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Your Training May Be Lying to You: What Happens When the Fight Isn't Scripted · Making Shooters Better

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've had the opportunity to be shot at hundreds of times.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've had the opportunity to shoot at people thousands of times.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the advantage of being a and I have had the opportunity to watch thousands of rounds being fired back and forth between people.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've been able to observe them under that level of stress.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've been able to look at what they do and how they do it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've crafted what I taught and how we taught it based upon those observations as well as an understanding of the physiological effects of stress.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably just waiting for the signal to go.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And under those circumstances, you're getting good.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But how much of that performance depends on knowing what happens next?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest calls that training clairvoyance.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And once you hear him explain it, you may look at your own practice very differently.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dwayne Wolfe spent more than 25 years in law enforcement and 28 years as a full-time instructor.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's a longtime police warned columnist and a leader's 2025 trainer of the year.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be getting into what happens when the script disappears.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: How stress changes what you notice, like competition and qualification.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Tell only part of the story and how to test whether your skills will actually hold up when someone else controls what happens next.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: What fascinates me is how sure we can all be about what we do before we've ever actually had to do it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation may well challenge you and have you questioning some of those certainties.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because we all like to believe we'll see the danger, make the right decision, be ready and able to act.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're putting those assumptions under the microscope.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is Making Shooters Better, brought to you by Laser Ammo.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's roll the episode.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Duane, welcome to Making Shooters Better and appreciate you being here, mate.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to the conversation today.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I start the podcast with the same question for every guest, mostly because I'm super curious about where everybody's shooting journey began.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So how old were you when you first started shooting?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to say that uh somewhere around, well, before 12 years old probably, um did a little planking.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um my first gun.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to figure out which one it is.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I it was either a single-shot bolt action 410 I bought from one of my cousins, or it was a bolt action 20 gauge and a Martlin 22 semi-automatic that my dad picked up at a rumin cell one day when I convinced them we had to buy some guns so I could go hunting.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was not a hunter, but I wanted to be a hunter.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh he was kind enough to purchase those and uh we went out and did our very best to try and uh lower the grouse population, which we weren't necessarily great at, but we had a good time, good bonding time between dad and I.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you started slightly higher calibers by the signs of things.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh your bird hunting shotguns worked work better than than uh 22s.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: But generally when we went hunting, I carried the 22, which at at my age it was a full-size adult 22.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was walking around with a two by four in my hands.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't real uh advantageous.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was always thankful to my grandfather that he lent me his little browning um semi-automatic, which is a whole lot smaller and a whole lot lighter.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks, grandpa.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have a favorite hunting experience with your dad?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, just being out with him uh and that time together, uh, those are things that memories are made of.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what hunting is about is spending time with those those special people in our life.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh dad not being a hunter, taking me out hunting, um says something.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um It does.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: When it came time to when it came time to deer hunting, he decided, you know what, I know less about deer hunting than I do bird hunting, so he handed me off to the relatives.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I got lots of stories with my cousins um deer hunting as well.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny though that the experiences we have sort of in those formative years with loved ones, particularly father figures, grandfathers, that bonding time.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I remember taking my son hunting, and the first time, you know, we'd gone from target shooting and him getting comfortable with the firearm, being safe, but the first time I said, Okay, we're going out hunting, and it got that title.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: He could barely contain himself.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I won't say he was the quietest hunter I ever went with.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: He made more racket than than I I care to remember, but the experience of turning around, you know, as we wandered the hills of Wyoming, I'd look around and he had a smile on his face, I think, from start to finish.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a phenomenal memory.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And even though he did get better over a very short period of time with going out and remembering to be quiet and really looking for the animals, that experience was worth its weight in gold.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: You bet it is.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I, for years, still do now, teach a personal safety course for civilians called Dirt Dangerous Individual Recognition Training, and I focused on challenging attendees' assumptions in three areas that they are going to see the danger coming in time to be able to respond.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: They'll know what to do with it when it arrives, and even have a capacity to implement a plan.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So reading through your bio and reading through your area of expertise, I felt like there's some similarities there with what you teach to law enforcement, amongst many others.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for you, where do you think the biggest gaps are between what officers maybe think they'll do when the crisis happens and what actually then happens under pressure?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if we break it down into three concepts feed, read, and succeed.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, what's the feed?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Regardless of what you learn, it's being fed to you one way or another.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the 1980s, Street Survival, the book by Caliber Press came out, and in there were photographs of people showing the thousand-yard stare uh blading their body.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's one way to feed it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can look at that, I can say, okay, that's what a thousand-yard stare looks like.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: But later on, am I going to remember it?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if I can't remember it, that message hasn't been fed particularly well.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: If we go on to uh a more advanced program like Travis Yates is doing with this focus program, and I happen to be on the uh uh Board of Advisors, advisory board for that, uh, for him on that.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're taking a look at identifying specific research tells of potential police assault.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're looking at using utilizing video.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are doing a much better job of feeding it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have an opportunity to see it, then they have an opportunity to identify it uh and to build on there.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: The next uh part there where you have the feed, we talked about the read, you got to be able to read it, you gotta remember it in order to read it, and then succeed.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that is whatever it is that you need to do in order to be successful in whatever the task is.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I can feed you the information, you can read the information, but if we don't have a uh vision-action coupling of exactly what do I do when I see that, we're missing a vital gap.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, one of the things they talk about is a uh a target client.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm out on a stop and I've got somebody literally staring at my handgun, they may be staring at it for any number of reasons.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: They may, well, what kind of gun is that?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what kind of holster is that?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Might be also thinking, hey, how do I take that gun away from you and kill you?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if I see it, uh if I haven't thought about or practiced uh backing up, creating distance, uh, letting the person know that I see them looking at my gun and then taking whatever action is appropriate in that in that moment, uh, then I haven't done a uh we've we're we've missed that link to the action phase of how do I deal with a threat once I recognize it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely something to be said there because that visual targeting is one of the things that we try to teach civilians pre-assault indicators.