It’s said that speed is fine, but accuracy is final.

And, most people training for defensive situations spend the majority of their time trying to “clear leather” and get their gun into the fight faster and put accurate rounds on target faster.

That’s important.

But there’s something further upstream that will have a MUCH bigger impact on whether or not you survive a lethal force encounter, regardless of whether it’s a fight with a gun, a bladed/impact weapon, or empty hands.

Namely training the mind to realize that it’s in a fight sooner.  This isn’t having a proper mindset.  It’s not even situational awareness in a traditional sense.

If you focus on smoothing out and speeding up your drawstroke, which is important, you MIGHT shave a few tenths of a second…or even a second off of the time it takes you to put effective rounds downrange.

But if you work on training your mind to identify and respond to threats more effectively, you can cut 5 to 10 seconds (or more) off of the time it takes you to put effective rounds downrange.

And, in a fight for your life, 5-10 seconds is an ETERNITY.

It’s hard to believe that those kinds of delays are even possible, but if you freeze because of denial, because you’re thinking about liability or because you are going back and forth between using lethal or less than lethal force, seconds add up.

Even without liability and lethal/less than lethal considerations, seconds add up.  Here’s an example of what happened to a shooter who knew an attack of some sort was probably coming and just didn’t know how it would play out…

One of the guys I work with is a nationally/internationally known competitive shooter and instructor.

He’s FAST. He can go from beep to bang and put accurate rounds on target with a pistol in under a second.

Last year, he trained with another shooter/trainer that I work with and they were doing scenario based force on force training.

Initially, it was taking him 8-15 (fifteen) seconds from when a lethal force attack was happening in his field of view until he actually got off his first shot.

Think about that for a second.

He went from getting his first shot off in under a second when responding to a beep to taking 8-15 seconds to get his first shot off when responding to an actual threat.

He’s not alone. Retired Navy SEAL Larry Yatch’s SEALed Mindset studio has run scenario based force on force training almost every day of the week with thousands of students over the last few years. They film every class, analyze the tapes, and see this exact same phenomenon with concealed carry shooters, competitive shooters, law enforcement, and military (even people at elite levels of all backgrounds). But why?

The issue lies in the fact that 99% of training and practice that people do focuses on tactics and techniques to get the gun into the fight faster, and put accurate rounds on target faster.  Again, this IS important.

In the unarmed self-defense world, the focus is on effectively striking your opponent as fast as possible.

For most people, getting hits on target faster isn’t where the greatest opportunity for improvement is. The biggest opportunity for improvement is training the mind to realize that it’s in a fight and deciding to act faster.

With the example I gave of the shooter with a 1 second drawstroke taking 8 seconds to fire, it means that it took his mind roughly 7 seconds to observe that there was a potential threat, identify that it was actually a threat, and finally decide to take action and start the 1 second drawstroke.  It’s absolutely unbelievable until you experience it.  Even then, many people don’t believe it until they see the video.

Many people in the tactical world refer to John Boyd’s OODA loop (Observe, orient, decide, act) but they only take advantage of a fraction of the power of the OODA loop.

The idea of the OODA loop is that, in a fighter jet dogfight, the pilot who can accurately cycle through the OODA loop the fastest will win. Put another way, the pilot who observes a threat fastest, orients that threat with past memories and training, decides on a course of action, and acts (correctly) in the shortest amount of time—repeatedly—wins the fight.

In fighter pilot school, they learn to cycle through their OODA loops faster and faster by being exposed to similar situations over and over again under increasing levels of stress AFTER they have mastered the fundamentals.

As they master the responses to specific situations, they identify threats faster and the responses become conditioned responses that the unconscious mind can not only execute immediately, but generalize and use in multiple situations.

The key is getting enough exposure that they’re able to bypass the conscious process of going through the OODA loop and let the unconscious mind handle the entire process.  Fortunately, high stress situations slashes the amount of time required to accomplish this.

Ken Murray talked about this in his AWESOME book, “Training at The Speed Of Life” when he highlighted the fact that, in the absence of scenario based force on force training, most officers don’t get to the point where they can think on the fly in a lethal force encounter until after their 3rd justified use of lethal force.

