Phase Line Green At Wapiti Shooter Sept 11-14
- Thread starter spooksar
- Start date
Hokus Grey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Somewhere between "WTF?" and "FTW!".
I'll be wearing dark sunglasses. You'll have to stare hard.
Hokus Grey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Somewhere between "WTF?" and "FTW!".
Nope. It'll snow by then and I live 10 mins away.
Hokus Grey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Somewhere between "WTF?" and "FTW!".
Summer is over. Now we are in the land of hellish night.
Bring gloves.
Bring gloves.
- Location
- Fort St John B.C.
feedback ? pictures ? funny earl stories ?
Hokus Grey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Somewhere between "WTF?" and "FTW!".
Coming soon.
Hokus Grey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Somewhere between "WTF?" and "FTW!".
After Action Report
Phase Line Green – 2 Day Advanced Pistol Course
Wapiti Shooters Club – Grande Prairie, AB
September 13th – 14th
Day 1-
Saturday started with a thick blanket of fog hanging low over the range in the morning. It was cool, about 5°C and the humidity made it seem colder, but at least there was no wind. I tracked down Earl Green, owner and operator of Phase Line Green Tactical, at the club house holding court with a group of guys around a table. I said “Hello” to Earl and shook hands with all the other shooters that I would be spending the next two days beside on the firing line. Most I knew locally, or had shot with before, though there were a few new faces. RCMP and Canadian Forces personnel were among those present as well, which was nice to see. This was not my first course with Phase Line Green and I had a fair idea of what to expect, so I arrived early and ready to shoot. By 09:15 we had made good with our introductions and the safety briefing and were on the firing line.
Earl warmed up the group with a simple cold drill. 5 rounds to the center of mass area on a locally sourced target that was vaguely reminiscent of a slightly squashed IDPA silhouette - easy enough. Earl then gave us a short lecture about the importance of grip and what exactly comprised a proper grip on a pistol. He explained that most misses and the inability to consistently make hits with a pistol are related to inconsistent and insufficient grip. The grip should be a death grip, fully engaging the muscles of both hands to get maximum friction and control of the gun in order to reduce the path of least resistance. After the lecture, we shot 1” dots at 3m, 5m and 7m. He was right about grip, as my groups were already tightening up.
After running us through a few more accuracy drills from 5m-7m, Earl went into another brief lecture on sight picture and front sight focus; then more drills from 7m-10m. We shot weapon hand only and support hand only. Earl never let up about grip, drilling us on weapon hand only shooting, then pressing the support hand palm into the grip and feeling the support and seeing the difference it made on target, then shooting with a firm two handed grip. Always, the moment my grip wavered from that death grip, my shots strayed, but when I bore down on that Glock 17 with all I had and watched that front sight, the rounds went right where I wanted. Grip, grip, grip.
We worked trigger press for a little while, with hammers and controlled pairs. There was a brief lecture on slapping the trigger versus working the trigger reset and the use of both while shooting for speed and accuracy. I had always worked the trigger reset and after having Earl pointed out that almost all of us slap the trigger when running the gun at speed, even top tactical and competition shooters, I did speed up a bit on my trigger manipulations. At some point we broke for lunch. It had been a solid 3 hour block of shooting and instruction and my hands were already feeling the abrasion from the textured grip of the Gen3 G17. Earl said that that was how hands should feel after gripping the gun with a proper grip.
We reconvened on the firing line and the rest of the day continued in much the same fashion as the morning, with Earl assigning us drills that worked one specific fundamental shooting mechanic, then using that isolating drill in order to perform more advanced tasks. In between shooting evolutions, Earl broke down the physiology of shooting, demonstrating how the anatomy of the hand is engaged while shooting a pistol and how to be that rigid recoil abutment, allowing the gun to operate without recoil bleed to take the gun off target. He also showed how muscle tension in the forearms, shoulders and core all worked together to give the gun no path of least resistance as the shot breaks.
