Reality Based Training

When you train for something, you want your training to be as close to the real thing as possible. We can think of many occasions where people actually engage in their activity of choice for practice. People play basketball to practice basketball. Drill alone will not make them a better player. Musicians practice by actually playing their instruments... not simply reading music and imagining their movements. The same can be said for dancer, painters, carpenters, etc... just about any skill.

Then what about those of us who train to engage in deadly situations? You can't exactly practice a gunfight. Or can you? It's true that there are some amazing technologies and installations that allow great training. Kill houses and Simunition being at the top of that list. Where the threat gets as real as it can without actually throwing real ouchy, hurty, killy bullets your direction. But why is it so important? Why cant you go to the range, practice drawing, firing your rounds, and re-holstering and call it good? It's because deadly threats will never present themselves as static targets with bulls-eyes painted on their chests. You may be really good at shooting a three inch grouping at 10 yards.... but see how well you do it when there is a criminal bearing down on you with a knife intent on doing you harm.

A day at the range and a home invasion are not even close. If you think so, you are training for failure.

Let's break it down a little farther. Let's take a simple home invasion. Let's assume you have a family, they are asleep, and a bad guy forces a door open and comes in. You grab your gun and intend on ensuring your family's safety. Here are the factors you may not have considered: It's probably a low light situation. Is that a knife or gun in his hand or the steak he was planning on throwing to the family guard dog? that could be the difference between justifiable homicide and murder. You may be in an unconventional shooting position. Peering around corners with feet dodging furniture and other obstacles, it's going to be pretty hard to keep that weaver stance. You have to think about where your bullets could go if you miss... or if the bad guy misses. We all know the "Know your target, and what's behind it rule", but how often do you consciously review that before you press the trigger? I can safely say that pretty much no one at a range ever consciously thought about where the bullets go after punching a neat little hole in your paper target. Your rounds can go through walls and injure sleeping family members. And yes, I hear the cries of "That's why I use hollow point or frangible ammunition". Sure, that works for you.... but what about Mr. Badguy? I'm sure that when he got his bullets, he was thinking about shooting through walls accidentally. Are you inviting stray pullets to go past you and injure a family member? Then there is the mental and physical trauma associated with coming face to face with someone who may try to kill you. Oh and the tunnel vision that may not allow you to see Badguy's buddy.

What happens when all this is put together? The heart rate increases to levels that under any other circumstances would warrant a visit to the ER. Your thinking brain gets hijacked by your instinctive brain. Logical thinking and fine motor skills go out the window. You actually revert to a neanderthal like state of physical and mental ability. As crazy as it sounds, it's well documented. It's the reason police officers in gunfights miss 80% of the time. It's all about your body trying to preserve itself. And it does that by increasing the heart rate, releasing chemicals that cause faster blood clotting, blocking the pain senses, eliminating complex thought, tightening muscles ( your body actually hardens your muscles to create a kind of armor that harder to penetrate), and increasing cellular energy production. Put all that together, and you become a very different person. How do we overcome this to be effective in life-threatening situations?

Reality based training is the answer. You will interact with situations that artificially create those body fight responses and your thinking brain and start to adapt. Think of the first skydive with the one-thousandth. How different would they feel from a physiological perspective. You would go from being out of your mind scared to calm, cool, and collected. A place where you could deal with a chute failure or other malfunction. Something you could not have done your first time around. Don't let your first gunfight be your first gunfight.

Master the fundamentals with good practice and technique.  Think beyond the tangible. You will fight how you train... so train how you want to fight. A static caveman with a bulls-eye painted on his chest? Or a mobile, thinking warrior?

Stay Low, Move Fast

Kill First, Die Last

One Shot, One Kill

No Luck, All Skill