Springfield - Worlds Collide: Training For Multiple Threats

All right Rob, so we've been talking about how worlds collide here a little bit. Right. Personal defense side versus competition side. Now you and I both know that I've had a little bit of experience in competition. Didn't do all that well so I went into teaching.

And you have taken your skills and been able to teach some of America's elite military and law enforcement guys mechanical shooting skills. Right. I want you to take a look at this 'cause on a worlds collide basis, I think this drill may be where we have the biggest difference or maybe I'm gonna be surprised. I want you to take a look at how we teach people to deal with engaging multiple threats in a realistic environment as opposed to maybe like two pieces of steel or like running through a plate rack. Well always remember in a match I can create a dance.

Absolutely. And I know my steps before I ever go. So there's nothing practical about it other than the shooting. And that's the trick. So, so here's what we try to do.

And I want your feedback on this. So when we're dealing with preparing for multiple targets we have to remember that right now We know there's two big green silhouettes here, but I in reality, if I get focused on, "Oh man this guy is trying to hurt me, trying to hurt my family." I don't know what's going on with that guy or whoever else at that moment. I'm hyper-focused over here. So, you know, if you'd just give me an up command and then I'll use that as my stimulus for this guy being a threat. All right.

You ready? Ready. Up! Now you can imagine what the timer guys are going to say about that moment where I shot this guy, brought my gun back and just sort of wandered my head around as if to be looking for something else, but in the real world if I'm not trying to pick up on where that other guy is, the idea to me, of shooting and looking over here and swinging, I'm not really trained in anything that I can put in a practical aspect. And I'm wondering how you teach people to deal with that kind of a situation.

Multiple unknown threats or maybe there's just one. Well, when you look at that situation, there's there's several things to look at them. One of the things that my, in my fighting background from a boxing standpoint, they always tells you, they always tell you it's the punch you don't see that gets you. And in a defensive position, it's exactly the same thing. The targets you didn't know is there is the guy that's going to get you.

'Cause you all like to think you're gonna be able to handle everybody up to that. Now, in everything I see you do looks perfect to me. I mean, I can't see anything wrong. I make competition shooters constantly mix up in the drill, what they're doing. Like it'll be one, three, one, and two, two, two.

Because I don't want the guy to get fixated into just shoot twice and leave, shoot twice and leave. See that's one of the problems from the competition world is we listen, okay, there's two targets there. I'm gonna shoot two of them, both of them twice. So that's one of the big problems about competition is will will say I need to shoot that target twice, that target twice and then we're moving on. I can miss that target, never know it, and in the real world, that's where the problem comes in.

So the competition shooter, while we, we, we focus on speed and accuracy and all the things that should happen while you're actually shooting, we've thrown away any reality because we don't care. It's like a football game. We know there's going to be a, a down and then we're going to stop the game. So the competition shooters work that way. Now on the plus side of it, the best part about it is the competition shooters are the ones who have perfected the techniques for shooting quickly and accurately.

But it doesn't mean we know how to think. And thinking with a gun is so important especially that part where you're collecting and processing information and the defensive context. Exactly.