By Claus Hansen, Member until 2017
It was late Friday afternoon and the weather was good outside. The 3rd part of POMW was to run off the shelf. The same course was set up as for POMW B, 3 weeks earlier. It was now that the POMW shooting technical handbook had to be put to the test. There was no theory this time it was straight on and hard. Before we got down to business, however, Kimu Sensei wanted to get an idea of how much people had been trained. It required you to be honest about how much you had trained. The vast majority had trained 25 min every day and all had trained 75%. No one but the chief instructors had fired a single shot. It therefore boded well for testing the POMW shooting technical handbook.
I myself had trained at least ½ hour every day, some days probably significantly more. I had also had a few "aha" experiences along the way. In the beginning I had a habit of closing one eye to be able to aim correctly. I had gotten rid of this habit on a day when I had gone and trained for probably 1 to 1½ hours. Suddenly while training I found a way to avoid it. It was a super cool experience. Even better was when I got to the shooting range and I could see the results of my shooting. It was at this point that it really dawned on me how essential the handbook and basic training were.
After we were divided up based on our training set, we started with range shooting at different distances of 3, 5, 7 and 10 m, with associated targets. It was fired in thousands of bio balls and very few of these hit outside the target; at the short distances it was rare that they were outside the black in the disc. All things considered, these were surprisingly good results when you consider how difficult it was for people to just hit the target 3 weeks ago. Now the same people themselves stood and shot like driven shooters.
After a reasonably satisfactory afternoon and evening it was time to go home. Tomorrow, POMW C2 was to be completed. It was with some excitement that I drove home that evening. Excited about what was going to happen the next day, it could be surpassed, Minouchi Sensei's theory could be proven; had we proven it? At least it was a great result so far.
Saturday dawned and the pitch was set up early Saturday morning, following guidelines from Kimu Sensei. Today, a wide variety of shooting exercises had to be practiced. Among other things, shots with transitions, i.e. standing shooting at several targets. Here the distance was varied and the time between shots reduced. When we had all stood and slapped the black out of the targets and counted the shots that had missed, we were asked to calculate the average number of "misses" per team. The top 2 teams had 5 shots outside the black per team participant. The worst probably 6-7. It must be said to be very good under the kind of pressure that was exerted. Now the two best were set up in competition with each other. They had to shoot at each other and were given a maximum of 5 seconds to fire the 2 shots at 2 different targets. If a shot was fired after the 5 seconds the entire team was DQ'ed. The one thing that held me back was what I was wearing. We got a few minutes to talk strategy. On my team we agreed that 5 seconds was plenty of time, so the most important thing was to remember the manual and just shoot. The signal sounded and magazine after magazine was emptied. They drove to the limit and sometimes a little over, it was about having the fewest outside the black. After dueling mano é mano, it was time for lunch. After lunch the result would be announced and the team that had won. After a half-hour lunch where there was lively talk in the corners about who had won, it was time to announce the result. I remember several people asking who I thought had won. I really had no idea. I assumed my team had done their best and so we could only hope it was good enough. Kimu Sensei called the two teams forward and we were asked to stand on opposite sides of the others. The others were asked to choose the team they thought had won and stand by them. I remember that we didn't have many who believed in us, probably around 20% of the participants - our "supporters" could be counted on 2 hands. It was therefore probably a surprise to most that we had 25 shots outside the black and the other team had 30 shots, a difference of 25%, which corresponds to being No. 1 or lying in the middle of the field. We could well allow ourselves to be proud.
After this little shoot out, it was time to move on with the program. Now we had to practice with laser guns and transitions. The laser gun was of the same type as those used by special forces for training. Here it was important to still focus on the aiming devices, which can be challenging when you can see the dot of light and what you hit. Finally, there were also exercises in shooting at moving targets. First by moving forward towards the target at a quiet pace and then backwards away from the target, all the while firing shots and at the same time they had to hit the target preferably the black. It was a bit of an art and very challenging. It was made somewhat easier by being able to use some of the tools and movements from karate.
In another exercise in shooting in motion, you went with the side to the targets and shot at several targets. This was even more challenging and harder to master. The important thing was the way you moved. You had to constantly move at a calm pace along the targets and remember to use the techniques from the handbook. However, it was demanding to move backwards and shoot to the side.
Once these exercises had been practiced and you had started to get the hang of it, the pace was picked up. After running around like this and firing several hundred shots, the time allotted for the course was about to be used up. I actually had plenty of input for the day and didn't need more. It had been exhausting to be on for so many hours. However, there was just one last thing we had to test and that was an IPSC track. This was composed of all the exercises we had been through. Now was the time to put the skills learned to use.
It had to be timed and each miss of a disc would cost 10 seconds. The course was built of 15 discs that you had to run along, first forwards past the first 8 discs and then backwards past the last 7 discs. After this there were 6 targets where you had to shoot from standing, i.e. transitions and to the last 4 poppers where the last one had to be hit twice. Safety rules that were wrong for IPSC also applied here. That is, you could be DQed if you point your weapon at the audience or the referee or if you did not discharge correctly. The weapon had to be handled correctly and pointed at the targets at all times.
It had to take place in turn and if you were DQed, you were at the back of the queue. Quite a few got through the course quickly and only a few were DQed along the way. Some by foolish mistake, where they didn't think about it because they were running on adrenaline, but there was no dear mother. If you made a mistake, it was all over again. Unfortunately for many of those who were fast, they also had many misses. When it was finally my turn, I was up and running. However, I calmed down so much that I was able to think some of the course through before I had to go through it. I focused a lot on giving myself time to think through safety and hitting all targets. It was more important to me than that it should go fast. I also had no misses and was probably not the fastest, but I was not DQed. In any case, it was fun and I also ended up standing as one of the 4 who had hit all the targets, fat. To put it lightly; This was one of the coolest things I've tried in a long time. I can understand that there are people who are taken by it.
