up in such a way that when you were shooting from behind the car the shooting lanes were really crowded with the white bystander targets. Before the drill, they did a demonstration showing how hard it is to shoot accurately if your rounds are passing through a windshield. The drill generally went like this: Instructors start by yelling, making noise, talking shit, and then call targets for you to try to engage through the windshield and then it was the student's job to fight their way to the back of the car and meet up with their partner at the back of the car, engaging called targets in their field of fire while communicating what they're seeing/doing with their partner. Again, the best part about this drill was the difficulty of the shooting problem in front of you and making sure you got your hits with all of this chaos going on around you. Here is a link to one of the runs by two of the other students through the drill. I wish I got one of my runs on camera, but this is a good representation of what we all did. That was the last serious instruction we did.Then we had some fun just shooting the hell out of the car, culminating in blowing the car up. We did a debrief of the class where everyone was asked to speak about what their thoughts were on the class, including the instructors. It was good to hear the returning students say they always get something new from their classes. The instructors said that every one of their classes are different and I'll definitely be going back to keep pushing myself.Overall Thoughts: I had an awesome time and took a lot of lessons from the class. It was money and ammo well spent. I'm trying to get some of my friends to go with me in the fall or early next year for this class. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/33S4EHD
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