Rebirth of AR-15 Rifle Training?

Let’s take a quick trip back in time, around 15 years or so, Travis Haley and Chris Costa had just released a very popular DVD (remember those?) called “The Art of the Tactical Carbine,” and pretty much everyone in the firearms training industry picked up a copy and watched it from beginning to end.

The techniques demonstrated by Haley and Costa on that DVD, as well as similar techniques that were coming out of a decade of U.S. involvement in the Global War On Terror, were all the rage in the gun world. The combination of these two forces shaped how civilians learned to use a defensive carbine for years and has formed the backbone of defensive rifle training for over a decade.

The author was invited to the first ever Rifle Renaissance AR-15 training class offered by The Complete Combatant. Image: The Complete Combatant

This period was also when I learned to run an AR-15 at speed. I have not served in the military, so my training with the AR-15 started out with a few basic rifle classes, then a brief time shooting 3-Gun competitions. I never really considered myself a rifleman. For me, it was pistol first and then shotgun, with the AR being, at best, a tertiary defensive firearm. Despite watching the videos and getting some training, I felt that something was not quite right with me and the AR-15, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Stepping Up Rifle Training

Fast forward a few years, and I receive an invitation to attend the inaugural Rifle Renaissance class, put on by The Complete Combatant. I jumped at this opportunity because I have trained with Brian Hill in the past, and I found him to be on the cutting-edge of modern firearms training, blending the latest in neuro-physical learning with a background in law enforcement and mixed martial arts.

students on firing line during AR-15 rifle training — The Rifle Renaissance class was focused on the use of the rifle as a close-quarters defensive firearm.

However, Brian was only one of the trainers at this event. There was also A.J. Zito, a top-level competitive shooter, veteran and expert gunsmith, as well as former Green Beret Shane Kerwin and veteran law enforcement officer Adam Winch. Each of these instructors brought a new, results-based approach to the defensive carbine that brought new life to how I shoot America’s most popular rifle.

A state-of-the-art training event like this demands a state-of-the-art rifle, so I shot everything at these classes with a Springfield Armory SAINT Victor rifle chambered in 5.56mm, topped with a Leupold Patrol 6HD 1-6x Low Power Variable Optic (LPVO), with a Blue Force Gear sling to hang on to my rifle when not in use.

The Process

Let’s begin with the basics: Stance. A long gun, even a long gun which uses a mid-power cartridge like 5.56mm, generates more recoil than a pistol. Therefore, having a stance which allows us to redirect and manage recoil becomes more important when shooting a rifle or a shotgun.

Brian Hill AR-15 rifle instructor — Brian Hill is the co-owner and head trainer at The Complete Combatant. The Complete Combatant sponsored the inaugural Rifle Renaissance class.

This statement gains significance once we look at the traditional “bladed” rifleman’s stance, where the shooter stands at a roughly a 45-degree angle to the target, his support side shoulder closer to the target with the stock of his rifle nestled in the pocket of the strong side shoulder. His back and neck are bent over so he can look through his sights, and his feet are splayed in two different directions with the support side foot pointed towards the target and his strong side foot at a roughly 45-degree angle away from the target. The rifle fires, and the recoil impulse is transmitted to the shooter’s strong side shoulder. Where does it go from there?

It’s here where we begin to see the problem with the traditional rifleman’s stance. The shooter’s shoulders are bladed away from the target, so the recoil impulse moves the strong side shoulder to the right of the target (for right-handed shooters — this is reversed for lefties). In addition to this, the spine, the source of all our upper body strength, is bent over, reducing its effectiveness in managing recoil. The strong side foot is pointed away from the target, which means that any recoil which makes it past the upper body goes down through the hips, which also are pointed away from the target, just like the shoulders.

All of this means that rather than using our pre-existing systems for handling incoming motion to our upper bodies, we are fighting the body’s built-in methods for dealing with force applied to our arms and shoulders. There has to be a better way to do this, and at The Rifle Renaissance, I learned not one but two different ways to make this happen.

Solutions

The first was demonstrated by Adam Winch, who showed us how to position our rifles not on the outside edge of the clavicle towards the shoulder, but rather further inwards, towards the spine — almost up against the neck. This position is possible only if your rifle has a modern adjustable stock on it, like that on my SAINT Victor, and it has the effect of bringing the recoil impulse closer to the centerline of your body where it has less chance to force your body (and your muzzle) to one side of the target. Adam also suggested moving our feet so that both of them are pointed towards the target, which mimics the setup for the modern isosceles pistol-shooting stance.

close quarters AR-15 rifle shooting — Brian Hill’s class stressed the use of the AR-15 in a close-quarters environment when shot placement and accuracy are most important.

Adam is also a fan of placing the stock higher on the body so your neck and back are less bent when firing your rifle. This means that your body’s built-in support system can be better utilized to bring your sights back on target, making for faster, more accurate follow-up shots.

A.J. Zito arrived at this same destination, but took a different route. Rather than bring the rifle closer to the centerline of our bodies, A.J. showed us how rolling the strong side shoulder forward, as if we were giving someone a shoulder shrug, can align the body towards the target and keep the muzzle from straying left or right after recoil.

Brian Hill demonstrates kneeling position with AR-15 rifle training — Brian Hill shows how shooting from a kneeling position can provide you with a clearer line of fire in a busy environment.

Both feet are pointed towards the target, just like Adam taught us, but rather than use the traditional “use both hands to shove the rifle back into the shoulder pocket” method, A.J. taught us to press forward with the strong side shoulder and use both hands to fine tune our aim rather than a primary means of recoil control.

These techniques were put to the test using the classic Bill Drill: Six rounds into the scoring zone of the target in as little time as possible. The goal here wasn’t to get 100 percent accuracy, it was to watch the movement of our dot (or reticle) under recoil. Any movement to the right or left was an indication that we needed to place more attention to the techniques we were learning so we could improve our speed and accuracy.

In Practice

Those techniques came under even more scrutiny during Brian Hill’s four-hour-long block of instruction. Our targets were no longer clearly defined and distinct. Rather, they were partially (or fully) obscured by “no shoot” targets, and we had to figure out how to move in order to either make the shot or improve upon a lousy initial view of the target.

Shane Kerwin instructor in AR-15 Rifle Renaissance class — Shane Kerwin is a former Green Beret who taught positional shooting at the Rifle Renaissance training course.

Knowing how the mechanical offset of our sighting system affects point-of-aim and point-of-impact at close distances became absolutely essential in this class, as did knowing when not to pull the trigger and make a potentially hazardous shot. As Brian said during class, “We want to automate our firearms manipulation skills, but we don’t want to automate pressing the trigger. That needs to be based solely on the environment and the threat situation we face.”

Conclusion

I left The Rifle Renaissance with a renewed interest in mastering the AR-15 as well as a better understanding of how to set up my rifle for close-range (25 yards to less) encounters. The LPVO I chose is one of the best available, but the very fact that it is a telescopic optic means it has a much smaller eye box behind the gun versus the almost infinite eye box of a red dot sight.

As a left-handed rifle shooter (I’m cross-eye dominant), the ambidextrous charging handle and safety of the SAINT Victor were absolutely vital to my success in this class, and the wide grip and grabby textures on the B5 Systems grip was a welcome change from the A2 grip I have on many of the other AR-15 rifles in my gun safe.

One of my biggest takeaways from The Rifle Renaissance had nothing to do with shooting a rifle. Rather, it was how Brian (and especially his wife Shelley) set up everything to be as much a social event as much as it was a training event. This is an often-overlooked part to the ongoing success of a firearms training business, but it is an essential part of everything they do.

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