{"id":3681,"date":"2016-04-25T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2016-04-25T09:00:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:00:12","slug":"lessons-from-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/lessons-from-rogers\/","title":{"rendered":"LESSONS FROM ROGERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the rare stars who\u2019ve shot a perfect score on the legendary Rogers test is Gabe White, the only one to have done so from concealment. He used a Glock 34 9mm with an inside the waistband holster in the appendix position. He told Glock Annual<\/em>, <\/em>\u201cThe Test itself is a real marathon\u2014125 possible points on moving, disappearing plates, with four freestyle draws, eight strong-hand-only draws, two freestyle reloads, one strong-hand-only reload and two support-hand-only reloads. By my count there are at least 142 chances to screw up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In five days, it felt like I screwed up most of those 142 possibilities at one time or another. Having been shooting for very long time, my biggest problem was wrapping my head around Rogers\u2019 techniques and getting away from the ones I\u2019ve used so long myself. It seemed counter-intuitive when Bill said, \u201cPin the trigger back after you hit your target, and keep the sights right there, and don\u2019t move the pistol until the next target pops up.\u201d But it works.\u00a0 Before I figured that out, I blew more than one target that popped up when I was scanning elsewhere and had to double back with the sweeping gun, and it had disappeared before I got there. Remember, exposure time on Rogers targets is as little as half a second.<\/p>\n

My biggest problem was following instructions. I\u2019d run a few stages of the test perfect, a few more pretty good, and then completely blow one. Most often, I\u2019d shoot out of sequence. Rogers demands \u201cnear to far\u201d for tactical reasons, and I tended to shoot the one nearest to the sights on multiple targets; even if all subsequent shots were hits, they were invalidated for score by the procedural penalty.\u00a0 I finally managed to do what I tell my own students: turn off the auto pilot we all seek, and go to manual override.\u00a0 Conscious competence instead of unconscious competence. Think about what you\u2019re doing, if only for an instant. When I managed to do that nine demanding stages in a row, I passed the Advanced score.<\/p>\n

In my first blog entry in this particular series<\/a>, , I wrote, \u201cIf you aren\u2019t good at taking orders, you probably won\u2019t be good at giving them\u2026\u201d Good Lord, little did I know when I wrote those words that I would live the lesson at Rogers\u2019.<\/p>\n

There were numerous stages where we had to reload one-hand-only with either hand. Rogers teaches doing that with the pistol in a \u201cV-block\u201d between thighs and knees. For decades I\u2019ve used and taught a different technique for that, and more than once found myself starting to do my own method, catching myself, and then having to switch to Bill\u2019s. That \u201coops, check, back, start over\u201d ate up enough time that I\u2019d lose three to five of those briefly-exposed targets by the time I got the gun back up. (Bill told me later, \u201cIf you\u2019d asked, I would have let you used your own technique, so long as it\u2019s safe.\u201d My fault for not asking, but I was there to ingrain his <\/em>stuff, not mine, and it all reinforced a valuable lesson for me.)<\/p>\n

A tip of the hat to Bill Rogers and his wonderful staff: Major Adam Smith, Sergeant Kyle Armstrong, and Billy Lumpkin, late of DEVGRU. They all did a wonderful job.<\/p>\n

\"Mas_Ronnie\"One more Rogers instructor deserves notice. I hadn\u2019t seen Ronnie Dodd since he took the Advanced OfficerSurvival course from Ray Chapman and I at Chapman Academy in Columbia, Missouri thirty years ago. He went on to an honorable retirement, during which he taught armed concealed carriers in Tennessee how to stay alive on their own. Ronnie was visiting after prevailing over a bout of throat cancer that would have put most people under.\u00a0 He kicked its ass \u2013 living proof of the survival attitude that he, and the other instructors Bill Rogers surrounds himself with, share with their students.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t taken their Basic class, though it gets rave reviews, but I can tell you from a week of intense personal experience that I give five stars and big thumbs up to the Intermediate\/Advanced program at Rogers Shooting School<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the rare stars who\u2019ve shot a perfect score on the legendary Rogers test is Gabe White, the only one to have done so from concealment. He used a Glock 34 9mm with an inside the waistband holster in the appendix position. He told Glock Annual, \u201cThe Test itself is a real marathon\u2014125 possible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}