PDN 2013 Training Tour: Update #4

Rob Pincus here, for another Personal Defense Network Training update. This week, I am here at Black Wing Shooting Center, I'm back in Ohio. The Personal Defense Network Training Tour, it's about a third or the way through. We still got a long way ahead of us and lots of classes. We've been incredibly busy, there's been a lot going on. One of the things that's going on this week is the NRA show, so we'll be getting plenty of video in the next PDN update. You'll see that from my presentations down at the NRA annual meeting in Houston, Texas. We'll also be stopping by the booth of a lot of our advertisers, and, of course, our PDN Tour sponsors. We're going to make sure that you get the latest, greatest updates from their booths as well. Now, one of the things we're gonna talk about this week is teaching others to teach. Omari Broussard, Personal Defense Network contributor is teaching right here at Black Wing Shooting Center. He's teaching an Instructor Development course. Many of you know that we recently launched The Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors. Omari is part of the staff there and I'm on the advisory committee. What he's gonna talk about is teaching others to teach. Some of the things that he's had to learn- All right, Omari Broussard here, talking about teachers teaching teachers, really instructor development. A couple of key points I want to bring up, maybe three, is the importance of answering the why question or teaching instructors to answer the why question, the importance of quality in instructors and how to gain quality instructors. So, the first one being answering the why question, I think in instructor development, it's important that instructor candidates understand how to answer the why question and what way they should answer the why question. Early in my training, I've been doing firearms and combatives for nearly two decades. In my earlier parts of training, It was more, "We do it this way because this is the way it's been done" or "This way has worked in certain situations." And now, as I've matured as an instructor and now teaching instructors, having completed instructor development in different programs, I would have to say that, just saying, "This is the way we've always done it", or "This is the way the curriculum does it", is not enough for the student. We have more educated students now with the internet and the information that's out there. Students are coming to classes, asking the why question and just giving them, "Well, this is the way we've always done it", to me, ends up being a cop out. We talk about answering the why question, that's gonna help gain intellectual comfort. They understand what they're doing and they understand why they're doing it, that's gonna make them more comfortable, agreed? Number two, quality in instructors. And that requires a deeper level of knowledge for instructors. I've taught programs where becoming an instructor was kind of a given. If you completed the course, let's say, it's a three or four or five day Instructor Certification. I've taught programs where at the end of the course, that goal was to ensure that the instructor or candidate got certified. That used to be a model that I thought was the right way. As an instructors instructor, can I get them to a level to where they can teach a one day or two day program? I think I put a lot of stress on myself to accomplish that. Well, doing instructor development today, as I've matured in the industry, I understand, number one, not everybody needs to be an instructor. Not everybody is ready for instructor level information or ready to transfer that information to the student. It's okay for an instructor candidate to come in and complete the instructor development and not necessarily get certified immediately. We just ended up in New Hampshire where we did a course, we first did a course last week as part of the PDN Tour. And then, we joined the NE Shooters Training Conference and we did a couple of sessions there as well. I really was excited about coming here because, number one, I get to interact with a lot of top instructors. Craig Douglas, Rob Pincus, Dave Harrington. It's great to be able to see what they're doing, exchange information, just great, great vibe. Plus, I get to reach a lot of people who may have never done this kind of stuff before. Like to think that I'm helping people out, so it's a pretty good way of doing that. Today, we're working on grounded engagement, trying to survive that initial burst. You found yourself on the ground for some reason, before you worry about getting up, escaping, whatever, we need to survive that initial moment, and that's what we've been working on this block for. Basically, we have some great resource in New York, New York Firearms.com, NYfirearms.com, it's a blog and a forum. We review products and we also have a great community of people. We're gonna continue to host trainers throughout the year, we'll host Matt and host Rob several other times throughout the year. It was pretty awesome getting out there. Like I said, in New York, not the most gun friendly state 10 round mags, stuff like that. And seeing a group of people actually came out, wanting to train, super enthusiastic about it. Hopefully we get more people out in the state of New York and some of the banned States to come out and train, and realize there still is good training around and as long as you can still own guns, you guys should definitely get out, get on a range with us. Rob, anything you want to say about the tour? That's a big part of the mission of the Personal Defense Network Training Tour. We have our sponsors, you can see them all over the website, you see them all over the truck, obviously. Without the sponsors, we couldn't do the tour the way we do it. One of the big things about the way we do it is that we get to go into areas which I call training sparse, right? That if you're into these areas where they never hosted training before- We were just at a range here in New Hampshire, the Londonderry Rod & Game Club? Londonderry Fish & Game. Fish & Game, and they had only hosted one other class before, Matt. Matt was the very first class they ever hosted. That range has been around for 65 years. The club just started having outside trainings. We're building a training community at that range. The PDN Tour, because some of the sponsors obviously underwrite some of the expenses, we're able to go to some parts of the country that don't have strong training community. I really think people in some of these States are very motivated now. They realize that they're in a position where they need to assert themselves. They need to fight to get their rights back in those States. And I think that we, as a firearms community, need to support them. We need to go out and try to encourage people to train, encourage clubs that aren't hosting training to host training.