2013 PDN Training Tour: Update #9

Okay, I am at the Pawnee shooting range and I'm just outside of Briggsdale Colorado. Of course, Colorado was hit really hard with some of the politics, some of the knee jerk reaction over the last six months. And as of July 15th we'll be under some different laws here. But for now we're still using full capacity magazines just like when I used to run training regularly here when I ran the Valhalla training center out here in Colorado. I love Colorado.

I love being out here. Victory Defense Consulting recently took over the range, operations, the clubhouse and the store operations out here at Pawnee. Been coming out here for years, really good stuff. We took our tour for the personal events network through Minnesota. Last week, we did instructor development, we did advanced pistol handling.

And now I am in Colorado and we are doing rightful work, pistol work, advanced pistol work, and of course we're here in mixed groups. That means you never know who's gonna show up. We had some ladies join the class today. And one of the questions that gets asked a lot at Personal Defense Network is, "What about special training for women?" Or "What about women? "Can they train in the regular classes with men?" "Do we need to market special classes just for the women?" Well, I'm gonna have a couple of those students talk to you in just a minute, but first we're gonna go in and sit in on the debrief of the class we just finished and talk a little bit about how we choose the techniques that we're gonna share in a class or how any instructor probably goes about choosing what they teach and what we of course decide we're gonna share with you at the Personal Defense Network.

All right, well, guess with the... As often as the techniques or whatever you wanna call it change. How do you guys go through and choose what you wanna teach? And I mean, how do you rate it as what's-- It's a really good question because it's very fair. Right?

And I think here's an important way to gauge the value of the answer. If you had an instructor who said, "Well, I know what I do works and it works for my students "and it worked for me in the nom. So that's why I teach it." I think that we have to say, okay you know, "Get it, you have your integrity in that and good job." But if somebody says they don't care about the other stuff and they just have what works for them, and they aren't out there trying to figure out what the newest best stuff is and what other people are doing. You know, I would compare that to any other area of professionalism. If you went to a doctor and the doctor said, "Hey, how about some leeches?" And you said, "Oh, leeches?

"Is there something better like medicine?" And he said, "Well, you know, that was medieval." You know, "Best thing you could do for a cough "is leeches on your throat. "So that's what I like to stick with. "I know it's worked for me." I think you would tell that doctor, "No thanks. "I'm gonna go somewhere else." Every other field in that endeavor is pretty clear that research is good, experimentation is good. Let's do more observation.

And then let's have some philosophy. Let's apply some logic to what we're seeing, right? So if I see a video or if I go to a lot of other classes, right? Especially training conferences. Where we'll go to training conferences and see what other people are teaching.

See what they're doing. You know, don't just sit around in a circle and say, "Have you been to a class "with some of the other instructors in the industry? "What are you seeing?" And we kinda compare notes. And somebody will say, "Oh yeah, well I saw this." and you know, my thing and I think anybody's thing should be, "Why?" You know, "Why do that?" And if the first answer is, "While you can." Well I don't need more tools for my toolbox. If I can do it my way I have a bunch of reasons why I like my way that are like physics, physiology, whatever.

And you have some new way that you can, that's not good enough. Why would I wanna do that instead of this, right? Now we're comparing right? Apples to apples. What's more efficient?

What's gonna work over a wider plausible set of circumstances, right? So if I have this circle of everything that's possible, I know what's probable is this what's probable is right here. And somebody says, "Oh well, if you were in a situation "with like 16 ninjas with AK47s "and your house was on fire "and you had your AR with your 30 round magazine "and your wife had an AK, here's what you could do. "You guys could interlock legs and hop while you shot". And I was like, "I don't wanna hear this can "for this crazy extreme might happen stuff." Talk to me about what's most likely to happen based on empirical evidence, right?

Video cameras, dash cameras, like the the work that Tom Gibbons has done in taking real personal defense shootings and trying to reconstruct them. And then find me stuff that'll work there with as close to 100% reliability as we can find. And once we have two of those things in the room then we'll start worrying about efficiency. Then we'll start worrying about different hands, different guns, the widest plausible set of people. Right?

