Sean Griffith "Speed, Accuracy, and Consistency"

Summary

The TTPOA Podcast: Episode with Sean Griffith "Speed, Accuracy, and Consistency"

Release Date: June 6, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The TTPOA Podcast, hosts Brandon and Matt engage in an insightful discussion with Sean Griffith, an esteemed firearms instructor and competitive shooter. Sean brings a wealth of experience from his military and law enforcement background, offering valuable perspectives on enhancing shooting performance through speed, accuracy, and consistency.

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1. Sean Griffith's Professional Background

Sean Griffith begins by outlining his extensive career trajectory. He served four years in the Marine Corps before transitioning to police work in Maryland, where he dedicated eight years. Subsequently, Sean was detailed to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Georgia. Since 2020, he has been with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) full-time, focusing on firearms training for federal law enforcement. Additionally, Sean competes and teaches performance shooting classes independently.

Notable Quote:

"Spent four years in the Marine Corps, then got out, went straight into the police in Maryland... I've been with DHS full time since 2020."
— Sean Griffith [01:20]

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2. Competitive Shooting and Teaching Performance

Sean discusses his involvement in competitive shooting and how it informs his teaching methodology. He recounts a recent competition against Eric Shaw, highlighting the high-performance standards within law enforcement shooting circles.

Notable Quote:

"He won fair and square, man. He shot a great match."
— Sean Griffith [02:07]

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3. Training Philosophy: Speed, Accuracy, and Consistency

A central theme of the discussion revolves around Sean's training philosophy, which is built upon two foundational models:

• Performance Objectives: Emphasizing the triad of speed, accuracy, and consistency.
• Shooting Fundamentals: Focusing on physical structure, trigger management, and visual confirmation.

Sean emphasizes that achieving high performance in these areas requires a delicate balance, ensuring that improvements in one aspect do not compromise the others.

Notable Quote:

"I need it over and over again."
— Sean Griffith [09:14]

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4. The Role of Split Times in Shooting Performance

Sean addresses the concept of split times—the intervals between consecutive shots—and their importance in evaluating shooting consistency. He critiques the prevalent focus on achieving rapid split times without maintaining accuracy, a common issue in law enforcement training.

Notable Quote:

"Split times, I think a better use of split times... is a better use of them as a metric to make sure that you're not over confirming or under confirming."
— Sean Griffith [14:57]

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5. Iron Sights vs. Red Dots: Training Implications

The transition from iron sights to red dot optics is another critical topic. Sean and the hosts discuss how long-term use of iron sights cultivates subconscious alignment skills, which red dots can disrupt if shooters are not adequately retrained. This shift often leads to decreased performance among officers accustomed to iron sights.

Notable Quote:

"If I have you draw the gun, close your eyes, present the gun, and open them, your iron should be in alignment."
— Sean Griffith [33:43]

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6. Challenges in Law Enforcement Training

The conversation highlights significant gaps in current law enforcement training programs. Sean points out that many officers do not receive rigorous, ongoing training that ties shooting pace to visual confirmation, resulting in poor accuracy under stress despite possessing firearms.

Notable Quote:

"Until that becomes the norm, you'll continue to have officers, they're going to shoot at whatever pace they can physically shoot, regardless of what they see."
— Sean Griffith [19:24]

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7. The Influence of Training Culture and Incentives

Sean emphasizes the necessity of a training culture that encourages exploration and accepts failure as part of the learning process. He contrasts this with institutional mandates that prioritize minimal qualification measures, which often hinder skill development.

Notable Quote:

"Exploration isn't a luxury. It's a requirement for you to develop as a shooter."
— Sean Griffith [21:30]

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8. Practical Applications and Drills

Sean outlines practical drills designed to enhance shooting proficiency. These drills focus on varying split times based on target requirements and promoting trigger preparation to maximize efficiency and accuracy. He advocates for tailored training that addresses individual shooter needs.

Notable Quote:

"I'm going to prep the trigger as deep as I can until I meet confirmation."
— Sean Griffith [52:10]

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9. Sean Griffith's Training Offerings

Towards the episode's conclusion, Sean shares details about his training programs. Interested individuals can access his classes through his website or social media channels. He also mentions his upcoming participation in the World Shoot in South Africa, indicating a busy training schedule ahead.

Notable Quote:

"All our classes are on there to sign up for and then the regular channel... set up classes or you know, I post a lot of information online on Instagram."
— Sean Griffith [87:58]

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Conclusion

Brandon and Matt express their gratitude for Sean's valuable insights into shooting performance and training methodologies. They encourage listeners to engage with Sean's training programs to enhance their own skills, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and improvement in law enforcement.

Notable Quote:

"Appreciate what you do... Thank you for all your service out there."
— Matt [86:25]

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Key Takeaways

• Balanced Training: Achieving speed, accuracy, and consistency requires a harmonious training approach.
• Visual Confirmation: Linking shooting pace to what the shooter sees is crucial for maintaining accuracy under stress.
• Adaptability: Transitioning to new equipment like red dots necessitates updated training to prevent performance declines.
• Cultural Shift: Embracing a training culture that values exploration and accepts failure can significantly enhance shooting proficiency.
• Continuous Improvement: Ongoing, tailored training is essential for first responders to maintain and improve their shooting skills.

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Stay Connected with Sean Griffith

For those interested in enhancing their shooting skills or seeking advanced training, Sean Griffith offers a range of classes accessible through his website griffithshootingsolutions.com or via his Instagram handle @griffith_shooting. Sean is committed to providing practical, effective training to first responders and shooters of all levels.

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Train Hard. Stay Safe.

Transcript

[Matt]

That's so funny.

[Brandon]

Welcome to the TTP08 podcast, a podcast for SWAT officers, military and all first responders. We'll be talking training tactics and leadership with the best subject matter experts around. Here are your hosts, Brandon and Matt. That's your host. All right, so welcome to the backyard Honky Tonk. We're here again with a new sexy man on my couch. And we got Matt over here to my left. We had a rehearsal. I plucked some stuff up and didn't record and we had like a 30 minute conversation.

[Matt]

It's technical difficult.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Then I looked down, I'm like, oh, it's not even recording. So hopefully we can recreate the magic that we had earlier because, man, it was some magic. So we'll see here. We got what we got going. So, man, welcome to the house. Welcome to the backyard Honky tonk. Welcome to ttp. First time out here. So you're a virgin.

[Sean Griffith]

Yep.

[Brandon]

No longer. You got your first class in today in my region. So, man, who. Who are you? What are you about, man? Tell me a little bit about yourself.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Brandon]

But you got to look into my eyes when you please do. Make Matt jealous. I want you to make Matt jealous.

[Sean Griffith]

So, Sean Griffith, I obviously out here to teach first class, which was awesome. Day one. Day two is tomorrow, so today was good. Um, spent four years in the Marine Corps, then got out, went straight into the police in Maryland, did eight years with them and then got detailed down to FLETC in Georgia, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. So I've been with DHS full time since 2020. So I've full time firearms for federal law enforcement. And then I compete and teach kind of performance shooting classes outside of. Of that, on my own.

[Brandon]

You just compete? Just a little bit.

[Sean Griffith]

Just a little bit.

[Brandon]

Just a little. Just a little bit. You could brag on yourself. You. You do pretty well for yourself.

[Sean Griffith]

I do. I do okay.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

I did get beat by Eric Shaw this week though.

[Brandon]

So, yeah, Eric will like that when he listens to this and stuff.

[Sean Griffith]

I had to, I had to shout him out.

[Brandon]

And Eric's a. A cop of active duty and, and stuff. So I think that's really cool that there's guys that are out there pushing like really high performance. So that. That's really neat. Eric's on a text thread that I'm in with a bunch of cops. When I saw. I think it was. You posted it.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, probably.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And I, I sent it out to the guys. I'm like, hey, man, congratulations to him, because that's a. That's a huge. That's a huge deal.

[Sean Griffith]

He. You know, it. The South Carolina section, super close. I think he got me by four match points out of, like, 1200 or so.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean, I was looking. I was like, oh, my gosh, man.

[Sean Griffith]

Like, that's the best kind, right? Like, if you go there and just crush everybody. Did. You know, it's a. Yeah. Call that a soft win, right? Yeah, I want.

[Brandon]

If.

