Monday, January 2, 2017

Training Tips

When going to a class on shooting guns, one does well to read the list of required materials to bring and to follow a few simple common sense rules of thumb.

Basic Tools
* Bring all of the required items. There's a reason the items are listed as required.
* Sub-$100 optics are cheap for a reason. They won't survive a training class. Buy once, cry once.
* Cheap ammo is cheap for a reason. Just. Don't.
* Bring tools needed to fix and adjust your guns. Lube is good!

Instruction
* If you are paying for a class, remember: you are paying to hear the instructor's take on how to make you better. If you don't want to listen to it, then why did you pay for the instruction?
* Ego is not your friend. Really.
* Take notes. Nobody's ever said "I wish I hadn't taken notes." Many have said "I wish I'd taken (more / better / some) notes."
* Pay attention to detail.  There's a reason your instructor is going in to detail on the given topic.

Equipment
* Cheap guns are cheap for a reason. They don't survive training classes.
* Sight in your rifle ahead of time if you are going to take a rifle class of any sort.
* This instructor (and many others) has seen a higher percentage of AKs fail than ARs. Why? Folks take care of their ARs, and yet, AKs are not indestructible.
* Have an optic, or other sighting apparatus. You'd think this would be a given, but there's a reason it's in this list.
* If you are rude enough to show up with a rifle not already set up, know that you are now "that guy." If you are that guy, bring sight adjustment tool (s).
* AR-10's do not generally survive training classes. M14's often have trouble, too.

Be Polite / Be Professional
* Snowflakes usually don't like gun training. Even if you think you will... you won't.
* If you try to be different, you will be. This is not a good thing - for personality, or for guns, or for equipment.
* Phrases like "yeah, but I like to do it like this..." often don't go over well. Oh, the instructor has heard them plenty. But none of the other people, who paid to get into that class, paid to hear your take. If they wanna know, they'll ask you after the fact.
* If something is not working, ask the instructor for coaching. If your coach tells you the same thing he told you a minute ago, there's a good chance you ought to try it.



The Two Best Points of Advice:

* If at first you do not succeed, then try it the way the instructor showed you in the beginning.
If you try to jury-rig it, do not expect success. If most people had success that way, then the instructors would likely teach it that way.

* The single best thing you can do to improve your shooting and tactical abilities is to be in shape and maintain a healthy weight.
If you are fat, lose weight. If you are out of shape, get to the gym (or bodyweight routines). If you are fat, you are neither in shape, nor the right weight. "Healthy at any size" isn't.

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