https://www.spectrain.us/product-page/level-up-pistol
This course is great for anyone wanting to get faster, and more accurate in any practical shooting context. This is not a "competition course" in the sense that will not spend a bunch of time going over competition rules, divisions, or skills that are totally competition specific. We will however use USPSA style stages as our testing ground for the skills that we develop in class, and will also review stage planning. I believe stage planning and visualization skills are crucial for any shooter that wants to be elite, as these skills are required to establish accurate consistent baselines when evaluating techniques.
Intro/overview
This was my second class of 2024 with the other being Appleseed Pistol Clinic. While both classes were good, they couldn't have been more different. If you don't know Billy Barton he is the guy behind Spec Train and the Speed Up and Get Your Hits podcast. He is also a USPSA GM and the winner of the 2023 Bill Drill Challenge with a 1.27 IIRC. He also has quite a few good instructional videos out on YT. It is this combination of things that led me to sign up for this class. When I saw that there was going to be one only a little over an hour away from home that was icing on the cake. I want to mention it turned out this was a very low attendance class with only 4 students. Many instructors would have cancelled, and I wouldn't blame them when you have to travel 1/3 of the way across the country to not make any money. Billy however not only didn't cancel, but he also didn't shortchange us in the least, as a matter of fact we got extra.
Day 1
I got to the range early as I usually do and found that Billy had everything already set up including a USPSA stage off to one end. After everyone else showed up we had a quick intro from Billy and each other. The other guys were current USPSA shooters. I haven't shot USPSA in years and would be reminded of just how different it is from IDPA throughout the weekend. At a few days shy of 56 I was the oldest in the class by quite a bit. Billy explained his training philosophy and we went over the almost universal safety rules, range specific rules, and made a medical plan.
We then jumped right into shooting with a cold run through the stage he had set up. After we ran through it there was a debrief and we went over to the other portion of the range to do some instruction on the basics. We started with a deep dive into what Ben Stoeger calls trigger control at speed both dry and live. I should note here that Billy used drills or ideas from different sources giving credit when he could but pointing out that most of these weren't new and could be traced back a ways. We made a logical progression to Doubles talking about a working a little with dot occlusion. Next up was working with confirmation levels using the terminology set out by I believe Hwansik Kim. Billy has a particularly good video out on YT about this, but there is more to be gained by the in person coaching he gave.
Lunch was next. Afterwards we worked on the draw. Billy uses a version of the scoop draw but he goes over a lot of methods and the pluses and minuses. I did ok here even though I have been slacking on draw practice with some bad lateral epicondylitis in my shooting elbow. This was not about the time, but the process. That being said I had a few .7 somethings in there that were a ways away from Billys .5's. He was so smooth that he didn't look that fast, but the timer doesn't lie. This was one of the areas where an equipment difference was obvious. I was wearing my IDPA gear and the others USPSA gear. While the gun differences were small, (with the exception of the top student shooting an Atlas), belts, holsters and mag pouches are considerably different. If anyone would have been concealed carrying that would have been another big data point though from what I have found in matches, AIWB concealed is not slower than OWB/ open front concealment, the difference is in the reloads. I was not using a concealment garment for this class. I forgot to mention Billy said something to the effect that a 1 second draw is the new slow. I chuckled.
I will put this in here because it makes sense but it didn't make my notes so I can't say for sure where in the class it fell. We shot Billys class standards which he calls the Billy Drill. It is basically a Bill Drill shot at three distances, 7, 15, and 25 yards and the the time and score added up. To get a patch you have to be under 10 seconds. I don't remember what Billy demoed it in but his 7 yard Bill was a casual clean 1.5XX. No one earned the patch even though most of us thought the class host, a very good shooter and the guy with the Atlas would. He did very well at the first 2 distances but stumbled a little on the 25 yard line. His group was quite tight and his times were fine, but it was high right on the target with a couple of deltas. I shot way too loose and ended up around 15 seconds with all of the points down.
Transitions were next starting with the what most of us have already seen but going over them in enough detail to make you think. It was what this morphed into that led to the first new thing/aha moment of the class for me. Like everything else in the report I am not going to give away Billys class here, but I will say it is a method that Billy accredits to JJ Racaza and put everything in a new light for me. The student I was paired with had seen this information before and had obviously practiced it. He made me feel like a real bumbler but with some work I can see where this will make a big difference in parts of my shooting. I will mention here that something Billy stressed throughout the class was Homework. He mentioned he was making no promises that you would walk away from the class a better shooter, but he hoped to give you enough homework that with diligent practice you will become a better shooter. We ended day 1 with another run through the stage. I did better than in the morning.
Day 2
We started the day with a deep dive into stage planning. Way deeper than I have ever went even though I have been competing for years. Billy had a list of 7 items here that we went through. I won't list them as this is already a long report and again, I don't want to give away all of his class. Suffice it to say, I will have to refer back to my notes often on this one. Billy had set up a different version of yesterdays stage and I will use this time to again mention the big differences between USPSA and IDPA. This was a stage that was quite large with a lot of opportunities for choices and 14 paper targets and 3 steels. Yes, 31 rounds compared to the max of 18 that I have grown used to. Unlike the first day Billy gave us plenty of time and pointers for this stage. It was challenging but fun. After this run we would return to the other end of the range and work on all of the skills that we could have implemented here.
