The Massad Ayoob Group ran its MAG-80 course at the Sierra Vista range in Sierra Vista, Arizona, in March 2011. After Action.net asked Massad Ayoob on the range why shooters should keep training after their first classes.
Course overview
- School: Massad Ayoob Group (MAG)
- Course: MAG-80, an intensive study of defensive firearms
- Location: Sierra Vista range, Sierra Vista, Arizona
- Round count: 500 handgun, 100 long gun
- Prerequisites: MAG-20 Classroom plus MAG-20 Live Fire, or MAG-40, or LFI-I
What was covered
- Extreme speed for hits, plus shooting at greater distances.
- Managing contingencies such as weak-hand draws, one-hand reloads and malfunction clearing if wounded.
- Several hours of hands-on handgun disarming, and countering an attacker’s attempt to disarm the student.
- Shooting while moving, and using long guns for defense.
Massad Ayoob on continued training
- Aim to be the best you can be. Learning alone means reinventing the wheel.
- Defensive shooting is a chain of complex psychomotor skills that all have to work. People call it a perishable skill; Ayoob described it as corrosion-prone, because the rust builds quickly.
- An instructor outside yourself catches things you do not notice when it is just you, the gun and the target, which means faster feedback and faster correction.
- Watching other students work shows how the same techniques behave in different hands. The same holds for the hand-to-hand work in the course.
Takeaways
- Plan a second-level class after your first: skills built in a basic class need refreshing and building on.
- MAG-80 is the step up from MAG-40 or LFI-I.
Originally published on After Action.net on March 28, 2011. Rebuilt from the archived report and the video transcript; the original photos were not preserved. See every class in the Training Log, or share your own training experience.
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