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Training Program Purpose:
Training programs designed to increase self defense skills are the most neglected. First of all (and hopefully not you) most people have the ridiculous assumption that they can somehow defend themselves against a violent attack without any training at all. During our concealed carry classes (at USSA) we always attempt to influence the students to attend training after they graduate the course. The reason: I don't know of a single state concealed carry program that adequately trains someone to use a firearm for defensive purposes. Every state I am familiar with has some sort of legal class that teaches about the law, and then requires the student to be able to demonstrate the ability to shoot their gun without shooting themselves. That is about it for skill requirements! What a joke! A good firearms training program focused on self defense is incredibly important and should focus on factors that relate to the mission: self defense. Unfortunately, most people don't address the realitys of defending themselves, and tend to train completely wrong. Some general guidlines: - Choose to defend yourself. Why do I mention this? In a large variety of places/states citizens have the legal right to carry a firearm as of this writing, yet most fail to carry a gun??? Todays new captured the latest shooting in Illinois, at a university, and I can't remember many times I have watched the news not to find some innocent civilian falling victim to a predator. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, THE POLICE CAN'T BE EVERYWHERE!!!
- Train- Yep, I am saying it again. I can't tell you how many times I have been shown a firearm of some sort by someone who was trying to impress me only to find that the owner did not know how to operate his or her own firearm. I have see several people who didn't even know if the gun was loaded. Those wishing to defend themselves should take training as seriously as those who are professional warriors. Training sessions should be at a minimum of once a week, and even better, more than twice a week.
- Train in ALL of the environments that you might be attacked in. We all train on a static range with paper targets, but how many times do we practice defending ourselves from a vehicle, or in our own home? We don't have to fire a single round to practice movement in our homes in the dark, and if we have an enclosed garage we can practicing maneuvering and dry-firing in our vehicles any time we want. (Do I need to say that these exercises should be practiced in safe areas with no ammunition present?)
- Design your training sessions to include threat scanning and recognition. Special Operations team members work on this religously, why wouldn't you? Most civilians that will be called to defend themselves or their family's will have to be very, very good at identifying friends from foes. Can you imagine shooting one of the family members you are trying to defend?
| Physical Keys- Training for self-defense purposes has some key physical aspects that should be analyzed. Some considerations:- Training Programs should be designed specific to your environment. If you plan on defending yourself in your home under low light conditions, then train for that.
- Make sure to train like you plan to fight. Don't train at the range with a nice range holster working on your fast draw and expect to be consistent when doing a concealed draw from a completely different holster and clothing.
- Training repetitions should be done with specific attention paid to learning the correct movement, then increasing speed so you are practicing the skill at full speed. You will NEVER know how fast you can do something until you push yourself at top speed.
- The goal should be to perform repetitions increasing in speed until the accuracy element degrades below your acceptable level (which should be very high, since accuracy is THE key in most games). Then train at that maximum controlled speed until you are able to increase the speed again maintaining a certain level of accuracy.
- Remember that practicing wrong at full speed, will degrade your skill faster than anything you can do. Your learning repetitions must be correct, NEVER EVER perform repetitions faster than you can do them correctly.
| Mental Keys- Self defense is combat...thus this material will be the same as on the Train 4 Combat page. The mental aspects of training for combat, and designing training programs are critical because of what the past has shown us. It has been proven time and time again that warriors will default to their level of training, and will perform in combat the same way they trained themselves to perform on the range. One common story firearms instructors tell is the story of the law enforcement gunfight where officers were found to have picked up their empty brass sometime during the fight. This was a result of their habits on the range repeating themselves in actual combat. Training design should take this into account that whatever we perform in practice, we will most likely do under stress in combat. Other mental aspects that must be focused on when designing training and executing training sessions is a constant will to win, and an attitude that no matter what happens in the training drill, the trainee MUST NOT QUIT. We don't allow ANY quitting in our tactical classes at USSA, even to the point where we get very close to breaking a range safety rule. Developing a NEVER quit attitude is that important!
Mental aspect of a good training program: - Don't separate the mental from the physical. Even if you are practicing by shooting at a paper target, believe in your mind that you are engaging a living breathing human. Make sure you scan and treat post shooting actions as though that live human can always get up and return fire.
- Pay particular attention to believing you can win the fight. Perform each repetition like your life depends on it (it does).
- Educate yourself on the mental issues you may face when in combat, and train to overcome them. I recently read a great book about teams that relied entirely on visual communication when the bullets started flying because of auditory exclusion (hearing goes away during some high stress situations). Know what you may experience because of how your brain works ahead of time, and implement training procedures to overcome these handicaps.
- Believing is achieving. Although this comes from the competition section, it applies in combat as well. Although I don't have the ability to lie to myself and believe I can win unless I feel that I have put in the hours of work where I deserve to win, I do work constantly on building my confidence on performing key techniques....on demand. You should pay a particular amount of attention to "performing on demand" in your training sessions, meaning that you should set up a drill or a shot and repeat it over an over (sucessfully), ingraining your belief in yourself that you can do that particular thing, on demand...perfectly....ten times in a row. This will increase your confidence on hard shots when the pressure is on, because you already KNOW you can succeed. What if you have to take that shot that will pass within inches of your partner...will you be able to? Have you trained to build your confidence?
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| | Transitioning to another weapon...should be automatic. How does this relate to home defense? If you have the legal right, and proper training, you should have a layered system of defense in your home, what happens if you can't get to or your primary doesn't work? (I recommend having access to a weapon in all areas of your home). |
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