Suarez Intl. Point
Shooting Progressions
April 21-22, 2012
Big Springs Range –
Searsboro, Iowa
Roger Phillips and Greg Nichols
~Preface~
First and foremost, I will say that I am writing this with
the intent to post it at multiple venues and that some comments may be made to
certain groups of individuals and not the member base of any one particular
forum etc. Also, please excuse any typos or errors, while I usually go through great lengths to use proper spelling and grammar, I've been writing most of this with my 4 month old daughter on my lap and it's been kind of hard to type...
It seems that whenever I see a review of a Suarez Intl.
Course posted outside of Warrior Talk, Gabe Suarez’s forum and meeting place
for his students, customers, and colleagues; that some will take to condemning
the organization for elements of Gabe’s past.
I do not care about Gabe’s past, it was in the past and that
is it. If you have some beef about Suarez as an individual, I would ask
that you not air your issues where this class review is being discussed as it’s
not really about Gabe Suarez.
I did not take this course because of Gabe Suarez, I enrolled in this class mainly because of
Roger Phillips. I’ve been reading Roger’s writings for years at
DefensiveCarry.com and have always found his pieces, well written, technically
and tactically proficient, valid and quite informational. To this day, every
time I shoot a shot looking for maximum accuracy (yes that does mean using
sights), I do so using information that I obtained from Roger and his writings.
I have wanted to take this course for years, particularly
under the instruction of Roger, for many reasons I was never able to make it to
this class until this month, I
have taken a few training classes with other instructors but I've still wanted to take this class.
The final straw driving me to this class was when I was
attending a course at the Tactical Defense Institute of Ohio (TDI) one of the
instructors, Greg Elfritz made mention of a study on movement and other factors
and how they altered the results of modeled gun fights using AirSoft Force on
Force training. Near the end of this study, the following can be found.
"This clearly identifies a need for additional training
and highlights the critical importance of making yourself a moving target
during a gunfight. If highly trained shooters hit their opponents’ torsos with
only eleven percent of rounds fired, imagine how much worse the average street
thug with no training and minimal experience will perform under similar
conditions!"
"I’ll simply say that we as trainers need to do some more work. We need to
find a better solution to allow our students to hit their targets with a
greater percentage of rounds during the stressful, fast-evolving nature of a
gunfight. Whatever that solution is, be it training in point shooting
techniques, an enhanced sighted shooting curriculum, or stress-inoculating
scenario-based training, it is our collective responsibility as trainers to
find it."
While some of the material from the Point Shooting
Progressions Course, hereafter referred to as PSP had been covered in those
classes other classes, PSP is just the class to fill the gaps
referenced above from Greg’s article and I highly recommend it. I have no
qualms referring friends, family, and my own students to Suarez International
(SI) and after reading this after action review (AAR) in its entirety, neither
should you.
~Day 1~
The class was hosted by Suarez Intl. Staff Instructor, Greg
Nichols. While Roger did a majority of teaching the course, Greg did his fair share of giving feedback to the students and word is that he is doing quite well inside the SI Organization. I have a feeling I'll be seeing more of him in the future and have some friends and prior students looking to take the
Defensive Pistol Skills Class with Greg this June. I will be eagerly awaiting more feedback from this class.
It will surprise a lot of readers to learn that this class,
which is often thought of as the “must have” of point shooting classes did not
start off with a sacrifice along the lines of sights being sawed off from
pistols and thrown into the trash, after all the paper work was filled out,
mags were loaded, eyes and ears in place; we started with…
…An exercise in accurate shooting. That’s right, the first
shots in POINT SHOOTING CLASS were shot using our sights in a “One hole drill”
where the goal is to try and shoot five (5) shots into as tight a group as
possible with a single hole being the desired result. Range was only about
three (3) yards and the “target” was a small piece of blue tape no bigger than
the fingernail of my little finger. This is just to see if anyone is having any
issues regarding the fundamentals of shooting a pistol.
