Last week, I was interviewed for George Shepherd’s Survival Summit on a few firearms topics related to survival and preparedness.  It was a good interview…almost an hour and a half long…but a few of the questions were ones that come up fairly often and I wanted to share them with you.

  • Q:  Would you recommend training with others? if so, what are your recommended drills?

The short answer is yes, but the question brings up a good point…

There’s a lot of crossover on the terms that people use for firearms training, and this can cause problems.

4 Components Of Firearms Training:
Head Knowledge
Training
Practice
Testing

I like to break the learning process up into 4 parts: head knowledge, training, practice, and testing. Some of these, you do with just your buddies and others you need to have an expert influence present.

With head knowledge, you’re learning ABOUT shooting. It’s passive, to a large extent. You listen, you watch, or you read about best practices for how to shoot.  This is what you get with MOST DVDs, books, videos, and the classroom portion of live training classes.

Training is where you take action and learn to apply the head knowledge. Ideally, you have an expert who can make any necessary corrections and tell you when you’re dialed in. But you can also record yourself on video and compare your technique to someone you want to copy.  This is the range time in most firearms training classes.

Practice is where the magic happens. This is where you turn head knowledge and training into conditioned responses that you can execute unconsciously under extreme stress. You can do practice on your own or with a group using live fire, dry fire, or even with mental rehearsal. But you want to make sure you’re disciplined about it. 5 minutes of perfect practice is WAY more effective than 2 hours of randomly throwing lead.

Let me back up a second before I get to the 4th part of the training process.

It’s oftentimes taught that there are 5 phases that people go through in the process of mastering a skill.

5 Phases of Skill Mastery
UNconscious INcompetence
Conscious INcompetence
Conscious Competence
UNconscious Competence
Teaching

First, you’ve got unconscious incompetence—where people don’t know what they don’t know. In some cases, this is ignorance.

Second, you’ve got conscious incompetence—where you know that you are lacking. This is where you admit that you don’t know everything.

Third is conscious competence—where you have head knowledge about how to do something, but still have to consciously think about the individual steps to execute successfully. This is the most frustrating stage, because you may know EXACTLY what you need to do, your technique falls apart under stress or on command.

Unconscious competence—where you can perform a skill without consciously thinking about it, while your attention is elsewhere, or under extreme stress. Chewing gum and keeping your balance while walking is an example of unconscious competence.  Once you make the choice to chew gum and walk, your unconscious drives the process and your conscious mind is free to talk, look around, or do other things. When someone reaches this phase with a particular skill, it is generally called mastery.

The fifth phase is when a master teaches. They not only are able to unconsciously perform a skill, but they have a conscious knowledge of what they’re doing and a vocabulary to explain what they’re doing to others. The combination of conscious and unconscious thought and executing while explaining can drive the skill another level.

Testing is the 4th stage of firearms training and it’s where you find out which stage of learning you’re in. You can do testing by yourself with a timer, with friends in informal competition, in formal competition like IDPA, 3-gun, or USPSA, or in controlled force on force training with airsoft, paintball, or simunitions.

If your technique falls apart under stress, it’s a sign that you’re in the conscious competence phase and you need a combination of better mental control and more practice. If your technique doesn’t fall apart under stress, then it’s an indication that you have achieved unconscious competence and you want to gradually increase stress and complexity.

  • Q: Can you explain the type of training that higher level operators receive, private security, and/or gov’t agents?

Absolutely. Four of the main differences between “elite” training and “normal” training are technique, tactics, volume, and stress.

Most technique that’s currently being taught, regardless of whether it’s a civilian, military, or law enforcement class, is designed for the least common denominator and the assumption is made that the shooter will do little to no practice outside of their formal training. That leads to techniques being taught that are easier to teach, and easier for students to successfully demonstrate during the class, but not necessarily the most effective.

This lack of training on the part of the individual officer is why the average hit ratio for law enforcement across the country is 15% even though departments that encourage a gun training culture among individual officers have hit ratios above 80%.

Most classes focus on the most basic of basic techniques. Elite training also covers fundamental techniques that are more effective, but that MUST be practiced by the individual student to work.

The next difference is tactics. Normal classes focus primarily on technique, because, for most shooters, that’s where the greatest opportunity for improvement is.

Elite training takes a shooter who has solid fundamentals, and adds other shooters and maneuvering to the mix. This is something that just can’t be done safely until the shooter has their fundamentals dialed in.

The next difference is volume. Normal classes might do a few hundred, or even a couple thousand reps of dry fire and live fire.

Elite classes might stay on the range for a week at a time, camping out to eliminate wasted travel time, and do several thousand reps.

In a “normal” building clearing class, you might stack up and do 5-10 entries over the course of a day. In an “elite” class, you might do 10+ entries per hour for an entire day with a few breaks for after-action debriefs.

The final component that’s different is stress. In firearms training, this can take the form of increased speed, increased motion, performing on the clock, competition, needing to keep your job, and force on force.

Stress training acts as a refining fire…forcing out impurities and hardening the shooter, but it isn’t used in most classes, because the students have JUST learned a new skill and most training can’t take students straight from learning a skill to performing it under stress.

  • Q:  What are your suggestions on “Mandatory” firearms training for preppers? And your suggested calibers to own and be proficient in ASAP?

Let me start with the caliber question.  That’s a tough one and the answer today is different than it was 5 years ago and incredibly different than it was 10 years ago.

