Paul Gomez
www.Gomez-Training.com
The "Combat Point Shooting Instructor's Course" was taught primarily by Steve Barron with assistance from Clyde Beasely. There were several other persons who served as range cadre.
Given that the class was primarily law enforcement, they ran a military range with safety officers center, left and right and the range officer behind the line with a PA system [typical 'clear on the left, clear on the right, line is clear' sort of commands].
They did a very nice job of showing techniques by the numbers [slowly], at moderate speed and at speed so that the students could follow and understand the finer points of instruction. The instructors used Glock 17s with the sights removed.
The core material was straight out of Kill Or Get Killed with some modern influences creeping in. The Low Ready as used in KOGK was replaced with a low ready just low enough to see the bad guys hands [generally the gun is indexed at the groin of the threat]. This is pretty common in many of todays training programs. They also paid more attention to having a weight forward stance than in Shooting To Live or KOGK. I'm not saying that it wasn't there, just that at Hocking they tended to use terminology and phrasing that I'm more used to hearing from Mod Iso trainers regarding weight forward balance and getting your weight behind the gun.
Body Point is, basicly, the 1/2 hip position from STL. This was not taught by Applegate during the war and isn't included in KOGK. 3/4 Hip is mentioned in KOGK, but wasn't specifically taught. One thing that I noticed is that when working from the holster, it is not very intuitive to stop at Body Point. I found myself overshooting Body Point and winding up in 3/4 hip. From there, I either retracted to Body Point or extended to Point Shoulder. Barron & Beasely weren't dogmatic about exactly where the elbow indexed on the body, but they did insist that it contacted the body [which is appropriate for 1/2 hip]. For me, the Body Point &/or the 1/2 Hip Position work very well as a ready position. I've held people at gunpoint there and it is encouraging to know that I can put rounds on threat from my ready position without altering a darn thing.
We used Body Point out to about 10 feet. We used Point Shoulder from 5 to 20 feet and we used two hand Iso at 20 feet. I used left hand only, right hand only and two hand positions at every range and with each method just to get a feel for it. Evidently this was significantly unusual because both Barron and Beasely, as well as a couple of the ROs, commented on this.
Overall, the class was well worth the time and money invested. Was it the end-all, be-all...of course not. Did I like everything they did...nope. But it was definitely worth doing and I met some good people doing it.
As an added-extra-bonus, Steve coordinated for Mark Prince, their unarmed guy, to put on the Applegate Offensive Unarmed Combat course for us in the evenings following the Point Shooting course. We spend approximately 7 hours on Monday thru Wednesday evenings going over this material. It was exactly as is covered in the Offensive Unarmed Combat chapter of KOGK. That was a lot of fun and Mark is, umm, a prince. Seriously, he was very competant and very sincere in his desire to teach. Only seven of the point shooting students bothered to show up for the unarmed block and only two of the seven were current LEO. The other five were the only private citizens in the class. Go figure.
Given that the class was primarily law enforcement, they ran a military range with safety officers center, left and right and the range officer behind the line with a PA system [typical 'clear on the left, clear on the right, line is clear' sort of commands].
They did a very nice job of showing techniques by the numbers [slowly], at moderate speed and at speed so that the students could follow and understand the finer points of instruction. The instructors used Glock 17s with the sights removed.
The core material was straight out of Kill Or Get Killed with some modern influences creeping in. The Low Ready as used in KOGK was replaced with a low ready just low enough to see the bad guys hands [generally the gun is indexed at the groin of the threat]. This is pretty common in many of todays training programs. They also paid more attention to having a weight forward stance than in Shooting To Live or KOGK. I'm not saying that it wasn't there, just that at Hocking they tended to use terminology and phrasing that I'm more used to hearing from Mod Iso trainers regarding weight forward balance and getting your weight behind the gun.
Body Point is, basicly, the 1/2 hip position from STL. This was not taught by Applegate during the war and isn't included in KOGK. 3/4 Hip is mentioned in KOGK, but wasn't specifically taught. One thing that I noticed is that when working from the holster, it is not very intuitive to stop at Body Point. I found myself overshooting Body Point and winding up in 3/4 hip. From there, I either retracted to Body Point or extended to Point Shoulder. Barron & Beasely weren't dogmatic about exactly where the elbow indexed on the body, but they did insist that it contacted the body [which is appropriate for 1/2 hip]. For me, the Body Point &/or the 1/2 Hip Position work very well as a ready position. I've held people at gunpoint there and it is encouraging to know that I can put rounds on threat from my ready position without altering a darn thing.
We used Body Point out to about 10 feet. We used Point Shoulder from 5 to 20 feet and we used two hand Iso at 20 feet. I used left hand only, right hand only and two hand positions at every range and with each method just to get a feel for it. Evidently this was significantly unusual because both Barron and Beasely, as well as a couple of the ROs, commented on this.
Overall, the class was well worth the time and money invested. Was it the end-all, be-all...of course not. Did I like everything they did...nope. But it was definitely worth doing and I met some good people doing it.
As an added-extra-bonus, Steve coordinated for Mark Prince, their unarmed guy, to put on the Applegate Offensive Unarmed Combat course for us in the evenings following the Point Shooting course. We spend approximately 7 hours on Monday thru Wednesday evenings going over this material. It was exactly as is covered in the Offensive Unarmed Combat chapter of KOGK. That was a lot of fun and Mark is, umm, a prince. Seriously, he was very competant and very sincere in his desire to teach. Only seven of the point shooting students bothered to show up for the unarmed block and only two of the seven were current LEO. The other five were the only private citizens in the class. Go figure.