Repeated exposure/stress inoculation calms the mind and allows the mind to filter out noise and focus on what’s important. Because the mind’s filters have been programmed to only pay attention to what’s important, there’s less to process and the mind can cycle through the OODA loop faster.

Because the mind is relying on memory and previously built neural pathways (unconscious) instead of figuring stuff out on the fly (conscious), the end result can be cutting several seconds off of your response time to a violent attack.

So, what’s the solution?

First, you can prepare your mind through multiple lethal force encounters. This is, obviously, not a preferred method of stress inoculation, but if that horse is already out of the barn, you might as well get as much mileage from the experience that you can.

Second, you can prepare your mind through multiple simulated lethal force encounters. You can do this, to a limited extent, with airsoft, video training, and paintball, but using Simmunitions, UTMs, and shock vests are higher leverage solutions.

There’s a good chance that your mind will be a mess the first couple of times that you run through force on force drills. A lot of this is because you’re operating in unknown territory.

When your mind is in unknown territory, the filters come off and the mind tries to suck in as much sensory input as possible and tries to map it with existing memories and neural pathways to figure out things to do and things to avoid to maximize your chances of survival.

The calmer you are, the smoother this process goes. The more excited and amped up you are, the rougher it is.

At the same time that your mind wants to suck in as much sensory input as possible, the conscious mind is being overwhelmed.

The conscious mind processes sequentially, or one bit of information after the next…like crossing a gorge on a rope.

When it gets overwhelmed, it either shuts down the entire system and you freeze or it starts trying to filter input to the brain. Sometimes, this takes the form of tunnel vision. Other times it takes the form of audio blocking.

But until the mind has had a few exposures and it’s been trained to know what’s important and what isn’t important, it can be a roll of the dice what input your mind pays attention to and what input it filters out.

As you get more exposure to force on force scenarios, your mind will calm down. Each time you’re in a force on force situation, it represents more and more familiar territory. The number of unknown and surprise elements goes down.

It will still be “stressful,” the outcome will still be unknown and your attacker may still surprise you, but the biochemistry is familiar, as are the changes in hearing, vision, time distortion, stomach, bladder, and how your arms/legs/body respond when you tell them what to do.

This leads to less adrenaline being released, more control of your fine motor skills, a wider field of view, and the ability to “think” more.

In addition, as you do scenario based force on force training, you’re creating more and more memories and conditioned responses for the unconscious mind to pull from in the future. If the conscious mind works like a single person crossing a gorge on a rope, the unconscious mind works like multiple people crossing the same gorge on a cargo net and has up to 1 million times greater processing ability than the conscious mind.

And, because of the biochemistry involved and full use of the unconscious mind, you develop neural pathways MUCH faster with force on force training than with traditional training.

When you give the unconscious mind an accurate threat profile to respond to, it will observe and identify it almost instantly after only a few repetitions.

And when you give the unconscious mind a conditioned response to respond with when a lethal force threat profile presents itself, it can decide and act on that conditioned response almost instantly.

Regardless of whether or not you get your stress inoculation from real life or simulations, it’s vital that you do “hot washes” or after-action debriefs as soon as possible after you complete the simulation so you can process what happened, pick out good stuff to repeat, and pick out mistakes to avoid in the future.

Where do you get this kind of training?

That can be difficult…especially if you’re not military or law enforcement. And not all schools that “do” force on force training do it well. A few instructors that I can recommend are Ken Murray, Matt Seibert, Randy Watt, Peyton Quinn, Eric Johnson, Mike Seeklander, and Larry Yatch, and Beau Doboszenski from SEALed Mindset.

Larry and Beau have an incredible home study program that helps program threat profiles into the sub-conscious that’s arguably better than any other situational awareness program available for a fraction of the price.  Read more now by going >HERE<

Have you done force on force training in the past? How did it change you? What did it change about how you train?  Share your experience and/or questions by commenting below.