Earl moved us on to timed drills and we went to work on balancing speed and accuracy, first as individuals, then as 3 3-man teams going head to head shooting Mozambique Technique drills, failure drills and a modified VTAC 4x4x4 drill. Those who have had the pleasure of taking one of Earl’s courses knows that he can get some good rivalry going quickly in order to build some friendly competition and add some low level stress to the shooting equation. He is also a wizard when it comes to assigning team names. (Go Team Swordfight!)
Towards the end of the day, Earl had us moving back out further and further. We shot standing and kneeling at 15 and out to 25m-27m and shot from a modified prone position from around 30m. My hits were all over the paper when we first got out to the further distances and I didn’t quite figure out Earl’s modified prone position. I chocked that up to difference in body type and left it at that. We moved back to 25m and Earl had us hold in a push up position, then run back to our guns which were on the ground at the 5m mark, pick them up and shoot 5 rounds with fatigued arms. We did another drill where we had to hold our arms up over our heads for a minute and then run back to the 5m line to find he had switched some guns around and removed the magazines from others in a type of induced stress scenario. Earl explained that the essence of “Advanced” shooting is being able to think while shooting. Having the ability to perform the fundamentals of shooting without sacrificing higher cognitive function require to keep you alive, assess threats, look for people to help, scan for cover, or adapt to the course of fire on the competition range.
By days end I was approaching overload with all I had learned and my hands ached from the death grip I had had on the gun all day. We shot for a full 7 hours with only one 45 minute break. Earl Green’s rambling teaching style is such that he educates as much as instructs, passing on useful information that is easily applied and adapted practically into the next evolution. The way he meanders from lesson to lesson, breaking up the shooting evolutions with blocks of verbal instruction and teaching, enables him to present a lot of information without student fatigue. The round count on the day was about 400 rounds, which was higher than I had expected, but I didn’t feel as though one round had been wasted. He had really hammered home the importance of grip for me, which was something I always knew was important, it had just never been demonstrated and explained so clearly to me. I went home and cleaned up, then refueled and met Earl and a few of the guys for a few cold ones. It is a known fact that some of the best instruction on any firearms course comes off the range over cold beverages. By the time my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.
Day 2 –
A bright and sunny morning greeted us on Sunday, with all 9 students on the line and ready to go by 09:00. With only 9 shooters, it took little time to get squared away and everyone seemed to be genuinely there to train, so we didn’t really have any delays in getting things going. As always, Earl ran over the safety brief and gave a bit of an outline of what he expected us to be working on for the day, then we got set up on the firing line. As we had the day before, we warmed up on 1” dots at 3m, 5m and 7m, concentrating on applying what we had learned the day before about grip, sight picture and trigger control. A few more accuracy drills out to 15m and Earl moved us on to some shooting for speed on the timer. We did some draw and fire exercises that picked up our pace a little bit and showed us where things came apart at, the balance of speed and accuracy being paramount to being able to engage targets quickly and effectively.
It was interesting watching how Earl Green was able to specifically tie aspects of each evolution to the real world situations relevant to the LEO and Military people taking the course, as well as the responsible armed citizens and competition shooters. At one point in between a block of instruction, he even gathered the group in and offered himself up as a “new shooter” and had the group make suggestions on how we could best begin teaching what we had learned to an untrained person. By this point, we all had a good grasp of grip, stance, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger press and follow through and the group was able to put forward ideas on where to begin with a new pistol shooter. Definitely and interesting exercise that allowed us to cement some of the principles we were learning to apply to our own shooting.
As the morning moved on we put out some steel targets, roughly the same size as the torso section of an IDPA silhouette and did some shooting on the move laterally. These evolutions allowed us to utilize the same grip and muscle groups that Earl had talked about the previous day. It was evident how important engaging the core muscles and having that death grip on the pistol was when shooting while moving. I could feel myself getting more comfortable with these principles and I was able to pick up the pace a bit at this point. Earl got us back in our teams and we shot a timed multiple target engagement called a “Chaos Drill” and a few other types of multiple target drills that got us shooting at speed. By the time we broke for lunch at 12:00, my hands were feeling the strain of maintaining a vice-like grip for the past 3 hours. I was really enjoying myself; the sun was out and the weather was beautiful for a September in Northern Alberta.
