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On May 24, 2025 I got the chance to attend a training course focused on pistol dots. The instructor was Adam Metcalf, owner of Open Arms Instruction, and he offered to let me attend for free. Thank you to Adam for the opportunity, and to community member Shaggy for making the connection. Open Arms provides training across a variety of topics all over the Northern Virginia Area. This particular session was a 4 hour course focused on shooting well with a pistol red dot. At 4 hours, I think it’s probably a bit closer to a clinic than a full on course- but as I’ll detail below, Adam did a great job organizing the plan of instruction and keeping to a tightly run schedule.
The course itself took place at Shadow Hawk Defense in Hedgesville, WV. It’s a great facility, and the last time I was there was the 2023 WV Gun Run.
About Adam Metcalf
My first contact with Adam was a brief phone call to introduce myself and my background. He was very friendly and enthusiastic, and this carried over in person when I arrived at the range. Adam and I are both Air Force veterans. Like me, his background was not really in small arms. Whereas I was a 13N (Nuclear & Missile Operations Officer), Adam was a 13B (Air Battle Manager). After he left the Air Force, he joined Federal law enforcement, including the US Secret Service. At the tail end of his career there, he oversaw firearms, medical, and use of force training for several hundred agents. He also graduated from several programs at Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).
On top of that, he’s a long time competitive shooter in both IDPA and USPSA. He’s also gone through programs from several other renowned instructors as well.
I particularly like the blend of real world experience mixed with competitive shooting to provide a balance of “go fast” and “how this really applies.” He was also devoid of bravado and brashness that’s characterized some of the other instructors I’ve worked with. He kept it very professional and to the point.
Adam’s instruction style was very familiar to me, as I think we’ve probably gone through the same (or very similar) training courses on curriculum design and delivery. I particularly liked his focus on key objectives. Something else he did that I’ve not come across before but found interesting was the use of a wireless PA speaker during instruction and commands. Whereas every other course I’ve been to relied on voice and yelling alone, he set up a PA tower behind the line and a remote microphone. This made hearing his instruction and commands much easier for the most part (I’ll get to that in my gear portion).
The Pistol Dot Course
I’ll not get into details of the entire course of instruction here, only a high level overview. Of note, Adam also had an assistant instructor named Matt who was helping out as well.
The day started with some simple shooting drills that I think were more about letting people warm up and give the instructors a chance to assess where the students were at with their skills. These were done from the ready position.
Then we moved on to some zero verification and precision by shooting at 1″ squares drawn on the target. While the expectation was that everyone showed up with their dots already zeroed, this was a chance to correct anything egregious. We did this twice, once at 5 yards and once at 10 yards.
Next, Adam discussed using the housing of the optic as an aiming guide in lieu of the dot. He had students either turn their dots off or as low as they could go to force them to use just the outer housing to frame the target downrange and see how their hits landed. I actually couldn’t really do this as my optic (Shield RMSx) did not turn off and relied only on automatic brightness.
From there, we moved on to some drills that emphasized target focus rather than focusing on the dot itself. I won’t get into how that drill worked, but I thought it was effective. It would be even more so if we could move back to even further distances than we did. As a training tool, though, it would work well during dry fire and your own personal range time.
Adam also provided some thoughts on occluded sight training, where you put something like painters tape over the front of the optic so you can’t see through it. His belief is that this has some value as a training tool, but also teaches bad habits and reduces performance in the long run because you’re teaching yourself to use your non-dominant eye.
After lunch, we pivoted to things that were easily applicable to iron sight shooting as well as dot shooting. These topics and drills included managing the grip of the pistol for faster shooting, drawing and presentation “by the numbers,” as well as barricade work.
Key Takeaways
I took two main things away with me as focus points for the future. Of note, I think my precision with the pistol was reasonably good and I did a fair job chewing out fist-sized clusters of shots on the IDPA silhouette cardboard targets Adam favored. Not as well as a couple of the other students (who are also regular IDPA competitors, I came to learn), but reasonably well.
