FIREARMS TRAINING COURSES

Beginner to advanced pistol training from the ground up. Prepare at home, to perform in the real world. 

PRIVATE LESSONS

Are you looking for personalized firearms training? We can work with you to come up with a unique plan to meet your goals and advance your skillset either online or in person at local ranges.

AGENCY TRAINING

Modern and practical training for LE/MIL/Armed professionals can be arranged anywhere in the world. Please contact us below for details.

Norstar KINETICS - SWITZERLAND

We had high expectations bringing Jay for the first time to Europe… and honestly… ALL, without any exception, have been exceeded by a large margin. Easily one of the best classes we experienced. Stay tuned for @shepdev.online in Switzerland part 2!


PISTOL 101

FROM THE GROUND UP

Online pistol training directed at the new and amateur shooter. From the first steps of safe firearm handling to accurately shooting 6 rounds in a second. Using dryfire as the basis for a 70 day workout plan, along with 7 hours of fast-cut video lessons, this program creates a reasonable and affordable habit to guarantee progress. 
From The Ground Up is an extensive training program that builds towards a challenging exit test. Passing the test will confirm you are no longer an average shooter.

Checkout the course overview HERE and the philosophy behind the course HERE

This course is currently unavailable as it is undergoing some updates to bring a better program in 2025. See you then!

KIT LIST:

EYE/EAR PROTECTION

SEMI-AUTOMATIC PISTOL

MINIMUM OF 2 MAGAZINES

250 ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION

HOLSTER AND MAG POUCHES

SHOT TIMER APP OR DEDICATED DEVICE

Yes, you can run this entire course from home and skip the three live-fire sessions in the workout plan, however it is highly recommended to have access to a range. The first live-fire session is to experience the behavior of your firearm under recoil, which will allow you to modify any inadequacies in your grip and observe the relationship between an intense focus on maintaining your building blocks of shooting and rounds ending up on target.  The subsequent live-fire sessions track your progress at the mid-point and end-point of the course. If you are focused and thoughtful behind the gun during these sessions you will find that less ammunition goes further. Please reach out via our contact page or social media if you have further questions about kit.


Now: 0 virtual students training from 25 countries

See what they're saying:

I thought this was a well packaged course. I'd recommend it for anyone that's getting back into the firearm's world after a long hiatus or even just starting out or a bit confused on where to go once they've got their gun. Like it was said in the course, this is a blend between an "encyclopedia of shooting skills" and teaching points on each one of them.

Coming from a military background I'm used to instructors that preach their way and their way only as the "right way". I didn't find that to be the case at all in this course. There was an incredible amount of options given and we as the student are encouraged to find what works best for our gear and our bodies. The course was also extremely detailed and entertaining enough to want to continue learning more. And lastly, thanks for all the extra info on the forums, that was a good bonus reading other guy's questions and answers to common problems. 

Cliff

I was already an advanced shooter but Jay's classes thought me about the most important lesson of all, dry fire! And dry fire everyday with method and objectives. This immediatly revealed holes in my technique, holes that I had to imprint out with countless repetitions of....you gessed it, the same boring stuff EVERYDAY! Now it's part of my daily routine just as taking a shower, it's just how it is now. 

I think Jay is the industries best kept secret and I cant recomment him enough. 

An advice to new shooters, forget about the flashy and tacticool stuff, focus on doing the basics at a Master level and you wil be awesome! Citting the words of a Grand Master "You will leave the shooting range as good as you have arrived." Live fire is just the confirmation of your dry fire, if you dont do it, what are you even confirming?!

I wish you all the best in this amazing shooting journey! 

Martin

I signed up for your course and been watching your videos. You are hands down one of the best teachers in the firearms industry. The combination of humor and raw info makes for a engaging and easy to retain course. 

"H"

As a new shooter, the amount of knowledge and opinions on becoming more proficient with my firearm is overwhelming. Like most of you, I've spent hours on YouTube watching great shooters teach specific techniques or videos that would hopefully troubleshoot my missed shots. Unfortunately, we're left to piece together all these desperate teachings on our own.

I started Shepherd Development shortly after purchasing my first firearm in 2022. The Handgun Training Course truly builds you up from square one. Starting with firearm safety for dry fire practice, gear considerations, and then moving you to a daily dry fire regimen. I found all the video content on this course entertaining and paced well enough to keep me engaged. I often find myself watching videos about specific techniques and discovering new gems of information that didn't resonate with me until I experienced them in my training.

When I started shooting, I always was told to focus on the "fundamentals". This course starts with guiding you through what those fundamentals are (i.e. Building Blocks), demonstrations on why they matter (or why some fundamentals matter more than others), techniques to troubleshoot your missed shots, and a structured dry fire plan that you can continue and shape to your needs long after the last of the course contents are viewed.

