This is a 5 minute video of at TED-Ed worth watching to get a better understanding of the neurophysiology behind valuable “practice”. The neuroscience of practice and training in general is a field I have studied in great detail over the last 10 to 15 years. Understanding the objective WHY behind techniques, gear and training
You might have noticed that we’ve expanded PDN Academy recently by adding a few classes to the offerings at the PDN Academy Distance Education Page. These three new courses are just the beginning of the dramatically expanded catalogue we have planned for 2017. I’ve long been a believer in the concept of distance education, especially
Many folks leave their defensive practice to chance and actually spend very little time doing anything other than target shooting. Those folks show up a the range and send some rounds down range and hope that there will be some benefit. There is a better way and, oddly enough, it can also be practiced by the toss of a coin.
it’s not easy to talk about the most important terms and concepts in the world of defensive shooting — because it’s a little difficult to judge what makes something important! There are, certainly, a lot of things we can talk about which are valuable or which are significant to defensive shooting in some way. These are generally thought of as the things we do, or want to do, or need to have when preparing to defend ourselves with a firearm. They’re important to know. At the same time there are some ideas which are very prevalent in the field, but which aren’t really valuable or are routinely misunderstood. This series of articles, then, is going to look at both sides of the importance equation: those things which have positive importance (good to know and do), as well as those things with negative importance (good to know and avoid.)
I’m from the Pacific Northwest, commonly referred to as the “Pacific NorthWET” by those of us who live here. Having grown up in the region, I’m used to the rain, wind, and cold. (And as the saying goes, that’s just summer in Oregon!) It rains so much here, in fact, that there is a common
I would like to discuss something that, in firearms instructing circles, seems to be the metaphorical mutant cousin living under the basement stairs. It’s something that many instructors (and shooters) want to believe doesn’t exist. When it rears its ugly head every now and then, they belittle, blame and condemn, then force the little monster
Anyone reading this is likely aware of the need for frequent and realistic firearms training with their defensive firearm. It should also come as no surprise that the vast majority of us simply don’t have the time or resources to train the way we should, as often as we should. Now ask yourself: how many
What is the real reason we should train to use only one hand to manipulate and shoot the firearm? Lots of people might say, “Because it is common to get shot in one of your extremities and lose the use of one hand.” While I agree, and the statistics confirm this to an extent, over
Once we finish a personal defense training class, a question that should remain in our minds is, “Where do I go from here?” We trainers almost universally say that you have to practice after a class to ingrain the skills you learned in order to achieve the unconscious competence necessary to prevail in a critical