[Sean Griffith]

If I want to win, I want to win against people that. That matter. And E. Yeah, obviously matters, so he. He won fair and square, man. He shot a great match, so.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Well, that's cool. Well, welcome to the house, man. I've enjoyed entertaining you. I guess hosting you, not entertaining you. Yeah, maybe a little bit of both. So we had dinner last night. First time I ever met you, you got to my house, you were already here before I got here, so I was like, hey, man, good to meet you. So I do like that. I enjoy just. You come highly recommended. So always vet people and talk to the guys that I know in the shooting world. I'm like, hey, man, what do you think of this guy? And when I hear good things multiple times, I'm like, okay, let's bring this person out. So I think we'll.

[Matt]

We'll.

[Brandon]

We'll have a happy little marriage here with TTPOA and stuff.

[Sean Griffith]

I'm excited.

[Brandon]

Definitely want to have you out for the conference next year. A little too late for this year conference, but we'll get you out for next year's conference and stuff, so. Man, I wish I could remember what the hell. I asked last time when we did the dry run, thinking it was the real thing and stuff like that. So, Matt, you got to get my ass a little bit more, man. Like, you know, you gotta. You gotta teach or treat me like some of the guys that you teach when. When they come to these host rescue schools. Like, hey, so assume you're a dumb.

[Matt]

Thing, what you're doing.

[Brandon]

Yeah, you're a dumbass. Like, get your right, man.

[Matt]

Okay, Assume you know, no idea what you're doing.

[Brandon]

Yeah, assume this is my very first podcast. I'm like, man, we've been doing this for I don't know how many years. We have, like, over 100,000 downloads, and I still can't hit record. So I will say that's the very.

[Matt]

First time that, though you're a trained police officer, not a technician.

[Sean Griffith]

So, interestingly enough, I was a. I was a comm guy in the Marine Corps. So you Know, guys would call us like, hey, my radio is not working. And the very first question is always like turned on it on. Right. And you know, 50% of the time it wasn't. Yeah, right. So it's not unreasonable that you didn't know.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

When, when Derek, the old podcast partner, when he was the technical guy, we have some major issues because he's a knuckle dragger, big muscled head, just goofball.

[Sean Griffith]

You need a checklist on the wall, like, hey, turn this on.

[Brandon]

Yeah, pretty. Pretty much. So, so Matt, if you want to take over the technical stuff, man, you feel free, man. You're, you're way smarter than I am. So anyway, so I think you have a unique background in the fact of you teach law enforcement 2 million rounds a month. That, where you, where you. Not that you personally, but the organization that you work with. 2 million rounds. I mean, that's, that's, that's mind boggling.

[Sean Griffith]

That, that's, it's large.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And so I think that's, that's a great thing that you're such a high level shooter in the competitive world, but you're also teaching, you know, just the person out of college who's never even shot a gun, that's probably scared of a gun. Not all of them, but some of them can be. So I think they're it. To be able to blend what you know and be able to make it make sense to someone is a, is a really unique gift. So like what is, how do you, how do you combine that skill set with getting down to just the basics and the end user who doesn't even understand what this gun is, can even capable of doing. So how are you able to do that?

[Sean Griffith]

Basically it's an art for sure.

[Brandon]

You're an artist.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, I've never been accused of that. You know, I think a lot of it is understanding what you have to get across right now to get the performance objectives, whatever they are for the day or the training cycle done right. Like, how can you simplify stuff, especially for the new shooter who's never done it right? Like I can't, you know, take a brand new shooter and if I start diving down like, hey, this is confirmation 1, 2 and 3. And this is how we're going to manipulate the trigger based on those. Like that's, that's going to be far too much. They're just not going to connect with that. So understanding how do I get that performance out of them without over complicating it for them. Yeah, that, you know, that's that's where the magic lives. So just, you know, for, like, for that, you know, like, hey, I. I need to see the dot in my. In my target area. And when you do, I need you to roll pressure through the trigger. Right. That. Those for right now, that's all I need you to do. And then once we start getting that level of performance. Right. So I, I see that. Yep. You're parking the dot where you need to. And then when you do, you're able to keep the gun still as you press the trigger. Once I see that, then we can start to add, you know, complexity to. Hey, like now that's taking you more time than it. Than it is required. So now like, like, let's accept a little bit less information out of the dot. Maybe when I just see the. The color of the dot float through the A zone, you can press the trigger. Right. And it's just kind of diving down those rabbit holes as. As they start to latch on to concepts is in. In the way that, that I've seen work the best.

[Brandon]

Yeah. So you had a chart that you drew. Fantastic artists, by the way.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, I'm great at drawing sea turtles. I'll draw you one tomorrow.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So you had a triangle.

[Sean Griffith]

Yep.

[Brandon]

And you started off, and I, and I liked what you said, so kind of go over that. What, what you were talking about.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So we didn't go over this the first time. So I just came over. Yeah. So this totally new, Totally new podcast, like I said, I forgot this shit. I asked you the first. First go around.

[Sean Griffith]

No, it's all good. So I'm a fan of kind of Big Picture. Right. So if I show you kind of like where we're going and then we start diving down the roads that we're going to take to get there, I think that, I think for people learning, that makes it easier to. To maybe understand. Like, hey, why are we doing this? Well, he said we were going to do this or this was the end goal of that. Right. So two models I use right out the gate is kind of our performance objectives. What am I looking for? Like, big picture out of your shooting? Right. So those three things I boil it down to are I need speed, I need accuracy. And then kind of the capstone for those two is I need consistency. Right. So I can't have, you know, one off accuracy or one off speed. Right. I need it over and over again. So what, what are the things that we're going to do or, you know, what cues can I work off of to get the Same result over and over again at the speed that I want with the accuracy requirement that I want.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

And then the second model I use to kind of reinforce that is, you know, kind of my fundamentals of shooting. I guess you could call it three big things. So I look at it like physical structure. Right. Talking about from the ground up, how you're physically set up behind the gun, then how am I going to manipulate the trigger? And I use the term trigger management because it's how I'm managing the trigger in both directions. Right. So we have rearward motion and then front forward motion. Right. So how am I going to press the trigger? And then once I press the trigger, how am I getting off of it and getting reset and ready to press it again? And then the capstone for that is. Is the visual side. Right. What. What information do I need out of the iron sights or the optic in order to start shooting? Right.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

And if I develop all three of those, I in turn, get high levels of accuracy at relevant speed with a high level of consistency. Right. So those two models, I like to kind of give the big picture of what we're after, at least, especially on day one, where it's a lot of static, fundamental type shooting. You know, I need fast accuracy consistently.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah. I think that. I like that you added the consistency part of it, because I think when you go on a shooting journey, marrying the speed and accuracy consistently is the journey.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And I think, you know, you look at it right now, just say, hey, I'm a shooter that just started this. In a year from now, my consistency with speed and accuracy is going to be different than what it is right now. I'm consistent what I'm doing right now, but I'm working to be more consistent with adding more speed and accuracy and keep building upon that and building upon that. And I think that's. I like that when you added the consistency to that because, man, I can go from the holster and. And get lucky and get, you know, a really fast like 7, 9. But it took me 15 times to do that as opposed to. Well, I'm at a 92.7out of 10 times or my draw for. Or whatever the case, whatever. Whatever metric you're using. But I think that's. That's the important part of it to understand where am I at right now and where am I trying to go and then what am I consistently able to do with. With the skill set that I have currently.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, for sure.

[Matt]

And.

[Sean Griffith]

And, you know, like, over time or as time progresses as your training cycle. However you run that, you know you're gonna put different weight on different parts of that triangle. So there'll be times where trying to push new pace. Right. So I have more weight on the speed side and I understand that when I put more weight on one, another is going to suffer. Right. So, for example, if I'm trying to find a new pace, I'm going to shoot at the pace that I want to be at. Understanding that my accuracy is going to take a hit in.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

Or maybe my consistency is going to take a hit in that. But then on, on, you know, game day, whether you're shooting matches or, you know, in a shooting in the LE world, that's the time to that it all needs to be whatever your highest level of all three of them together are. Yeah, that's what we're looking for there.

