Tuesday, Feb 18:
Mobility work
Thursday, Feb 20:
Another PT test, where I was much more out of breath than usual. I also lost focused and had a couple of mess-ups on the catches. 25 pushups, 39.5 situps, 7 squat cleans @ 55#.
I did 2 easy rucking miles with 20#, then a good 1-hr core workout, and then a little more work to help with the squat cleans.
PISTOL ASI (Active Shooter Intervention)
This was my second time taking this class. I wasn't satisfied with my performance the first time around a year prior, at the same location. We covered a ton of content, and it was awesome getting exposed to a lot of techniques, but it was a lot to take in and think about at once when I had almost no prior experience. I had felt like I got worse as the day went on that first time, partially because it was mentally tiring to keep up and stay focused. I wanted to do better this time.
This time did go much better. I prepared ahead of time by watching videos of the basic drills that the class starts with. We had Cadres Chuy and Karl this time. I know from other events that Chuy's great at teaching, and that he's very intentional and patient. Karl was new to me, but he was also fantastic. As usual, the GORUCK Firearms Instructors were impeccable with their professionalism, focus on safety, and ability to teach.
We started by making our firearms inert with barrel plugs.
We learned the fundamentals and went through drills:
- Stance
- Grip
- Sight Alignment
- Sight Picture
- Trigger Squeeze
We learned about how to handle malfunctions with Tap/Rack, and how to do magazine changes.
After a safety briefing, we started live fire by getting a baseline of our shooting and scored our targets. I think the idea is that we'd try again at the end of the class to see if we improved, but we ran out of time for that.
We learned how to do rapid fire by not fully releasing the trigger. Cadre Karl noticed that I was shaking a lot when I was shooting at the beginning. I was nervous and still getting used to handling a weapon again, since I hadn't touched a firearm in a year.
We were paired up with battle buddies, with a more experienced shooter joining a less experienced shooter. Although I had taken ASI before, my buddy knew more than I did, from his own time at the range. It was a great setup, since you learn a lot from getting feedback, and even being the one watching and coaching or providing suggestions helps you become a better shooter. It's good for having more eyes on safety, too. My buddy was a young guy here with his dad, and he was great and really helpful and nice.
We learned how to shoot from different positions, like kneeling and prone, changing positions to be a harder target. We did magazine changes on the move.
We learned how to turn towards the threat and engage the threat. We learned how to shoot after getting our heart rate up with a sprint out and back and then finding our stance and shooting.
For our culminating exercise, the cadres set up a little shooting course for us. First, we had to demonstrate the proper unloading and loading procedure. Common misses were not starting the loading procedure by first re-doing the unloading procedure, and not handling the firearm in one's workspace (up high in front of your face so that you can still watch targets behind the scenes, not far down forcing you to look down and miss everything that's happening).
Then, we had 7 steel targets to hit. They were little men that would fall over if you hit them. I surprised myself when I got the first one. I moved over to a group of them next, but kept missing before I tried a different one and got that one.
Next, we changed magazines and holstered, before sprinting to two barrels, between which we shot from the kneeling position. We were shooting at a steel target that time. I forgot about that and aimed at the paper target for the first shot, before I remembered and started hitting (or missing) the steel target.
I reloaded and re-holstered, and sprinted to the last set of barrels, where we shot from a prone position. I couldn't hit the target from there. I was trying to do it upright. Maybe I should've tried doing it lying on my side like others were doing, but that looks really hard to get right, too. I might not have hit the target at all for those 10 shots on the steel target.
It was really cool to put it all together with that. It also gave me a taste of what shooting competitions are like. We were scored based on following procedures, number of hits on target, and time. The hits on target mattered the most, since procedures has 1-2 pts per deduction, and hits were a point each.
The top shooter in our little contest got an autographed target, or something.
FIGHT
You learn how to respond when your life is being threatened when you're armed. If you're not armed, you learn some options for how to handle it, with distracting feigning of fear, getting the muzzle pointed away from you, inflicting pain, getting control of the weapon, and tap racking it to make sure it's ready.
In a new twist on FIGHT that I didn't encounter last year, we learned how to handle various car-related situations that may come up if you take rideshares. Find ways to get big and brace yourself to get control of the situation if a nefarious associate of the driver tries to come along.
We touched on how rooms are cleared by 2 people, covering the corners and then meeting coverage in the middle. We learned how booths in a restaurant are not as ideal, because you're kind of trapped in there.
CAR (Counter Ambush Response)
I wasn't originally going to sign up for this, since it's an advanced class, but a new friend convinced me to. She's an experienced shooter and offered to help me through it. We were battle buddies for the class. We had Cadre Machine and Cadre Karl.
Both mornings, it was pretty chilly at the start... like you kept your hands in your pockets to make sure they could still function ok. I didn't want to use gloves, since I wasn't even used to shooting with bare fingers yet. It warmed up quickly enough, though. It got warm later in the day, but I kept my long sleeved clothes on, anyways, to protect against sunburn.
Because of a local noise ordinance, we couldn't start live fire until 1pm, and the class started at 8am, so we covered all dry fire aspects of the course, first.
We practiced the fundamentals with various drills.
We learned how to make sure that even after someone went down, they were fully de-animated. The drill involved shooting 3 rounds at the body, then shooting an empty ammo box near the ground to mimic a head shot. TM and I both went, and when we checked afterwards, we did find two holes in the box! I was amazed, though I joked that one of them very well could've been a wildly missed body shot.
I asked TM to help me take some pictures, so that I could check how my body position looked. I found that I don't do the rounding of my back, so I'll have to work on that. My grip was also all over the place. My left thumb isn't always aligned with my right thumb and parallel to the ground.
For CAR specifics, we learned the safest places to find cover behind a car, with the wheel wells (and the axel) and the engine block. We practiced shooting to the side of the car around the front or back, and from on top of the front or back hood. Everything about your position with your arms still apply.
We learned how to get out of cars facing the target.
If you're driving and stopped, you can engage the target, then get out to the side, using your foot to resist the bounce-back of the door swinging open and coming back. While traversing the width of the door, keep control of your weapon close to you and right in front of your upper body, still facing downrange.
We started working in teams of four, for drills that imagined that we were riding in a car together when we got ambushed from the side. We'd rotate between the four seats in the car, each with its on responsibility. The right side front passenger would engage the garget, while the left side people got out and started providing cover fire. Once the "shotgun" person was out, they'd get out, and once they took position on the front hood, they could start providing cover fire while the driver ran out and found cover and started giving cover fire, so that the "shotgun" could then take their turn to run away from the car. On the backseat end of things, the left side passenger would provide cover fire while the right side passenger was getting out, and once the right side passenger was in place and the left side passenger was done with their mag, they could run away from the car to cover, then provide cover fire while the right side passenger ran for cover, too.
It looks like this...
We had music blaring to go with the live fire, just like you might have in real life in a car ride. It was pretty awesome. The Cadres would throw in some twists, like locking the door on us, so that we'd have to adapt to a small unexpected variable changing. Nothing goes 100% as planned in real life, so you have to keep a cool head (and remember how to unlock a car door), and keep going.
It was pretty sweet.
I can't wait to do more FAD events!
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