2014 PDN Training Tour Update 6/5

So here we are in the Ramsey County Sheriff's office in Minnesota, we're in downtown St. Paul and this is the Scenario House. This is the scenario room where we just completed yesterday our first extreme close quarters tactics course of the 2014 Personal Defense Network training tour. Now it's been a few days since I've done an update. In fact, it's been almost two weeks and the reason is between Memorial Day weekend break and the travel that was involved there to get us out of here into Minnesota and the number of classes that we've been doing since we've been in Minnesota, as well as some videotaping for the Personal Defense Network down at one of the Gander Mountain Academies here, we've really been incredibly busy.

So I wanted to give you a quick rundown on what's been going on. First of all, we've had classes all over the country recently. Now I did that big block of courses in Illinois where it was great to get to work with a lot of the new CCW permit applicants and even some people who've already received their concealed carry weapons permits in that the 50th state to allow some provision for concealed carry. The strong firearms community there and the great number of people that are signing up for concealed carry permits and of course getting the training they need to be able to be armed responsibly is just a great breath of fresh air in Illinois and people are really excited about it. Now, since then, I've been all around the Midwest and I made it to Minneapolis.

Now, here I am again in St. Paul today, but I was down in Lakeville teaching a combat focus shooting course at the Gander Mountain Academy. I was working with a couple of different instructors from around the country as well. Then I got up here and this is one of those times that we're going to be working with a law enforcement facility to do training with both law enforcement and civilians, people with concealed carry permits or people interested in home defense or any aspect of personal defense really. So this is the second time we've done it on the tour.

There's one more stop scheduled. And I think it's awesome. We talked about it in great detail on one of the earlier updates but a big thank you to Ramsey County Sheriff's Office. This is one of our tour locations for the last few years and what we've been doing is the extreme close quarters tactics, which involves grappling, striking and shooting as well as being able to transition from a close contact unarmed fight to a defensive tool if we need it. And we did some very full context scenarios right here in this room using protective equipment and non-lethal training ammunition, which of course we follow all the protocols recommended by the Reality Based Training Association when we do that.

The course we're running today and the reason I'm wearing my Fit Shot shirt is a course based on integrating functional fitness with practical shooting skills. And of course this isn't a shooting program. Fit Shot is a program designed to encourage fitness inside the shooting community. So it's something that's very near and dear to my heart, it's something I think is incredibly important especially when it comes to personal defense. Alessandro Parabani has joined us.

He's one of our PDN contributors and he was actually one of the co-developers of the Fit Shot program. He's here actually leading the course while I'm doing this video. So he's doing a great job with all of our Fit Shot coaching candidates. Now we don't run Fit Shot courses because we wouldn't wanna come out for a full day of just doing fitness for six or eight hours with firearms. What we actually encourage our coaches to do is take their courses, whether it's concealed carry course, advanced course, maybe a tactics course or for the guys that teach here at Ramsey County, their law enforcement in-service courses and integrate a Fit Shot workout into the higher levels of courses as well as the lower levels of courses as long as everyone's being safe.

So the coaches course is a one day program that's designed to help people understand exactly how to integrate fitness. Now for a long time people have done fitness and then gone to the range. So they maybe run a few miles and then shot, we're done a lot of pushups, a lot of sit-ups a lot of pull-ups and then shot. What we do with Fit Shot is a one-to-one relationship between reps of fitness and reps of shooting. So it's a really, it's a different model, it's a completely different approach.

And what we see is it really stresses people to control the gun and controlling the gun means that the workout actually is harder 'cause there's cognitive energy being put into that following what's up with the gun and also the fine motor control that has to be present to control the gun to get the shot so you don't get your time penalty. So it's a little bit of a game, we make sure people understand it's not defensive firearms training. There's no linear relationship. I see a lot of different programs now that are trying to have a very linear relationship. Let me do this specific exercise so that I will be able to hold my gun better.

Well, ultimately, I feel that if you can have a higher level of grip strength, if you are more mobile, if you're more flexible if you're faster and if you're stronger, if you have more stamina then you're going to be able to fight better. And that goes for fighting with a tool, that goes for fighting unarmed, it goes for just avoiding danger and fighting by evading a problem. So really important fitness for personal offense, the Fit Shot program is our example to the world of how you can safely integrate firearms and fitness on a range. And we've worked with Airsoft to do it with laser trainers as well. In fact, they're in the CrossFit room right now working out with laser trainers.

Ramsey CrossFit is headquartered here also at the Sheriff's office. So it's very cool to be able to use this facility. We've got a great range, we've got a scenario house, great classroom and we've got the gym area as well. Next stop for me, I'm heading out to Iowa, I'm gonna be there for six days. I've got back to back to back courses and then we've got the Shoot for Heroes, and of course, we're gonna be doing that at Brownells home range.

Brownells' a great company, again, another place that I stop on the tour every year. So I'm really looking forward to that. We've got three full classes, a pistol, an advanced pistol and a rifle. And then I'll also of course be doing that Shoot for Heroes where I have a lot of fun helping them raise money for a great cause. And then it's off to Colorado.

One of my highlights of the trip every year, of course I lived in Colorado for a number of years looking forward to being in Leadville, in Gypsum and also out on the Front Range. We'll be out there near Fort Collins doing several classes as well. Again, a lot of those classes are full but I think there's still some slots available up in the high mountains. We've got classes going on from Chris Fry out East. We've got classes going on, coming up with Kayla Causey, some more medical classes.

There's a lot going on inside the Personal Defense Network training tour, check out the website, see what's going on with the videos of course are free, articles and videos are always there at PDN and the courses that you can still attend between now and the middle of August.