By Martin E. Hansen, Member until 2018

"Load and make ready"

Many of you have been through the first POMW (Project Old Modern Warrior) course or have read all the articles here on the web and understand why Shindenkan has included the modern firearms on the resume. In the first POMW course, you get a general introduction to firearms and the history and, the answer to the above. But POMW is also more than this. POMW is also about building shooting instructor competencies, which is the extended part of POMW. All chief instructors in Shindenkan have gone through a special POMW course designed by Kimu Sensei, where he passes on the common thread within pistol shooting, so that the chief instructors can function as instructors in the upcoming SDK shooting association, where Shindenkan's students who have the POMW 1 & 2 courses ( POMW Pistol) can maintain and train their shooting skills under expert and competent guidance, something which, in our own experience, is missing in several Danish shooting associations. The Shindenkan shooting instructor training is expanded with POMW 3 and the chief instructors have spent 3 full training days and home training to acquire it.

Monday 10 September 2012 at 12.00 started the POMW 3 course. POMW 3 is exclusively a wet training course and only with 9 mm when the shooting is stationary, as well as SIRT laser pistols when shooting is practiced in motion. I had actually really looked forward to getting outdoors to shoot, as it had gradually become too dark to stand in the booth at Sorø Shooting Association, where shooting times are between 6.30 and 9.00 pm. The gun that myself and the chief instructors have purchased is a CZ SP-01 Shadow with fiber optics in the front sight and it works best in daylight. So it was with great excitement that I, with all my equipment incl. Transport permit and gun, set off for Hanebjerg (also called Rooster Mountain) near Hillerød in North Zealand. The weather was fantastic and the last real day of summer according to the meteorologists, so it was nice to spend most of the day outdoors. First of all, a track had to be built, which on this first training day was a fairly simple arrangement of rafters with 1-2 IPSC discs in between. We had to train with IPSC discs.

I had done my dry training almost 100% following Kimu Sensei's POMW process shooting handbook so I was hoping it would show in my shooting and I was also excited to see the others shooting as we had decided we wanted to go through the IPSC A license the course all together, as one team, just as we did with the theory part during RRCAMP-POMW.Praha. Within shooting, you operate with different terms, which I will try to explain some of in this article 🙂 One of them is recoil shock, which is a strange term. It's not like you're directly afraid to shoot, but you instinctively react by affecting the gun just when the shot goes off (recoil occurs), e.g. by pulling up a little and thus raises the barrel and the target is hit higher than intended. Kimu Sensei wanted us to be cured of this fear of recoil, which is why he had procured some hard-charged ammunition in a completely legal way, because if we got used to this, it was no problem to shoot with general. Ammunition and pist gone, our recoil would be 🙂

The plan was for us to shoot from 12.30 until we were finished, which on the first day meant that we shot approx. 4 hours. During this time, all of us except Claus Shishu, who was vacationing in the USA, managed to shoot about 600 good shots. Good shots really mean that you do your utmost to make every shot count and not just be fired off. This is one of the principles of POMW shooting technique, every shot counts and every shot must be evaluated by yourself. The first exercises we had to go through were actually range shooting just outdoors and on IPSC discs according to the above set-up. We started by standing at a distance of 7 meters to get familiar with the surroundings and the shooting form. The most difficult thing about shooting a gun, and the most essential, is the trigger and especially double action, which means that with the trigger you cock the cock and release the cock, whereas single action only releases the cock, as it has been cocked by the rail of previous shots (That's why it's called a semi-automatic pistol).

But since it is more difficult to shoot double action, we started out by only training this, by simply putting the cock down after each shot, which then simultaneously trained us to have control of the cock, which is a big safety factor in IPSC and all second firing, and is shown in the unloading procedure, which many of you have also tried during POMW 1 & 2 – Unload, show clear, HAMMER DOWN, holster. IPSC targets are elongated and hexagonal and in a way simulate the upper part of a human torso, but are not shaped like a human, as IPSC is sport shooting. There are three zones – alpha, charlie and delta, where alpha gives the highest score and corresponds to head and middle chest if you "translate".