 

 


    28 replies to "THE Secret To Winning Gunfights and Other Violent Attacks"

    • Steven Key

      As a pastor who trains regularly with our church security team, I can testify to the importance of simulated force-on-force training. We are fortunate to have a skilled law enforcement trainer who also specializes in training church security teams in northern Colorado. It’s one thing to train on the range, and another to run through dry fire drills; but adding real-life scenarios and being “put through the paces” is incomparable in value.

    • Michael Maloof

      Obviously, I’m late to the party, but I wanted to express an interest in the hope that I’ll be able to attend this training at some future date.

    • M. Smith

      Just what I’ve been looking for, but the time and travel won’t work at this point. This seems to be getting a lot of response so it should do well. Any way to take this on the road? If not, do you know of any good force on force training in the Phoenix, AZ area? Thanks.

    • William kee

      Please let me know when more information becomes available

    • Brian Stewart

      I’m interested. Please provide all details and I will see if I can make it.

    • Jim

      I have had the privilege of doing some force on force training. It was so different from training on a traditional range with a buzzer, which I thoroughly enjoy also. I think one of the biggest differences from traditional range training is that force on force training is fluid and dynamic. Your “attacker” can move, think, change the situation, and they can shoot back, which brings all kinds of dynamics into the training. When you have the opportunity to train when someone is shooting back at you, it gives you the opportunity to learn whether all the things you practice on the traditional range are your default response: focus on the front sight, smooth trigger pull to a surprise break, etc. Traditional range training is great, but there is little to no fluidity and dynamics. You can move, which is always good, but your target/attacker stays still and has zero chance of shooting back at you. Force on force training will take your shooting and mindset to a whole new level. I know it did for me. Please let me know about this training opportunity.

    • Steve Doran

      The idea that faster is always better is not true and Boyd never said it. He said quicker is better. His aim was to produce a quicker order of tactical, operational, and strategic OODA Loops, which is a comparative concept as it equates to your opponent.

      It more about getting insides your opposition’s decision cycle causing him to make mistakes. Boyd showed how to quickly present his opponent with a series of unpredictable changing conditions. These quick changes disconnect your adversary’s mind from responding to you in a decisive way. But Boyd clearly understood and emphasized that the goal of quickness does not always equate to high speed.

      Why? The single-minded quest for faster tactical and operational level OODA Loops undermines our ability of looking at the big picture which makes us more vulnerable and less able to cope with unfolding events. It then allows our adversary to get inside of our decision cycle and win, because we do not have time to adjust to his counter. Sometimes a situation is moving so slow that it puts the defender at a tactical disadvantage. You have to keep in mind you are not a member of the military where killing the enemy is all that matters. We have laws that will put you in prison possibly for the rest of your life and others that will take everything you own. Quickness of mind does not always equal speed on the trigger. I have seen more than one person go to prison, lawmen as well as civilians because they lost perspective of the situation.

      • Ox

        Thanks for your comments, Steve. I used “fast” because most people don’t appreciate a difference, at surface level, of fast vs. quick and it was already a meaty enough article the way it was. How would you define them?

        The point of the article was that the most important secret to winning a fight, whether it’s empty hands, a gun fight, or a dog fight, is to know that you are in a fight to begin with.

        This, in simplest terms, drives the decision on whether or not to respond/shoot. If you’re in a fight, you respond. If you’re not in a fight, you don’t. Either way, you want to cycle through accurately observing, identifying, (and accepting) as quickly/fast as possible.

        Have you done much force on force? Have you noticed a change in how quickly/fast you identify threats and how much more comfortable you are in situations that used to cause much more stress?

        • Steve Doran

          I grew up in a situation where I always had to be guarded. You quickly learn that placing yourself in a position of vulnerability with any person or in any place unknown to you is not a good idea. It may be as simple as stepping to the side where the person has to alert you that they are moving into an aggressive posture.

          No one can be alert at all times anyone who says they can are full of more than bull capital S with a hit. You would also burn out relatively quickly, and men especially need a mental recharge witch is another issue I will not go into here.

