Good Reps vs. Bad Reps During Training

Hey everybody, Barrett Kendrick here, with Personal Defense Network. I'm out here at the Combat Focus Shooting Conference. It's our 2015 conference. Actually, it's the eighth conference to be exact, with that. One thing that I've noticed, whether I'm on a recreational public range, or a private range teaching courses is that students and sometimes instructors allow bad reps to take place.

And what I mean by that is that, let's say we're out there, students are learning new skills, we're getting out there, they're learning to apply a certain skill to be able to get a certain hit. And you know, all of a sudden they've missed four out of the last five shots but we can't allow that to continue to go forward. Ultimately, we're trying to hardwire our brain to be able to apply the skill without having to think about it. So if I'm trying to hit a three-inch circle with a firearm, I just want to be able to drive the gun out there and to get that hit. Well, when we allow those bad reps to happen, we're building a habit, but we're also building the wrong habit.

So every time that we allow that to take place, I believe that we're going to have to dedicate that many more resources, that many more good reps, that much more time to be able to hardwire the correct habit in that. So we want to make sure that we're putting the correct focus there. We want to make sure that we do get those good reps, that we do get the right good reps as well. One of the other times that I really see that come into play is when we start to add a new skill or to add context. So maybe the students that are getting out there, they're getting their solid hits the day they get hit.

They've done that over the past couple of days. And then all of a sudden you add that they're shooting from a seated position or they're shooting from an unorthodox shooting position. When that takes place, we'll start to see their ability to be able to get those hits, start to fall away. What's our job as instructors, where it's your job as a student to make sure that you're honing yourself in to where ultimately you're getting the good reps not just on the shooting position that you're putting into place, but also on the more fundamental skill of getting those good solid hits to start with. So again, I'm Barrett Kendrick with Personal Offense Network.

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