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: People will look at areas of your face before they hit you there, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking, I'm gonna smack you in the mouth, I'm gonna smack you right in the eye, I'm gonna hit you in the jawline, and they'll start targeting that.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, alongside that is then also proxemics and distance between you and that potential attacker.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you're right, it's taking that visual cue and that feed and actually doing something with the information rather than sort of going into a holding pat and going, well, is it?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Am I seeing those signals specifically?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it really going to become a situation where someone's trying to take my gun and having a multitude of potential responses ready to go, especially ready to go in their way that they've practiced and done it under stress?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, how have you in your training put officers under stress enough that the lessons really start to sink in?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a multi-layered question that takes lots of hours of instruction.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um as a police trainer, I had the opportunity to have a uh video simulator, uh, had the opportunity to use force or force munitions, had the opportunity to bring students out with uh paid actors to simulate those situations so the students can learn learn to read them in real time.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the quality.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can talk about how to respond to a domestic, I can take it out, take you out, and I can put you in one.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then dealing with the situations they as they come along.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: The key thing is is making sure that the feeding and the reading are as realistic as possible based on the tasks that you want.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's one thing if I give you a list of field sobriety indicators, it's another thing if I take you into training and have you test someone uh who's actually intoxicated.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've got that level of fidelity, which is gonna add to the memory, which will add to hopefully better future performance when it comes down to doing it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's particularly important for law enforcement officers because they're the ones day in and day out who are gonna find themselves, most likely, on the receiving end of somebody's ill intent.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And getting them into a place where they respect both the distant components and their own speed of response is absolutely critical.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is someone not listening to instructions.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, that could be there for a lot of reasons, but it should be a warning flag.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave it a percentage of 95% of all attacks that ultimately end up happening to law enforcement officers begin with that one indication.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not following instructions, not following commands.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Based on my personal experience, I would agree with this percentage there.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the data.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I just I just have those situations that come to memory.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have one in particular that stands out for you?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Had a guy stopped him uh on a DUI, um, was not following directions.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I had uh told him not to smoke.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: He started smoking.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I went over to attempt to remove the cigarette from his hand.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: He turned around and tried to stick me with the cigarette into my hand.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: He then followed up by grabbing me and punching me in the face uh three times.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, two and a half times.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got my hands up.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sucker punches based on reaction time, based on what I've seen.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Your hands come up somewhere between the second and third punch, which is no fun.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then I got my hands up, got it blocked, pushed him away, uh, and ended up uh he came at me, he ended up getting a front kick in the stomach, and then uh he uh got OC sprayed, and then he decided he wanted to cooperate.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I took him, uh got him down to the ground and got him handcuffed.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but that that and so many other occasions when people refused to follow directions were a clear indicator that an assault was pending, and all too often that's what happened after that.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything in hindsight with obviously the years of experience you now have under your belt that you would have done differently?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the situation he was in, he's you know, I put him in the back of the squad car and uh he didn't have weapons, so I didn't take the cigarettes or the or the lighter off of him.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so going in and after the cigarette uh allowed him to get a hold of me, attempt a stabbing with that uh with that cigarette.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then when he came out, uh I wasn't prepared uh to be grabbed and punched repeatedly.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So based on my experience now, honored hindsight being 2020, uh there's certain things I would have done differently.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like at that point, I I don't remember why I put him in the back of the squad car at that time.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh if I had to do things all over again, I'd I'd just tell him to drop it out of the of the squad car.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and if he fruit then refused, well then things might have ended up the same because again, my my asking somebody to do something doesn't guarantee they're gonna do it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: He gets the final say, I can try and de-escalate the situation all I want.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: They get the final choice.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just hard though, isn't it?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're anything like me, the introspective portion of that becomes or can become somewhat haunting because you're second guessing every decision that made that led up to that.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Finally having to reach in there and try and take it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the normal after uh a situation process we go through.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: We sit and mull it over and over and over again as our brain tries to make sense of it and tries to put it in order and and tries to learn from them.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we've always got the little voice in our head who's critiquing it, and perhaps sometimes not in the nicest voice.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not saying things the nicest way, which is something that you have to be aware of and you have to be prepared for to deal with that, because you know, the voice that talks to you the most is a voice inside your head.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think uh we'd all be a whole lot better in life if we trained that voice to be a whole lot kinder.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when we speak to ourselves, we'd probably end up uh being a whole lot less critical of ourselves and others.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the internal narrative is incredibly important.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I learned this lesson kind of late in life, actually.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the garage doing a DIY project, which is not my favorite thing in the world to do, and I had made the mistake of measuring once and then cutting rather than measuring twice, then cutting.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this piece of lumber was the wrong bloody size.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I was cussing myself out kind of under my breath, but apparently just loud enough for my wife to hear.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Um, who who are you mad at?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: She first when she first came out, she thought I was on the phone.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, with myself, I made a stupid mistake.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But she's like, You talk to yourself like that?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, always have.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I grew up with.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I have replicated in my head.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, if you're if you listen to that all day long, that's gonna have a really bad effect on your psyche.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But but it took somebody else to kind of hear it and recognize it to get me thinking, hold on a minute, there's something obviously wrong with doing that.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Having this really quite aggressive internal narrative.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I I took it upon myself to start doing some study, and I've always been interested in psychology anyway.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I came to the conclusion, long story short, that if I was prepared to listen to the critic, I should also be prepared to listen to the coach.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started over a period of months and then years, change the narrative to be more supportive.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's such an odd thing to start doing, to talk nicely to yourself, but also so bloody important because we learn so much more from those internal dialogues when it's a balance of things, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's okay to be critical, but also are you supportive?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did you do something well and recognizing that?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're our own worst critics most of the time.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, mates.