A few years ago, the .380 was considered a “mouse gun” and .45 was the only “real” defensive caliber to carry in semi-automatics. 9mms were laughed at and .40s didn’t get much more respect than the 9.

Then, the FBI stated that defensive ammunition needed to pass several tests, including penetrating between 12” and 18” into ballistic gelatin with and without 4 layers of denim on the outside.

FBI_Ballistic_TestsFast forward a couple of years. Many departments adopted the FBI standards. In addition, many concealed carry holders adopted the FBI standards. As a result, ammunition companies re-designed and reformulated their loads and now almost all defensive ammo, whether it’s 9mm, .357 sig, .40, or .45, ALL penetrate between 12” and 13”. There are more than half a dozen kinds of .380 rounds that will pass these tests as well.

So, the answer to the question of which caliber is best is very different today than it was a couple of years ago.

The answer is, whatever caliber you want, but I’d push you towards the caliber that will be the most comfortable to shoot, that you can afford to shoot, that fits in a gun that you’ll carry as often as possible, and that is readily available in your area.

I have carried 40, 45, and .357 sig. I now carry 9mm for 4 main reasons. The first 2 reasons are that the ammo is affordable and easy to find. The 3rd reason is that I know I can hit torso targets at 100 yards nearly 100% of the time with my sub-compact Glock and anything closer is a no-brainer. The final reason is that I can carry 10 rounds in the magazine and 1 in the chamber and an additional 17 rounds – 28 rounds in all – concealed, comfortably from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed.

On the training side, the only mandatory training that I’d suggest is safety training and weapon familiarization. Safe and comfortable gun handling is vital, regardless of what you plan to do with guns.

Other training is going to be dependent on what you feel like you need the gun for. There’s crossover, but self-defense is different from hunting, and both are different depending on whether you’re using a pistol, rifle, or shotgun and different in normal times and in a post-disaster situation.

On the self-defense with a pistol side, I’ve got a few products that are incredibly effective in helping people go from being comfortable and safe with a firearm to being an expert shooter, while doing most of the practice in the comfort and privacy of their home.  First are Dry Fire Training Cards, 3010 Pistol, and Concealed Carry Masters Course.  These courses all help shooters shortcut the practice phase and achieve mastery faster and cheaper than they could otherwise.

There are 2 other courses that I want to suggest that focus more on the mental/unconscious aspects of shooting.  First is the Insight Deadly Accuracy home study course.  It approaches firearms training from a COMPLETELY different direction and focuses on mental state control to both achieve seemingly impossible accuracy and blunt the stress response in lethal force situations.

Last is the Concealed Carry Masters *LIVE* Course.  It focuses on a specific sequence of training that combines live fire, dry fire, and force on force to help students achieve mastery incredibly quickly.  In many cases, a handfull of repetitions of this training is equivalent to 3-5 DAYS of conventional training.

Questions?  Comments?  Share them by commenting below:


    5 replies to "Training with others, higher level training, and calibers"

    • Estie Effeu

      LOTS of good advice above!
      Think I’ll check on YouTube for vids on how to disassemble, clean—AND REASSEMBLE!—any firearm I may acquire.
      Till reading the above, I HAD BEEN a member of the “clean the barrel” club, and then I thought I was being *really* thorough when I took off the slide and barrel and cleaned all I could see there. WHAT? There’s more? Oh, crap!
      MANY thanks for the new—and labor-intensive—education, Team! Much appreciated!

    • Marty

      Like Chuck says, any weapon can jam. I’ve found the cause of most malfunctions is a dirty gun. I’ve had many people bring me weapons which no longer worked and the vast majority of them were terribly dirty, inside and out. Just taking off the slide and barrel, cleaning them and putting it back together is not proper cleaning. Learn all you can about your weapon, including complete dis-assembly, cleaning and lubrication is a great start. I am old school and love my S/A D/A Sigs, both 9mm and 45. Never had a problem with them jamming and they’re both 25 plus years old.

    • left coast chuck

      Sorry, Estie, there is no jam-proof gun. Anything mechanical can malfunction at some point in its lifetime. That’s why a lot of time in handgun training is spent on clearing jams and how to get back into action. I would like to say that the more expensive the gun the less prone it is to jamming, but that would not be totally true. I would not base my opinion of semi-auto handguns based on an experience with a “bargain” fifty or more year old gun. Did it jam because it was worn; did it jam because the springs were tired; did it jam because you were using 50 y.o ammo? Or, another likely scenario: did it jam because it still had old cosmoline packed in it somewhere? I would say that any modern, semi-auto from a major manufacturer that has been on the market for five years or more will be less subject to jams than some WWII relic (or earlier). Using modern, current ammunition will also ameliorate jams. Major manufacturer, modern firearm, new ammo, clean weapon = fewer jams.

    • Estie Effeu

      Once upon a time, my Walther P38 9mm (Hey, it was a bargain) jammed on the range and required VERRRRY careful manipulations to un-jam w/o a possible misfire. Haven’t trusted it since.
      SOOOO…I’d ask you experts:
      “Which concealable autos are the least (and most) likely to jam?”
      That’s not the kind of jam I like!

      • Russell

        The Glocks & XD Springfield lines are the most popular for good reason. Reliability and easy use. Have also been impressed with S&W Shield line, bought a nine for the wife due to thin design, have about 1000 rounds thru it with problems to date.

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