Tactical Firearms with Clay Martin AAR

Clay kicking off class (PC: Great Bridge Training)

 I had the opportunity this last weekend to attend Off the Reservation's Tactical Firearms class.  The owner, Clay Martin, is a veteran of both the US Marine Corps and the US Army Special Forces, where he served in various roles including as an instructor with the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Course.

(PC: Boombot Media)

Tactical Firearms is a two-day rifle/pistol course.  The course requirements are 500 rounds of pistol, 700 round of rifle, and a working knowledge of your firearms.  Oak Hill Farms in Yale, VA, hosted this event, and Great Bridge Training, LLC, set up the venue, provided excellent customer service, and assisted with the class.  The staff of Great Bridge Training were awesome, and took good care of the students.

A little bit about the venue.  Yale would be considered "out of the way."  The nearest food is 15-30 minutes away, depending on what you're longing for.  I personally think it's worth it, as the venue is excellent.  It's far enough out in the country to not be bothered, but close enough that a 30 minute drive to a hotel (if you need one) isn't that bad.  I would bring food and snacks though, as taking an hour just to drive to food and back does slow down the class.  There are full bathrooms on site for your convenience.

Clay coaching the line (PC: Great Bridge Training)

The class began with two drills (one on steel for speed, and one on paper for accuracy).  Clay uses these to gauge individual student skill levels.  The start of the class is very time intensive, as Clay comes around and coaches each student individually.  The particular skills Clay focused on were trigger manipulation, grip, follow-up shots, and rapid target transition.  There was a decent amount of down time, but that was a result of the individual attention, so the trade-off was worth it, in my opinion.  Down time was occupied with reloading mags and socializing with fellow students.  Before lunch, we re-shot the speed drill to check our improvement.  I won't regurgitate Clay's philosophy here; instead I'll direct you to his own words, which will probably do a much better job.

After lunch, we moved into rifles.  Clay ran us through a basic zeroing theory lesson, then we zeroed at our choice of 100 or 50 yards.  We had some equipment failures among the students, so zeroing took a little longer than planned.  After the zeroing, we ran the 400-point aggregate - 10 shots prone at 100 yards, 10 shots sitting at 75 yards, 10 shots kneeling at 50 yards, and 10 shots standing at 25 yards.  Next we ran the 1/2 & 1/2 drill three times - 10 rounds in 10 seconds at 20 yards, 10 rounds in 5 seconds at 10 yards, and 10 rounds in 2.5 seconds at 5 yards (all standing).

After the 1/2& 1/2, we broke for dinner.  The Oak Hill Farms provided us with the use of their grill, so after a run to the store, the students cooked up hot dogs, chicken, and barbecue from a local BBQ joint.  It was great to sit down and talk and just hang out with shooters.

Night shoot (PC: Great Bridge Training)

After dinner, we conducted a night familiarization shoot.  We practiced illuminating the target with a rifle light while firing pistols, and Clay ran us through the four positions for using a handheld light to ID and engage targets with a pistol.  That concluded Saturday.

Sunday morning began with pistol draws and reloads.  Clay has a slightly different method of both drawing the gun and dropping the mag than I've been taught, but both seemed effective.  It will take some time on the range testing them out to see if I choose to switch over or not.  We had a chance to run through drills practicing draws, and both reloads with retention and slide-lock reloads.

Moving in depth (PC: Great Bridge Training)

Clay coaching moving in width (PC: Great Bridge Training)

After the pistol drills, we shifted to shooting and moving with the rifle.  We shot drills in both width and depth.  The shooting in width drills varied from the standard "walk a line and shoot 'em as you see 'em."  Clay emphasized engaging targets as you would if you were clearing your sector in a CQB environment, i.e., engaging the far target first, not the near target.

Our final lesson of Sunday involved team fire and movement (shoot/move/communicate).  We started with two-person movement dry, then worked up to four-person movement live.  Everyone had a great time with these drills, and we finished up strong.  The class wrapped up with a quick after action and lots of brass pickup.

Moving! (PC: Boombot Media)

Overall, this was an excellent class.  My biggest takeaway was from the pistol portion.  Clay makes good use of the work that the Army has done with competitive shooters, and he can transfer the material very well.  I learned that a lot of the things I was doing with my pistol (how I gripped, pinning the trigger, and working the reset) were less than optimal, and I've got a lot of work to do to unlearn and relearn those aspects.  I felt the rifle material was information I had already learned in other courses (many of which were also taught by Army vets with similar backgrounds).  All in all, the pistol section alone was completely worth it.

I did end up shooting a lot more than 500 pistol rounds, probably closer to 650 (I brought 1000).  Part of that was my own fault, as I tried to work 2-3 rounds strings as much as possible to test the new methods and their effects during rapid engagement.

Clay has a very laid-back style, which might be a little different for people who are used to very regimented courses.  Clay runs a hot range and expects guns to stay loaded and topped off.  He's also very attuned to the realities of combat and the chaos of CQB, so his take on weapons handling is not driven by flat range artificiality.

(PC: Boombot Media)

I definitely recommend taking a class with Clay if you get the chance.  You can tell he cares about the material and transferring as much as possible to the student as he can.  Plus, the price ($300 + $20 range fee) was very reasonable, especially for the caliber of instructor.  I think you'll come away with the knowledge to make yourself a better shooter.  Whether you implement those with practice afterward is up to you.

Check out Clay on the web or on Facebook.