[Brandon]

Right? Yeah, no, I think that's, that's important because I think having your background and being able to, to teach LE folks, you understand that really, really well, as opposed to some other guys are, hey, man, my background is just competitive shooting. And not that they disregard. I'm not saying that. But to be able to articulate that to LE guys is, is part of the, the formula to be able to teach folks. Yeah, for sure with that. And we, we talked about it today and I asked you a question about split times because I think guys go down this. It's kind of like bench press, man. What's your bench press? Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. But it's putting that metric of what actually a split time means to you personally, what your skill set is, and not just getting on the Instagram and going, oh, dude, that motherfucker's blowing 15s and 16s.

[Sean Griffith]

Instagram shooting is all that matters.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, that's, that's what I do. That's where I find my philosophies in. But when I ask you, hey, when you're shooting a match and these high, high level guys are shooting matches, what is their split time? Because that, that matches their OIs. Because go answer that question, then we'll go from there.

[Sean Griffith]

So split times are always a touchy subject. Kind of like trigger prep.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

You know, obviously if I'm splitting the gun faster, I'm saving time. Right. If I split the gun at 15 versus 20, I've saved five hundredths of a second. So there's always that time component. I think what you see a lot, especially from the, the absolute highest level is the only targets that they're really worried about or, and, and I say worried. They're not worried. At least I'm not worried about split times. I could care less at a match setting. Right.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Griffith]

I'm just going to shoot as fast as I'm seeing.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Sean Griffith]

The information that I need to see. Right. If that happens to be a 16 or 17 split, so be it. If it happens to be a 22, it, you know, it is what it is. I think split times, I think a better use of split times instead of chasing them to get to some arbitrary number on, on whatever drill you're shooting, it's a better, a better use of them as a, as a metric to make sure that you're, you're, you're not over confirming or under confirming. And what I mean by that is, you know, like today I kind of gave out some, some raw numbers, let's say for confirmation. One type target, you're looking for 20ish splits. Right. So 18, 22, that's kind of good. If you start to get up in the 30 range, I know you're probably getting too much information.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

Or more than what's required. Right. I can use that as a metric to make sure that other kind of principles that, that we're talking about are being met. Right. Yeah. You know, it's a kind of same thing with draw time. Like if you have a one second draw at let's say five yards the first shot, and then we go back to 10 yards and you're 1.1, and then we go to 25 yards and you're 1.75. Well, I know we have a fundamental problem based off the draw time. It's not that I'm concerned about what your first draw to first shot is. It's that I know we were at 1 at 1 second or 1 at 5 yards, 1.1 at 10 yards, then we had this dramatic shift. So something fundamentally changed. Right. And I could tell that using the metric of time, split times are kind of the same thing. Yeah. You know, if you split a five yard open target at 50, something, something's wrong there.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Sean Griffith]

Like I can tell through the metric of the split time we have some kind of fundamental error. Whether it's vision, whether the gun shifted in your hand, whatever it is, we had some kind of problem there. And then I can, you know, tailor my training towards whatever the problem.

[Brandon]

Yeah. For that.

[Sean Griffith]

But it's more of like a check on fundamental stuff.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

I think is a better way to use that.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Because I asked you, I'm like, hey, what, what is, like, what do you think the average time is? And you're like, now they're about 20 in the 20s somewhere around there, depending on deal. But my whole point to asking that question was we watch body cam video of OIS and we're seeing officers blazing fast like teen split times. They're not hitting anything, they're mag dumping. And their skill set level and their ability is nowhere near these top guys that are shooting their vision. Shooting what the gun and their dot, what, what they're seeing. And I think that's, that's the, that's the key right there is shooting your vision. What is it, what is the vision that you're seeing? What's it telling you and what's, what are you able to do with that? Because these guys are, in these shootings, they're not vision at all. It's shooting with emotion. It's shooting out of fear. It's shooting at, I don't know, sometimes. And I don't, I don't say that because I'm, I'm dogging these guys because of what happened. It's. Man, we have to tr. We have to train these guys differently. We have to understand what's going on. And we can't just look at an Instagram video of some quote, drill and go, that's the way I got to shoot. Okay? That's the guy that he's shooting and showing you some performance of whatever metric he's trying to show. But the reality is he's not shooting a person, he's not shooting a match and doing all that. And so my point to all that is we're asking officers or our officers are shooting so fast that they're not even seeing what they're, what they're doing. And so if they are doing that and we're asking these high end shooters, they're not doing that. But it's like, man, you got to understand the perspective of what you're trying to do and what you're doing. And I think that's where Ellie loses it a lot. So that was, that was the reason why I asked that question. I want to kind of go down that road.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah. So I, I think a big, a big reason for that is, I think one of the biggest reasons for that is because trainers in general haven't attached their officers shooting pace to what they're seeing. Right. I came through the police academy in 2012. That was not a thing. Right. It's just, hey, get acceptable sites. Right? Like, nobody ever explained what actually does that mean on a 7 yard target versus a 10 yard target versus a 20 yard target. Right. That was left kind of to my own devices to figure that out. Yeah. And, and then it would. There was never a conversation of like, hey, you can't shoot faster than what you're seeing, otherwise we can't guarantee what we're hitting and all of that kind of stuff. Right. So I think it's a, it's a failure to, to connect shooters shooting pace to their visual pace. Right. And over time we can speed that visual pace up. Right. How fast are you processing that? Right. How well are you controlling the gun? How fast is the gun returning? How precisely is the gun returning in order for you to meet those visual confirmations? Faster. Right. Which effectively allows you to shoot faster and maintain a level of accuracy. But you know, at least in my time, until recently, I've never heard of law enforcement trainers attaching shooting pace to visual pace.

[Brandon]

Right? Yeah. No.

[Sean Griffith]

And that's a relatively new development in the LE world. And it's for the better for sure. But until that happens, you'll continue to have officers, they're going to shoot at whatever pace they can physically shoot, regardless of what they see. Right. Unless their entire training program has been built off of, hey, you need to see X to, to hit this target. And you, you know, we give them time to explore. And inside that exploration failure is okay because we're learning what, what is acceptable, what is not. Right. All of that stuff kind of builds on each other in order to teach you what you have to see.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

And then once you get like that just becomes the way that you operate. I think you'll see a lot less of that. But, but until that becomes the norm.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

I think you'll continue to see just, just absolute ripping on the gun regardless of what they're seeing.

[Brandon]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Two yards man. Rip away.

[Sean Griffith]

Everyone's a hero.

[Brandon]

Yeah. I mean it's, it's one of those deals like I look at the Oiss that I've been involved in and had to use my, my gun in, in my career and they've all been different. Like there's been a level of, of, of exposure, distance, weapon system. So they're not all the same. Like they're different, different target scheme, like moving still and stuff. So I, I look at that and I go, just from my experience alone, you just can't cookie cutter this stuff and just go okay, well you're always going to do this, you're always going to do that. You have to have A broad understanding of what you can do when you can do it.

[Sean Griffith]

Which requires exploration, right? Yes, you have to without exploration. So I like to say exploration isn't a luxury. It's a requirement for you to develop as a shooter. You have to be given permission to explore stuff, which means you have to be given permission to, to miss. Now that's not in the, in the real world application setting, but on the range in a training environment. Without that exploration, you'll never know what is required to get the result and what doesn't get the result that you want. Right?

[Brandon]

Yeah, one thing is too same thing with like cqb. You take guys that are brand new on the team and you, you, you're teaching them and then they run with experienced guys. Dude, there's a, there's it's night and day difference of. But they also understand, okay, this is the pace that's expected of me. This is the pace that these guys are running at. This is where I need to get to. And also day one they can't go at, at this guy's pace who's been doing it for 15 years because they're missing all kinds of stuff. You're like, how did you not see that guy that was right there? Like, I don't know, you know, and stuff. So I think goes not just to shooting, but it goes to a lot of things that we do in, I mean driving. I mean you look at a high speed pursuit, your very first one, as opposed to, man, I've been doing this for 10 years and I've had I don't know how many car chases that I've been in. Like, okay, well I understand it slows down. I understand what's about to happen. I, I get that because I've done it before and I think that's where sometimes where the, where the Instagram just drives me crazy in that aspect.