• 15:59
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• 16:14
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• 16:23
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• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back to the episode.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I read something that I found super interesting, and that is a term you use called a training clairvoyance.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Expand on that.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, training clairvoyance is something that comes about out of well-intended training.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: If we think I look at the Oodloop observe, orient, decide, and act.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes when we're training, what we don't put into the context of what we're doing is observe, orient, and decide.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: All too often that process has already been completed.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, if I'm teaching uh baton and uh on the whistle, uh the bad guy's gonna step and throw a punch at us.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: You will sidestep and you will strike to the leg three times with the baton.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a good way to teach the initial motion, it's a good way to teach what a beginning of a punch looks like.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but we're not doing so we're not figuring in the response time that it would take to actually feed it, understand it, move it, and use the baton.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we end up with a artificial perception of what our abilities are.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so things will happen a whole lot faster than you expect because while you're training, the expectation is here's what's going to happen.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a script, it's it's a closed loop.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's only when we put our students into an open loop.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh you can watch, having been a martial artist for 50 years, uh you can watch a demonstration that I or anybody else does against one of my students, and it will be pre-recorded or pre-rehearsed.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody's also everybody's gonna do it so nobody gets hurt.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yet when you take me or anybody else and you throw us into a real fight, suddenly it doesn't look like the demo anymore.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have to read and respond, and that takes time, which doesn't allow me to do the really nice looking step back, get a good stance, properly execute the block, whatever I'm gonna do, what happens is we end up in a in a melee where I have to respond extremely quickly because that's just how the reality of it works.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the minute you start on a scripted response, which you have to for safety within the parameters of especially martial arts and sparring, you set unrealistic expectations.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a start point and an end point.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is out in the real world, you don't know when it's going to start.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: It might not start.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And 80, 90, 95% of the time, it's not going to.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: It will de-escalate by virtue of either your skills or their unwillingness to actually go through with what they may have been considering a moment before.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't know if it's coming.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then there is the processing, because you're already behind the power curve as to how you're going to respond and what is the correct response.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully at that point it's ingrained, so the response is automatic.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: However, we don't necessarily get everybody trained to that level of expertise, let alone maintain that level of proficiency over time, because defensive tactics, guns, anything that is not practiced on an ongoing basis, if you don't use it, you're going to lose it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that has to be an overarching consideration for everyone, uh whether practicing the combative arts or preparing themselves for self-defense, or police officers uh preparing themselves to go out and uh protect the communities that they serve.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I used to try to put my clients intermittently under a lot of stress and pressure while I was teaching uh Muay Thai and boxing.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd do a lot of pad work and we would spar periodically as well, but train, spar, test, right?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of have that cycle.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: But periodically I'd just mix it up.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't know what's coming today.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't know we'd have the pads on, and I would put pressure on them.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there was always a moment early on during the testing phase where they get the deer in the headlights look, they're like, oh shit, here it comes.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: What am I going to do with it?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it revealed in a lot of cases how even after that level of training, because I was fairly intense with people to the you know, within the confines of training civilians as nicely as possible, and wanting them to come back.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was always that element that they still weren't ready.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, in fact, now I know, I wanted them to know that, to instill in them a desire, to want to avoid violence if at all possible, to not let the false confidence that comes with, well, I've been training for months, I've got to be pretty good by now.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can hold my own.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, because you the element you have not, we can never do in a classroom environment get ready for is the open loop of when it's going to happen.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know when the attack's coming.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you now, okay, here it is.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, you can probably respond fairly well if you've been training effectively up to that point.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is Out on the streets and with people that have ill intent, you're never gonna know.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: But uh regardless of whether it's martial arts or with guns, if you have not sparred, if you have not tested it, uh you can't expect it to work out well.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: We can we can shoot at targets all day long.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can take a series of skill drills and link them together into a course of fire.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we can tell ourselves, I am prepared for a gunfight.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Look at how well I shot.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you I've heard people, competitors talk about there's stress in competition.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you think the stress in competition is the same as a stress in a gunfight, you've never been never had your life threatened.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put it to you to you uh kindly.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the cascading effects that occur uh from stress and everything else that happens has a dramatic effect form.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: If we fail to take those effects into account uh and assume that we're good to go, we're setting ourselves up for failure.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um my analogy is this: we can take the best Olympic saber gold medalist.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's six foot four, he's from South Korea.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's transport him back in time to the ship to uh the deck of a ship called uh the Queen Anne's Revenge.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and he's gonna face an opponent, and that opponent today is Blackbeard, uh, who has a saber.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be on a rolling deck, cannons and guns are gonna be going off.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's gonna be blood, there's gonna be screaming, there's gonna be all kinds of horrors.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we put the two together, who do you think's gonna win the fight, Blackbeard or the gold medalist who practices on a mat, where a touch, where you get a little connection to indicate that you have a point, means that you get the point and you win.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that the the touch was a cut, let alone a lethal cut.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and all too often competitors mistake performance in that realm for performance in the real world.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that is one of the critical downfalls in law enforcement training and training of civilians.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you have not tested your skill against another human being, uh, you have not placed yourself in a position to learn what you can and can't do.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've had the opportunity to be shot at hundreds of times.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've had the opportunity to shoot at people thousands of times.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's the advantage of being a bad guy.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I have had the opportunity to watch thousands of rounds being back fired back and forth between people.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've been able to observe them under that level of stress.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've been able to look at what they do and how they do it.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've crafted what I taught and how we taught it based upon those observations as well as an understanding of the physiological effects of stress.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and some of the things I see people teaching out there, it may work really great in competition, but that is an entirely different arena.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you mistake one for the other, it sets you up for failure.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was on a made the mistake of responding to some Facebook postings on a group that apparently was mostly competitive shooters.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And anytime you had anything to say that didn't go along with what they said, they would say, well, post a video of your shooting a build drill.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently, for competitive shooters, how well you shoot a bill drill is an indicator of your skill.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh eventually I wrote bags, well, post a video of you facing another person in a uh well uh uh choreographed uh force-on-force scenario showing your skills that they hold up under that level of stress.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's when they booted me off the site.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's okay because there was nothing I was gonna say that was gonna convince some of those people uh as to my perception of the error of their ways based upon my training and experience versus their level of training and experience.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to play a sport, and I used to sport fight when I was young.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I can tell you the first time I got into a real fight, it's a whole lot different.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's messy.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's to say nothing of the fact that it's also 360 degrees.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone that spent time in the military or law enforcement, that's probably one of the most disconcerting elements of having a real world interaction or engagement.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: You you you in a dojo, chances are in a controlled environment, you have an opponent, maybe you have several opponents, you can see them, you know where it's coming from.