|
Pistol Drills Video
The
core of Tiger Valley basic pistol training is teaching students to complete a
series of pistol drills as fast as possible while shooting at a no-miss
pace. These drills represent the fundamental skills required to
successfully use a pistol in any real-life situation. Watch a
video of Tiger Valley students working their way through seven of our
twelve drills here.
|
|
Elm Fork Wednesday Night Classes
August 6 was Tiger
Valley's first "Immediate Action Medical" class. Tiger Valley instructor T.J. Pilling and Dr. Greg Gardner
conducted training on both the tactical and medical sides of dealing
with injuries, including the use of the blow-out medical kit that was supplied
to every student.
Our
next "Immediate Action Medical" class is
on September 3rd and is full. Those interested in attending a
future
class are encouraged to register now for our October 1st class.
Pre-registration is required for these events and as we've been
quickly filling up our medical classes, sign up
ASAP if you're interested in participating. You can either drop a
check in the mail to our office address or pay through our online store.
This will be the
last time the class will be held this year. The fee is
$85, which includes the blow-out kit and the course runs from 6:30 PM
to 9 PM.
On
August 20th we ran a "Combat Match & Training" event. In spite of
a torrential downpour that hit Elm Fork just prior to the event
itself, we had 22 shooters work their way through carbine and pistol
stages, compete on a dueling tree, and receive some helpful training
tips along the way.
Our
next firearms-related night class is "Undercover Carry" on October
15th. Students will work on drawing their daily carry weapon from
concealment and using them at "in the hole" distances. Arrive
with your your handgun, holster, 200 rounds of
ammo, safety gear, and $65 course fee. The course runs from 6:30
PM to 9 PM and pre-registration is not required.
|
|
Tiger Valley Bug Out Drill
The
third annual Bug Out Drill covers 15 miles and 30 challenges across
rough, wooded terrain. Arrive with a long gun, pistol, pack, and
gear to survive a real-life bug out event. Water will be
available at multiple points, about 90 rounds each of rifle and pistol
will be required if you don't miss, but no other equipment
guidelines will be provided. Participants compete on an
individual basis and the event must be covered on foot, carrying all
gear, with no bikes, 4-wheelers, donkeys, or hot air balloons allowed.
In
last year's event, participants had to climb walls, cut wood, take
apart bolts, bandage Tactical Ted, shoot, and purify water just to name
a few of the challenges. Any stage can be bypassed if you lack
the ability or gear to complete it, though with a time penalty.
If you want a true test of you and your equipment with a chance
to win great prizes, come and join the competition.
A great meal will be provided after the event.
Pre-registration is required and participants will receive a Tiger Valley "Bug Out Drill" t-shirt. Register online today!
|
|
Team Sniper Match Update & Sponsors
This
September 20th and 21st will see 40 teams gather at our Waco facility
to compete in our 2-day Team Sniper Match. Spectators are welcome
to watch these teams, comprised of a precision-rifle equipped sniper
and carbine equipped spotter, participate in scenarios that will run into
the night on Saturday and mid afternoon on Sunday.
We have an
excellent group of sponsors who have contributed to the prize table for
this match. Please keep these companies in mind, as they have
gone out of their way to contribute to the shooting sports.
The match is full and we are looking forward to a great event.
Match sponsors are:
Black Hills Ammunition
Cheaper than Dirt
Chosen Tactical
Jet Suppressors
LaRue Tactical
Liberty Suppressors
Louque's Premium Firearms
Martin Knives
Mystery Ranch
Predator Custom Shop
Spec-Ops Brand
Strider Knives
Surefire
SWFA - RifleScopes.com
Triad Tactical
US Optics
|
|
Shooting Fitness
by Bruce Byars
We
often hear the statement “I’m out of shape” from students who are
required to run physical evolutions in a training class. This is
typical of a level two course, where students are expected to be
proficient enough to move into stress-based training. For
example, many students are winded by the end of a barricade drill
utilizing 9 different shooting positions. It is a simple drill,
but the movement and out of position nature of the course physically
stresses students. Add the prospect of being tagged by a remote
control shoot-back paintball system and the stress level goes up even
more.
Keep in mind that the level and type of fitness
required for a USPSA competition shooter is different from that in the
military and law enforcement communities. The common thread
between them is that most task-oriented drills require a solid base in
order to complete them successfully. It is one thing to have a
workout program where you run, do sets of pull-ups, bench press,
sit-ups, etc., but it is quite another thing to put that strength to
practice in practical situations.
Therefore, a good
solid foundation-based workout regimen should be a part of your
training. This is not to say that you should be spending six days
a week in the gym and on the track, but rather train for your activity,
whatever that may be. Also, work with your physician to develop
the right workout program for you. Nothing is worse than doing a
workout regimen just because you see someone else doing it or you use
too much weight and stress your muscles to the point of injury.
Whatever
your workout, there are a few tips that you should consider.
