At this year’s Rangemaster Tactical Conference one class I took and particularly enjoyed was taught by Simon Golob, who focused on the importance of “cold shot training,” testing ourselves as to how we can shoot without a warmup. Like in, ya know, real life. I was not disappointed.
Simon is the man who took over our mutual friend Todd Louis Green’s excellent blog site, www.pistol-training.com after Todd’s untimely death. I can’t imagine a better person to have done so. Here, from there, is Simon’s own take on the cold shot: https://pistol-training.com/cold-shooting-ability/.
What’s more, we have the unusual ability to see an instructor’s side of being at Tac-Con, again from pistol-training.com: https://pistol-training.com/tac-con-2026/ .
I had the privilege of being Simon’s first outside instructor, way back when he was a young cop on NYPD, the beginning of a career that would take him to high performance levels with a major Federal agency from which he has now retired and is available to teach you. (Info at, you guessed it, pistol-training.com.)
He was so good in his early years that at one of Lethal Force Institute’s anniversary shoots I invited him to come as a guest instructor. He was awesome with his duty gun, then the NYPD Glock 19 with the hideous twelve-pound NY-2 trigger. Today he shoots a double action HK and can tell you good reasons why.
If his last name rings a bell it’s because he’s the husband of champion shooter Julie Golob. Google will get you to interviews and lectures featuring both of them.
Thanks again to Tom and Lynn Givens and their team for making the Tactical Conference happen.
I have shot some guns with truly awful triggers, not to mention DA revolvers. If it makes a difference for me, I have been unable to detect it. I did take a class with a DA revolver once and the only difference was that reloading sucked. Speed and accuracy were the same. I am far from being a world class shooter and perhaps it does make a difference at that skill level. However, being world class should theoretically make you better at managing the trigger.
Besides all his technical shooting abilities, Simon is a very personable, approachable and engaging instructor. He’s someone I plan to take a class from as soon as I can. His next class is this coming weekend just east of Oklahoma City at Mead Hall Range, an excellent training venue. Unfortunately, I’m already booked teaching at my home range or I’d be there.
I’m (another) old guy who started out with a S&W M-39, an auto with a DA/SA trigger system circa 1980. Even in the USAF, they issued S&W M-10s (or a Colt equivalent). Since I started out with heavy trigger pull(s), something like the New York Glock didn’t phase me. At the relatively same time, I also bought and used DA revolvers. Even my old backup Kel-Tec P-11 has a heavy trigger pull. I did have a short-term problem when I bought my first Glock, a G27 with its (relatively) light trigger pull.
IMHO, it’s just a matter of practice and not excuses.