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the real world with a 360-degree world, even if there are not threats surrounding you to that point, there are friendlies, there are civilians, there are other considerations that that individual is now shouldering, especially in the case of law enforcement, where a firearm is obviously always an option.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you spent years studying how people perform under pressure.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think that most people misunderstand about the difference?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think this is fascinating, the difference between looking at a situation and then actually recognizing what it means.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is a very good, very in-depth question.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um It's one thing to look at something and recognize it when you're sitting cool, calm, and collected.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I do for police one is I analyze police videos.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and people can sit and they can be in the cool, calm, collected atmosphere of their home, looking at their computer screen or their phone, and they can look at the video which is clear and in focus, uh, and they are detached, and they are uh in a calm state, and they can analyze what they see very, very clearly.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got all kinds of people who are always willing to put in their two cents worth how things shoulda, could have, would have been done.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of my favorite sayings from one of my mentors, Brian Willis, is anytime you hear what I would have done is what follows after that is bullshit because you weren't there.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um what they fail to take into account is vision and attention.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly what I am looking at, because only I know what I see.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: The camera, body camera or video doesn't tell you what I'm seeing.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't tell you how I'm interpreting it, interpreting that.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't tell you how my training and experience uh makes me focus on certain things.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me see things a certain way.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then my training and experience then uh kicks into play to tell me what it is I'm seeing making sense.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then my training and experience kick in in order for me to come up with a solution.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the solution that I'm gonna come in into under stress is gonna be the first satisfy satisfacing solution, the one that satisfies and suffices.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't get an opportunity in most cases, at critical instances, to sit down and weigh all the possibilities, uh, figure out which is the best of all the choices.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: The brain will grab the first choice.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it may not be the first choice that your brain grabs, uh, it may not be uh the second one that your brain grabs, but it's what's in my brain, and that's what my brain grabs.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I go with because right now I'm in survival mode and I don't have the time uh for any of the choices.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a conscious decision, it's a subconscious decision.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And understanding the physiological effects of stress and what it does to all the things I've talked about is something that is greatly misunderstood and all too often not taken into account.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: What I would tell people is anytime somebody's gonna teach you about firearms or shooting uh from the aspect of self-defense, is ask them what is it in your training that you do to accommodate for the physiological effects of stress?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if they look at you and go, huh?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they may be able to teach you how to shoot paper, uh, but they're not gonna be able to prepare you for a gunfight.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is, you know, it I think one of the biggest misunderstandings, especially competitors, is uh if I were to ask them what's the effect on the ciliary muscle caused by vasoconstriction, most of them will get a quizzical look on their face, like, what are you talking about?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens is under stress, when your blood goes to the center of your body, the ciliary muscle is designed to focus the eyes, and your eye shifts to far focus, which means you may not be able to see your front sight, um, which many people will deny that actually happens.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet, over the arguments uh that I've seen, we know it's a fact.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with red dots, does that potentially overcome that?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, provided that you're not looking at the dot, that you're looking through the dot at the threat.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I red dots, I think, are are uh provide you an advantage over sights for sighting under stress.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: However, there's no way for me to tell whether or not your visual focus is on the dot or your threat.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you have a problem there.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we did in our program is, you know, we taught the marksmanship, we taught them to focus on the front sight, uh, to shoot for qualification when they can see their front sight in order to be accurate.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: We also, once we're done with the qualification portion, would get into what we call the gunfighting portion, where we would tape up the back sight and we teach the students to look at the threat, use the back of the slide as your sight, and at five yards in and bring a gun up and on target, and use that previous experience of presenting it up to your eye and using the back of the slide as my guide in order to shoot quickly and accurately.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that ability was first probably recognized in a book back in the 1910s or 20s when you when uh Sykes and Fairburn um taught their their system when they were um teaching the police in Shanghai way back when.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they understood, may not have understood the the uh physiology and psychology behind it, but they understood what was happening and they accommodated.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: The body alarm reaction wasn't first documented by psychologists until the 1930s.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were 10 to 20 years ahead based upon their observations in real gunfights.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: As a result, they took their officers in and they trained them in a fun house or a house of horrors, depending on how you want to uh define it, where they were going in against simulated attacks.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, back in those days, they didn't have the ability to uh use firing cotton wads with blanks or or better yet now, force on force.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: But they they shot paper targets as a result of understanding how the eyes work, teaching them to present the guy, the gun up to the eye and use that as your aiming method, uh had very high hit ratios, good success rates under that level of stress.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: In if you believe the literature, uh one of them supposedly was involved in 300 gunfights, which is a pretty good gunfight record, um, if it's true.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So expand on the body alarm process.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what's gonna happen is this when you're suddenly startled, uh your knees are gonna bend, your body's gonna face towards your threat, uh, your eyes are gonna switch from near focus to far focus.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and if you got a gun in your hand, your hands are gonna punch out straight.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the things that uh there was a study done back in the 80s, done by two people, Burroughs and um Wes Moreland, and they took a bunch of weaver-trained shooters and they put them put them in force-on force scenarios.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what they found is in the majority of time, unless they had already adopted a weaver stance prior to firing, they naturally took an isosceles position because that's the bot the position that the body takes under stress and under threat.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet there's been a debate how many decades as to which one is better, weaver or isosceles, or modified or improved, or whatever version you want to call whatever version you want to call.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the things that I did when I first became a firearms instructor is I read that and I said, well, let's do some research.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I took my students and they were taught by the senior firearms instructor who shot weaver.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the students were shot both taught both ways to shoot, the majority of them following his bleed.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then I had my one class where we used isosceles, and that we put him into a series of force-on-force scenarios.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at three things.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, you know, I understand that they're going to shift, didn't make a difference on accuracy.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we found out the people who were trained to shoot from an isosceles shot from an isosceles with a much better hit ratio than people who were taught to shoot weaver who shot isosceles in most cases under stress.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: We changed in my class how we trained.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Back then he was basically doing 1960s.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Every day was uh fire string, which is basically every day is is a qual day, and it's red on the right, red on the left, red on the fire line, commence fire fire.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I added in things like uh targets where we take a sleeve of a shirt and attach it to the target, put a gun in it, throw a string up through the rafters and have that gun come up at the same time, we'd yell gun, and the students would sidestep and they would shoot.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we had a bunch of uh we had reactive targets.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and based on uh the information I got out of Dave Grossman's book on combat, excuse me, on killing, uh, we then looked at the shooting ratios because I saw our students engaging in force on force scenarios where a large number of them would not shoot when it was lawfully justified and common sense in that point to use deadly force.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that always bothered me until I uh read Dave's book.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we found that that increased the shooting ratio uh to 100% in the group that I did with reactive targets versus significantly lower uh shooting rates in other groups.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the other one we looked at was uh the effect of tactical breathing, the box breathing.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: We had uh two groups do their box breathing before they went in.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: They had one, we had one group not do the box breathing.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when we looked at the heart rates, uh compared with when they're sitting in the classroom versus when they finished, and it's not highly scientific, um, but you could literally see based on the level heart rate, the lower the heart rate average for that class, the higher the hit ratio.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was literally boom, boom, boom, without without any, uh, without any uh deviation.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: The higher the heart rate, the lower the um hit ratio.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the beginning of of my foray into research and looking at what the human body actually does under stress and trying to accommodate uh in my teaching uh in order to get my students to perform best under the level of stress they're gonna be under versus just training them to shoot on paper.