Disclaimer:  I have taken 4 classes with VATA and this is my first review.  I have paid for all of my classes with no discount or preferential treatment and have no prior personal relationship with the cadre other than that which was generated organically from attending their classes.

I attended the Tactical Pistol II course this past weekend (Sept 23-24, 2017), having previously attended VATA's Intro and Level I Pistol courses twice, and their Carbine Intro and Level I.  I am in no way a firearms, training or shooting expert, more of a tactical/practical shooting enthusiast so please take my review as one source of information and not gospel!  As I am no expert, I will not go through the entire course in unnecessary detail but will provide a high-level overview of my impression.

Instructors: Duayne and Nick, secondary instructor: Greg

Location: Camp Villere, Slidell, LA

Saturday started out with introductions, an overview of the curriculum, range safety brief, range rules review, medical brief and facility overview.  The facility is a no-nonsense range with bathrooms nearby and water available.  There are range tables to prep gear and load mags under a covered area which is a nice perk.  There were approximately 10 students and plenty of room on the range for everyone to shoot extremely comfortably.  The cadre is fun yet professional.  They are articulate in a no-nonsense shooter kind of way.  They know when to be a bit more relaxed and when to take topics a bit more seriously.  In addition, the instructors are seasoned law enforemcent professionals and are very knowledgeable.  They not only have their own experiences to use to back up their curriculum, but are also well informed on other scenarios that they have studied and can break down for students to enforce why they teach things a certain way, or why other tactics have become obsolete.

Following the briefing and more in-depth review of what the morning would cover, we stood at the 7-yard line, reviewed safe weapon handling and drawing from the holster.  As this was a level II course, all students were adept at safe weapon handling and only required a short refresher, but this afforded each student the ability to get comfortable with shooting for the day with no pressure and to assess any potential gear issues.

Nick and Duayne each handled half of the class during shooting, offering pointers on small issues that they were able to identify with each shooter throughout each course if fire.  Prior to each exercise, Duayne would demonstrate what the student was to accomplish, while always being very diligent about emphasizing real-world applicability in different environments and safe weapons handling and being very articulate about what the shooter was to focus on and why.  A few times Duayne or Nick identified something specific a shooter was struggling with and pulled them aside to offer individualized instruction.  While this slowed down the class a hair at times, none of the shooters seemed to mind and it showed that the instructors were not only paying attention to what each individual student was doing, but also took extra measures to help them address deficiencies.  Overall, this did not impede our ability to safely and effectively get through the entire curriculum that was laid out at the beginning of the class.

The class was a good mix of training.  It covered bullseye and tactical shooting at different distances, shooting from different positions and why you would need or want to do so, shooting from behind cover or concealment, reloading, dealing with different malfunctions, strong and weak-hand shooting and reloading, moving while shooting and when to do so (or not to do so), moving safely to different points of cover, and how to utilize different types of cover or concealment.  Several courses of fire also encompassed a timer to induce stress and give the ability to work drills consecutively more quickly.  All tactics were taught individually and combined during courses of fire set up by the instructors to give students the ability to apply multiple aspects of the training at once.

The class utilized bullseye, IPSC and steel targets at times and there were fun real-world based competitions built in that encompassed all three to include shooting plates and a dueling tree, most also utilized a timer.  The final course of fire was the VATA Combat Course, a series of 10 drills that are scored and timed and used to assess a student's ability to implement what was learned.

I thought the course was a great way to spend a weekend and was well worth the expense.  It was great instruction and utilized a solid round count (~800) in a thoughtful way (no SpendEx necessary here).  In addition, the environment offered a great opportunity to build camaraderie with the instructors and fellow students.  I have taken similar courses with 2 or 3 other training companies and would say that VATA's instruction is the best I've taken so far.  I plan on taking additional courses with VATA in the future and would highly recommend them!

I've taken a few classes with them. They're awesome.

I have taken a VATA pistol class, and would train with them again.  Hope to meet y'all at one!

I know Greg from VATA and have worked with him overseas.  Solid guy!