Last month I had a chance to attend a Chris Costa Handgun Employment II course in Corona, CA. The Class was hosted by the guys at Falcon Operations Group. So first of all I want to thank Charles and Anson from Falcon for the taking the time and effort to bring Chris out here to Socal. This was a 3 day advanced pistol class and for me hands down the best handgun class I’ve ever taken. Chris is a top notch instructor and sets the bar high for the students through his demonstrations. Anyone out there who thinks he’s all hype doesn’t have a clue. He’s also a high energy type person that keeps things rolling and entertaining even during breaks, which is great quality in an instructor.
I think the class size was 24 and had a good mix of mil/le and prepared civilian. Weapons were all Glocks and 1911’s with I think 2 Sigs mixed in. The class also had a really high round count. The class required 1500 rounds, but I’d recommend showing up with at least 2k. I ended up firing about 1900 and I could have easily gone through more if I wanted, but I slowed it down a little on day 3 to make sure I didn’t run out.
The biggest difference between this and other handgun classes I’ve taken was the level of drills being ran. Some would make the average mil/le range officer have a mild heart attack. Lots of them were definitely not for the beginner, but this class was filled with guys who were already pretty locked on so at no time were things unsafe. The first 2 days emphasized drills that focused on the basic fundamentals and finding your balance between speed and accuracy while progressively adding elements of increasing difficulty like taping over the sights, multiply targets, different shooting positions, and shooting/reaction hand only drills. The final day took everything we had already worked on and introduced movement. When I say movement I don’t mean just the regular slow forward/back and left/right style stuff covered in most classes. The drills emphasized realistic rapid movement, running, moving through and around others, and so on. The stuff you rarely get to do on a small controlled range. Chris also took time to cover CCW techniques, equipment selection, and equipment placement.
All said and done this was an outstanding class that I’d recommend to anyone and I’d have no problem taking again in the future. I’m also glad this was a 3 day class and not 2 like most. Packing it all into 2 days would have made for some very long days and I think would have taken away some of the training value.
Here’s a few pictures from the class taken by Ted Tae and DEFCON. Check out Ted’s other site Echo Niner for some awesome camera straps. Also keep an eye out for the DEFCON website, which will be up and running again in the future.