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to back up for a second.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you managed to take a class of people that were hesitant and or at different points when it was reasonable to engage their firearm that didn't, and got that class to go to 100%.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: But what was the actual process or the catalyst do you think for moving them psychologically from the unwilling to actually do what they need to do to, okay, I'm engaged and I'm gonna do, uh I'm gonna pull my firearm, I'm gonna engage.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: What was that uh work process like?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: What were you doing?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but basically what we did is we uh we gave them lifelike targets, we gave them reactive targets, so you have that stimulus response, stimulus response, stimulus response, which is the biggest factor um where they're getting that reward after they do what they need to do.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a threat, I need to sidestep, I need to draw, I need to fire.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and ingraining that.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was probably the biggest thing that made made that difference.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and along the way, we made other other changes and other choices.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um but w later on, like six months later, we put them into scenarios where entire groups, uh three, four, five people would not fire was justified.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the group that was taught the new method, we had 100% fire rights.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's absolutely critical.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh distinguishing between shooting at paper and preparing people for the job that they have to do.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you think the gap essentially is the realism of the training?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like looking at paper target and saying this is now a threat and getting people to engage the way they should was one hurdle.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: But implementing as realistic a process as possible between reactive targets.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of you know an arm on a string with a gun coming up that visually signals a fight time is on, was was uh I don't know, especially as former military, having a very hard time figuring out why somebody might have a difficulty not shooting a target when the rangemaster has said, This is your threat, go, and not engaging versus just adding what is essentially a very simplistic method for visually showing the threat and that being the difference maker for getting 100% of people to now finally engage that target.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same- Well, if you take a look at the military when the US military, when they switched over from their teaching methods from World War II to Vietnam, what did they do?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: They had humanoid targets that popped up when you shot them, they fell down.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of standing on the firing line, you were in a foxhole.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: These targets would pop up at indeterminate distances, you would fire, they'd fall.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Stimulus response, stimulus response.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: According to the research, according to the book, that raised the firing rate in combat from around 20% to closer to 80 or 90%.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just that simple change.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the best thing that we could do even better for people is a concept that Jeff Quayle created called gun sparring.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Jeff created a system called um Stress Vest, where a laser is used, and if you're wearing the vest, you get one of two options.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: You get a jolt of electricity or it sounds a beep.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you don't have to use this equipment, you have to buy this equipment to do this.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can do good firearms training with blue guns.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we could use an aerosol where you take a earplug and put it in the magazine to keep it from coming into contact with the slide lap liver to allow it to continue to fire repeatedly.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, guns don't have to go bang for good firearms training.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what he would do is he would have one person dressed in a hoodie and he'd give them a knife, a gun, and I would suggest you also want to add in a cell phone and a wallet, and then they would draw.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the students get to read what the draw looks like because me reaching into my pocket for my wallet is different than me than reaching for a gun.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: When I reach into my pocket, my hand is like this in order to fit in, whether it's my front pocket or back pocket.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I grab a gun, my thumb has to come off this.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you recognize that and you teach that to officers, there's an initial clue right off the bat.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: The height, if I'm reaching for my wallet, my pocket's always going to be lower than my belt line.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: The height of that elbow can tell whether or not I'm reaching my waistband or my pocket.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: So those little cues were now feeding, reading.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it comes out, we have okay, this is what it looks like when I grab my wallet, and by golly, it's a wallet, and this is what it looks like when it's a gun, and my goodness, it is a gun.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then the responding, moving offline, drawing their weapon, and firing to stop the threat, utilizing cover when appropriate.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: And these little itty bitty Tony Blower used the concept of microfights, just little mini micro-gun fights, I think is absolutely critical to the read, excuse me, feed, read, and succeed concept of preparing officers for the arena, which they're going to have to deal with, or anyone else is going to deal with self-defense issues with a viral.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it was very interesting for me to hear that one of the other methods you implemented was covering up sites.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would do the same thing as part of my tactical classes when someone had reached a reasonable level of proficiency and their mechanics was were down, they had good presentation, good you know, trigger press follow-through.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: All of that was kind of ingrained and they had reached a point where that was pretty good.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would often either blue tape or any kind of take, just cover up whether it's a red optic or the front and rear sight, and say, okay, now you know from one yard to two yards, three yards, four yards, five yards, where do we lose our capacity to point shoot under reflex and under stress?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had someone that did well at that and they sort of progressed through that portion of the training well, I utilized um do you need you know those shock knives?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: They have the little electric current that runs around the outside that's made by Jeff Will.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I okay, well, we'll revisit that in a minute.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would use one of those.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'd give them a shock.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, invariably people were unhappy about that.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, how unhappy are you gonna be in a real fight when your physiology doesn't match what you're actually gonna experience, you know, from the range to here.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you as much of a uh replication of the reality of the situation you're gonna face over here on the range.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, people they got with the program pretty quick, but it was always interesting to add that to pain and fear stimulus.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because at some point during the training, I wouldn't even have to touch them with the knife.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: They'd hear it crackle, and that would be enough to send them like into that.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, good, that's what I want.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I want you there so you know, okay, now I can still hit this target, but at what distance, where do the wheels come off?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so that progression.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you said the uh I you forgot the last name Quail.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one who came up with the shock knife.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: So do you use that?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, we never uh we didn't use this, didn't use the shock knife, no.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I we never, I mean, this is something I learned since I retired.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but and I did a class, actually two classes at ILED on shooting with science, where I took all the science that was available and looked at how we implemented in our training and the effects that we.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Saw.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: One point I want to make before we go on is you use the term point shooting.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't use the term point shooting.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: To me, point shooting indicates that I'm pointing.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, don't have a visual uh alignment with the weapon.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: What I refer to is alternate sight method.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: I am sighting the weapon.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's up in front of my eyes.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm using the slide as my sight.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: If I see either side, I know it's pointed either direction.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: If I can see the front sight with the tape on, I know I'm high.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we're using that kinesthetic memory to present that weapon level is the same.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And because at that point, by the time they've achieved that point, when they bring the gun up and stop it, the sights are aligned.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would suggest the same thing.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you're running red dot, you shut the dot off.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And at certain distances, uh, and I'm not an expert on red dot.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I've got one on my gun, but it's it's different than what most people use.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I get the chest in the window and I press the shot, guess what?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: The shot's gonna hit where the window's showing.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to find the dot up close and personal.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and you have to determine what range that is for your gun, um, based on because they've all got slightly different uh window sizes.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's how you make shots quickly, because generally in a gunfight we're behind the curve.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the sooner we get get shots on target, the sooner we'll get the results we need, which is somebody stopping their deadly intent.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that uh a problem that I see with a lot in uh law enforcement training is the targets that we shoot at.