If you follow the course and put in the work you will experience improved speed, accuracy, and confidence in your abilities with your firearm. I highly recommend this to shooters of all levels.

Roland

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share my excitement because last saturday I managed to get 3rd place in a Chilean national IDPA match. 
I've been shooting since maybe 2011, got more serious about it around 2018 and shot IDPA the full 2019 season. I shot as much as I could afford, even took a couple of classes, but I couldn't rise above 10th to 15th place. Stopped shooting during the pandemic and when I came back last year I was even slower, having issues with shot anticipation, among other things. 
I started with this program on april 12th, and in these few months I went from 12th place to 6th, then 5th and then 3rd place in this most recent match. I'm on day 67 of the program, and am looking forward to the final live fire test so I can measure this progress in a more objective way. I am very grateful of this program because even as I knew years ago that dry fire is the way for improvement, I needed a clear path to follow, just like this one.  

Cheers,

Stefan

OUR TRAINING CONTENT HAS ALSO BEEN UTILIZED BY THE FOLLOWING TRAINING DEPARTMENTS:

Austria Federal Police

Washington State Police

Swiss Police

Spanish Air Force

Anaheim Police Department

North Carolina SWAT

Israeli Police

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Brazilian National Police Academy

United States Army National Guard

BC Conservation Officer Service

Calgary Police Service

United States Marine Corps

Canadian Armed Forces

United States D.E.A.

Orange County Sheriffs Department

Brazil Military Police

Apple Valley Police

United States Border Patrol

French National Gendarmerie

I done the Metrics this week and get 26" and 29". Done it cold. Really loving this program. I bought others from good instructors known in the industry but this one is second to none. Congrats from Brazil.

Rangel

Great course. I am an experienced shooter and found a lot of beneficial information to apply to dry and live fire training.

Tristan

Just amazing ! Thanks for your support and feedback with your experiences

Antony

Shepdev program works! I started out feeling nowhere near where I wanted my pistol skill to be. I’ve been doing this program for about six months and improved tremendously at my draw from concealment, marksmanship, followup shot placement, speed and efficient weapon manipulation. The dry-fire drills allowed me to improve dramatically using zero ammunition. Every time I go back to live fire, I have improved. 

This program has given me skills that could save a loved one or innocent. ShepDev is a great instructor and video producer. I can’t believe how much I have improved from an online course. 100% reccomend for all skill levels. I have zero affiliation with Shepdev; I just love the results.

Peter

I started the course a week ago and got kind of obsessive about the dry fire training.  I spent 1-4 hours a day on grip, stance and trigger control for 6 days and had a live fire session yesterday (May 1st). In the past, I never felt as comfortable with my G29 as I did with my G19 despite practicing (live fire only). Until yesterday, that is. I can’t overstate how much these dry fire sessions helped me.  I OWN my G29 now

Shots go where I want them; finding the reset has allowed me to send multiple rounds downrange quickly and accurately.  I adjusted my CC holster so that I get that FFG easily.  Sight picture makes more sense to me now. Sight picture consistency with Trigger control on take up and reset was likely the biggest factor to my improved performance.  But I can only do that well if I maintain the right grip form and strength ratio. I already knew most of this stuff intellectually but the process of this course compartmentalized each of these factors so well that when my shots started falling apart again, I could quickly diagnose what I was doing wrong and get back to shooting well.  Usually between shots. I was also able to communicate what I’ve learned to my shooting buddy and he shot better than he ever has after only about 15 minutes of my “instruction” and dry fire prior to going live. And I mean he shot WAY better than he ever has.  

Honestly, his improvement was probably even more impressive than mine. I used to out shoot him significantly but yesterday he closed the gap even compared to my improved capability.  He even shot a few strings tighter than me. This course is amazing.  To get that kind of improvement with zero ammunition cost is astounding.

I’m all in every day now.

I just want to say thanks to Jay and all you guys in here. I still have so much work to do but it’s not overwhelming anymore.  It’s exciting and fun.

Mac

My shooting progress had become stagnant. Thanks to this course I started again from basically zero and in 4 months I passed the Metrics Test. I can surely say that my on demand skill has surpassed my previous skill on my best day. Thank you for making this course so reasonably priced and attainable.

Sven

Excellent all the way through. Covers all the fundamentals and building blocks to become proficient at an intermediate level. I would like to see a rifle course.

Erik

Exceptional course, worth every penny and time invested. Excellent teaching , wheter you are a beginner or experienced, this course will have something to add to your knowledge. Sorry for my bad english.

