Triumph Systems Brings Professional Training Targets to the Mainstream
Matt Korovesis 10.16.15
At last week’s Big 3 East event in Daytona Beach, Florida, Triumph Systems made their worldwide debut. Triumph’s “hard launch” will take place at SHOT Show in January, but they brought several of their initial products to offer upon the gun-media altar at Big 3 first—and their innovative targets have several of us writer-videographer folks quite excited.
Triumph aims to make professional-level training aids more affordable. They’ll allow individual shooters to improve their skills and instructors to present their students with more realistic scenarios. One of the most interesting products in their lineup that will accomplish just that is called the Pivotal Trainer.
The Pivotal Trainer consists of a stand, target hanger, remote, and a 360-degree rotating motor. The facing of the target in the hanger can be manually or automatically rotated using the remote. This allows the user to practice shoot/no-shoot scenarios with the flick of a switch. Jared Ogden and Ken Harris, the founders of Triumph, demonstrated how effective the Pivotal Trainer is on the firing line.
Human silhouette targets were attached to both sides of the hanger board. One was “armed” with a cutout of a power drill, while the other carried a cutout of a pistol. With Ken “driving” the position of the target, Jared was forced to visually confirm before firing that the target he was aiming at was, in fact, a threat. It was a very effective discretion drill.
Triumph’s price point for the Pivotal Trainer is $250 or slightly below that, meaning it will be very easy for individual shooters and law enforcement agencies looking to enhance their training.
Jared and Ken also showed off their Threat Down human silhouette target. The Threat Down targets consist of honeycombed “bleeder” sections attached to a human outline.
The bleeder sections represent vital organs that, when struck by projectiles, are most likely to result in a “threat down.” The silhouettes provide immediate and obvious visual feedback with colored liquid, and can last for hundreds of rounds (believe me, we shot them a lot). Triumph plans to offer the silhouette targets for around $12 to $15 each, and a target detailing the vital organs of a whitetail deer (the Ethical Harvest) will also be available. Two zeroing targets on each side of the Threat Down human silhouette give you even more bang for your buck.
Triumph will also be offering a unique and effective line of targets called Pop Packs. These small, liquid-filled bags come in three different colors with a variety of numbers and shapes on the packaging. Just like the Pivotal Trainer, they’re very handy for discretion drills. An instructor can line up a number of Pop Packs and yell out which specific target shooters should engage. Jared and Ken demonstrated this for us as well, using several media folks as guinea pigs on the firing line.
As Ken yelled out which target to pop (for example, “yellow triangle”), shooters had to think and examine their targets before shooting, which in the long run will help build good habits. The fact that the Pop Packs exploded in colorful fashion made the drill quite enjoyable, too. The Pop Packs will sell for roughly $10 to $15 for a dozen.
Trimuph’s soft launch at Big 3 East was quite encouraging, and anyone looking to enhance their personal training or that of their agency in an affordable way should pay close attention to them come January. They will be sharing a booth with Kryptek on the SHOT Show floor. Their Facebook and Instagram pages have more info on their products.
I've been a history and gun enthusiast since I was a kid. I love to shoot just about anything, from silenced bolt-action .22s to fully automatic heavy machine guns, and I love even more when I get to write about them. My main interests are modern small arms and the military small arms of World War II and prior conflicts, with a particular focus on Russian and Finnish firearms. Reading about guns like the Mosin-Nagant rifle in books and on the internet got me interested in collecting, shooting, and writing about them, and I hope to do the same for others through my work.
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