Last Sunday I took USCCA’s USCCA Introduction to Defensive Shooting and USCCA Increasing Practical Marksmanship classes for a total of 4 hours of training. It is not a secret that my shooting skills are rusty as hell for lack of trigger time, so it was good to diagnose how bad I was and what I needed to do again. No surprise: go back to basics and get it right was the answer.
If you just bought a gun, I would not recommend this class just yet. I would ask you to take NRA’s Basic Pistol class first to get yourself used to the proper manipulation and safety standards and then go to a class like this. Even if this class is quite basic and you are all Ninja and sh**, it is never a waste of time to revisit the basics and to expose yourself to new techniques that may or may not work for you, but finding out is part of the fun. Did I learn anything? Well yes, it seems my trigger work sucks, and I need to practice more the right way.
PS: Check your sights as in “can you see the frigging front sight clearly?” I haven’t retouched the paint of darn thing, and I kept losing it making for truly shitty accuracy.
Something I learned years ago; always begin your practice session with the basics upon which you placed advanced skillsets. The first fifty rounds are always the same as the first fifty rounds forty years ago. Why? Because it feels so good to relive the experience. Sets the tone and tenor of the session.
It is called repetitive reinforcement. (Or nagging if it is coming from wifey…)
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The most effective classes I have ever taken will repeat the basics several times during the class. The goal is to turn it into a habit, and make it muscle memory. Especially things that you will be expected to do under periods of stress.
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No matter how good you are, doing a day of basics will be very refreshing. I have no idea how many times I have said “Damn, I have forgotten so much of that…”
Re “can you see the front sight clearly” — at age 66 I need reading glasses, but standard reading glasses or bifocals are set for reading a book so the front sight is a blur with them, and it is with distant vision as well. Since I’m a computer guy I got separate “computer glasses”, optimized for arm’s length. They have half the “add” value of the reading glasses. I call them computer glasses, but a pianist might call them sheet music reading glasses, and they are also just right for shooting. So I sometimes call them my “shooting glasses”.