Day One.

We started the first day of this five day format off with a cold drill. A man on man shoot off on pepper poppers and hostage targets. No briefing, no warm up, Just sprint over to the targets and get it done. That's a gun fight. Sudden and unexpected. This drill took it's toll on many of the 27 students in attendance.

The class in comprised of about 80% LE, a couple of Marine scout/snipers and a few of us lowly training junkies.

The class was broken down into three groups of nine and we rotated through several very intense problems. We worked the knife charger from outside of and inside of vehicles, The high speed mover, and a number of other drills.

One of the drills had us working a problem in two man teams from the vehicle. The drivers side of the vehicle faced down range. On the signal, AMBUSH! The driver engaged pepper poppers from the drivers side window. The passenger exits the vehicle and goes to the ground engaging bowling pins from underneath the car. This is to simulate taking out the adversary's legs and shins. Keep in mind that the driver is still in the car. These type of drills do require that you be switched on all the way. Once the driver has the pepper poppers down he exits the vehicle from the passenger side door and also goes to the ground and engages any bowling pins that are still standing. Needless to say, this is a high speed very intense drill, and a ton of fun.

Given the amount of time we spend in our vehicles I feel that this type of training is essential to any serious combatives student.

Day Two, Night Shoot.

Day two kicked off with a brief warm up on paper targets. Singles and pairs from 5 yards followed by shooting on the move. Once we got out juices flowing the class split in two. One group working two man room entries and the other shooting the high speed mover on the move.

The room entries consisted of stacked, crisscross, and button hook formations. Once we had the drills down dry we went live. The entries drills built from that point working up to shoot/no shoot target ID while shooting on the move during the entry. Great fun.

After the sun set we worked several night time entries building on the skills we had worked on during the day. In this case, shoot and no shoot targets were clustered together and on some of the shots you really had to thread the needle. We wrapped up the evening with two different two man team donga trails.

Day Three.

Day three kicked off with an introduction to Krav Maga which in Hebrew translates to contact combat. This is a straight forward in your face fighting system that'll bring an individual up to speed in a very short amount of time. After some stretching and jumping jacks we learned how to maximize the power in our striking elbowing, and kneeing techniques. The techniques that we were taught made a significant difference in striking power.

From there we got into disarming techniques. It was explained that the individual holding the gun on you wanted your wallet or something from you and did not intend, at least in that point in time, to kill you. The techniques are simple and seem like they would be effective. This isn't something you can learn in a few hours, however a couple hours a week for six months and you'll be able to do perform some devastating techniques. From the sampling we received it seems to be, even for a layman like myself, to be a good way to go as opposed to the long term study of the oriental martial arts disciplines.

After lunch we broke into three relays of nine and went back into the firing drill rotations. My relay started of with a cold drill man on man. That was ugly. We have some great shooters in our relay, but for what ever reason we had one hell of a time hitting the hostage taker head shots. Once we got back in the groove it went better, but hey, ain't no warm ups in a gun fight.

Next up was the high speed mover. This time vision barriers were set up so we couldn't see the targets until they moved across in front of us. We had to ID any shoot target and engage it before it disappeared behind cover. The target exposure was about two seconds and the targets level of threat were changed between runs.

The final rotation of the day put us back into the vehicles firing from the drivers and passenger seat firing side hand only.

Thus far the round count for the three days has averaged about 150 rounds per day. This is by no means a hose fest. Every drill requires thinking and problem solving under pressure. Some of the pressure is generated from the man on man formats and some from the limited time frames on the mover and charger to engage the targets.

Man (the species, not gender) fights with his mind and failures in action occur because the man couldn't think, and not because the man couldn't shoot. Paraphrased from Bill Jeans, BTW.

It's that philosophy that sets ITTS apart from the other schools that I've had the good fortune to train at.

Day Four.

Day four started with viewing some actual shooting footage which I'm not at liberty to discuss.

Day four had the class divided into two groups. Each group participated in role playing reenactments of actual shootings. The crime scene was secured and evidence was collected. Actual LAPD detectives then questioned the responding officers and witnesses. This was very interesting to say the least.

