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I’ll take a moment to chime in with an agreement to Bill’s post, and to add a personal opinion by way of elaboration.

I’ve taken some courses from Suarez that I thought were well-taught and very meaningful. Don’t have the Yeager T-shirt, however. I mentioned elsewhere that, though the economy and other factors have slowed me, I started about six years ago with the intent to train with a select but broad list of instructors.

That wasn’t to be tacticool; it was because I knew that Master Yoda did not exist.

Anything to do with fighting—whether with guns, other implements, or hands and feet—is liquid, dynamic, by default chaotic, and there is no one best way. There are opinions, some better than others, and the method-du-jour will change over time.

There’s no linear path from first-time handgun owner to “master gunfighter.” There is no one “best” system. There is no one “best” instructor. People teach what they know and, IMHO, sticking with one school of thought is limiting.

And things change. At the turn of the 20th century, the “correct” way for police and military to train for combat with a pistol was in a single-hand, side-on stance against static bullseye targets. What Woodhouse saw in the early 1900s he deconstructed and modified; what Woodhouse taught was deconstructed and modified by Fairbairn and Sykes; what Fairbairn and Sykes taught was modified by Applegate; what Applegate taught was deconstructed and modified by Jeff Cooper; what Cooper taught has been deconstructed and modified. If you study the literature, you realize how quickly this continuing evolution occurs. For example, as recently as 2002 there were only a few instructors/schools that included serious close-contact shooting or CQB force-on-force in civilian classes. Some offered handgun retention training, but that was about it. Flash forward less than a decade, and it’s now difficult to find an instructor who doesn’t at least offer it in the syllabus...albeit some are more expert and experienced at it than others.

So for me the key is to do your research, pick a course, and enter into it wholly and unreservedly committed. If the guy says the pistol should always be fired upside-down with the pinky finger, you might ask for clarification/explanation, but otherwise just do it and absorb the instruction. I don’t have a problem with an instructor who has an ego the size of West Texas. When I’m in his class, it’s his way or the highway. After the class, I hope I’m smart enough to critically evaluate what I learned: some of it I’ll keep, some of it I might not.

Never let your brain stop working and, IMHO, never stay exclusively with a single instructor or instructional method. Be sharp, open-minded, and analytical. Some instructors have a codified system: this is done this way, that is done that way. But the reason Cooper was able to leap beyond Applegate was because he applied analysis and innovation to what had come before.