TEXAS DEFENSE ACADEMY AT WARRIOR POET SOCIETY RIFLE COURSE
TDA in opening screen on Warrior Poet Society YouTube Video “How to Brace on Cover & Concealment”
Texas Defense Academy prides itself on having the best training/instruction for our students. With that in mind, the instructors here at TDA are also students. We like to find the best in the industry so we can share that knowledge with you. TDA Instructors Bryan Malatesta and Michael Current recently attended a Rifle 1 course presented by Warrior Poet Society. This is their story.
We arrived at Triple C Range in Cresson, TX on a chilly 100° Texas day. Warrior Poet Society Founder/Instructor John Lovell began the day discussing placement of the rifle in the pocket (not shoulder) and how your points of contact change when you change levels (standing/kneeling/prone). He also discussed proper stance and grip.
After the basics of rifle placement, we zeroed our rifles, then the fun began. John began the next block of instruction on Up Drills. Starting from Low Ready, we began headshots from about 7-10 yards.
Once our targets began looking like a cyclops, John discussed different low ready positions. These were: Low-Ready, Over-the-shoulder, Retention, and Sul (south). With our rifles unloaded he called out one of the four positions as we practiced transitioning between them and sighting in on the target.
We then moved on to diagnosing what our rifle was doing after the shot by watching our sights. By what we saw the sight doing, we could adjust our stance/grip to maintain a flat muzzle. This required a lot of attention to detail to get this right but it made a big difference once you got the hang of it.
After lunch, we began engaging multiple targets and target transitions. The drills ended up being 3 distinct targets labeled 1, 2 or 3 and we had had to smoothly transition from one target to the next getting clear sight pictures and then take the shot. A good takeaway from those drills was to lead with your eyes not your muzzle. We spent the remainder of the day running target transition drills as our student instructors called them out. This drill was very good at spotting our weaknesses or strengths from torso turns to body turns to a hand and eye coordination.
We highly recommend you attend any training by John Lovell! And join his YouTube channel, linked below, as you won’t be sorry. He is outstanding.