We were back on the firing line after an hour lunch break, where Earl threw us right back into training some unconventional shooting positions, such as shooting from a seated position and moving from seated to kneeling engagements. This exercise was derived from vehicle borne operations and was an interesting and fun evolution. Drawing the pistol from a seating position poses some different types of issues in order to keep from crossing yourself with the muzzle. There was also a serpentine drill as well that really reinforced muzzle discipline, as Earl kept on us about our accuracy, speed and situational awareness during the drill. He was not letting us compromise what we had already learned as we began to get more dynamic with the evolutions.
I’m not sure of the exact time, but I believe it was midafternoon when I realized that Earl had been steadily moving the evolutions out further and further. During an exercise that had us shooting weapon hand only, I noticed that I was ringing the gong pretty consistently from well beyond the 25m mark. I looked down the line and could see everyone concentrating hard on their targets and ringing the steel with nearly every shot. We spent the next few hours shooting from various positions out to 45m. Earl pushed us hard on stance and how to lean heavily into the gun, really tightening up on the grip and core muscles to make those longer shots. Rolling Thunder evolutions down the line had the steel ringing like church bells, as we punished the gongs. I even had a chance to revisit Earl’s modified prone position and I’m not sure if it was just a confidence thing or what, but I was able to get into the position comfortably, as well as ring the gong from it several times in quick succession. Now that we were getting more comfortable shooting at distance, Earl brought out the timer again and had us shooting 3 round strings from the draw for time from the 45m mark. Being able to nail this was one of my big high points for the day. We were bringing all of the lessons that Earl had taught us over the past 2 days together and the results were undeniable.
To round out the day and to break into some different types of skill sets, Earl ran us through a few short contact distance drills from arms length of the target. Breaking contact and using the pistol safely at these distances poses many challenges and while we didn’t spend a lot of time on this, it was informative and helped break the focus from distance shooting, to quickly presenting the pistol and engaging an immediate close quarters threat safely. Finally, Earl ran us through some quick Close Protection drills. Again, this was very close quarters type engagements out at 7m-10m. Working briefly with the principle protection detail reinforced our muzzle awareness and quick to the gun, quick to the threat type shooting we had been working on for the past 2 days. For us this particular evolution was more of an application of advanced shooting drill than real CP training, but it was educational none the less.
The day ended with all the shooters down on the 45m line, checking out each others guns and letting each other shoot their pistol and check sights, modifications, or different types of pistol. Everyone was just kind of bull####ting and popping off rounds with the ring of steel echoing across the range, when Earl got everyone’s attention and pointed out just what was happening. 36 hours earlier, most of us were struggling to get consistent hits out at the 25m mark and here we were now, chatting and casually nailing the gongs with consistency at nearly 50m. This was the proof that we were assimilating the lessons and actually getting something from the instruction. Actual, on paper (or steel) results we could see. The course round count was around 800 rounds, give or take, but I really don’t feel like any shots were thrown away, or we were just getting our blast on. Every bullet had a lesson attached to it.
There were many other lessons that Earl taught over these 2 days that I wasn’t able to capture for one reason on another, but this has been the bulk of it. There are probably things that I forgot, or got the chronology wrong on, but whatever. A great course with a great group of guys and I for one, walked away with way more than my money’s worth. I sit now with confidence in my ability to safely and efficiently manipulate the pistol to get positive results on target out to 50m. I couldn’t say that before. There is definitely a greater understanding of the physiology and mechanics behind pistol shooting and a firm foundation in the fundamentals that I can now take and apply in whatever type of shooting I do next. I can diagnose what I am doing wrong, as well as know what it feels like to do it right. There were lessons on combat mindset and sports psychology that I was unable to put words to here, lest this report become a small novel, but suffice it to say that I feel more than satisfied with the course content. In all honesty, this was probably the best course I have taken with Phase Line Green to date. I believe that Earl Green is evolving into an ever more effective and knowledgeable instructor and educator and that will keep me coming back for his courses. For me this is the last firearms course I will take in 2014, but I will most definitely look hard at another PLG course as part of next year’s training regimen.