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you take a look at most uh fair number of targets, you will see that, well, number one, a bullseye is not analogous to human anatomy.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where is your tan ring?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: What size is your tan ring?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you look, go by the old center mass, which is you take a line from the shoulder down to the hip and the line down the shoulder where it crosses, that's your center mass.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's generally right below your soloplexus.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to stop somebody quickly, you don't want to shoot there.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I took a class from Dr.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Williams, who teaches a class on shooting with X-ray vision.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he explained to us if you think of the area that you want to hit, it's about the size of a four-inch circle.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: It goes from here down to the bottom of the solar plexus and it sits right against the front of the chest.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you want to put your rounds.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I've never made a target for it because unless you're standing directly straight on, it changes at the angle.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to use your imagination.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I took his concepts and I created a target that has that as the 10.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: That area, big area, is the 10.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Two areas off to the side are the nine.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the lungs.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and after that, everything else is green.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you have red, which means what?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Stock.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yellow, mean caution, green, probably going to keep going.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is it perfect?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when I look at training officers to shoot someplace that's not gonna stop somebody, it makes no sense to me.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: What uh and on my uh my department, the 10 ring was down here.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I told my officer, I don't want you to shoot at the 10 because we're not scoring.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: All right, I want you to shoot at the eight.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the eight on most targets is where you want to put around at.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: So either adjust your targets or if you've got a target that has that, don't worry about the score.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because the score doesn't matter.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Bad guy doesn't know what the score is, all right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: He'll let you know when you've achieved your goal.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta aim at that eight, you gotta aim high chest, or if you want to stop people in gunfights, and then understanding where that tube is based on the angle that you are to your threat, or to get your rounds to go through, because that's not a that's anatomy and not target shooting.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Which again is another distinction right between competitive shooting and the points you would score in a competitive match, comparative to shooting in real life to stop a threat so that you make it home at the end of your shift, or in a civilian's case, you make it through this deadly force encounter and are, you know, able to uh to survive.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: An A zone isn't not an A zone in a gunfight.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's shorter than that, I think maybe a little narrower.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Don't quote me, I haven't looked at an A zone lately.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because there again, that's the difference between the reality and the competition.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just a quick reminder: if you're enjoying the episode, don't forget to hit that like button.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your support means the world and it helps us keep pushing forward, creating this content.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back to the podcast.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I see in competition that usually drives me completely crazy is how out from behind cover or concealment a competitive shooter will go to make their shots when in reality, if there's incoming rounds and they have the right of way, you wouldn't be sticking your frickin' nog in out in half your body from behind that wall.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: You would be using that cover and that or that concealment to the greatest degree possible.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's a training score.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the competitions I'm looking at, uh, there isn't cover and concealment, snow fence.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: That you can see right through.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, so I I can see what's happening, I know where everything's at, let alone the fact that I got to run the course ahead of time to figure out which way I want to shoot it.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah when I when I hear competitive shooters talk about all that, it increases your decision-making process.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: If I get to run it ahead of time, where's the decision making?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: When do things change?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: When do I have to react?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a closed loop, not an open loop.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so and I'm not knocking competitive shooting.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great way to build your skills, but understand that those are skill drills, isolated skill drills put together in a course of fire.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is the equivalent of uh me deciding I want to be a quarterback and I'm gonna hang a tire in my backyard.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna spend all my time throwing that football through the tire, and then I'm gonna walk onto the field and say I'm ready to be an NFL quarterback.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a few more things that come into besides that.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and if you don't recognize that, you're you're um Uncle Jesse throwing the football over the mountain in uh Napoleon dynamite.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you're not living in the realm of reality.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that should change in competitive shooting or any of the shooting competitions that people tend to go into is the course of fire should be a complete mystery until the last possible moment.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we should construct them in a manner that is comparative to the reality of the situation.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: You are not going to be able to peer through that fence or through that wall to get to your target.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: The target is going to be moving.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way that asshole is sitting there waiting for you to show up and shoot him.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be moving.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: So are you.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: The position from which you shoot, you're going to have to be adaptable.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you're also going to want to try and keep as much of your bod, your body, behind the cover or the concealment.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be sticking your noggin out three feet from behind this fence.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my suggestion if you want to shoot competitively.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Plan on losing.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Go into it, if you're a police officer with your duty rig.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Utilize cover appropriately.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do the tactics the way you normally would, versus running towards a target to get to the box in plain view and then shooting it.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: Which is probably going to get kicked off if you do it correctly.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: But in in the places when you when you can apply it, I've never shot competitively, so I I'm talking a little bit from inexperience just from what I've seen here.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and just don't worry about your score.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just do it correctly.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're engaging all the things that you want to be doing in a gunfight, uh, at that level of performance, stress, whatever.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how many people want to do that?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just spent a bunch of money to to lose.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: How many more times do I want to do that?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking with a uh competitive shooter oh a couple weeks ago, and he said, Well, you know, I've gone and I'm I'm now ranked uh grandmaster, uh, and he's a law enforcement firearms instructor.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he says he said I spent thousands of dollars on ammunition and hotel rooms and been gone uh every weekend to a match.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then people say, Well, you know what?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Law enforcement firearms training stinks.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Cops are lousy shots.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why can't they all be competitive shooters?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how many thousands of dollars does that take?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Where's that money gonna come from?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you're working, if if you're running out every weekend to do that, well, guess what?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Cops work rotating shifts, and occasionally they like to see their families, you know.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you have all of those things that come to play, and and most police officers do not want to be competitive shooters.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: What we have to do is give them the tools, understanding the threats and the parameters which gunfights occur in order to best prepare them for the situations they'll run into, which is not competition.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then you people say, well, cops are lousy shots, and my response to that is always, well, are you comparing your hit ratios and on the range to hit rates in gunfights?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they some departments don't have very good hit ratios.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, why?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, bad guys move.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a level of threat.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: You got rounds potentially incoming.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was at the uh Force Science Conference last week, and uh Dr.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Simon Baldwin out of Canada was one of the keynote speakers, and he got up and talked about the research that they did.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what they did with the RCMP is they changed their qualification.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: They changed it to the 678 qualification, which is you fired six rounds at seven yards in eight seconds.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's all they have for qualification if I understood correctly.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now you look at that, well, that's a really long time.