The answer to the question is, we look at everything, anything I see. Like I don't dismiss something. And we have a thing called respectful irreverence. There are some guys in the industry that I'd rather not go drink a cider with, right? But there's a lot of guys that even if I would rather not drink a cider with them for whatever reason, I'm sure they may not wanna drink cider and hang out with me you know, I still, I'm gonna look at what they're doing.

I was in the Army for like three minutes but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna look at what a Navy guy is doing, you know? And I think the problem is a lot of people put blinders on. They're like, "Oh, that guy? "I'm not gonna listen to what he..." I think that's really really shortsighted and really foolish. So that you look at everything and then the first thing you do is see if it fits what you're training for.

And the next thing you do is you compare it to other ways to solve the problem and look for what's most efficient. And if it's a break even then you've started looking at "Does it apply to more people?" "Does it apply to more types of guns?" "Is it applied to rifles and shotguns and pistols?" Right? And sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it can't apply across spectrums. But if you can find techniques or tactics or concepts in your training that are universal that are the widest plausible set then that's what you should go with.

You know, it's not easy, you gotta sift through a lot of things, right? Even in my work with Personal Defense Network, we had a lot of people that submitted articles or a lot of people that say they wanna do videos. First, there's a lot of hurdles to cross before I say yeah, whether I agree with it or not. There's some articles and there's some videos on PDN that aren't tactics I teach aren't techniques I teach. Some of our DVDs are by guys who teach things that are very different from me but they can explain why.

They have legitimate answers. They can explain it. They've proved an efficacy so that the program works for people. It may not be what I think is the most efficient for the context I'm teaching for but maybe they're even teaching for something else. So come on and be part of it.

You've got legitimacy. But the guy who just says, "Well this has always worked for me "and I'm not gonna change it "just cause some fancy new fangled thing came up. "I'm gonna stick with what I know works." Think that's really shortsighted in terms of professionalism. And we wouldn't want that in the guy building our car. We wouldn't want that in the guy building our house.

We wouldn't want that in the guy teaching our kids. We wouldn't want that in our doctors or dentists. So why would you want that in your personal defense instructor? I think women training in men's groups is a wonderful idea. I have a problem with segregation of women, of sexist.

I don't appreciate that men get to learn stuff that women don't. And I think that the only way for you to really learn is to be with them and be able to see their capability, see what your capabilities are. Know where their strengths are. Where women's weaknesses may be, if you perceive that you have some. But you're never gonna know that unless you're in the class with the guys doing the same drills, learning the same thing, having the same experience.

That's what makes it more equal, I guess, in my opinion. If you only train with women, you're only gonna see where women's weaknesses may lie. You're gonna get used to that. You're never gonna see where, you know maybe where men's weaknesses are and then you can see those differences. So I think it's the only way you really should go.

This was a phenomenal thing for me to do. And I had a wonderful experience that I learned. I did take this class with my husband. My husband's actually the one that bought me my first gun. And we both started kind of shooting together on that since.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time next to my husband. Actually, I spent on the first day, the first set of drills I was right next to him. And then after that we separated and I actually preferred to not stand right next to him. I know he watches me when I shoot. And I know I watch him a little more when he shoots when other people were shooting and we're watching but we go home, we get to talk about it.

We get to go over what he thinks I did. What I think I did, what I think he did what he thought he did. We create questions. We go over answers. And then we go to the range and we we're-- I teach, I'm a NRA certified instructor.

And my partner and I started women's only basic can gun courses. I think as women beginner shooters, they are more comfortable shooting with just females. So learning the basic fundamentals of firearm, I believe going out and doing it with just women only is a great idea. But in advancement, you need to learn how to shoot around everyone. Women need to feel comfortable training with men because on an everyday basis, you never know who you're going to be shooting around.

So you have to be comfortable in every aspect. So whether I'm shooting next to a female or a male, I need to know that I can be able to do that along as every other female out there, they need to know that they can shoot next to anyone and still be okay.