Dialed In Training

Last weekend I attended an intermediate pistol class taught by Justin Dyal, of Dialed In Training. Travelling the entire week before the class, I wasn’t sure I could make the schedule work, but thankfully, I did and attended almost all of it. Justin taught a block of classroom instruction on Friday night, starting while I was in the air. I made it to the range in time to catch the last hour and a half or so, entailing a nervous cab driver and climbing a barbed wire chain-link fence. Good times.

Justin is a longtime friend and one of the top thinkers in the training field today. He is also FAST coin holder #5. There is no regurgitation of old material in Justin’s classes, and in this class, we did not spend time going over most of the stuff you expect to see in a class. Instead, we focused on the two most important parts of shooting, 1. having the right cool guy gun, and 2. keeping it looking pristine for Instaphotos.

No. Actually we focused on grip and trigger control. I normally don’t like to call attention to mediocrity, but I was in another class recently where the instructor said that if you have a compromised grip (for many possible reasons) that your stance needs to make up for it. Justin well understands that stance cannot make up for grip.

Most instructors seem to talk a little about how to pull the trigger. Some may have a drill or two that focuses on pulling the trigger but Justin has many drills that delve into proper trigger manipulation — more than I have ever seen. “Master class” is such an overused term, but in this case Justin’s treatment of the trigger amounts to a two-day “master class” on trigger pulling. I’ll elaborate a little more on that later.

The classroom portion of the class was very interesting. Much of it had to do with mental management and so Justin talked about some of the different work that is out there in that area. On top of going over the ideas of people like Lanny Basham, Anders Ericsson, Daniel Kahneman, and Tim Gallway, Justin brought his years of Marine Special Operations experience to bear when discussing performance. I won’t go into it here, but Justin TRULY thinks about this stuff, and his time in special operations gave him a great opportunity to observe and experiment with high-level performance and high-level performers.

Shooting stress on a range can never simulate the stress of a fight, but as instructors our job is to at least try our best — a very difficult task. Justin incorporated stress into the training in fairly unique ways. Man vs. man competition is not new, but normally, each person shoots a mirror image of the others targets. Often, this quickly morphs into one shooter dominating the rest and everyone coming up next knows it. Instead, Justin had one side doing one thing, and the other side doing another. This not only allowed shooters of disparate ability to have a “fighting chance”, but it also made it hard for each side to gauge just how much effort they needed to put into the task. That in turn rachets up their stress.

If a stronger shooter faced off against a weaker shooter, the stronger shooter might have to shoot strong hand only or even support hand only, possibly with multiple targets and multiple shots. The weaker student might only have to hit one target freestyle. That is an extreme example but you get the point. This methodology proved to be very effective in the class, with some really close runs and a lot of student excitement.

Justin talked about the three different ways to press the trigger. He likes crashing the trigger, rolling the trigger and prepping the trigger, depending on the difficulty of the target. We did many drills to explore our ability to do those things, both with and without adding stress.

I could go on and on about the class, but I don’t want to give it all away. If you have the opportunity to train with Justin, I suggest you jump on it. He doesn’t teach a ton of classes and he doesn’t overload the number of students per class. You will get individual attention and you will get better… if you are willing.