[Matt]

I would just say I think people think if you're doing it at that speed, it's, it's easier the job, it's not easier, just getting better at it.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Okay. And so I'm gonna lead in this. Is that, you know, coming through the academy when I did, you know, Sig Sauer P226, 9 millimeter dasa all about front sight down because no red dots back then. It's all about front sight, you know, good, you know, consistent trigger press 12 pound trigger to the rear. Then he goes into single action mode. You're at four and a half. Got let the track, you know, the slack out, then come back and there's very little take up in those things. Back then, of course, our cigarettes rose. Those guns were already shot up pretty well anyway. So I mean, they would, you know, I mean that's a great, it was a great gun. But that I look at training in the academy, what we were told, you know, of course, is front sight, you know, and you know, blurry target, you know, clean, crisp, front sight.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Matt]

You know, and you're just, you're dropping it in that rear dovetail. And that was, I mean, that was what the industry, I mean it wasn't like just dpd, that was everybody across.

[Sean Griffith]

The board for sure.

[Matt]

And it's not to say that was wrong, but for a long time and having my career kind of bridge the gap between, you know, no patrol rifles at all.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Nobody having them. Not even red dot, you know, then. Because when I went to swat, there was, there was no rifles in patrol steel to going to a red dot for the first time because everybody had eotechs and having to go from using iron sights on shotguns and rifles. Growing up with a long gun in your hand to an eotech.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

A, a full automatic coat commando, having to shoot 30 out of 50 rounds full auto. And they're like, you will go through this class. You will learn how to do it in three days. You will pass this class. If you don't, you will not be here.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And you know, and so I think to say that is that it can be done because I had great dudes that were here that were really professional, that really knew how to do it and they have paved that way. What I see a lot of guys that come in, they don't have that luxury of having somebody really to help with the fundamentals. And so they sign up for a class or they go to something that we're doing. And they are, and I hate to say it this way, they were way behind.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Like anybody can buy a MOS gun or have input, input a red dot on it. And they cannot, they cannot run it, you know, but they're carrying it on duty because they've passed their qual. And so what I've seen is, is departments once they bought off on, well, they'll shoot better if we do this and let people buy red dots then. I mean, like five years ago, like hardly anybody issued them. Now like it is like for us, it's standard issue now a Glock 45 with a 8 point acro P2. That's a very nice setup. Like at one time, if I would never would have thought in my, in my career that they would issue that, you know, to Ricky's. And so you're seeing that. And so what I think, you know, you see, I think that they thought that was the easy button. You know, we give everybody a.

[Sean Griffith]

That's absolutely what they thought.

[Matt]

That's what they thought. Yeah. This is a Glock 45. It's a great gun. It's. You have a, you have a, you have a good red dot optic on it. From the day you go the academy, you're starting to do this. And they were like, okay. And yet. And I kind of keep track of this as a whole still, the numbers overall in police shootings. First hit ratio is still pretty low.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Matt]

National average 17%. In Texas, we're a whopping 19%.

[Brandon]

So.

[Matt]

So at the best you're hoping to do is one out of every five, you know, and I don't know if we're in. What you do in your, in your other career, you're seeing those kind of stuff. And you know, and because it is, you know, again, we know, we like Brandon mentioned, you see videos, you hear of people doing this. I'm like shooting a bill drill or whatever it is, the drill you want to do on the range when you know what you're going to perform is something entirely different, then you have all these outside factors coming in and if that makes sense. So you know, what do you see on your side of it over there?

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, so like, you know, the first shot stats are interesting. So. So you look at it objectively, like why. So what, what specifically is happening that that first shot isn't hitting. Right. And you go back to the visual side of it. Right.

[Brandon]

So.

[Sean Griffith]

So we know that the officer, by and large, of course there's outliers, but for the. The majority are going to snatch the gun out of the holster at max effort, which is a good thing. Right. I want the gun in front of your face at point six. We talked about it today. Right. But then once the gun gets in front of your face now what has to happen? And that's where before you press the trigger, I need to reach confirmation. Whatever level that target requires is what it requires. Right. But until you hit that confirmation, that bullet should not be leaving the muzzle. The problem is again, nobody's tied the shooting speed. So. So I look at everything shooting like if the term shooting as actively pressing the trigger. Right. Anything outside of that is, is under the movement category as far as how I think about it. Right. So your draw is movement reloads are movement, transitions are movement. Movement. Movement is movement.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

So all of the movement pieces should be at, at max effort. And there's some things we can talk about efficiency wise, to get that up, you know, faster. But either way it's a max effort kind of event. But once the gun reaches whatever destination it is, right? So for a draw, it's from the holster in front of your face. Once it reaches that destination, that's where we have to make this shift of. Now we're no longer in max effort. Now we need to be visually connected. Right. And that's the part that I think is, is failing. And that's indicative of first shot misses, right? They don't have visual confirmation. They press the trigger anyway. First shot misses. Now the gun's in front of their face and it's been there for an amount of time. So they start reading the red dot. And that's why I would imagine you get better hit ratios out of the second, third and subsequent rounds. Right. And then I, I would, I would venture to guess the hit ratio starts falling off the deeper into a string a shooter gets. Right. Because the structure isn't developed the way it should be. The physical structure of the shooter. So the gun is behaving erratically and those kind of things. Right. So I think, you know, you asked earlier, I think about like, how do you bring the practical concepts, practical shooting by and large, at least the way.

[Brandon]

Was that when we were recording?

[Sean Griffith]

I don't think we were recording that, but either way, you asked that question and you know, practical shooting can be summed up as lots of things. It's speed and accuracy, a blend of that, all of that. But what it really is is kind of a training mentality of, of I'm going to look at whatever's happening very objectively, find out what's going wrong, and then take whatever actionable steps to fix it. Right. That's what practical shooting is to me, or at least how we train for it. So when we talk about like first round hits missing, right? Like, okay, well what's going wrong then? So is the gun not parked where it should have been in the first place or did they move it when it was parked? And I think if you go back and look at a lot of the videos, you'll see the gun. There's no way the shooter, a shooter that's never performed a sub second draw on the range is performing sub second. First shot hits it, yes, 12 yards, you know, in a live shooting, right. The way that they're able to do that is by skipping stuff, right?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

And what they're skipping is meeting that visual confirmation and firing regardless of what they see. Right. So that goes back to the training culture of, you know, from, from day one, are you attaching the shooters shooting pace to what they're seeing and that kind of stuff?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So. Well, going back, I was in my mind, I think, coming through that like to say my academy class, we had your. The best shooter in the class and low shooter. I don't know if the, if the, the difference was that large as we said, you see now with classes. So I think there are guys walking in. I know they were ahead of where I was walking in. Like, they're like they're already shooting to some level, some of them, before they ever get to the pd. It doesn't mean everybody, obviously we have people walk in the Dallas Police Department. They've never carried a gun or even shot a gun, I should say, you know, before they get there. There's nothing in a way that's better because you don't. Only bad habits. But. And so I think what you're seeing is now because of the, the, the, the competitions in the practical shooting and because of the optics and all that, is that you're seeing people walk in that are already achieved a certain, I don't say mastery, but they're more competent. Does that make sense?

[Sean Griffith]

For sure, yeah.

[Matt]

And so I think you're seeing that and then that creates a whole nother conundrum because then how do you know who taught them? What are they doing? How did they get there? Because again, you know, doing stuff with Brandon. And you know, if you're around here, and believe me, by no means am I a master of any of it, but I have enough experience to see guys coming out of the holster. I'm like, you've never saw that dot. You're not even. You could have been turned off immediately. Yeah. And you can tell that or, you know, and there's. And so I try to tell them I'm not moving really faster. I'm just more efficient in my movements, you know, because you can only go so fast and break a Safari Land holster open and draw.

[Brandon]

Yeah, It's.

[Matt]

It's only physically possible by human within a varying. A couple moments. And so what's happening is I'm cleaner in it because I'm not wasting motion. I'm presenting it. I'm not bending down, I'm bringing it to my eye. And I think. And then when they start letting you down, they start looking for that Dot. So they're going back to the fuzzy, you know, target because they're looking for the red dot, like, and I catch myself doing it too. We all do where I'm like, stay target focused, bring the dot to that. And then once you do that, it's like they see it and you're like, you know, I'm sure you probably see here some of that as well.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Matt]

But it's a challenge because you're trying to juggle this and trying to juggle that and you know, and you're seeing different. Like, like your point earlier about the different levels of experience in the class you're teaching now, I would, I would venture to say you probably had to do some of that today with some of them, like, hey, yeah.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Matt]

Yeah. And so I think that's just a new evolution of training that wasn't there 25 years.

[Brandon]

No, that makes sense. No, yeah, most definitely.