If you're involved in a shooting be truthful!

For civilians, make a brief statement to the responding officers. "He came at me and I was in fear of my life. With all due respect I would like an attorney present during further questioning."

A superior court judge address the class as to how to testify in court. The most prolific statement to come forth is to be a human being with a reverence for life. Too many times the shooter comes off as a tough guy and this will turn a jury off in a heart beat.

Do not argue with the DA or other court officers. State the truth in a calm and respectful manner. If there are points that you need to make and haven't ask your council to call a short recess and direct the questioning to address those points.
When you answer questions address the council asking the questions, but address the entire room as well including the jury.

Do not volunteer addition information. Answer the question and then move on to the next. Take your time before you answer and think it through.

The reasonable man standard was discussed at length. If your adversary claims to have a weapon and states that he will use it, a reasonable man would believe that that was in fact the case. Given that, a sudden and deliberate move towards that weapon would cause most reasonable men to take action. Whether or not there is a weapon isn't always relevant. The fact that you believed it was there based on information conveyed to you by your adversary may be enough to justify your actions.

Trained shooters like many on this board may be held to a higher standard than untrained shooters.

Any and all written material, books, magazine articles, and yes, Internet posts can be entered into evidence.

Bumper stickers, T shirts with the macho BS like, "Kill em all and let God sort em out" can also be used against you.

Everything is discoverable.

We ended the day with a rather intense qualification course of fire that involved sprinting from the 3 to the 25 to the 7 etc., and firing from a number of positions with a few push ups thrown in for good measure.

Day Five.

The theme for today was officer/citizen down rescue. Before we got into the shooting we given a two hour block of instruction on emergency medical stabilization of gun shot wounds and other serious trauma. The lecture was given by a SWAT operator who is a certified EMT and provides emergeny medical treatment to team members should it be needed during call outs.

Next up was a ballistics demo with various handgun rounds, buck, slug, and 223 on vehicles

From there we moved in to single man and two man rescues. One of the more interesting techniques was how to lift, move, and secure the victim in the vehicle. Using the technique we were able to lift and maneuver some pretty big boys. The technique worked amazingly well.

We ran a number of different drills and eventually were running 2, two man cars. One would provide cover fire while the extraction team recovered and secured the victim.

The final drill of the day was to drive onto the range, 2 two man cars, and locate the victim who was in an unknown location. The cover team would engage six pepper poppers also in unknown locations and once the targets were down and the victim had been secured both teams would evacuate the range. The victim/targets were placed between 60 to 100 yards from the point where the vehicles entered the range. The total elapsed time for the drill averaged about 35 seconds from entering and exiting the range. I'll be the first to admit that I've never done anything like this at a shooting school before.

We wrapped up the day with a nice dinner and a detailed debrief of the N. Hollywood shoot out by one of the SWAT shooters who ended the ordeal.

Closing thoughts.

During the past 17 months I've logged 26 days training at ITTS. It has been a great evolution and has had significant impact on what I think is important. Legendary guest instructors such as Louis Awerbuck and Bill Jeans have also echoed the ITTS message.

First and foremost is the ability to think on your feet under pressure. Secondly is the ability to accurately articulate why you've chosen to take that particular course of action.

Above all else is to keep things as simple as possible. All that fancy stuff goes right out the window when faced with sudden and unexpected acts of violence. Clean smooth lines and quick thinking win fights.

The courses involving vehicles, and there have been many, affords an understanding of how to use a vehicle for cover and how to defeat them as well. We've shot out of vehicles, into vehicles, from moving vehicles, under vehicles, and through vehicles. Looking back the information that has been disseminated boggles the mind.

The cold drills identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the shooter. The blind drills teach you how to think and keep your cool under pressure while shooting at speed.

While ITTS has some great and unique equipment it's the overall philosophy that sets them apart.

To paraphrase Scotty Reitz, " This aint play shooting, it's gun fighting boys."