This past weekend a couple of us participated in Pistol one at the Impact Shooting Center in Cleves, Ohio. Normally Shane Cardwell with the help of recent Impact Shoot 2 patch winner Bryan Flannagan. Due to outside circumstances, Shane was not able to instruct this class, so Bryan and our USPSA Master Class shooter Peter Woolard took over for Shane. Peter has been wanting to get into instructing so this all worked out for him and he crushed it. Bryan is always extremely helpful in getting people comfortable on the range, having Peter there as well just made it even better. Both guys have helped me go from shooting maybe 3-4 times in my life to 2 years later being pretty confident in what I can do now.
The class itself was your bare-bones pistol 101. Getting people comfortable with a pistol and getting people ready to carry a firearm safely and responsibly. Grip. Sights. Trigger. Reloads. Very basic but very important things to know. I think fundamentals are one of the most overlooked things in any discipline. In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the fundamentals are key, sure there are fancy moves and super high technique moves, they are all based on a fundamental base. When I started at AIM, Shooting was just something you did, when I started actually shooting with these guys, shooting was no different than learning jiu-jitsu or any other martial art. You have a strong fundamental base you can do anything else the sport evolves into.
I have taken this class and versions of it I want to say 4 times now, I made the choice to take a brand new gun to learn and I am very glad I did. The grip on this gun vs my M&P is completely different but also the mechanics of the firearm are different so it was a very good refresher. Had I taken it with my m&p I still would have learned something and further drilled in the fundamentals but that is me, I like going over something again and again. Another person, they may just take it once and be bored taking it again. I don’t mind drilling the basics until it’s automatic, I think I may take a pistol 1 class once a year, almost like spring training for baseball players.
Bryan does a tremendous job explaining things much like Shane does. An expert shooter and someone shooting a gun for the first time will both understand what is being explained. Pete did a great job for his first time, he can shoot like the best of them so seeing him share what he does to get that good is awesome. Whenever there’s something I don’t get or understand I go to Pete or I just copy what he does until I figure it out. I hope he gets the chance to teach more in the future.
I wish I had taken more pictures during the class but I was too into learning some new things! If you have a chance to take classes, do them. There is no reason to not always get better. Skills in shooting perish, refresh em!
Here is a dump of the rest of the shots I managed to get.
-Cano