[Sean Griffith]

That's definitely the case. And the red dot is interesting because you know, you got, you got guys teaching red dot classes, which is, which is fine. But at least the way I perceive shooting that it's going to sound really bad. A little bit controversial if you will.

[Brandon]

I like it.

[Sean Griffith]

But I don't think that red dot classes should exist. And here's, here's what I mean by that. The difference between red dot, like if you notice today, right. We went through a whole, and I happen to have all red dot shooters in the class, but the principles remain constant across the red dot.

[Brandon]

Because you turn your red dot off.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, that's, that's my, that's my parlor trick. Yeah. But you know, like, so you have this whole culture of leos especially you see it quite a bit in that were trained on iron sights that have been carrying iron sighted gun for 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it is, switch over. You know, the agency switches to a red dot. It's not an option. So now they have a red dot and they hate it. Right. And they hate it because they point the gun out in front of their face and the dot's not in the window. Right. So again, if you take that practical approach, or at least that practical training approach, like why isn't the dot in the window? Well, it becomes real simple. It's. The gun is off an axis. It's off the x or Y axis. Right. Meaning it's, it's not level, vertical or horizontally. Which if that's the case and this person has been carrying this gun for 20 years, it also means that their iron sighted gun Was off an axis. The difference being that the iron sights had kind of gave you a clue, right? Because I could reference the front off the rear and the rear off the front, so I know which direction to take it. Right. The. The.

[Matt]

Well, they've been doing it for a long time, so they've already kind of crack their own cheat code.

[Sean Griffith]

So what you have is, is when they first started, it was a very conscious correction, like, all right, let me drive the gun. Now it's aligned. And then over 10, 15, 20 years, that becomes a subconscious act. Right? And then you, you know, you take that ability away, put a red dot on it where you can't align the dot with anything else, right. It just. The gun just has to arrive in alignment, and now they can't drive the gun there. That. That ability is gone for them. And now you have guys that, like hell, you know, you see the red dot, you know, circle wobble trying to find it, and it's because the gun isn't presented right. So you look back, and it' it's not a dig at what's happened in the past. I think the red dot has really highlighted some of the training inefficiencies of the past. Right. Where. Where that should have been being taught 20 years ago that, hey, that the iron sight should arrive in alignment. Like, if I have you draw the gun, close your eyes, present the gun, and open them, your iron should be in alignment. And if they're not, we have some kind of fundamental. Whether it's a grip presentation, some kind of error. Right. But that wasn't the way it was perceived because you had that ability. So the red dot kind of eliminates that, and it really highlights, you know, the gun arriving alignment. But in turn, it also hurts. Hurts older shooters is the wrong term, but it. It kind of throws them for a loop a little bit, I think.

[Brandon]

I. I've seen years ago, I've seen range guys just take the backside and just push it to the left or push it to the right. Oh, this will fix it. I'm like, okay, that's not how you do that. Yeah, it's like, oh, man. That. That was correcting. Yeah, having a bad index was okay, we'll just push this back. Rear sight to your left or far right. You're like, okay. And then the guy I was like, oh, yeah, that works.

[Sean Griffith]

Trajectory is a real thing.

[Brandon]

Yeah, you knew that. My gosh. But, you know, it's come a long way. But I think the. The whole thing with the red dot guys were like, oh, that's going to fix everything, dude. That just complicated stuff because you, like you said you had all these other issues that you just didn't recognize because it's easy to. To get. Get away with it, you know?

[Matt]

Well, we're lazy by nature. Oh, and we want the easy button. We talked about this, especially cops. Yeah. And you want the easy button. And we had a guy, we were out doing some. We were shooting the day, and a guy because. Hey, can I jump in here? Checkers? He said, sure, go ahead. He wants to check his dot. And he's like, my. My battery's out. I'm like, okay, dude, we'll put one in there. He's like, we run down the range because the range. I'm like, you don't have any with you? He's like, no. And I'm a. It's one of my pet peeves. Does not have enough batteries.

[Brandon]

Like, they're free.

[Matt]

Well, well, even if they're not free, I mean, don't. I mean, your life is much more worth than get on Amazon and order a pack of eight.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

You know, if you buy or a pack of eight, they'll last you for a long time in the new modern red dot, you know.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

But like, no. And so he walks down to get a. A red dot from the battery. Sorry. For the range. That comes back up and he's putting it in there. I mean, it looked like he was rebuilding an engine. It took. I was like, dude, this is a. It is something so simple. But, like, it is a pet peeve. I'm like, you carry that on duty. Like, people count on you to be great and you are struggling, putting your own battery, you know, in your own site. And so again, they. They want the easy button, you know, like, oh, this red dot's gonna fix everything. He's like, no, it won't fix things. It may solve this problem, but it will create these other problems. And again, you have to have training. I think that's what we're. But this conversation boils down to that. You've got to have. You got to have training. Got to have good training, people that can correlate it to how you're doing. So because I've had great instructors, I've had bad instructors. And it's not to say that every great shooter can teach, not that every great, you know, teacher can shoot. You know, you got to find that balance. But being able to relate it back to the real world as far as leos and how it applies is critical because I've. I've been in classes where guys have never pointed a gun at anybody in their life. That's fine, that's. You can't learn things from them because you definitely can. But there is times where somebody like yourself with that background can say, let me explain to you, does that make sense? And so I think that, I think that really helps.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, like it or not, you have to get student buy in with whatever. It's not just firearms, but firearms. For example, if you don't have buy in, if they don't hook on to what you're teaching them, like you're sort of a salesperson. That's a, that's a bad term. I don't love that. But you have to sell at least the reasonableness of what you're putting out. Right. So, you know, like, let's say I'm a competitor, I don't have LE background and I go teach cops. Right. Like you said, there's nothing wrong with that. Right. Like, there's plenty of guys doing it and they're doing a really good job at it, but they're, they're going to run across officers that are already skeptical. Of what? Of the whole competitive side. And if you can't make a reasonable connection to their actual job tasks, you're going to lose them. Right. So, so making that connection and getting buy in is, is a real thing. Right. So being able to connect these concepts, you know, like transitions is always an interesting one. Right. Because most LE shootings are one on one. The vast majority are one on one. So why in the world would I have to do a target transition, like from one target to another? And if you can't make that connection to, hey, these are places that you might see these skills that we're trying to develop. Develop. You know, there, there are guys out there, I've experienced it as well as I imagine every other trainer that's like, hey, you know, this is competition stuff. I'm not doing it. It's like, well, here's the application, here's where you're going to see this stuff. And what I found it. You know, I've traveled all over the country at this point teaching. I've worked with a lot of LE guys and I've had the skeptical guys. And as soon as you make that connection to their actual job tasks, that skepticism like dies almost instantly. Right. Even, you know, you run a two day class. If I make a couple of those connections early on in the first day, the questions just stop for the next two Days, they totally. You get that buy in and they realize like, oh, he's actually thought this through. The things that this dude's putting out apply and are applicable to my job. And, and it's, it's much, much easier if you make those connections.

[Matt]

I think it's a bigger gap between a class like you're doing this week and then just you're at the line at the, at the academy with guys that have to be there. Yeah, that's, you know, and so it's a whole different animal. And even when we do classes for TTP way or like the classes we do that are through us by large, the guys want to be there. And like they're in. We have guys taking notes. But do you. And you pick him up within the first 15 minutes of the class. Like, that guy is here because he wanted to get away from the house for a couple days or he was made to go to this and he wants nothing to do with that, whether it be tactics or shooting. And I've been, you know, I've been fortunate to have been involved in both of them where I'm helping, you know, people out or whatever. And you see this big disparity, you know, between like the guy that really wants to be there, that wants to learn. And I think that goes back to the talk about, we talking about civilians and all the IPSIC stuff. I think officers do not think those guys, like, it's a hobby to them and I guess it is a hobby to a degree, but they spend a tremendous amount of money on those guns and those rigs and the ammo, range fees and travel where if they're not serious, they're. Then they're wasting a lot of money. And it's not that everybody's a billionaire doing that. So some of these guys have to work hard to go do that. And so whether I agree with what they're doing not has nothing to do with. I appreciate the effort that they put into that because there are some guys are phenomenal shooters out there that. Because they, they've done that. I think, I think sometimes there are. There are officers that do not connect that dot where this dude is not police. He doesn't carry a gun for living, but he is. Why is he so good? Because the dude cares. Because he wants to be good. Versus you have a lee of people who carry a gun for living who, who do not care to that level. Does that make sense? You know, I'm sure you probably see that going between bouncing back.

