GM
Advantages of Virtual Training
Gander MountainDescription
Rob Pincus and Gander Mountain Academy Director Billy Hieb are at GMA’s V Range, where they take a look at how this virtual range offers safer, more convenient and economical training and practice. Using modified Glock and Beretta handguns, shooters are in a virtual as opposed to a live-fire environment. One advantage of this is that they can push themselves more. Another is that because the guns are not shooting live ammo, shooters can get lots of reps without the expense of ammo. In fact, they don’t need to bring anything: no guns, no ammo. Just show up ready to practice!
At the Gander Mountain Academy we have the luxury of training in a simulation type environment. What I mean by that is scenario based training. As a student preparing for this type of training it's important that you find the right instructor, the right instructor out there. How do we know who that person is? We need to investigate our instructors because too often in places similar to this, they'll play the scenario and you just go do your thing and you shoot.
The most important part of this is teaching. So, how do we get there? We get there by asking people who have taken the training. You know, it's not so far to go ahead and talk to the actual instructor, you know, get a feel for their abilities 'cause their abilities is what makes this training top-notch, the ability to adjust on the fly. We won't know that until we talk to them.
What is their background? Do they have the ability to teach us? That is truly the most important thing here because you need to get something out of this not just playing the scenario because playing the scenario is the easy part. The hardest part is being able to be taught those simple things that we take for granted. Most of these scenarios that are played out on environments like ours and anybody else out there that does something similar.
The scenario itself has scripted teaching points. You know, anybody can cover those scripted ones, but the real facilitators, the true instructors that really grasp this concept, have the ability to strictly and solely watch the shooter because that shooter, every one of us who is the shooter, will do something in that scenario that triggers a teaching moment and we need to capture that instructor. We need to find that instructor out there that has the ability to exploit those weaknesses or those areas for improvement. The teaching points that are scripted, they're a given, but the key factor really is those unexplained ones that happen.
I cannot say enough positive things about the coaching that comes along with a V-Range session. Chris, a range officer at the Onalaska Gander Mountain, is a great coach and instructor as well. I think this is the real value of a V-range session. You can pack a lot of learning, and maybe more importantly, un-learning of undesirable habits, during the range session. You can then apply that learning on a live range, knowing that you are hard-wiring what you learned on the V-range with the instructor.