First, a good cardiovascular workout is essential to good
performance. This does not necessarily mean running.
Biking, rowing, walking and especially swimming are great cardio tools
as well. Second, exercises with dumbbells should definitely be a
part of your strength routine. This is because dumbbells help you
develop finer muscle dexterity since they work stabilizing muscles and
help increase your range of movement. Third, don’t disregard
major muscle groups such as your back (pullups), chest (pushups),
abdominals (situps/crunches) and neck/shoulders (dumbbell
presses). Lastly, don’t forget about nutrition. A good
healthy diet is vital to a successful and effective workout
routine. Along with diet, proper hydration is absolutely
essential while you workout. It helps flush toxins from your
muscles that result in excessive soreness. Remember, if you feel
thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.
As a final parting note just
remember… being in good physical shape not only makes for better
performance, but makes for a healthier lifestyle as well.
|
|
Oh, Say Can You See... The Sights?
by Wayne Dobbs
This
issue’s fundamental topic is going to be a controversial one for some
folks out there as it relates to defensive shooting. Many trees
have died and much bandwidth has been wasted on the topic of using the
sights in combat with a pistol. We’ll cover some insights on
sights (pun intended) and try to get some ideas out there for you to
use and think upon this month. And, in case you were wondering
about how I rank the importance of this fundamental, sight usage is
“very important” from my viewpoint.
First of all, some
fundamentals about the fundamental! There are actually two
traditional fundamentals involved in this topic and they are sight
alignment and sight picture. Sight alignment is simply the
relationship of the front sight to the rear sight and nothing
else. There is no target involved and the alignment may be
perfect, very good, OK or it may be really awful. All we are
dealing with is the relationship of two points in space, which, if you
recall from high school geometry, defines a line. Perfect sight
alignment is when, as you view the sights from the rear (and through
the notch of the rear sight), you see the post of the front sight
perfectly centered in the notch of the rear sight, with equal bands of
light around the front blade and the top edges of both sights are in a
perfect horizontal line. To steal an old saying describing
perfect sight alignment: “Equal height, equal light”
Perfect
sight alignment is important because if you can achieve it and maintain
it somewhere on the critical zone of a target throughout the shot
delivery, you WILL get a good hit. As I stated above, you are
creating a dependable linear orientation of the weapon when you align
the sights well and that’s a great confidence and competence builder.
Most
shooters and “trainers” use the terms “sight picture” and “sight
alignment” interchangeably and that is totally incorrect. You now
know what sight alignment is and it doesn’t involve a target.
Sight picture is the relationship of the sight alignment to the
target. When I teach a class, I usually don’t try to confuse
folks with the terminology (unless it’s an instructor or advanced
class) and simply teach what I call “sight usage”, which encompasses
both topics.
So, if everything is perfect in our little
shooting world, we will have our master eye, rear sight, front sight
and a desired impact point on our target in a four-point line. If
we could maintain that perfection as we pressed the trigger and
delivered the shot, we would have a perfect center hit.
Unfortunately, perfection exists only in the mind of God and we ain’t
Him! The reality is that we cannot maintain such a perfect linear
relationship because we wobble and sway and get blown around or we are
moving around to avoid being the recipient of the other guy’s efforts
on us at the same time! All of these factors and many others
combine to make it impossible to maintain perfect sight alignment and
sight picture with complete immobility, although I’ve seen some
shooters get pretty close! So what do we do about this
reality? We attempt to be as steady as possible through solid
stance, grip and more stable positioning (such as kneeling or prone, if
viable) and we spend more energy on sight alignment than sight
picture. Additionally, we learn to accept our “wobble zone” and
apply excellent trigger control technique as the gun moves about on the
target.
I said earlier that it’s more important to
maintain good sight alignment than it is to worry about sight
picture. That is because as long as the sights are well aligned
somewhere on the desired impact zone of the target we will achieve a
good hit, assuming a good trigger press, as any error will be minimized
by keeping the sights parallel on the target as we fire. If we
allow the sights to get significantly misaligned, our error at the
target will compound geometrically and can start making us miss,
sometimes very badly. This is the difference in parallel error
versus angular error. You do not want to have the second one
happening when the shot is important.
If we combine poor
alignment with poor trigger control (a frequent occurrence in fights
involving badly trained or poorly disciplined shooters), we start
seeing misses in the 80-90% range, even at very close quarters.
This is the average police agency street shooting performance level in
the US and it’s inexcusable, because it can be addressed effectively.
Nobody said it was easy or fair to fight for your life with a pistol
and doing it well requires quite a bit of hard work and discipline on
your part. Part of that discipline is to make certain that the
weapon is adequately aligned on the target that you are engaging before
you fire, and the sights are the dependable and defensible way to
accomplish that goal.