[Sean Griffith]

The argument's always interesting too with the, with the law enforcement versus the competitive side. It's, it's, it's, you know, like hey, you know where all the targets are. It's like, okay, well so do you. If you come to the match, come show me that you can do it better, right? Or hey, those targets aren't shooting back. It's like how many times have you trained, Brandon, where somebody's shooting at you while you're training? Have you ever done that?

[Brandon]

No, world, no.

[Sean Griffith]

Right? Like that, that's not a thing that happens in the training world. It didn't happen when I was in the Marine Corps like that. That doesn't happen. So again, all these, what you have is, is a lot of excuses getting thrown out of why I, why I'm not going to go do that. Right? And it's, it's a, it's an ego protector, right? Like hey, I know I'm going to get outperformed and this is my job and I don't want to look bad in front of them, right? So I talk, you know, the guys that I try and get to come out to matches, fellow co workers and stuff like that, it's like, hey, the, the second hardest thing to do is get you to your first match. The hardest thing to do is get you to your second, right? Because at your first match you're going to take an inevitable ass beating and then do you have the stones to come back a second time and say, hey, how, how do I get better at this? Right? And if I can get you to your second match, usually I've got you hook, line and sinker, right? And then the other side of it is, is the, the tactical drills, whatever you know, you know, years ago was the fastest is a good example, right? That's attack. That's not a competitive USPSA drill. Well, if you take any of the high level competitors and run that like two to the head, reload, four to the body, they're going to shoot that in like three and a half seconds, right? That five second part time is, is literally nothing. Yeah. So so to say the application isn't there or it doesn't, you know, I'm not going to go do this because that's competition and it doesn't apply. That's again, that's one of the most ridiculous mentalities I think I've heard.

[Brandon]

No for sure, because I guarantee you, if you were asked especially the, the just say it, just the officer that has the great biceps and all that kind of stuff, I guarantee you he probably follows some professional Bodybuilder, some fitness guru on there, and we do that all the time, which I don't. I don't care. But obviously, that person that you're following in the fitness industry knows what they're doing. They know how to work out, they know how to train. It's the same thing. But sometimes we don't correlate to that because, well, I'm. I carry this. I follow people on Instagram that are females, that are. Whatever. They're flight attendants or whatever they do. They shoot more matches than, I mean, their competitors. I mean, they go out there and they shoot, and they don't have to do that for a living. They do it because they want to. They do it because, hey, I don't want to be a victim and all that. I mean, that's a great reason to do it. But then you got other officers that. The only time they ever go to the ranges, it's qualtime. I'm like, man, you're protecting these people. Like, we have an obligation to be proficient. I'm not asking you to be a gm. I'm not asking you to be anything besides just proficient with what you have and clean your gun and understand some fundamental skills or take or at least.

[Sean Griffith]

Taking steps, regardless of where you are, taking active steps to get better in whatever it is.

[Brandon]

Yeah, like, there's guys that reach out to me in our department. Our police organization will pay for. For training as long as you're a member. And I think that's a great thing. And any members of. When you hear this, I always tell guys, hey, man, if you have a police organization, go to them, get this going. And I have some organizations that. We're not gonna do that. I'm like, you're sorry? I'm sorry. That's some bullshit, man, because don't pay for your damn kids soccer cupcake festival or what other bullshit that these police organizations pay for. I get it. There's some things that we need to do. I understand that, but there's also. We owe it to our guys to. To train them so guys will reach out. Hey, I saw this class. Want to go? We have a guy in the class today. Hell, I didn't even know who he was. I called him, like, hey, man, where are you? I was in the class today. I'm like, oh, sorry, man. I just didn't know him because he was new. But my point is, a new guy wanting to. To better himself, dude, I am all over that. I will give you free classes. I will help you in your journey. Because you're putting some fucking effort into it, man. Just a little effort. That's all I need, just a little bit, an effort.

[Matt]

Well, I don't think everybody has to go shoot a match. Yeah, I think, you know, to your point, some people are, you know, put off by that or worry. I would never say that. Like, and you go shoot, like, just try to get better, you know, just try to elevate yourself from where you are right now to where you, you know, you know, and trying to move forward and whether it be taking a class or just be more serious about your own stuff or whatever, because I, you know, I hear different things, different guys. I'm like, look, regardless of what you believe practical shooting is or it is not, like, I don't care. That's not my, my thoughts. He's like, no matter who you're here, you bring in a SWAT guy, a competitive shooter, you know, a guy sitting in the stands just watching, like you can't get your gun out of the holster clean. Like, that doesn't take a GM or anybody else to say that it doesn't matter. That, like, you don't need me to tell you that. Like, you know, that if you're honest with yourself, you know. And so I think again, you see people, you know, that have this idea that, well, I'm here, I carry a gun for living. This is where I'm, you know, this is where I am. Because I'm gonna tell you, the departments as a whole, in general, and guys I talk to the departments, don't make, don't put a lot of inference on it either.

[Brandon]

No.

[Matt]

Okay. And so ultimately, I think primarily you as a, as a, as a leo, it's your responsibility to try to get better. However, the departments aren't on the hook either. They don't push that. They'll make you go do all these, all these other, you know, you know, state mandated classes that take up a lot of time, but, like, you know, that you can, you can draw ammo for, from us. You know, the department can and go out and shoot, but unless you're in a different division that has its own internal, like us or other divisions, and there's, there's very little to help push you to get better. And there's no, really no, you know, there's no, I don't want to say incentive, but like, hey, if you come out and shoot your minimum, what you got to do to call and that's all you want to do, they will allow you to do it.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

You know, whereas you Know, there ought to be. I don't know, you know, if y' all do think back home where y' all do. But I would like to see where the department in the agencies would be more active in trying to elevate the game, if that makes sense.

[Brandon]

Yeah. If the department went and said, hey, this is your overtime gig, dude, we had the best shooters in the world because cops will fucking do anything for overtime, so.

[Matt]

Well, there's agencies I know of that. Your promotion ability, or you get points, like it's added.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

To help you in his physical fitness and shooting. In some places, they don't care one way or another, so. But, like, I think that's a great thing saying, hey, your qual matters every year.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So when you try to make, you know, try to make rank the next, you know, make sergeant, lieutenant the next time, you're like, dude, like, you probably would have made it in the top five, but you didn't because your. Your pistol is terrible.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

That's not fair. Like, it's absolutely fair.

[Brandon]

No, for sure. It's actually like SROs. I'm like, you're going in. The most precious thing that we have is our children. And it's a target rich environment of kids everywhere and teachers. You're like, that should be some type of requirement. What is. What. What do you do? What's your qual? Oh, you're one of those people that we have to help get recalled. No, you're not even accepted. You're. You shoot once a year. That's what you really do. Okay. We don't need you. Because you. Yes, there is the aspect of being able to relate to kids, and I'm like, I get all that. I was an SRO for a while. I understand that. But ultimately, you're there to protect these kids and teachers.

[Sean Griffith]

Yep.

[Brandon]

So that's what you need to do. You need to be able to physically be able to do that, both with your hands, your feet, your body, and your gun, your tools. So I do remember one of the questions I asked you is that it was the whole trigger control, so. Oh, yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

Trigger prep.

[Brandon]

Trigger prep. Yeah. So I think you're one of the only guys that I've that are brought in that was a competitive shooter at your level that really addressed that, but you addressed it in a different. Different way. And I think when you hear that, probably people like, oh, driving off the road. Oh. Because I was the same way when you first started selling. Okay, what. What is he talking about?

[Sean Griffith]

Like, what I was wondering, because I. Because I know the history of people that have come out here. I was wondering who in the class was like, oh, here we go. Yeah, hold on, stay with me now.

