I had the pleasure of attending the Green Ops Defensive Pistol Clinic this past Sunday. I was looking through my blog to refresh my memory about it, and it turns out that it has been a full year since the last time I took this clinic. This was kind of a surprise! I go to a lot of these clinics, but it seems I’ve branched out quite a bit. It did make me excited to see how it has evolved since then, and I was not disappointed!
Read on for the AAR!
I talk a lot about pistol skills on this blog. There’s a reason for that; when it comes to actually shooting stuff, pistols are the hardest of your options to use at anything beyond about 15yds. Pistol skills also tend to go away the fastest.
But… that is not the same thing as “you can neglect your other weapon skills”. Don’t shoot enough rifle or shotgun, and your skills in that arena will degrade just as surely, if not as quickly. The realization that I had not been doing enough carbine work lately inspired me to sign up for the Green Ops Defensive Carbine Clinic I even though I was already doing another class this month. What did I think? Read on.
Continue reading Green Ops Defensive Carbine Clinic I AAR (Sig Edition)
A topic that gets precious little coverage on this blog is concealed carry. I live in MD; there’s functionally no concealed carry for average people here unless you meet some very specific criteria. This is compounded by having a job where concealed carry is not a viable option. Thus, I have the gear, but the topic is essentially theoretical to me.
When I was invited to the second day of Green Op’s Advanced Covert Carry Skills course, I was a little apprehensive. I mean, I always enjoy learning from Mike Green, who is one of the best instructors out there, and hard shooting is good shooting. The timing of the course, however, was very awkward (literally the day before Succot began in the evening) and I’m always nervous about going into day two of a course and then trying to play catch up. But they wanted me to come, and I really wanted to see Mike, so I gave in.
I can say with emphasis that I’m glad I did.
Continue reading Green Ops Advanced Covert Carry Skills Impressions (TD2)
One constant refrain I’ve had for at least a year is “where are my advanced Sunday classes?” In what I assume is part of a concerted effort to get me to shut up, Green Ops finally relented and offered a Defensive Pistol II clinic this past Sunday night. My inside information is that they will be offering more of these advanced clinics next year, and even a proper Sunday all-day class! (Readers: the moral of this story is that if you want something from trainers, step number one is to simply ask politely for it! You might even get it!)
This was my first time shooting a level II with Green Ops, and you can read on for what I thought of it!
Despite my inability to hit a USPSA match for the past few months, I still consider myself a competition guy when people ask me about what kind of shooter I am. I enjoy the “defensive practitioner” side of shooting, but I know in my heart that I’m a boring guy who does boring things in safe places, and am rather unlikely to put those defensive skills to intended use. Don’t get me wrong, I still think they’re important – because sometimes safe places become not-so-safe, and boring things becoming dangerous – but shooting a USPSA match is the activity I’m most likely to be using a gun in.
Because of that, I put a heavy priority on hitting competition-oriented classes when they’ve available to me. I think you can get a lot out of them; the JDC speed shooting class brought my splits down to ~.25, which isn’t going to put me in GM class anytime soon, but it’s enough that I don’t feel as totally outclassed as I used to. Given those results, I was eager to see how the Green Ops Practical Pistol/Competition class this past Sunday would give me some improvement as well!
More after the break!
Continue reading Green Ops Practical Pistol/Competition Skills Clinic AAR
I recently (5/19/2019) had the pleasure of attending the Green Ops Low Light Pistol clinic in Fairfax, VA. This was my second time at this particular class. While I am admittedly a big fan of their other classes, the low light pistol clinic always stands out in my mind as an example of what a “signature” class looks like – it teaches you skills you’re unlikely to acquire or practice elsewhere. We learned a variety of handheld light with pistol techniques, practiced some fundamentals in the dark, and even got a few reps in on our weaponlights. It was a really good time!
Full AAR after the break!
Continue reading Green Ops Low Light Pistol Clinic AAR (RMR Edition)
My second Green Ops class of the year was another run of the defense carbine I clinic on April 28, 2019. This is probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve taken this class, and every time, I get something new out of it. It’s also interesting to see how Green Ops has been evolving as a company, and how the classes change due to feedback.
Besides my usual goal of improving my somewhat dismal carbine skills, I had two secondary objectives:
Continue reading Green Ops Defensive Carbine I Clinic AAR (Sig Optics Edition)
I had the privilege of hitting the Green Ops “Knife-Oriented Self-Defense” seminar at the “5.11 ABR Academy” at the new-ish 5.11 Rockville store on Sunday. It was pretty cool! It was only 1.5 hours long, so this isn’t an AAR so much as a quick writeup with some pictures in case anyone’s interested in it.
Continue reading Green Ops x 5.11 ABR Academy – Knife Oriented Self-Defense
One of my big commitments is trying to get in a class every month on some sort of martial skill. Mostly, that’s guns, because guns are fun, but I’m good with knives, hand-to-hand, medical, whatever. It is expensive, but they’re usually one day and local, so there’s not a lot of ancillary costs.
The big problem is often making the call about what class to go to. There are some months where I’ve got hard choices. Do I do the Green Ops practical pistol clinic, the FPF Training Minuteman Rifle class, or the PNTC PRS class?
In an attempt to solve that conundrum, I’ve got a list of priorities that I try to use to as an evaluation standard to determine what I should take. These are ordered in importance to me, but no priority will ever totally override the others. I am very interested in what my readership feels about these, so please leave comments if you agree/disagree!
I was reading the Civilian Gunfighter blog recently – it’s fantastic – and they had a really great series of posts up on there looking back at 2018 and discussing their plans for 2019. Unlike them, I don’t have a lot of really cool stuff to talk about or have much wisdom to share, but I think it might be informative – and hopefully inspirational – for people to understand what happened with me starting in April.
The Hebrew Hammer 