Student Review: Combat Rifle Manipulation (CRM) Class 31 May – 01 June – Batsoff
Company: Max Velocity Tactical
Course: Combat Rifle Manipulation (CRM)
Instructor: Aaron
Location: Romney, WV
Dates: May 31st, June 1st
Website: http://www.maxvelocitytactical.com/rifle-manipulation-rm/
I recently attended MVT’s Combat Rifle Manipulation (CRM) class and wanted to share my thoughts on the class. In my last AAR for Combat Rifle / Contact Drills (CRCD), I stated that I would not be headed back to the square range for training… well call me a liar, I’m glad I went!
Aaron was the instructor for the class, he’s a combat Vet that brings what he learned down range to the square range. He also follows the crawl, walk, run methodology that Max preaches. One of the great things about getting instruction from those with experience, is that they not only share with you how to do something, but WHY you do it that way. Most agree that experience is the best teacher, and given our subject matter, I don’t need to learn anything the hard way. I was thankful that Aaron was able to back up his teaching methodologies with real life proof points. Hat tip to Aaron for being open to other methodologies as well.
The class starts off as you would expect with a safety review, zeroing of rifles, and basic rifle manipulation (loading and unloading, etc… ). From there the curriculum continues on to firing positions, clearing malfunctions, theory of cover, shooting on the move, and buddy pairs / contact drills. The class covered all the necessary aspects of rifle manipulation and does an excellent job for setting you up with the skills to be successful in the CRCD class.
Thoughts, Ramblings, Learnings:
1. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed this class. This was my 4th “rifle manipulation” class and I was excited at how much of what we reviewed was just different enough to make it interesting and new again.
2. One of the primary take-aways from rifle manipulation is to come up with a process to deal with rifle malfunctions. If your rifle goes down, how do you get it back in to the fight as quickly as possible? Aaron does a great job of giving you the necessary procedures to do this. He was also open to other procedures, just be ready to defend why you are using your procedure, there may be a better way. Be open to new learning.
I know everyone wants to take the “advanced course,” be an operator in the shoot house, and train in SUT… but if you can’t keep your rifle in the fight when failures occur, you are not going to be helpful to the team.
3. Tacticool – for all the “tacticool” talk seen on the forums, I didn’t find anything tacticool about the training. The training was straight forward rifle manipulation and problem remediation.
4. 3rd party induced failures was a highlight. It consists of moving off the range while someone sets up your rifle with a particular failure scenario, then it’s your job to quickly re-enter the range and clear the stoppage as quickly as possible.
5. Burst Movement – This was another highlight drill for me. This was simply Getting off the X. Moving quickly and efficiently and responding with the appropriate amount of fire.
6. NSR – Non Standard Response is my favorite response. I was happy to see Aaron giving so much leeway in the drills. There were drills where we ran single taps or controlled pairs, but many of the drills were NSR. We are running these drills to simulate a problem, do you what you need to do to solve that problem.
7. Urban Prone – it sucks, and I suck at it.
8. The 1st day is a work day… 2nd day is where the action is. We spent most of the 1st day reviewing and practicing rifle manipulations with less than 200 rounds fired. The 2nd day is a shooting and drills day.
9. Break Contact / Buddy Pair Drills – enough said. I could run these drills for hours. They are part of day 2 and will give you a primer to what CRCD is about.
10. Round Count. This varied within the class. On the low end I’d guestimate 600 Rounds. I shot ~800 rounds (the NSR drove up my round count).
11. If you were born in the 70s or 80s you’ll likely understand all of Aaron’s teaching references and examples.
12. And as always, the best part of the class is meeting like-minded Patriots. Class ages ranged from 39 (I was the young-in) up to 56-ish. I was able to expand my network and truly enjoyed the company. Participants came from VA, TX, SC, and PA.
So how do you know if this is the class for you?
If you don’t know how to recognize and clear a double-feed, failure to feed, failure to eject, bolt override, or whatever Murphy is going to do to ruin your day… then this is a class for you.
If you think “tap – rack – bang” is some type of sexual preference… then this is the class for you.
If your remediation procedure consists of looking at the bolt, shaking the rifle, looking at the bolt, cursing, announcing your rifle is broken, more cursing, working the charging handle, looking at the bolt, dropping the mag, inserting a mag, running the charging handle, etc… then this is the class for you.