As a help, Kimu Sensei marked the targets with a piece of yellow marking tape in the middle, so we knew exactly where to aim, now that it was the first time we had to shoot "wet" on IPSC targets. He also demonstrated his shooting skills, but as he said "I'm a little rusty since I've moved on to rifle and LRS training", then he placed 2 shots a few hundredths of a second apart right on the yellow tape. It looked like two snake eyes right on the spot and that type of shot, with two shots so close fired immediately after each other is also popularly called "snake eyes". It must be said, however, that in just under a year he had had approx. 80,000 good shots during targeted training and matches all over the world with the world's best shooting instructors, and trained dry training at least every day, often several times a day. After all, Kimu Sensei is known for being rather uncompromising and inhumane with his own training :-). At the same time, he had demonstrated what we also had to train during the day "reset control". A gun has a mechanical reset, where the trigger just begins to pull the cock and when the next shot is possible, i.e. there is a little bit of play in a trigger. You can train your trigger to take the clearance between the shots, i.e. while you are aiming again after the first shot (recoil control), you have already pulled the first part of the trigger and you can fire the next shot quickly. If you master this technique, you can actually fire 6 shots within 1-2 seconds, which on top of that are tightly grouped.

But you have to crawl before you can walk, so we started, as mentioned, by training double action. I fired my first shot and was happy when it also hit the marking tape, but the second shot was not straight forward some snake eye 🙂 We shot standing with the gun starting at 45 gr., as you are not allowed to draw from the holster and fire before you has passed his IPSC A license.

Thus we moved backwards at 12, 15, 20 and 25 m. The further away from the disc you get, the greater the spread, i.e. the distance between the shot holes. Therefore, you must also make sure to spend more time aiming the further away you are. It is quite hard to fire a lot of shots and at one point I suddenly found myself bleeding which turned out to be my trigger finger which was simply cracked, the triggers kick back a little when you fire and with enough repetitions it was i.e. enough to make my finger leak 🙂

Typically we fired 2 magazines for each distance, which is 36 rounds before moving to the rear and firing the next 2 magazines. We all have 4 magazines each for our pistol, so after 72 rounds we had to reload, and I have to say hello and say that it can be quite tiring for the thumb to load all those many rounds and time consuming, but then there was time to reflect on one's performance and at the same time an opportunity to have a drink, there is no wasted time in Shindenkan 🙂

All the many shots also mean many empty casings, which can be reused, and thus you can save money by buying reloaded ammunition, which Kimu Sensei has also procured for us, but this requires us to deliver the empty casings. That's why I also found out what the word "range chicken" means - people go with the seagull in the air and collect empty cartridge cases just like a flock of chickens go and peck the ground for grain or other delicious food.
On this first day, we also practiced transitions, i.e. you switch between goals, which you can also remember from the POMW 1 & 2 courses. The difference here was that it was of course sharp and there were different stations with targets above each other and at different distances.

One station created a bit of a challenge for most of us, and it consisted of a steel target (20 x 20 cm) placed at approx. 45 m from where we shot the stations. The difficult thing was not the goal alone, but that you have to change your focus from a goal close and immediately after to a goal far away. This could be clearly seen when we subsequently analyzed our shot images, which Kimu Sensei made a great virtue of throughout the day. Based on your shot image, you can analyze the errors you may have in your handling of the gun, which we were also introduced to during POMW 1 & 2.

Since we had now had difficulty with the steel target, I chose as a conclusion to use the last few magazines to shoot at the steel target at a distance of 55 m. We were allowed to choose freely what we wanted to train and Jens Hanshi-dai and I chose the steel target from a long distance, which Kimu Sensei then turned into a shoot-out.

Quite entertaining, where the winner was the one who finished emptying the magazines first and had to shoot as long as you hit the target, if you missed one the shooting passed to the other. We had a lot of fun at the same time that there was a bit of pressure, and it was great to feel that you can actually easily shoot 55 m with a gun and hit, it is a distance where you can also hear a split second from when the shot is fired until it hits the target. Søren Renshi and Kjeld Renshi-dai had otherwise chosen to practice transitions, but when they saw what Jens Hanshi-dai and I were up to, they subsequently jumped in and suddenly wanted to shoot for the steel target.

All in all, a really super good and nice shooting day in good weather, where I got a lot home to practice on. It was also quite hard to shoot for a little over 4 hours, but as Kimu Sensei said "You might as well get used to it and you'll probably be a bit battered today and tomorrow, but for the A-license course it's 2 days in a stretch of 8 hours”. I drove from there in a hurry, as I had to go to Korsør that evening and teach all my students karate. I was badly injured when I came home from karate, but fortunately I am in good shape like all Shindenkan instructors, so I was healthy again after a "coma-sleep" the next morning.