Shooting Fast, Staying Accurate
Despite that, my first takeaway is that while that precision was good, my speed from shot to shoot needs work. I had trouble trying to “go fast” for doubles and triples because the dot was all over the place. Things stayed within the -0 ring of the target, but it could have been faster. This is obviously a grip and recoil management issue that I need to work on. Adam frequently discussed keeping the firing hand relaxed, using it only for the trigger, and using the support hand to wrench down and stabilize the gun.
This needs practice on my part. I found that taking the advice a little too literally and loosing my right hand up a lot didn’t help me much speed wise and only reduced my accuracy. On the other hand, squeezing with my middle, ring, and pinky finger very hard (as I’ve been doing) also induced too much fatigue over time. I’m sure there’s a happy medium in there somewhere- but either way it includes firming up on the support hand.
Move With Intention
The second takeaway was a phrase that Adam kept saying throughout the day: “With Intention!”
He would typically say this when telling the group to go from the holster to the ready position, when telling us to reload, or when presenting from the ready position to sights on target. Adam’s explanation is that there are several activities (particularly these three) that shooters tend to slow down when they want to focus.
His argument is that when shooting, you should go quickly (with intention) through these steps that don’t actually add value to the shot. For example, you should be careful and make sure you grasp the gun in the holster with a proper grip at step one, but then there’s no value in going from the holster to the ready position slowly. So rather than waste time doing this lazily, just snap it up. The same thing applies to lazily performing a reload or presenting the gun to the target- you can do these quickly without hurting your performance. The important part is getting a solid grip on the gun, and verifying a “good enough” sight picture for the job once you present it.
This got me thinking about my conversations on rifle shooting with John Simpson, in that you need to go fast enough to get the first shot off and accurate enough to hit the required target. There’s no bonus points, especially in a gunfight, for being even more accurate than required as long as you were the first to get a hit.
My Equipment
For this course, my primary gun was the recently acquired Springfield 1911 Operator AOS in 9mm. In addition to the two factory 9 round magazines, I brought along two 10 round Mec Gar 1911 magazines. I had a Shield RMSx optic mounted on top of the gun. Other modifications include VZ palm swell grips and a Chen SI one-piece mainspring housing & magazine well.
For support gear, I’m experimenting with another belt configuration that I’ve honestly just not put a lot of time with an inner/outer belt. Normally, I always run my pistols with my standard battle belt setup and change out the holster as needed. However, since 1911 magazines are single stack, they don’t fit in the standard mag pouches. So I took the chance to rig up a new system using an Esstac 1.75″ Shooters Belt.
The underlying belt aside, I configured it how I normally would with a Dara holster (and new DBL2 drop attachment), Esstac Kywi mag pouches (a triple in this case for the 1911 due to lower capacity), canteen/utility pouch, and SO Tech Viper Mini IFAK and a TQ holder.
How it Ran
With one exception, everything worked really well. The 1911 had one malfunction early on in the day where it failed to go all the way into battery. The rear of the case protruded about 1/8″ of an inch behind the chamber. The slide and everything was stuck hard, and it took concerted effort rearward against the topic to get it out.
This is the fourth such malfunction I’ve had with the Operator, and the hardest it’s gotten stuck. You can see from the photo here that a significant portion of the case mouth was pulled back and therefore wedged itself in the gun. I think the Operator has a very tight chamber, and it’s caused the occasional issue with bulk cheap 9mm ammo that might have a couple of rounds a bit looser on the spec. Previously, all malfunctions were with Aguila 124 grain FMJ, and this one was with Fiocchi Range Dynamics 124gr FMJ training ammo.
Once that was cleared, I had no other issues.
Going into it, I thought I was going to have a tougher time managing magazines given the much lower capacity of a single stack 9mm 1911. As it turns out, it was nearly perfect. Adam planned all drills around 10 round magazines. This worked great for me, at least until we had to go to a third magazine, which meant I was down to using the 9 rounders and just came up one shot short during the drills.
I’ll also note that the Shield RMSx performed flawlessly. I really appreciated it’s huge window, and the automatic brightness was on point the whole time.
