Setting Goals for Training

Omari Broussard, founder of 10X Defense, has been training law enforcement, military and private-citizen students for over 20 years. He has observed that, in the private sector, people’s training goals change over time.

Initial Training Goals

When a person makes the decision to learn to develop skills to protect themselves and their family, whether it be firearms or other self-defense training, they start to develop goals. Such initial goals could be to buy a handgun or to learn one of the martial arts. Over time and with more skills gained, these goals will change.

Evolving Training Goals

Omari stresses that it is important to place a high priority on your training goals. The goals that you set for yourself will dictate a lot as you experience different things — the guns you choose, the training courses you choose, and what you need to focus on when doing practice on your own will all apply to your goals.

Sit down and write out these goals. Just as you set goals for your professional life and your personal life, set goals for your training.

Gun Selection

When students ask Omari what gun they should choose, he asks them what their goal is. Is their goal to use a gun for home defense or for everyday concealed carry, or open carry in public? Knowing your goal helps narrow down your choices. And it determines what kind of training you should do plus what kind of gun you should buy and what other gear such as storage devices (e.g., a safe for a home-defense weapon or a holster for everyday carry) you should have.

What if you want a gun that can serve as a home-defense weapon and an everyday carry gun? Then the kind of firearms training you need expands and your storage/staging requirements change too.