Shooting on the move was the first skill addressed and we did runs dry and then live. It started with what could be considered normal movement and then progressed from there into different set ups. We worked another borrowed drill called Track the A zone straight first and then doctored up by Billy. To continue the movement theme we worked entries and exits. There were a lot of options here to work on and it was fairly new to me so I struggled a bit on both the mental and physical aspect of this. My age really started to show here I think as this is all athletic based stuff.
Throughout this we worked with sort of mini stages.
Remember how I said he gave us extra being a small class? That came in the form of a pretty big block of instruction on Swingers. He asked what else we would like to work on and this was one of the suggestions. I found it very interesting that the one time I had worked this before with Bob Vogel it was taught very differently. To keep the explanation concise, Bob taught tracking the swinger and Billy taught trapping it. This was one of many examples of what Billy told us early on that there are very few absolutes in shooting. You can put a bunch of the worlds best shooters in a room and there is very little regarding technique that they will teach the same way. This is very easy to demonstrate by something as simple as grip. You could take 3 of the modern top practical shooters, say Bob Vogel, Ben Stoeger, and Eric Grauffel, and they will all have very different grip explanations. Add in fanboys and it really can get out of hand.
We finished up the day with a couple of more runs on the stage trying to implement everything we learned. Adam, the aforementioned host and good shooter had the best hit factor for the stage winning a patch from Billy and a gift card from Howitzer Clothing.
Conclusion,
Wow, I have not been brief with this report, though I don't think I have taken it into Randy Harris territory yet. I will try and make a succinct conclusion here. For those of you who know me, I have been to a LOT of classes. I have definitely noticed a trend in the last number of years of class participants to be much better shooters than in the past. This trend continued here. It has been a long time since I have been a below average shooter in a class I have attended. It was humbling. I will also add that this is the first class since a 2013 class with Todd Louis Green where I have felt overwhelmed and actually learned new stuff. Some of that is because my roots are in "tactical" training, not performance/competition. This class definitely falls into the latter category. It was a well designed class with a logical progression. There was very little downtime. This translated to very little wasted time. Billy was a good instructor and coach who worked tirelessly throughout the class. We benefitted from great weather and frankly I am not sure how he could have kept up that pace in hot/inclement weather with a full student count. In short, 2 thumbs up, highly recommended!
PS, to paraphrase the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, I may be getting too old for this crap.
2-Day Level-Up Performance Pistol
This course is great for anyone wanting to get faster, and more accurate in any practical shooting context. This is not a "competition course" in the sense that will not spend a bunch of time going over competition rules, divisions, or skills that are totally competition specific. We will however use USPSA style stages as our testing ground for the skills that we develop in class, and will also review stage planning. I believe stage planning and visualization skills are crucial for any shooter that wants to be elite, as these skills are required to establish accurate consistent baselines when evaluating techniques.
Intro/overview
This was my second class of 2024 with the other being Appleseed Pistol Clinic. While both classes were good, they couldn't have been more different. If you don't know Billy Barton he is the guy behind Spec Train and the Speed Up and Get Your Hits podcast. He is also a USPSA GM and the winner of the 2023 Bill Drill Challenge with a 1.27 IIRC. He also has quite a few good instructional videos out on YT. It is this combination of things that led me to sign up for this class. When I saw that there was going to be one only a little over an hour away from home that was icing on the cake. I want to mention it turned out this was a very low attendance class with only 4 students. Many instructors would have cancelled, and I wouldn't blame them when you have to travel 1/3 of the way across the country to not make any money. Billy however not only didn't cancel, but he also didn't shortchange us in the least, as a matter of fact we got extra.
Day 1
I got to the range early as I usually do and found that Billy had everything already set up including a USPSA stage off to one end. After everyone else showed up we had a quick intro from Billy and each other. The other guys were current USPSA shooters. I haven't shot USPSA in years and would be reminded of just how different it is from IDPA throughout the weekend. At a few days shy of 56 I was the oldest in the class by quite a bit. Billy explained his training philosophy and we went over the almost universal safety rules, range specific rules, and made a medical plan.
We then jumped right into shooting with a cold run through the stage he had set up. After we ran through it there was a debrief and we went over to the other portion of the range to do some instruction on the basics. We started with a deep dive into what Ben Stoeger calls trigger control at speed both dry and live. I should note here that Billy used drills or ideas from different sources giving credit when he could but pointing out that most of these weren't new and could be traced back a ways. We made a logical progression to Doubles talking about a working a little with dot occlusion. Next up was working with confirmation levels using the terminology set out by I believe Hwansik Kim. Billy has a particularly good video out on YT about this, but there is more to be gained by the in person coaching he gave.