Be Safe
Phase Line Green – 2 Day Advanced Pistol Course
Wapiti Shooters Club – Grande Prairie, AB
September 13th – 14th
Day 1-
Saturday started with a thick blanket of fog hanging low over the range in the morning. It was cool, about 5°C and the humidity made it seem colder, but at least there was no wind. I tracked down Earl Green, owner and operator of Phase Line Green Tactical, at the club house holding court with a group of guys around a table. I said “Hello” to Earl and shook hands with all the other shooters that I would be spending the next two days beside on the firing line. Most I knew locally, or had shot with before, though there were a few new faces. RCMP and Canadian Forces personnel were among those present as well, which was nice to see. This was not my first course with Phase Line Green and I had a fair idea of what to expect, so I arrived early and ready to shoot. By 09:15 we had made good with our introductions and the safety briefing and were on the firing line.
Earl warmed up the group with a simple cold drill. 5 rounds to the center of mass area on a locally sourced target that was vaguely reminiscent of a slightly squashed IDPA silhouette - easy enough. Earl then gave us a short lecture about the importance of grip and what exactly comprised a proper grip on a pistol. He explained that most misses and the inability to consistently make hits with a pistol are related to inconsistent and insufficient grip. The grip should be a death grip, fully engaging the muscles of both hands to get maximum friction and control of the gun in order to reduce the path of least resistance. After the lecture, we shot 1” dots at 3m, 5m and 7m. He was right about grip, as my groups were already tightening up.
After running us through a few more accuracy drills from 5m-7m, Earl went into another brief lecture on sight picture and front sight focus; then more drills from 7m-10m. We shot weapon hand only and support hand only. Earl never let up about grip, drilling us on weapon hand only shooting, then pressing the support hand palm into the grip and feeling the support and seeing the difference it made on target, then shooting with a firm two handed grip. Always, the moment my grip wavered from that death grip, my shots strayed, but when I bore down on that Glock 17 with all I had and watched that front sight, the rounds went right where I wanted. Grip, grip, grip.
We worked trigger press for a little while, with hammers and controlled pairs. There was a brief lecture on slapping the trigger versus working the trigger reset and the use of both while shooting for speed and accuracy. I had always worked the trigger reset and after having Earl pointed out that almost all of us slap the trigger when running the gun at speed, even top tactical and competition shooters, I did speed up a bit on my trigger manipulations. At some point we broke for lunch. It had been a solid 3 hour block of shooting and instruction and my hands were already feeling the abrasion from the textured grip of the Gen3 G17. Earl said that that was how hands should feel after gripping the gun with a proper grip.
We reconvened on the firing line and the rest of the day continued in much the same fashion as the morning, with Earl assigning us drills that worked one specific fundamental shooting mechanic, then using that isolating drill in order to perform more advanced tasks. In between shooting evolutions, Earl broke down the physiology of shooting, demonstrating how the anatomy of the hand is engaged while shooting a pistol and how to be that rigid recoil abutment, allowing the gun to operate without recoil bleed to take the gun off target. He also showed how muscle tension in the forearms, shoulders and core all worked together to give the gun no path of least resistance as the shot breaks.
Earl moved us on to timed drills and we went to work on balancing speed and accuracy, first as individuals, then as 3 3-man teams going head to head shooting Mozambique Technique drills, failure drills and a modified VTAC 4x4x4 drill. Those who have had the pleasure of taking one of Earl’s courses knows that he can get some good rivalry going quickly in order to build some friendly competition and add some low level stress to the shooting equation. He is also a wizard when it comes to assigning team names. (Go Team Swordfight!)