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is a really long time.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but then once the qualification was done, they spent their time on training.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what happened.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: By cutting down that one qualification and giving more time for training, they went from a 31% or low 30% hit ratio in gunfights to 50%.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because they changed their emphasis.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I understand that we have to demonstrate an ability of marksmanship to what extent.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we have 50 rounds at a qualification?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's how many bullets are in the box.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need 50 rounds to prove that I'm proficient with my firearms?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh NASA, the NASA police used to, or maybe they still do used to do a qualification where you put a sheet of typing paper up and here's the deal.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: On the signal, you draw a percent, you fire one round.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's gotta hit the paper.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it had to be in, I think, two seconds.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you could do that, you're proficient.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now we get 49 more rounds to either save the money on or spend doing more realistic shooting.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a you know, you've got budgetary concerns, you've got time concerns, you've got all these other concerns when it comes to training police officers.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the police will never be as highly trained as they need to be to do the job that they do.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh bic you you look at the Navy SEALs, how much money is spent on one Navy SEAL to get them to their level of proficiency, how many rounds of ammunition do they fire, uh, the realistic scenarios they go through, and they spend far more training than they do deploying, unless we're in war.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: And even then they still get rotated out.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Officers spend more time out on the street than they do training.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: One of the tools that we have that we offer laser ammo is CQB in a box, and which is ironic because it comes in a bag.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it's three targets.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: They are laser sensored.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can put different sizes of the actual hip panels inside these man-sized targets and then set them up.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot of police departments that have picked them up and are using them well.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things I try to stress with everyone that grabs that equipment, whether they're using them with uh either our recall guns or drive mags inside their own service pistols for training, is always make sure somebody else sets these targets up.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely near useless for you to put that target up in a specific position in a room, make entry to that room knowing exactly where the target is, because the reality is you're not going to know where it is.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And movement and movement to contact is done very differently when you know where the target is versus when you have no idea where that threat could be.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it could be around the next corner, it could be left of that center fed room.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: You will move the way you're supposed to move, slowly and methodically, in my opinion, to contact if you don't know if you don't know where that threat is.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a tool that is being utilized by departments because of the convenience.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: There is no weekend trip they got to go take.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: We can put pressure on them either through electronic stimulus, like I like to use, but there are different ways to up the ante and put the pressure on them so that when they begin the exercise, they're already stressed.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important for, particularly for civilians, to understand that there is some stress that comes with competition, for sure, absolutely, because we get nervous, we don't want to embarrass ourselves.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: What if I screw up?
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: There are safety concerns, or all kinds of things that go through our heads.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that is a part, like a thin sliver of the stress that is felt when somebody else potentially has the intent of taking your life and you now have to engage.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's trying to find ways to teach civilians that difference, but also how and why they should interact and follow lawful instructions from law enforcement when they have an encounter.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not proud of it.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been pulled over a couple of times for speeding.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: It happens, right?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had a problem with a law enforcement officer, ever.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of my background, I always put the windows down, I always have my hands so they can see them.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: I always greet them with, you know, hey, how are you today?
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Great, fine, right, start calm.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: If they give me instructions, I follow them.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: It seems fairly easy to do, but somehow we've forgotten, I think, along the way, to respect the officers and respect the job they're trying to do.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: And also, and I want to go back to something you said at the very beginning, you have no idea what that officer's experience was.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: It could have been yesterday that he had the most violent encounter any human being could ever experience.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's on duty, and he's dealing with you doing the exact same behaviors that this person exhibited the day before.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then that brings us to another topic.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we talk about the concept of pre-escalation.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I've been through a critical incident, that's in my memory bank.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: If I run into a situation that looks like that, is similar to that, my amygdala is probably going to kick in and you're going to get a different response than if I hadn't been through it.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things we need to focus on in our training is understanding the physiological effects of stress, but also learning to modulate our own level of arousal.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a product out there called Neurosmart, which allows officers to wear a wearable device that monitors a number of things indicating a level of stress.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: By utilizing that device, you can put officers into a scenario, you can identify what and when they're experiencing stress, then you can go back and you can have them do cyclical breathing to lower that arousal level down in order to decrease the likelihood that that will continue to cause that level of arousal.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: People who are at a lower level are going to perform better cognitively than people who are through the roof.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's an absolutely critical tool.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: I talked about the effects of doing box breathing prior to putting the students in.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have that opportunity all too often as police officers.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can do my box breathing on the way to a call, I can do my box breathing in preparation and making an entry.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: But when something happens immediately, I don't necessarily have time to regulate it.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if I've gone through training that makes me less reactive to that, in the short term, it can improve my response.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in the long term, because police officers, because they have their amygdala activated so often by stressful situations, tend to be or can become hyper-vigilant or hyper-reactive to situations.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, by lowering that and allowing them to do that along with doing mindfulness training, we can lower that level of uh alarm uh in them uh when they see things uh and potentially cut down on potential problems caused from a triggering of that effect uh and uh and be able to identify when we need to be in that alarm.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we've mentioned box breathing a couple of times.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know there are going to be individuals that are not familiar with that as a mechanism through which to lower and regulate potentially a stress response.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's it's it's pretty simple.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, you want to sit up straight, put your hand on your stomach.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: You want to inhale through the nose for a slow fore count.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: As you're doing that, you want to have your stomach come out so you're breathing with your diaphragm, not your chest.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: You do that for a slow fore count, then you hold it for a slow fore count.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then you exhale out through your mouth for a slow count, hold it for a forecount, and then continue that.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that three or four cycles or as many cycles as you can do.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: I used to use that on my way to hot calls the entire weight of the call.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other way, the faster way, is called a cyclic sigh.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: And all you do is you take an inhalation, again, using your diaphragm, then you top it off to make sure your lungs are fully uh inflated.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: You pause for a second, then you exhale through the mouth.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: The critical components are in through the nose, because the nose, the brain reads uh air coming in through the nose as relaxing.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Think about when you stop and smell the flowers.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Under stress, we have a tendency to breathe through our mouths, all right?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the body recognizes that as an alarm state.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to inhale to calm.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want to exhale to get it out.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the exhale has to be longer in the inhalation.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and what you're doing is you're reducing the level of CO2.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: The body reads CO2 as an alarm, it increases stress.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so by reducing that, we can have better cognitive processes and and allow our brains to perform at a better uh ability uh by keeping that arousa level down.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: So also have read that those type of breathing exercises helps to ensure that we are taking in full lung falls of air.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we tend to be really stressed, breathing gets shallow, tend to narrow up the inhalation process.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that and is there some element to this as well?