OK, we’ve established that we need
good alignment and trigger control and we have to accept a wobble zone
as we deliver the shot. We also know that we need to deal with
three points of rear sight, front sight and the desired impact point on
the target (NOT the whole target). We know that our Mk I Mod 0
eyeball can only focus on one point in space at a time. So, where
do we ideally focus? The point shooting folks will say “the
target!” and start saying that the eyeball won’t focus on a close point
under extreme stress. That baloney was written by a prominent
trainer of point shooting years ago and like anything that made it into
print, some folks said it must be true. It may be the case for
some folks but it’s not true for all. That’s based on personal
experience and that of some other folks out there that I know
well. I have seen front sights in sharp focus under extreme
stress on the streets (with pistols and rifles), in IPSC and IDPA
competition and in handgun and rifle hunting experiences. Jim
Cirillo, a magnificent gunfighter from NYPD’s Stakeout Unit, related
that in his first fight he saw the serrations on his S&W Model 10’s
front sight in brilliant focus as he delivered three hits for three
shots on three armed robbers, including shooting around a bystander on
one of them and a 25-yard head shot on another! It is completely
possible to focus on the front sight, if you’ve trained yourself to do
so and made that a performance expectation.
Some folks
with their brain engaged may be asking WHY do we focus on the front
sight? That’s one of the most important questions and BS
detection issues you can raise in training and you should explore
it. There are two solid reasons for focusing on the front sight:
- It’s
the last point of the weapon at which we can still influence the path
of the bullet to the target. The front sight and the muzzle are
basically in the same location.
- When attempting to align three
points in space, it’s easier to focus on the middle point to achieve
that alignment (credit to Larry Vickers for this one)
I’m sure
that we could come up with other reasons for using the front sight as
our focal point, but those two should cover it well for any practical
purposes.
Now that we’ve covered the technical aspects and
fundamental reasons regarding sight usage, let’s get down to some real
world realities and techniques that will allow you to place accurate
shots on your target at speed.
First, I want you to create a
belief in your mind that you can and will see your sights at speed
during any use of a pistol in a fight that is outside of arm’s
reach. I don’t suggest that you extend the pistol far enough to
use sights when an attacker is so close you can touch him or they can
touch you. That’s asking for a disarming disaster. If,
however, they are outside that distance you can accomplish this goal if
you will consider what I have to say for the rest of this article.
Next,
you must do enough serious range work with a handgun system that works
for you. Much of the use of sights is driven by good ergonomics,
solid grip and lots of repetition with the system so that for lack of a
better term, you wear a “groove” in your mental pathways just like you
do a golf swing, a baseball swing, a fishing rod cast or any other
physical movement that you know at a subconscious level. If you
are a member of the “Gun of the Week” club and never learn to shoot
fundamentally well with a single, preferred platform, you will likely
struggle when your big moment comes.
Once you’ve developed that
subconscious skill with your chosen pistol, you should find that the
sights arrive on target in good alignment from your grip and stance and
the “groove” you developed from repetitive training and practice.
At this point in your learning journey, the sights are simply like a
road sign as you travel down the highway. You don’t really stop
and gaze at those road signs, but you do notice them and they give you
a quick confirmation that you’re traveling the right route. In
the same fashion, you see the sights in sufficient alignment to achieve
your shooting requirements once your competence has developed to the
level required for good performance under stress. I stress to
always keep on working on sighted fire in training, because I know that
even if you don’t look for or at the sights during a fight, you are
aligning the weapon between your eyes and the target and all that work
on the range is subconsciously aligning those sights whether you
consciously are or are not!
There are also methods of verifying
sight alignment by use of such names as the “flash sight picture”,
“sight alignment by feel”, “weapons silhouette alignment”, “stress
point index” and many other terms. All of them have some merit
and in your learning journey with the combative handgun you may find
value in learning more of them. I will caution you to be very
careful about going totally into the “point shooting” area that works
off visual feedback from bullet impacts on anything to make your
adjustments. It’s lots of fun and quite valuable to test
ergonomic interface between tool and man, but I feel it’s a limited
method for real world encounters.
Next time, we’re going to talk about something “critical”: trigger control.
Feel free to email me at detwd114@yahoo.com with your feedback on these topics!
(Editor's note. Click on the article titles if you missed Wayne's previous two handgun articles, "Fundamentals - Not Those Again!"
and "What's Your Stance").
| 
|
Previous
Newsletters Available Online!
Check out our previous
newsletters for fantastic training videos, equipment
reviews, and special articles. Find them here.
|
|
Upcoming
Events
September
October
|
|
Newsletter
Details
If you're having trouble viewing this
newsletter, or to view in your web browser click here.
For a PDF version of this newsletter, click
here.
Please pass this newsletter along to anyone interested and encourage
them to join our mailing list here.
Direct comments and newsletter suggestions to news@tigervalley.com. |
|
|
|
|
Tiger Valley LLC.
Range Address: Hwy 84 at Joe Russell Rd. | Prairie Hill, TX 76678
Mailing Address: 6309 Scottsboro Ln. | Garland, TX 75044
Cell: (972)977-9512 |
