This past Saturday I was out at KR Training helping with Defensive Pistol Skills 1 and a relatively new course called Personal Tactics Skills.

DPS1 went about as expected, tho I could see Karl continues to make small evolutionary tweaks to the approach and curriculum. I like that he’s never static with material. Sure, the core concepts and focus remain the same, but the approach to teaching them is always refined in an attempt to find the best way to convey and ensure students pick up on the concepts.

Personal Tactics Skills was different. This was my first time helping with that course, and only the second time the course has been taught. The material comes from numerous sources and really isn’t new, just the format of presenting it all. There is no live-fire in this class. It’s all about discussion, role playing, demonstration. It’s no-stress, no real physical exertion, but it’s a LOT of mental work.

And that’s so important.

We all love throwing lead downrange. It’s fun. But is throwing lead going to keep you out of trouble? Well, if you get to the point of having to throw lead, you’re already in deep trouble. What would be better is if you could have avoided the situation in the first place, if you could have kept things from getting to the point of having to throw lead.

That’s what PTS is all about.

Karl wrote a good article titled “Scenario Based Training – Why You Need It“. Read it. Yeah, you might think that because we’re instructors that there’s bias because we’re trying to drum up business for ourselves. Here’s the reality. Do you think Michael Phelps won all those Olympic gold medals by only getting his feet wet in the kiddie pool? No, he had to get into the pool and swim and work in the context he chose to excel in. If you want to be a champion fighter, MMA, boxing, whatever… you have to get in the ring and spar. So if you want to be good at winning a gunfight well… you don’t really want to get into a gunfight because that’d be hard to train. 🙂 But you can simulate it, you can replicate it. You can put yourself into those situations. They allow you to figure out what you need to do, how you can react. It’s so much better to figure these things out now and not when the flag flies. Especially consider that now, you will probably fail, you will probably make mistakes. Better to make them now when it costs you nothing but a learning experience, than when it could cost you something much more expensive.

I mentioned to students in class a good DVD that complements what was taught. It’s called “Practical Unarmed Combat” from SouthNarc of ShivWorks. I have a review of the DVD here.

A good day at the range.

Remember your sunblock, folks.

Got to start breaking in my S&W 640. I like it. While I bought it primarily for the extra weight to help with recoil management, the grip ended up helping a lot more because those small “boot grips” on my 442 leave the top corner of the backstrap exposed and it bites into the web of my hand, whereas the 640’s factory grip covers it just enough to keep it from biting. I do want to try out the boot grips on the 640 for comparison. Next range trip I guess.

Oh, and again… dumping 20-round mags of .308 out of an AR-10 has a high giggle factor. 🙂