Towards the end of the day, Earl had us moving back out further and further. We shot standing and kneeling at 15 and out to 25m-27m and shot from a modified prone position from around 30m. My hits were all over the paper when we first got out to the further distances and I didn’t quite figure out Earl’s modified prone position. I chocked that up to difference in body type and left it at that. We moved back to 25m and Earl had us hold in a push up position, then run back to our guns which were on the ground at the 5m mark, pick them up and shoot 5 rounds with fatigued arms. We did another drill where we had to hold our arms up over our heads for a minute and then run back to the 5m line to find he had switched some guns around and removed the magazines from others in a type of induced stress scenario. Earl explained that the essence of “Advanced” shooting is being able to think while shooting. Having the ability to perform the fundamentals of shooting without sacrificing higher cognitive function require to keep you alive, assess threats, look for people to help, scan for cover, or adapt to the course of fire on the competition range.
By days end I was approaching overload with all I had learned and my hands ached from the death grip I had had on the gun all day. We shot for a full 7 hours with only one 45 minute break. Earl Green’s rambling teaching style is such that he educates as much as instructs, passing on useful information that is easily applied and adapted practically into the next evolution. The way he meanders from lesson to lesson, breaking up the shooting evolutions with blocks of verbal instruction and teaching, enables him to present a lot of information without student fatigue. The round count on the day was about 400 rounds, which was higher than I had expected, but I didn’t feel as though one round had been wasted. He had really hammered home the importance of grip for me, which was something I always knew was important, it had just never been demonstrated and explained so clearly to me. I went home and cleaned up, then refueled and met Earl and a few of the guys for a few cold ones. It is a known fact that some of the best instruction on any firearms course comes off the range over cold beverages. By the time my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.
Day 2 –
A bright and sunny morning greeted us on Sunday, with all 9 students on the line and ready to go by 09:00. With only 9 shooters, it took little time to get squared away and everyone seemed to be genuinely there to train, so we didn’t really have any delays in getting things going. As always, Earl ran over the safety brief and gave a bit of an outline of what he expected us to be working on for the day, then we got set up on the firing line. As we had the day before, we warmed up on 1” dots at 3m, 5m and 7m, concentrating on applying what we had learned the day before about grip, sight picture and trigger control. A few more accuracy drills out to 15m and Earl moved us on to some shooting for speed on the timer. We did some draw and fire exercises that picked up our pace a little bit and showed us where things came apart at, the balance of speed and accuracy being paramount to being able to engage targets quickly and effectively.
It was interesting watching how Earl Green was able to specifically tie aspects of each evolution to the real world situations relevant to the LEO and Military people taking the course, as well as the responsible armed citizens and competition shooters. At one point in between a block of instruction, he even gathered the group in and offered himself up as a “new shooter” and had the group make suggestions on how we could best begin teaching what we had learned to an untrained person. By this point, we all had a good grasp of grip, stance, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger press and follow through and the group was able to put forward ideas on where to begin with a new pistol shooter. Definitely and interesting exercise that allowed us to cement some of the principles we were learning to apply to our own shooting.
As the morning moved on we put out some steel targets, roughly the same size as the torso section of an IDPA silhouette and did some shooting on the move laterally. These evolutions allowed us to utilize the same grip and muscle groups that Earl had talked about the previous day. It was evident how important engaging the core muscles and having that death grip on the pistol was when shooting while moving. I could feel myself getting more comfortable with these principles and I was able to pick up the pace a bit at this point. Earl got us back in our teams and we shot a timed multiple target engagement called a “Chaos Drill” and a few other types of multiple target drills that got us shooting at speed. By the time we broke for lunch at 12:00, my hands were feeling the strain of maintaining a vice-like grip for the past 3 hours. I was really enjoying myself; the sun was out and the weather was beautiful for a September in Northern Alberta.
