Costa Ludus HET 1

From September 5^th through the 7^th, 2022, I had the privilege of being invited out to Southington Hunt Club in northeastern Ohio by Chris Costa of Costa Ludus for his Handgun Elements Theory 1 (HET1) course.  This place is not only a complex full of pistol and rifle ranges, but also has a 1,000-yard range.  If you are an off roader, they have many trails to take to test your off-road vehicles of all kinds as well.  I encourage you to take a class at this wonderful location.

In full disclosure, Chris invited me out for free as, at that time, I was assigned to the school as an SRO at Arcanum Butler Schools.  I was one of 16 students who took the class.  The class was divided up into lecture and range time with the majority of lecture occurring in between drills while on the range.  You may know Chris Costa from the Magpul DVD’s of the early 2010’s, but he has been on his own at this point for a decade under his own company, Costa Ludus.  Chris cut his teeth in the Coast Guard, where he completed many boardings of ships suspected of trafficking.  Chris had two AI’s: “Groot” and “Buzz” with him for the class. 

On Training Day 1, after the class set up the range, Chris had us shoot two drills to examine the current skillset of the students.  After we completed drills at various distances, Chris refreshed our fundamentals with a lecture on the topic.  We completed a couple marksmanship drills both dry practice and live fire.  Chris’s top three fundamentals as he described them consisted of aiming, grip and trigger control.  A stolen quote of Chris’s, with attribution given is: “See your sights.  Track your sights.  See your work through your sights.”  I feel this is genius and describes the shooting process no matter the weapon you are using.  

We moved onto a ball and dummy drill that was done in a unique way I have never seen before.  After that trigger control exercise, we progressed onto shooting different target anatomy from standing and kneeling positions at different distances.  Next came a partner shooting drill that is like a game of horse or pig in basketball, with its own catch to it.  We progressed to working on our draw speeds from various hand starting positions.  Something that stood out to me is how Christ taught the draw stroke: “Quick to gun.  Sure, of grip.  Quick to threat.  Sure, to the shot.” 

We ended day one with drills covering emergency and tactical reloads, engaging multiple targets, targeted anatomy, and finished with a walk back drill to see how the students progressed from the beginning of the day to the end of day one.  All students showed improvement, including myself.

On Training Day 2, we started the day with a 25-yard drill followed by a walk back drill.  After the warm up, we progressed into stoppage reduction drills.  Chris literally had us try every way there is to clear each type of stoppage so we could see how things have been taught historically.  Chris ended the stoppage reduction drills by showing us the most effective, simple, and up to date stoppage reduction methods.  These are the same as what we teach in our Defensive Handgun 1 and 2 Courses.  Chris showed us ways to reduce a stoppage if you either only had one magazine on you to start the fight or if you were down to your last magazine in a prolonged gunfight. 

We wrapped the day up with different positional shooting drills.  Supine, urban prone and prone shooting was included.  The best part of this block of instruction were techniques to stabilize a pistol in prone so we could get accurate shots at 25 and even 50 yards.

Training Day 3 started with a little misting of rain so we started our day with a lecture underneath a tent.  I am not going to give away the contents of the lecture as I feel everyone reading this should take HET1 as soon as their time and budget allows.  Picture a mindset, situational awareness, leadership, realities of human existence, use of force and self-improvement lecture wrapped up and tied into one.  To say it was motivational is an understatement.  After that lecture, I was energized and recharged in all the above-mentioned categories.  I have borrowed a little bit of his lecture in how I end classes now with first time students, all at the same time, inserting my own experiences and stories from other trainers to make it my own.    

After the fantastic lecture, it was time to press some triggers.  We started with a walk back drill.  To spice things up a bit, we repeated this, but this time, our sights, and emitters on our red dot pistols (on those students who had optics on their pistols) were taped up for Chris to demonstrate what our point shooting capabilities are.  I was surprised how accurate I could be without referencing my sights while shooting.  The trick is to superimpose the slide over the bulk or center of the target. 

After this, we progressed to one handed shooting where we learned the proper way to change between our dominant and non-dominant hands.  This was tested by a modified version of Super Dave Harrington’s Iron Cross drill.  Chris discussed the importance of practicing turning to identify and engage, if necessary, threats to the left, right and behind us.  We practiced this with various drills.  To end the range session, Chris had us compete in a team drill and finally a drill together as a class which I found a very interesting way to wrap it up.

After range clean up, Chris gathered all the students for a short closing lecture.  Chris asked for an AAR from everyone.  All the students had positive things to say about the course.  I told Chris that I enjoyed this class so much that I have added HET2, the next handgun class Chris teaches, to the list.  I stand by my comment that I feel like anyone from all backgrounds can benefit from this class and at the very least, high-end operators will pick up a new skill or two.  For me personally, I gained a lot of nuggets, skills and points of instruction.    I hope everyone who reads this will train with Chris at some point.  

My pistol that I used for this class was my issued duty pistol of that time period.  The Smith and Wesson M&P 45 in .45ACP ate 31 rounds of 200 grain Winchester +P duty ammo along with five 230 grain Federal Hydroshock and seven Hornady 200 grain Critical Duty.  I also fed it 1,280 rounds of PMC 230 grain FMJ training/target rounds during the class for a total of 1,323 rounds fired in three days of excellent and intense training.  Every night I would give it a quick wipe down and then relubricate it.  The only stoppage that was the gun’s fault (yes even I cannot properly seat a magazine on a rare occasion) happened within the last 100 rounds fired on the last day.  It was a double feed (in line stoppage) that was quickly cleared.  The pistol kept running afterwards.   While detail cleaning and inspecting it the night after the class, I discovered the culprit.  There were very small pieces of gravel that wedged themselves in the slide and frame rails, slowing the slide down just enough to cause the issue.  After a detail clean and lube, all debris was cleared of my pistol.