Adelson

ENVIE D'APPRENDRE EN FRANCAIS? DECOUVREZ:

LARA TACTICAL

LES ESSENTIELS

Nous revoyons ensemble les fondamentaux du tir : la visée, la prise en main, le contrôle de détente, la position et la respiration. Les bases nécessaires pour progresser.

LES ESSENTIELS DYNAMIQUES

Passage au niveau supérieur, êtes vous à l’aise lorsqu’il s’agit de faire mouvement avec votre arme ? Nous voyons tout cela dans une grosse formation de plus de 2h30.

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

There is sometimes a significant difference between what we can do, and what we can confidently do. 

This is similar to the performance of an athlete in the off-season versus on the on-season.

Everyone is capable of throwing incredible speed into shooting and movement after thorough preparation and even moreso if the result downrange doesn't carry any consequence, or require any confidence in its successful completion. Of course, the goal is to bring that performance that we can confidently deliver on demand into closer alignment with our best possible performances. 

Gaming/racing drills and challenges is a ton of fun, and a great way to raise that ceiling of our skillset. 

However... We shouldn't fool ourselves to think that a performance that we can hit 1 out of 100 times is something that will be able to be achieved "on demand". 

In this case, the time in which I could confidently complete this drill was almost 2x slower than my best possible time. Yes, there are equipment, ammunition and training variables that play into this, but is this much of a difference acceptable? 

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#questions #discussion #ipsc #uspsa #fiveonit #challenges #challenge #question #possibility #probability #stats #maximum #time #canik
This is an ad. 

New drill: "The SIMO Bill"

Find a buddy and a BULLIT company that you can run a simo Bill with and walk away smiling. Goal is to synchronize the ending and still run it sub 2.0s. 

It took 4 attempts to synchronize a 1.66 with only 6 shots showing on the timer - so I think we got lucky, but this was pretty fun!! 

+rep to @hotsauce_mike for exchanging at least a hundred airsoft BB's to the fingers before this video. All for the community science project coming down the pipe in a few months 👨‍🔬

Thanks @fhmunition for keeping us sharp 🫶
Trying to stay relevant. 

4x4 challenge by @jjracaza - 4 yards. 4 rounds in the A zone under 1 second. 

Haven't raced anything in a few months and wanted to see if I could still keep up with the pros. The answer is no. At least not without forcing it. 

Looks like I lost about 10% on my average draw and splits, and you can see how much tension I'm carrying when pushing the pace. 

It's naive confidence that our skillset will remain intact without a consistent sharpening of the blade. 

TLDR - if you want to go fast, keep going fast. 

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#uspsa #ipsc #challenges #speed #speeding #racing #freezing #hands #racer #asmr #tension #science #shadow #systems #dr920 #cold #snow
Variety is the spice of life. 

The inspiration for this endeavour came from @gotgammage after he humbly, but unknowingly ran this standard at 3X the distance! 

Can someone make it happen on the first try? 

Also, I need someone to drop some motivation about training weak hand shooting in the comments. 

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#metrics #test #standard #weakhand #stronghand #testing #metricstest #canik #holosun #please #sponsorme
Are you a slapper, or a prepper? 

Or should you be both? 

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#canik #holosun #vortex #vortexoptics #optics #uspsa #ipsc #idpa #speed #fast #surefire #shootingdrills #drills #training
Fast sights. 

It all depends on what the game is. How important is the shot? Can we afford a rough sight picture? Do we have the time to get more than a rough sight picture? 

Once the dot is on target, that's where the bullet is going (roughly). Stabilizing the dot on target builds a margin of error on the back end, but it is entirely possible to fire a round accurately as the dot is dancing or bouncing onto the target - if we are required to do so. 

The only question is if we can do our job to ensure the round gets where the sights are saying it will go. 

If you are looking to hit the reset button on your shooting skillset - the CONQUER2023 code for 20% off is still active until the end of January. Link in bio. Get after it 🤙

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#holosun #reddot #rds #pistol #ipsc #sights #sighting #quickdraw #decisions #longrange #distance
The Candle Challenge by:
@candle_ghostshooter

A test of your shooting skillset and your ability to read the instructions carefully. 

@candle_ghostshooter - your turn to complete my challenge - The Trials! 😈

PS. Has anyone experienced this fault with the new @vortexoptics Defender MRDS? 

PPS. Thanks for the sweet shirt @manzano.tactical 😘

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#challenge #shooting #uspsa #ipsc #speed #precision #vortex #holosun #blackhawk #propper
Motorcycle madness. 

🛵💀

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#motorcycle #helmet #bullettime #bulletproof #damage #targets #zones #visor #mohawk #options