CRG in Kentucky

[heavyfire7537]

My overall impression of the class is Randy did an excellent job of presenting the material and demonstarting it in class. The content has changed my thinking on CRG and has shown me several techniques that I am going to make part of my training while totally deleting others.

Overall I would recommend this class.

This is not an entry level class. Be VERY proficent with your gear and weapon.

Any questions PM me and I will be happy to answer them.

[sarge11c]

Very Impressive class, this weekends training was a very eye opening experiance for me. On one hand it showed me several things that I need to work on and other things that have helped to bolster my confindence.

The weather conditions where shall we say less then ideal. But, it provided a wonderful opportunity for everyone there to determine what would and wouldn't work for them in those conditions. I am now sold on the AIWB carry especially when wearing cold weather gear. I was a bit nervous shooting with gloves on at first but by the end of the weekend it felt odd to not be wearing them. Also this class has made me think about the placement of my spare magazines.

I will paraphrase the AAR comment that I made yesterday, "I continue to be impressed with the professionalism and abilities of the instructors with in this organization. Coming from a military background I am very impressed with how approachable Randy was, and his willingness to send break time working one on one with students that had questions."

Not only was the material and the instruction superb, I was also very impressed with my fellow students. Regardless of the conditions, rain, sleet or snow no one complained and damn it was COLD!!!!

Highly recommend this class!!!!!! I am just sorry I am not going to around to train with this group the next time SI comes to KY.

[B+Shooter]

Highly recommend this class!!!!!! I am just sorry I am not going to around to train with this group the next time SI comes to KY.

Stay safe, and stay in touch if you can. Hopefully the skills in this class tuned up your situational awareness to look with a keener eye.

[B+Shooter]

I remember finding other comments before the class saying that Close Range Gunfighting was an eye-opener. I understand that now, It is fundamentally different than other training I've seen. Comments about this being the flagship course make sense too. It's really the 'gateway' drug to get you hooked on not being a victim. I can see where the SI philosophy all builds on itself, how other classes dovetail with the most important skills.

This is my second SI class and I am going through a serious mental housecleaning of all the non-practical ideas/equipment/training. A lot of tactical glory stuff is getting pushed in the attic, mentally (and is some cases, physically).

As far as the actual class, yes-they can always go a little smoother. We were, again, hampered by weather. SFODA's travel with predator overwatch; Randy travels with stormcloud overwatch. This is nontypical for this time of year. Yes, we could have started earlier, but with weather/travel, I'm not sweating a little lag. I'm not knocking the classroom portions either. I believe much of the most valuable training was done in the classroom.
1. If the goal was to go out and run drill after drill, that would have been fun. The round count would have been higher. However, I feel like we would have learned only a fraction of what the CRG class teaches.
2. Coincidently, this benefitted us another way. I believe that a certain amount of suck factor can enhance your stressload in order to challenge your skills. It helps us better understand that not every fight happens when I have my tactical under armor clingy shirt on. However, everyone reaches a certain point where you are so miserable that you aren't paying attention to the details of instruction. If you stopped learning, then why are we doing it?

I believe the classroom/range time ratio was good. More shooting is fine, but that what later practice is for.

Randy is a great instructor. He's approachable and easygoing. He has a lot of great knowledge and it shows that he is truly passionate about the subject matter, that he's done a lot of homework on training/tactics/mindset/history.

I guess I'm hooked now.

[Randy Harris]

Thanks guys....

This was an excellent class. A big part of that was the students being already squared away when they got there. Usually in a CRG class there will be some who really would have benefitted with a little more basic instruction. Nobody in this class fell into that category. Everyone was good with their finger discipline and muzzle discipline and were open minded and ready to get to work. That makes it easy for me.And even though we were working in somewhat miserable conditions I didn't really notice it all that much due to things going so smoothly.

Students normally go through a process of internalizing the things they learned in the class the week after class. Here they think through what they did, how it matches up with what they have done before and how it differs. They consider what applied to them in their situation and what may not. Sometimes that goes for the instructor too.

One student asked how they were "as a group" and I said 85 to 90%. On further review I was a bit low on my grade. I should have said 90-95.And here is why....

75% of this class I believe had military combat deployment.One of them was a police officer who shot with his duty gear. Kudos to him for keeping it real in the triple retention rig. I think 100% of this class had previous training experience and some with some big name folks who have their own TV shows. I was first clued in about this group when I saw a picture on the wall of his house of the host in uniform with a certain political figure....at that point I figured...hmmm....this may not be the typical CRG class. This was reinforced at dinner Sunday night when everyone talked about past deployments or upcoming deployments and everyone seemed to know about out of the way "islamic sounding places" where everyone else had served...and then there was a sneaky dangerous older gentleman whose deployments were from before some of us were even born......

Point is that it is super humbling to hear how the students felt they were now going to take a hard look at how they trained after experiencing this class and how what we had just provided them with was so different and maybe more applicable than much of what they had gotten from other sources. I kept hearing "this just makes more sense". From this group.....that is truly inspiring.

Thanks guys. I'm looking forward to coming back and doing Extreme Close Range Gunfighting sometime next year.

[Nothosaur]

Thanks SI for coming to Kentucky! It was near freezing temperature both days, and the muscles & joints were sluggish. But, on the bright side -- if we can train to be ready to move quickly enough in cold weather, then we'll be all the more ready in an emergency.

The course taught us practical skills -- "getting off the X" in a lot of different ways, and then presenting the weapon efficiently. It gave me a lot to think about in how I access the gun from concealment in a real-life situation.

Because of this class, I have modified my holster to allow for quicker access.

Excellent class!