AAR- KR Training Defensive Pistol 1

This past weekend, I attended the Defensive Pistol Skills 1 class from KR Training.  The class was great, and I am going to start off by skipping to the end- I recommend KR Training and this class.  Now that we have the suspense out of the way, lets get down to the nitty-gritty.

There were several reasons for taking this class-
First: this was a birthday gift to my father-in-law.  My FIL is a retired federal agent, and recently got his Texas CHL and is getting very serious about carrying for protection.  I wanted to support that by getting him training that was not just shooting at paper on an indoor range
Second: Refresher for me.  I have taken this equivalent class before from another VERY good trainer, but I knew I had not been training/ practicing enough.
Third: Evaluate KR Training.  A bunch of us gun nuts (including 45er) had gotten into the habit of going for yearly classes with Steve Moses at Bluff Dale Firearms Academy.  Bluff Dale is a long damn drive from here, and while it was 1.5 hours to get to KR, it was still much shorter.  I was wanting to see if KR would be a good option for the group.

Bonus- The drive from Austin took us right through Elgin, TX and past the world famous Southside Market and BBQ

Urp...

KR is a great operation.  A private range, private classroom, and very dedicated instructors.  The class started out with an equipment and skills evaluation- Reactive targets that you had 3 seconds to knock down, moved into classroom instruction, and then went hot on the range.  And when I say hot, I mean every bit of it.  It felt like August- we were all dripping sweat in 30 minutes.

The range part of the class started on the fundamentals and built upward in a logical progression.  We went from base trigger work, through drawing, moving on the draw, threat scanning, multiple targets, and drawing from concealment.

One of the pluses for this class was the amount of instructors.  There were 14 students, and SIX instructors.  Everyone had one on one instruction on parts that were needed.  This was also the one possible detraction from the class- there were a couple of times I noticed conflicting instruction.  But it was minor and seriously only happened twice.  

The students in this class was an eye opener.  We were everything from a college aged young woman through a retired law enforcement officer in his 70's, five women total.  Equipment was heavily slanted towards Glocks from the student side, S&W M&Ps on the Instructors and a smattering of everything else.  There were two 1911s (including my STI), one S&W 910s (my FIL- who will be selling it and buying a Glock ASAP), one CZ (yay!), one S&W Shield, and one what I think was a SCCY CPX 9mm- which surprised the heck out of me.  While I hear a lot of people extol the virtues of Glocks, M&Ps, and the other plastic fantastics- at the only people to knock down both of the reactive targets at the end of class evaluation were the people with 1911s.  Not saying that 1911s are better, and I am known to carry Glocks a lot, but that is what happened.

I had 2 equipment failures.  Both of the STI supplied mags I had failed in one way or another during the class, but the two Wilson Combat mags ran flawlessly.  Time to buy two more Wilson mags and use the others as targets.

All in all- I learned a lot at the class, even though it was a refresher.  My FIL learned a whole lot and is talking about taking it again with me when he buys a Glock.

As I said before, I recommend KR Training and I plan on taking more classes as soon as I can.