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the brain recognizes that we're breathing through our nose, so technically, or you know, by virtue of uh previous habits, that's a relaxing or a relaxed state for us to be in.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is there also a portion of this that is is stimulation of of nerves, like maybe the vagus nerve or something like that, where we're introducing a breathing pattern that helps soothe that?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any uh truth to that?
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have now exceeded my level of expertise on the science of breathing.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those things that I think is underutilized by people when they get stressed because the ability to think in a variety of different ways in terms of problem solving when we are stressed and our cognitive ability reduces, the prefrontal cortex starts to shut down, uh fight or flight system kicks in, right?
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're limited on the bandwidth we have available to problem solve.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think anything that allows people to broaden that out, get their thinking back online, their higher functioning thinking, is always going to be beneficial.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think for someone who's never experienced or maybe experienced only a few times in their life a stressful um incidents, understanding how you can modulate or control the fear response is absolutely critical if you want any chance at all of thinking clearly.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think the world itself would be a nicer, safer place if everyone would learn to pox breathe and use a cyclical sigh.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Think of all the problems it would resolve.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just calm down.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: If only it was that easy, right?
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you're right, with the breathing, that at least gives them a chance.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for the listener who practices regularly, sincerely believes that they are prepared for a critical incident, what do you think is perhaps one assumption you want them to test first to see if they're truly ready?
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: Flag football.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: We played against another team.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: We never just tried to run plays and then went in for the big game.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: Test yourself as much as humanly possible.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: And recruit others to help you test you.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you got to do it safely and you have to have to have safety measures in play.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have officers every year who are seriously injured or killed doing realistic training because people do not follow protocols.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I emphasize you can do it with blue guns.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: In the history of the world, no one ever has been seriously injured or killed by a blue gun.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: Guns don't have to go bank.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to be firing projectiles.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, any one of those will place you in an opportunity to test your response.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even when we're doing the gun sparring concept, we have a limited portion of the oot loop because we know what they're there, what we're there for.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: We know what's going to happen.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: But it's reading it correctly and responding and ingraining that response of moving as you draw to make yourself a harder target to hit.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: We have too many repetitions on the range of standing still, and too often we see people standing perfectly still in a situation where if they're moving, they're more than likely uh would have a better outcome.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been a fascinating chat with you.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go and we sort of summer summarize everything, where can people connect?
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want them to go to either book you to come in and speak or do some training with them?
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can catch me on LinkedIn.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably my best uh social contact out there.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just hit me up on LinkedIn and I'm there.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we'll put the link to uh your LinkedIn on the show notes, and we'll also when we uh post this for the YouTube podcast, the video version, we'll put it there too.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we effectively started today with three assumptions that we're gonna see danger, we're gonna know what to do, and that we're actually gonna have the skills to implement it.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think my takeaway from the conversation is that everyone needs to test themselves in as realistic a situation or as realistic training as they can find, and do it as often as they're able to do, because it's the reality of the stress that they will feel in a similar real life situation that is going to undo them if even if they think their skills are good.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: The wheels are going to potentially come off the wagon, and their actual skills is going to deteriorate faster than they probably have anticipated prior to something like that.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: Fairwit.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, you're dead on.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the key, uh one of the other keys is maintaining your level of proficiency.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you talked about your product with the laser.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: If I it was if Dwayne was in charge of the world, every police department would have a laser system for their officers to go in and refresh their skills on a regular basis in order to stay sharp.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think between the CQBs and the simulator, we have, because we do have a lot of police departments that run it.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we would love more to do it because it's the convenience.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do have a lot of departments now that have it set up in one room, it doesn't take up much room.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they can set up the simulator, they can do video scenario-based training, but they can also then run a score, a scoreboard, a whiteboard right next to the screen.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of my shift, I ran the recall pistols and I shot this.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: The next shift comes in.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna beat, I've got to beat Bob.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Bob did a good score, I'm gonna have a crack.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it not only does it obviously build team camaraderie and a little bit of uh sort of fun competition between them, but it means they've already they've already had their first shot from holster using the recall guns, right?
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: They they are as similar to their real firearms and the service weapons as you can get, but they've fired the first round potentially.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: They've got that cold shot out the way before they even begin the shift.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully it gives them an opportunity to train one time before they head out on the shift and then hopefully make it back to their families that night.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me for today.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fun.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we could probably have run this for at least a two-hour and just dug into it.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been fascinating.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me once again.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on what platform you're on, don't forget to subscribe and leave a like.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: We truly appreciate your support.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us keep bringing in the guests you want to hear from.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now that's the end of today's episode, and I look forward to catching up with all of you in the next one.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.