[Brandon]

Yeah, but, but I think you did a good job of, of tying it in and bringing it home. And I think it's also, if you're just listening to this podcast, it, you might not get it because it's hard without seeing it and feeling it and really you breaking it down in that way. So to be fair, it takes more than just a conversation.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So trigger prep, I'm a trigger prepper all day when appropriate.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Griffith]

So trigger prep, what you're really talking about is travel distance of the trigger, right? So you got pre travel travel and then over travel and it's just removing as much distance the trigger has to travel until you meet confirmation to fire the shot. Right. So it's really just a mechanism to bury dead time inside of dead time while reducing the chance that you negatively influence the gun. Right. So for example, if, if I have a five yard open target, right, that's low risk. I'm going to meet confirmation on that really, really fast. Whether it's out of the holster or shot to shot. Am I going to prep and prep and press on that, that example? Like. No, you're, you're going to be on and off the trigger, slapping the shit out of it. Right? That's, that's how that needs to happen. Right. But you know, take a 25 yard open target, right? I'm going to need more visual information, so that's going to take longer. So while I'm waiting to get more visual information, I think it would be reasonable to remove as much travel out of that trigger. Whether it's all the pre travel or maybe all the pre travel and then some of the travel, whatever I can get out of it distance wise, until I meet confirmation. And then no matter what, regardless of the confirmation required by the target, when you do meet confirmation, wherever you're at in the trigger, the bullet needs to leave the barrel, right? So, so it cost you nothing. And it removes distance of, out of the, the travel of the trigger while you're, while you're just waiting on confirmation anyway, Right. So it's kind of a no brainer for me. I don't even understand how this is.

[Brandon]

And I think when you say wait, you're talking tenths of a second. It's not waiting. Now I can choose. It's. It's tenths of a second.

[Sean Griffith]

Yes, is what we're talking about. So you look at like kind of some, some raw numbers that you put on it. Right. Or that I put on it for at least. Like getting the concepts across is a confirmation one, I'm looking for 20 splits. Right. That would tell me that you're, you're actually shooting that confirmation one style shooting 20ish, right. You know, 18, 22, whatever it is that confirmation two I'd be looking for somewhere in the neighborhood of 35. Right. Three and a half tenths between shots. So I've got an extra tenth and a half if that's the case inside of that tenth and a half, can I get the pre travel taken out of the trigger Then I, then once I meet confirmation, I don't have to move the trigger through there while keeping the gun still. I just have to move it through the travel part. Right. So I've just, I've just increased my margin for error by removing the pre travel. You go to like a confirmation three and I'd be looking for like 45 to 50 split times on something. Right. So while I'm waiting for stabilization of the dot or the iron sights, I can not only take the pre travel out, but I can take the some of the travel out. Maybe I can stack, you know, three pounds of pressure on a five pound trigger or something like that. Right. So then when I do meet confirmation again, regardless of the target, when the confirmation is met, the bullet has to leave. Otherwise we get into time loss and over confirmation, that kind of stuff. But if I'm sitting at 2 pounds on a 5 pound trigger press, I've only got 3 pounds to keep the gun still before the shot breaks. Right. So I've just reduced the chance that I negatively influenced the gun. Right. And that, that's kind of the whole purpose. Yeah, but it's still a matter of bur trigger prep. I'm not going to slow down the shooting so that I can prep the trigger. Right?

[Brandon]

Right.

[Sean Griffith]

I'm going to prep the trigger when the target allows while I'm sitting on sitting waiting for confirmation anyway.

[Brandon]

Because it's also tied into the vision part of it. It's not just trigger prep solely, it's. It's the vision of shooting what your vision is showing you. And my vision right now is not showing me something. So I'm doing something with my trigger finger that's very minute, but it's helping me gain a ability to be more accurate with what I'm doing based on distance, based on the target size, based on gun. Like a staccato is way different trigger prepping Than your stock Glock. You show that today, like 11 or I don't even know how many 58 different places that a Glock can go to as opposed to a staccato or some other guns that guys can shoot. So don't get wrapped up in that noise as much as understand it, what that actually looks like and stuff. And I think you did a really good job because at first I'm like, where's he going with this? Because I've seen you shoot guys, vouch for you. I'm like, okay, he's not gonna be just trigger reset, you know, all that kind of. And I think that's where. But I think that's a good thing to educate guys of understanding that because.

[Sean Griffith]

It doesn't have to be one or the other.

[Brandon]

Yeah, right.

[Sean Griffith]

Like I can, you know, like it's kind of like the confirmations. Like there's a lot of gray area in between all of this stuff. Right. So like, like I was talking about. You got the confirmation. 1, 2 and 3. I may start at a 2 and may kind of move into a 1 as I'm finishing the, you know, a 6 round builder or whatever it is. Right. So it's not black and white. Same thing with trigger prep. It's not that like, hey, you're gonna prep the trigger or you're not gonna prep the trigger? It's like, no, I'm gonna prep the trigger as deep as I can until I meet confirmation. Yeah, right. If I'm getting confirmation fast enough that I can't prep the trigger at all. Like it is what it is, I'm. I'm just gonna smash the out of the trigger over and over again. But if I have the time to prep the trigger inside of dead time anyway, like why wouldn't you? Right? If I have to move the trigger, let's say a quarter inch of total travel without it being prepped at all. Well, that I have to keep the gun still while I move through that quarter inch of travel. Well if I can pull out half of that while I'm waiting for confirmation anyway, now I only have to keep the gun still while I move the trigger an eighth of an inch. Yeah, right. I think my math for marine that pretty good.

[Brandon]

I don't even know no math, so.

[Sean Griffith]

I'm pretty sure I nailed it.

[Brandon]

Sounds good.

[Sean Griffith]

So if I didn't, it doesn't matter. But so like I said, it's kind of a no brainer for me. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna. I'm just removing travel Distance of, of trigger travel as much as I can until I meet confirmation. Right. And the confirmation doesn't allow me to. I'm. I'm totally cool with smashing triggers as well. Right. So it's not one or the other. It's. It's. When appropriate.

[Brandon]

Yeah, no, I think that's a, That's a great way. Especially in the whole law enforcement thing. I've, I've watched videos. I'm like, oh man, that was a tight shot. The guy, like, there was one the other day. It was a hostage deal and it was a guy walks up to a house and there was a car in the driveway and then he kind of goes to the left and then.

[Sean Griffith]

Was that jso?

[Brandon]

I don't know which. Which department. I can't remember. But I mean, it's a true hostage shot that you set up.

[Sean Griffith]

I don't think JSO was. They just had a shooting with a car in the driveway. I don't think it was hostage though.

[Brandon]

But yeah, I'm like, damn, man, that. That's. That's a tight shot.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Like, I'm not just pulling the gun out and just. Is my fastest time ever. My PR on this deal kind of shit. Like, okay, hey, I'm. I'm making sure that I have this shot because, man, this is, this is a game of middle millimeters here for sure and stuff. And I think, I think you did a good job. Especially that one drill that we did where, man, you're having to modulate speeds. You're having to. To get on the gas and then kind of hit the clutch. For. For lack of better words, making sure. Hey, my vision's here. Especially when you're hitting those small little, what, 8 inch circles, steel circles that we had.

[Sean Griffith]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

And then now you, you put a target that was about 20, ish, 25 yards away that had a. No chute in front of it. And you had a quarter of the target and a quarter of the. A zone. I mean, it was, it was a.

[Sean Griffith]

It was a. Yeah, that was an aggressive partial.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And so you're like, okay, I'm gonna have to slow it down. Not in. Like I'm gonna be so slow. But I have to make sure my vision is what I'm at. And my trigger is gonna be a good pull through, through the whole trigger of process of that, of that aspect. But I've. But then that one, that was five yards away. Fucking blast away, man. Get on it, you know, and stuff. So I think that was a good way of really demonstrating what that looked like. Then also the other drill that we did where we had the three levels of confirmation. Hey, shoot that. You had one that was an open target. You had one that was a, I guess you could say a partial target.

[Sean Griffith]

Half the Azone.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Half the A zone and then, hey, just, just the A box of the head. And then if you, if you put too much input in this gun, you're hitting the white target, you're in the hostage target. So that was a good thing. And I think too your ability, meaning like your is different than mine. So you're going to shoot that at a different pace than me. But still confirmation one, still confirmation to confirmation three. But it just looks different because of your skill set compared to mine or compared to someone else or. So there's that involved too. So it's not just a cookie cutter term. It's what your, your skill set is for you personally and what you're building on, what you're working. Because I did the demo, you're like, okay, well you did this, so maybe you're, you're right here. As opposed to someone else that's can shoot it at three, you're shooting this at a two or vice versa or whatever the case may be.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, it's, it's just like everything is shooting, you know, everybody wants like a black and white answer, right? Like hey, what do I do here?

[Brandon]

Especially cops.