We were back on the firing line after an hour lunch break, where Earl threw us right back into training some unconventional shooting positions, such as shooting from a seated position and moving from seated to kneeling engagements. This exercise was derived from vehicle borne operations and was an interesting and fun evolution. Drawing the pistol from a seating position poses some different types of issues in order to keep from crossing yourself with the muzzle. There was also a serpentine drill as well that really reinforced muzzle discipline, as Earl kept on us about our accuracy, speed and situational awareness during the drill. He was not letting us compromise what we had already learned as we began to get more dynamic with the evolutions.
I’m not sure of the exact time, but I believe it was midafternoon when I realized that Earl had been steadily moving the evolutions out further and further. During an exercise that had us shooting weapon hand only, I noticed that I was ringing the gong pretty consistently from well beyond the 25m mark. I looked down the line and could see everyone concentrating hard on their targets and ringing the steel with nearly every shot. We spent the next few hours shooting from various positions out to 45m. Earl pushed us hard on stance and how to lean heavily into the gun, really tightening up on the grip and core muscles to make those longer shots. Rolling Thunder evolutions down the line had the steel ringing like church bells, as we punished the gongs. I even had a chance to revisit Earl’s modified prone position and I’m not sure if it was just a confidence thing or what, but I was able to get into the position comfortably, as well as ring the gong from it several times in quick succession. Now that we were getting more comfortable shooting at distance, Earl brought out the timer again and had us shooting 3 round strings from the draw for time from the 45m mark. Being able to nail this was one of my big high points for the day. We were bringing all of the lessons that Earl had taught us over the past 2 days together and the results were undeniable.
To round out the day and to break into some different types of skill sets, Earl ran us through a few short contact distance drills from arms length of the target. Breaking contact and using the pistol safely at these distances poses many challenges and while we didn’t spend a lot of time on this, it was informative and helped break the focus from distance shooting, to quickly presenting the pistol and engaging an immediate close quarters threat safely. Finally, Earl ran us through some quick Close Protection drills. Again, this was very close quarters type engagements out at 7m-10m. Working briefly with the principle protection detail reinforced our muzzle awareness and quick to the gun, quick to the threat type shooting we had been working on for the past 2 days. For us this particular evolution was more of an application of advanced shooting drill than real CP training, but it was educational none the less.
The day ended with all the shooters down on the 45m line, checking out each others guns and letting each other shoot their pistol and check sights, modifications, or different types of pistol. Everyone was just kind of bull####ting and popping off rounds with the ring of steel echoing across the range, when Earl got everyone’s attention and pointed out just what was happening. 36 hours earlier, most of us were struggling to get consistent hits out at the 25m mark and here we were now, chatting and casually nailing the gongs with consistency at nearly 50m. This was the proof that we were assimilating the lessons and actually getting something from the instruction. Actual, on paper (or steel) results we could see. The course round count was around 800 rounds, give or take, but I really don’t feel like any shots were thrown away, or we were just getting our blast on. Every bullet had a lesson attached to it.
There were many other lessons that Earl taught over these 2 days that I wasn’t able to capture for one reason on another, but this has been the bulk of it. There are probably things that I forgot, or got the chronology wrong on, but whatever. A great course with a great group of guys and I for one, walked away with way more than my money’s worth. I sit now with confidence in my ability to safely and efficiently manipulate the pistol to get positive results on target out to 50m. I couldn’t say that before. There is definitely a greater understanding of the physiology and mechanics behind pistol shooting and a firm foundation in the fundamentals that I can now take and apply in whatever type of shooting I do next. I can diagnose what I am doing wrong, as well as know what it feels like to do it right. There were lessons on combat mindset and sports psychology that I was unable to put words to here, lest this report become a small novel, but suffice it to say that I feel more than satisfied with the course content. In all honesty, this was probably the best course I have taken with Phase Line Green to date. I believe that Earl Green is evolving into an ever more effective and knowledgeable instructor and educator and that will keep me coming back for his courses. For me this is the last firearms course I will take in 2014, but I will most definitely look hard at another PLG course as part of next year’s training regimen.
Be Safe
Last edited:
giant yetti
Regular
- Location
- Mighty Peace
well said. this course was worth the money and the ammo. I'm looking forward to a carbine course.
