Change How You See Training

We’re talking training today, and I have to say that I’m proud of all you Poets out there who are interested in becoming good defenders and have sought out professional training! Kudos to y’all! Most folks buy a gun and think they’re good to go when they’re not. So, good on y’all. Go ahead and give yourselves a homeschool high-five for being on the ball.

A Game of Opportunity Costs

People ask me all the time who they should train with or who are good instructors with whom to train, and it comes down to what you’re trying to accomplish. For starters, you need to train with all different kinds of professional trainers because everyone has different backgrounds.

For me, I’m not trying to to become the fastest and most accurate pistol shooter in the world. I’d like to be, but I’m just not going to put in the effort to obtain that level of mastery because though I want to be really good at pistol, I also want to be really good at carbine and really good at shotgun. Already you can see where I’m going with this.

I’m trying to be a Renaissance man of a whole ton of different skills, and the pursuit of that goal means I just don’t have the time to become the best in everything. But I don’t need to be the best, I just need to be a little bit better than good enough to overcome the threats I’m statistically going to face.

Odds are, I’m going to need more skills than just shooting fast if I encounter a dangerous and deadly situation, and there are many other skills that are much more useful to me than spending the time to be number one at the expense of gaining proficiency in those other crucial skills.

It’s a game of opportunity costs.

Your Training Philosophy

As you develop and refine your training philosophy and think about what it means to be trained, I want to expand your entire notion of what all that means. I’m always working on improving skills and developing new ones, and I’ve included a list below of those currently on my plate. Some I’ve got lots of experience in, and there are others in which I am growing.

• Pistol skills
• Rifle skills
• Shotgun skills
• Cover & Concealment
• Movement
• Long Range Shooting
• Criminal Psychology
• Situational Awareness
• Threat Indicators
• Verbal Judo
• Martial Arts
• Emergency Medical Training
• Room Clearing
• Fighting by Vehicles
• Gunsmithing & Reloading
• Low Light Tactics
• Night Vision
• Small Unit Tactics
• Military History
• Mission Planning
• Defensive Driving
• Land Navigation
• Communications
• Survival Skills

As you can see, this list is long, but it’s manageable. I can commit time to each of these throughout the year to improve, but you can also see that if I focus too much time on one, then I certainly won’t have time for others. It’s a balance game.

My training philosophy is more than about being a Jack of all trades, it about analyzing and evaluating my risks and adjusting my training plan accordingly. If I lived in a wildfire prone area, I would take the time to develop the skills associated with surviving that type of threat. Same goes for urban riots/protests for those who live in cities or grizzly bear attacks for those who live deep in bear country.

The skills you choose to develop directly correlate to the problems you’re likely to face. However, developing sufficient proficiency in those skills is not enough. You have to know how to employ those skills within the larger objective to ensure the desired outcome. This is where you have to train tactics and strategy.

Skills to Tactics to Strategy

There exists an important and overlooked progression to training. Far too many people stop at skills and don’t continue on to the correct timing and deployment of the skills (Tactics) within a larger plan to achieve the desired outcomes (Strategy).

This is what separates warriors from shooters. This is what makes special operators so lethal and capable. Only a tiny part of the job is shooting, and we have to be great at all the other stuff too. That’s why there’s such a huge cut rate at those high levels.

For example, say you’ve gone through our Pistol 1, Pistol 2, and Rifle 1, 2, and 3. You’ve developed proficient shooting skills with both handgun and carbine and can burn it down on a flat range. But now you need to take our 1 Man Room Clearing course to understand and learn how those skills are employed in a home defense or active shooter scenario.

Here’s the kicker, as you begin training tactics and strategy, you’ll realize that there are more skills you have to learn. Take my 1 Man Room Clearing example; you know how to shoot, but do you know how to move through a structure with the right amount of speed and silence so you don’t get gut shot after over-penetrating into a room? Now do you see why I have movement on my skill list?

When training correctly, you discover this compounding conundrum of skills, tactics, and strategies that build upon one another like a never ending sandwich you have to eat. It can be a lot, but it’s necessary to be a good protector. And here’s some encouragement, you’ve already done this with other aspects of your life. You mastered how to tie your shoes and learned which shoes you need for different situations. Or with your job, you learned a skill that got you in the door, but you had to learn how to employ that skill within the job’s context; however, to stay or gain promotion, you had to develop new skills that the tactics and strategy demanded you learn.

See, you’ve done this already, you just have to apply that same mastery funnel to areas of gunfighting and survival.

Conclusion

I don’t know your specific mission or your what your particular needs are, but I hope that this conversation will inspire you to push beyond learning skills in order to learn how to employ tactics and strategy (and you won’t normally find those in standard shooting classes).

You can check out our speciality classes to not only expand your skills but develop a capability to deploy tactics and employ a strategy to overcome whatever situation you believe you are likely to face. You get to tailor your training to your life.

Remember, Train Hard. Train Smart. And be strategic about your training.