2 more days were set aside for POMW 3 which was 24th September and 1st October, thus we could achieve 3 training sessions in total before our important milestone IPSC A license practical test on 13th and 14th October 2012. Day 2 was actually very similar to the first training day, so there was therefore a recap of the various exercises. What was interesting was to see if our shot pattern had changed from last, especially around transitions, where we had a tendency to "pull" the shots out in the direction the arm moved.

Much to the delight of Kimu Sensei and the rest of us, it looked much better this time. To start practicing shooting in motion, we used SIRT's to practice moving just before firing the second shot. You practice two shots, as an IPSC target must be hit twice to give a full score. But in the second shot you already have to move on to the next station in the stage, so you practice moving during the second shot so that you almost hang in the air, after which you can move on quickly. When you can do it, it looks quite elegant 🙂 but it probably looked quite comical as we were all Bambi on ice. We were also trained to move forward towards a target, and to the side and backwards while firing shots. The important thing here is to shoot with shorter and shorter intervals between shots the closer you get to the targets. When you move to the side, the space between the shots must be the same, so that you cannot hear that you are changing targets along the way. So much of the training this day was devoted to training the correct flow.

As Kimu Sensei says "You must hurry with everything except the shooting", i.e. you can run fast, draw fast, but give yourself time to shoot correctly. The day went fantastically quickly and we actually managed to get no less than 725 shots fired, and were just as exhausted as the first day.

The last day was planned, so there was a recap of approx. 200 shots of the first 2 days. After which we had to practice shooting in motion, where we again had to use SIRT's, but we could also train the individual stations stationary and thus got a feel for how it would be for the exam. The only thing we couldn't do was run with a loaded gun and pull a holster. You must not, as this requires an A license.

After the recap, where I arrived late due to work, we were to begin Shooting in Motion. The weather had also changed, but we were spared the big storm, but it was good to try a little rain, since we don't know what the weather will be like for the big exam. I was just allowed to shoot a target while the others had a drink and filled their magazines. So Kimu Sensei gave some one-on-one instruction, where his eyes constantly rested on me, so I was happy when the first 2 shots were "snake eyes", then the style was set for the day. The day featured shooting in motion around barricades, through barricades and under barricades. It's quite interesting and fun to try to shoot through a small hole at knee height, not everyone is flexible enough to reach down and take proper aim and fire shots that actually hit something 🙂 The last hour of the day was spent we to practice a stage where there were 3 stations. It contained several types of targets. IPSC discs, poppers and plates, which are the ones you typically encounter, in addition to this there are also targets that move, but we did not try that. The first station consisted of a barricade where you had to shoot around 2 targets, the next station you had to shoot high (over the barricade) and under the barricade against 2 targets above each other, then a longer run along a so-called "fault" line before having to shoot 4 IPSC targets and 5 metal targets in the form of plates and poppers.

The whole point was that, especially at the last station, you had to run a long way to shoot the targets within a short distance, or rely on your shooting and shoot them from a long distance. I chose to run a short distance towards the target and then shoot, which most of the others did as well. I achieved a pretty good time with about 26 shots to be fired, but was beaten by Jens Hanshi-dai by a few seconds when we were allowed to try again. It was fantastic to be able to try laser shooting in motion on a real stage and I'm looking forward to being able to do it sharp as well 🙂 As the last thing this day, we shot some magazines at poppers, because it had been shown in the race of the day, that they were the ones we were most "insecure" about, we don't know why, but it was good to get comfortable with that too. This last day was approx. 1 hour longer than the others, which was noticeable when I again drove towards Korsør, where the students were well into their training when I arrived.

In total, I managed to shoot 1725 9mm rounds in the three days plus the thousands of "dry" shots with the SIRT when we practiced shooting in motion. It has been an extremely good and fun course. It has been well planned and uncompromising in its approach to shooting, which is the case with everything that Kimu Sensei designs. I feel very well prepared for the upcoming exam and hope I pass so that we can get some competent shooting instructors in Shindenkan. Then I look forward to seeing all POMW 1 & 2 students in the SDK shooting association, where we will train POMW shooting technique and show what we are capable of. WHO CAN?

Epilogue; The following weeks, all Shindenkan Chief Instructors passed their IPSC A license with flying colors after one month of outdoor POMW III training. Two of them occupied respectively 1st place and 2nd place at the final exam of 4 stages, in front of very seasoned and experienced Danish shooters with up to 35 years of shooting experience. A little over one month later, everyone had completed the mandatory two IPSC matches, so the permanent IPSC A license was at home.
The A+ license - also called "Træn selv" came in the following week.