          But anyone who knows me and who has worked with me will tell you I am always relaxed yet I keep the totality of the circumstances in the front of mind and do not miss a beat. The more relaxed you are the easier it is to focus. Then when you do have to act you are aware of the big picture around you.

          I tell people all of the time the best thing that can happen to you in life is to get your ass kicked on more than one occasion. I grew up getting it kicked. Loosing taught me how to win, and to leverage my situation. You realize a punch or a kick will not kill you and will rarely incapacitate you. So you do not become paranoid in a potentially dangerous situation, and get tunnel vision or freak out when the trouble starts.

          You are now focused on using whatever you have or the terrain to your advantage. Hence getting insides your opposition’s decision cycle so you win. The same is true in a gun fight. I know when to draw and when to leave my gun in the holster and when to have it in my hand behind my leg. This comes from a relaxed focus. Before the fight even begins you have more information to draw from.

          Real life is nothing like the range or military combat. Much more has to be accounted for and taken into consideration because it is not all about me wining. I have an obligation to other innocent people who may be in the area not to make them my victims, when we are talking guns that bullet in you gun will kill a innocent bystander as fast as the bad guys will and i need information as well as skill to insure that does not happen.

          • Ox

            GREAT stuff, Steve. Thank you. I appreciated what you said and how you said it so much that I went back and added some carriage returns so that it would be easier for people to read. Please not that I didn’t change a word.

    • Bill Kornell

      Sounds like some thing I would to come too.
      Bill

    • gerald marsh

      Please let me know when and where. thank you

    • gerald marsh

      Please let me know what I can do and when to secure a place for training. thank you

    • Les Hovland

      Let me know the details.

    • Richard Shandor

      I am interested. Please send the details when available.

    • Richard Shandor

      Please notify me with the details

    • STEPHEN ALEXANDER

      i did force on force training while in doing private investigations. the experience is unparalleld. being able to train with people who think like you allows you to create new and interesting ways to defeat your own formal training.

      please notify me about classes and prices.

    • Estie Effeu

      I hear from a buddy in LA that neighborhood watch and community police academy participants get the (occasional) chance to use LAPDs big as life simulator.
      It’s minimal exposure but sumpin is bettern nuttin!

    • joe

      Please notify me with the details of the course

    • j r d collins

      Sign me up for that course. That sounds like a ‘no brainer’…

      JRD Collins

    • Scott

      Sign me up for notification.

    • Gregory Pitts

      I’m interested. I strongly believe in this type of training and try to avail myself if I can afford the time and money.

    • Doug

      Interesting article. I can see where f2f training will help prepare me for an event I hope I never have to deal with. I thought, initially, that you were going to say “a killer mindset” was what one needed if in a life or death struggle. I know I’m guilty of “waiting to confirm the attackers intentions” before taking action so this training would be good for my overall preparedness.

    • Patti Pstch

      Your OODA or my expression of having your Mindset ready. Without the mind being in the fight or flight mode I don’t believe a person has had the brain shut down enough to be in a mindset to make OODA decisions. Without being committed to the fight mode your mind is not set forum sense for OODA. You have not seen the situation as a danger or a threat.

    • Guy D

      Thanks for your detailed description of this problem. I was aware of it (I was an MP in the Army) but your explanation made it clear and concise. I usually train alone, and have been thinking of building a couple of man size targets each having 4 right arms that are hinged in such a way that any one of them can be raised. One will have the hand open as if the guy is waving hello, a second has a Badge in the hand. the third has a gun and the forth has a knife. The system will be set up electrically so that any one of the hands would be raised randomly. Obviously we don’t want to shoot the friendly guy or the policeman. To make the system even better maybe a left arm could randomly be raised before the right which would be empty as in waving with the left hand. and not always would the right raise be following it. but randomly it would with badge or gun or knife. What do you think about this as a means of training?

    • Randall Holmes

      I am interested in taking the class, please notify me.

    • Tom Westbrook

      I am interested in learning more about the training; dates length of course(s), costs, location, etc.

    • Matthew Hansen

      I’m in Lafayette,IN, but have been up to a couple courses at SEALed Mindset. They’re awesome! Please count me in on the training and let me know when it will be.

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