Hearing Protection Issue
This was minor, but worth pointing out. For ear pro, I was wearing my Otto Noizebarrier Range SAs. They continue to work great, but had some conflicts with the wind. It was a windy day for sure, and the wind noise kept causing the noise reduction to kick in. Sometimes this drowned out what Adam was saying over the PA, so I ended up taking them off in between drills.
Other Students Gear
I did take inventory of what others were shooting and how they were doing it. My point is not to offer critiques or anything, I’m just curious. On the gun front, just about everyone was doing what you would expect with a mix of Sigs, Glocks, and the like. Adam himself was demonstrating with a Walther PDP steel match. One student had a steel frame Staccato, which I really wanted to shoot but never go the chance. Another had a standout gun, as he was shooting a Langdon Tactical H&K Mk 23 with Steiner MPS mounted on top. That’s not something you see every day.
For gear, it was a mixed bag of people running basic CCW setups (both OWB and IWB), and a few more duty-oriented style.
For optics, it was a mixture of Trijicon SROs, Holosuns, Leupold, and Sig optics. My Shield RMSx and the MPS were the odd ones out.
The one critique I will offer you, dear reader, has to do with how you carry a tourniquet. One student had a more complete belt setup, which looked very similar to how I do mine with an IFAK in the rear, some kind of utility pouch around a kidney, and misc items scattered about. He had is TQ attached to the IFAK. This is fine, and I even suggest this is a good way to go, except that the TQ (a CAT) was still in the plastic shrink wrapping.
Properly Staging a TQ
The problem here is two things. First, should you need to get to that TQ right now, you still have to contend with getting that plastic off. That’s a pain in of itself. Worse is if you’ve only got one hand available because the other arm might be incapacitated (and the reason you need a TQ), then you’re in for a terrible time.
Secondly, if the TQ is still in the plastic wrapper, then that also means it’s not staged and ready for easy one-handed application.
I always suggest setting up your TQ in a staged fashion so you can quickly whip it out and apply it with one hand. Most people don’t actually practice this, and I saw the effect first hand a couple years back at the WV Gun Run where one of the stages required you to apply a training TQ with one hand- a lot of shooters struggled with that task.
Here’s a quick video about setting your TQ up for success:
Final Assessment
Given this was a compressed time frame of only four hours to teach, I think Adam did a great job covering a myriad of topics. I would say that the course was not for rank beginners for either handguns or optics. If someone did not already have a reasonable draw and grasp on pistol shooting, they would quickly fall behind the group. If you were totally new to optics and didn’t know the first thing about properly mounting, zeroing, or other basics, then you would also struggle.
As a course for people who were reasonably proficient with pistols and knew the basics of mounting an optic, I think this is a great “next step.”
I wish I could have stayed for the second half of the day, which was a “shoot fast” clinic and probably would have benefited me a lot- but I had other commitments for the day.
If there is any feedback I could give to Adam, and I’m sure he’ll read this, it’s that I think more discussion of the optic height over bore and offsets for different ranges would have been valuable. He touched on it briefly, but it was more of a side discussion and there was not a practical component. Perhaps it’s because we were staying between 3 and 10 yards for the day, so there wasn’t much chance to see it in effect, but one of the most valuable drills I’ve done on this with rifles was starting at 50 yards and marching the target closer and closer. At each step, we took three shots at the same point of aim to see how the sight offset affected the point of impact.
If we couldn’t do it live on the range due to distance restrictions or student talent to group at longer distances, I think this is worth at least a longer discussion point to emphasize. It’s a minor gripe, honestly, and something that I’m sure would get more attention if the course were longer than a few hours.
Wrapping Up and Future Plans
By completing this course, I have checked off one of my goals for 2025: attending a pistol-focused course. However, I think there’s more room to grow here and I’d like to do more. In particular, I need to get a bit better at managing recoil and shooting quickly. I think this class helped a lot with my draw to first shot speed, which was a weak point at the match last December.
I enjoyed Adam’s instruction, and I’m likely to do more with him. He has a few more courses focused on shooting faster and pistol skills that seem up my alley.
I have a few notes to practice with range and dry fire, as well. The other next step is trying it out with some matches.
With that, thanks for reading, and I”see you out there.