Lunch was next. Afterwards we worked on the draw. Billy uses a version of the scoop draw but he goes over a lot of methods and the pluses and minuses. I did ok here even though I have been slacking on draw practice with some bad lateral epicondylitis in my shooting elbow. This was not about the time, but the process. That being said I had a few .7 somethings in there that were a ways away from Billys .5's. He was so smooth that he didn't look that fast, but the timer doesn't lie. This was one of the areas where an equipment difference was obvious. I was wearing my IDPA gear and the others USPSA gear. While the gun differences were small, (with the exception of the top student shooting an Atlas), belts, holsters and mag pouches are considerably different. If anyone would have been concealed carrying that would have been another big data point though from what I have found in matches, AIWB concealed is not slower than OWB/ open front concealment, the difference is in the reloads. I was not using a concealment garment for this class. I forgot to mention Billy said something to the effect that a 1 second draw is the new slow. I chuckled.
I will put this in here because it makes sense but it didn't make my notes so I can't say for sure where in the class it fell. We shot Billys class standards which he calls the Billy Drill. It is basically a Bill Drill shot at three distances, 7, 15, and 25 yards and the the time and score added up. To get a patch you have to be under 10 seconds. I don't remember what Billy demoed it in but his 7 yard Bill was a casual clean 1.5XX. No one earned the patch even though most of us thought the class host, a very good shooter and the guy with the Atlas would. He did very well at the first 2 distances but stumbled a little on the 25 yard line. His group was quite tight and his times were fine, but it was high right on the target with a couple of deltas. I shot way too loose and ended up around 15 seconds with all of the points down.
Transitions were next starting with the what most of us have already seen but going over them in enough detail to make you think. It was what this morphed into that led to the first new thing/aha moment of the class for me. Like everything else in the report I am not going to give away Billys class here, but I will say it is a method that Billy accredits to JJ Racaza and put everything in a new light for me. The student I was paired with had seen this information before and had obviously practiced it. He made me feel like a real bumbler but with some work I can see where this will make a big difference in parts of my shooting. I will mention here that something Billy stressed throughout the class was Homework. He mentioned he was making no promises that you would walk away from the class a better shooter, but he hoped to give you enough homework that with diligent practice you will become a better shooter. We ended day 1 with another run through the stage. I did better than in the morning.
Day 2
We started the day with a deep dive into stage planning. Way deeper than I have ever went even though I have been competing for years. Billy had a list of 7 items here that we went through. I won't list them as this is already a long report and again, I don't want to give away all of his class. Suffice it to say, I will have to refer back to my notes often on this one. Billy had set up a different version of yesterdays stage and I will use this time to again mention the big differences between USPSA and IDPA. This was a stage that was quite large with a lot of opportunities for choices and 14 paper targets and 3 steels. Yes, 31 rounds compared to the max of 18 that I have grown used to. Unlike the first day Billy gave us plenty of time and pointers for this stage. It was challenging but fun. After this run we would return to the other end of the range and work on all of the skills that we could have implemented here.
Shooting on the move was the first skill addressed and we did runs dry and then live. It started with what could be considered normal movement and then progressed from there into different set ups. We worked another borrowed drill called Track the A zone straight first and then doctored up by Billy. To continue the movement theme we worked entries and exits. There were a lot of options here to work on and it was fairly new to me so I struggled a bit on both the mental and physical aspect of this. My age really started to show here I think as this is all athletic based stuff.
Throughout this we worked with sort of mini stages.
Remember how I said he gave us extra being a small class? That came in the form of a pretty big block of instruction on Swingers. He asked what else we would like to work on and this was one of the suggestions. I found it very interesting that the one time I had worked this before with Bob Vogel it was taught very differently. To keep the explanation concise, Bob taught tracking the swinger and Billy taught trapping it. This was one of many examples of what Billy told us early on that there are very few absolutes in shooting. You can put a bunch of the worlds best shooters in a room and there is very little regarding technique that they will teach the same way. This is very easy to demonstrate by something as simple as grip. You could take 3 of the modern top practical shooters, say Bob Vogel, Ben Stoeger, and Eric Grauffel, and they will all have very different grip explanations. Add in fanboys and it really can get out of hand.
We finished up the day with a couple of more runs on the stage trying to implement everything we learned. Adam, the aforementioned host and good shooter had the best hit factor for the stage winning a patch from Billy and a gift card from Howitzer Clothing.
Conclusion,
Wow, I have not been brief with this report, though I don't think I have taken it into Randy Harris territory yet. I will try and make a succinct conclusion here. For those of you who know me, I have been to a LOT of classes. I have definitely noticed a trend in the last number of years of class participants to be much better shooters than in the past. This trend continued here. It has been a long time since I have been a below average shooter in a class I have attended. It was humbling. I will also add that this is the first class since a 2013 class with Todd Louis Green where I have felt overwhelmed and actually learned new stuff. Some of that is because my roots are in "tactical" training, not performance/competition. This class definitely falls into the latter category. It was a well designed class with a logical progression. There was very little downtime. This translated to very little wasted time. Billy was a good instructor and coach who worked tirelessly throughout the class. We benefitted from great weather and frankly I am not sure how he could have kept up that pace in hot/inclement weather with a full student count. In short, 2 thumbs up, highly recommended!
PS, to paraphrase the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, I may be getting too old for this crap.
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