[Sean Griffith]

And it's, it's, it doesn't work like that, right? So like I can't tell you that a, a five yard open target is going to be a confirmation one for you. Like if you don't have the structure developed to be able to keep the gun still at 5 yards. A 5 yard target may be a confirmation too for you.

[Brandon]

You have a shitty index or maybe.

[Sean Griffith]

You'Re super locked on and a 15 yard target can be that confirmation and you can hold alphas on it, right? Yeah, it's going to vary person to person. So, so again it's, it's, you know, we, we make concepts at least I do black and white in, in class just to get the concept across. And then it's your job to go explore it. Right? Like hey, you need to figure out where your kind of lines are, how you would engage these and through that exploration and experience. And when I say experience, it's, you know, I think a lot of people, especially in the L A world think like time on the job. Right? That's in the shooting world. That's, that's not what, what I'm talking about. Right. It's time behind the gun is.

[Matt]

Well, don't confuse tenure with experience.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, there's a difference. Right. You know, because I get. I get a ton of people like, hey, I've been doing this for 20 years. It's like, okay, but I also know that you called three times a year for 20 years. And I know you've shot approximately 4,000 rounds in your entire life, Right?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

So that doesn't mean a whole lot. So how much time have you been spent behind the gun exploring these different things? And through that, you start to learn what your levels are and what you can and cannot get away with and that kind of stuff.

[Matt]

I think cops are programmed from day one, the academy, to have an out. Like, this is what the law says, or SOP Says and all this. And I just. And I'm no different. I mean, I'm not saying I'm different, but, like. Because it's all about risk mitigation and not going to get being sued and not going to jail for doing this or whatever. So that translates right into. Because I do a lot of tactics, you know, whether it be for ourselves or whatever. And I'm just as, you know, involved in trying to get my own runs in as I am, you know, helping out other guys. And I can tell you that it's all gray. I mean, what I believe after. After doing it for as long as I've been doing it is not gonna be the same thing as you. It doesn't mean that you have an out to say. Well, because we talk about this brand, I talk about this more hot. Any other subject, CQB and guys coming in. What does that mean? That. That's a generalized term. They want me to say, Matt, go left and break here and stop here and then turn inbound. Look at Brandon. And I'm like, that's not what we do here. Like, we process each room as a new clear sequence. And because there are people out there that do teach that.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And I think it is. If you. If you took the verbiage out of what they're talking about and just listen to some of the same vernacular, you would hear them, whether it be shooting or cqb, they want these hard and fast rules that way. Sean, you said this.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Matt]

Do not. Does that make sense? You know, and they want that. And I'm like, that's not what we're here to do. We're here and we call it speed clearing. Like, we're going to try to clear this room as fast. Fast as we can. I want you to overrun your headlights and figure out what your speed is. If Your speed is 87 miles an hour, I need you to 88,89 to figure it out. Okay. I need to back it back down. The trick is, is to know where you are. If you don't go out and shoot like the matches, or don't go out and go to our. In our CQB house and. And push yourself, you won't know where that is. Right. And I think that's hard. And correct me if I'm wrong, you don't think differently. I think it's hard to get people to understand that.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, for sure.

[Matt]

That push figure out. Because when I went to the academy, it was, you did not miss the target. Do not miss. Everything's got to be on there. And I understand that early on, trying to build fundamentals, but when you just staying in first or second gear, like, in order to work through all the gears, you got to push it up and you got to go faster to the point of failure. Okay, 87 is too fast for you. 83 is your speed. That's fine. We'll get it up there. But if you don't ever go to 83, does that make sense? You know, and I'm sure. I'm sure it's the same thing.

[Sean Griffith]

Yep, for sure. Like, you know, I've said before, you know, disallowing failure in the. In the shooting world and everywhere else, right? That is. That is handcuffing your people to mediocrity. They. There's no way to overcome that. That mediocre level without being able to. To fail at some point in the training. So, you know, it's the same thing with driving and everything else, right? Like. Like when you're learning, like, emergency vehicle operations, right? You don't drive around the track at 27 miles an hour to figure out how to drive at 85. Right. Like, it doesn't work like that. You have to drive fast. You're going to spin out. And when you spin out, it's like, hey, what happened there? What did I do wrong in order for that to happen and how do I fix it next time? But you've got to have those mistakes. And that's. That's a critical part of that whole learning process.

[Brandon]

No, for sure. Well, I think going back to the whole vision part of it, I've seen guys come through and do some demos, kind of like you did the day with. I'm gonna have a shitty grip. But when I get a shitty grip, I really have to focus in on what my vision is telling me. So when my vision says, hey, it's good, I can pull the trigger. Understand, I'm not gonna get back on that gun as fast as I normally do because I'm demoing what happens if you get a shitty grip because of draw, whatever. But I think going back to that, it still goes back to. What is your vision telling you?

[Sean Griffith]

Yes, to shoot. Shooting pace should always be tied to that, that vision side of it. Right. Like when I get the information required by the. Dictated by the target, I could send the bullet and I cannot send the bullet.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

Until I get the information required. Now that's in like the application phase of that. Right. So like in a training time, there, there is time and place to which you know, just talking about like fares a requirement. So there is time and place to outrun your vision with that and see, see what you see, what you feel, what mistakes are happening. But when we start talking about like the application of, of the shooting in real life, whether it's a match or a law enforcement deadly force encounter, whatever it is, the shooting pace should very much be tied to the visual pace. And that needs to, again, that needs to be like reinforced from the very onset of training and throughout the individual's career shooting wise. Right. Otherwise you're going to have either slow and accurate shooters or fast and inaccurate shooters. But you'll never have fast and accurate shooters. Yeah. It just won't happen.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I think my generation was the big.

[Sean Griffith]

Slow and slow and accurate. Right. That's the way I came through.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And have the big hole at the end of your training day, I'm like, yeah, I can stick my whole fist in there. That's awesome.

[Sean Griffith]

You know, and that's the speed of smell.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And then that was. And I think you made a great point because. Because I, I believe it too. Because just in my own shooting journey, speed is way harder to, to be consistent with and be good at as opposed to the accuracy part. And you kind of address that and I'm glad you did because if you can teach someone to be fast, you can catch them up with the accuracy.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah. The accuracy part's pretty easy. At least it's pretty simple. Like, hey, I need you to park the gun where it needs to be parked.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

Make sure through the sighting system and then just keep it there.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

You press the trigger. Like that's not that hard.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

When you start talking about fast, it's, you know, a lot of stuff has to, has to work kind of in unison for you to get the result accuracy wise you're looking for while being fast, right? Like, yeah, you know, if your hands and if your support hands in the wrong position on the gun, you're not going to be able to maintain the accuracy at those 20 splits or that kind of stuff, right?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

If your draw, if you have like a corner in your draw, your draw is not going to be faster. Like, you know, you start talking about a lot of like mechanical, technical stuff in order to be fast without a whole lot of tension building and a whole lot of like physical effort. And that's for. At least in my experience, that's been way harder to teach people how to do rather than be accurate. Like the accuracy, accuracy side is pretty easy to get you to like hit the middle of the target. That's, that's not terribly difficult now to get you to hit the middle of target at the speed that I'm looking for. That's, you know, a whole nother ball game.

[Brandon]

But yeah, no, for sure. So if you were to give advice to officers out there and training and then also this is the training pace and this is your OIS pace. What, what, what would that look like? How would, how would you describe that to, to someone?

[Sean Griffith]

So that's, that's kind of what we were doing there at the end of the day.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

At class. Right. So like, even if you're alone, you could, you can kind of do it yourself. Right. So if I shoot whatever drill you have set up, let's say you have like a Blake drill set up, right. So 10 yards, you're just gonna draw and shoot two rounds on, on three targets. Let's say my time, that I'm doing that consistently, right. So as fast as I can do it, as accurate as I can do it consistently, we hit those three kind of guidelines. Let's say my time is three and a half seconds, right. And I'm doing that. I do four runs in a row and it's, it's clean through those four. Well, so like the question is, where do I take the training from there? Like, what do I do to do that better? And the answer, I think, like, if you're alone, the easiest way is just to set a faster part time, right? So like, hey, your consistent time is 3,5. So now your new part time is 3 seconds, right. So I, you know, I'm going to make three seconds happen at this point, regardless of the hits. So I'm going to draw the gun. I need to know like, if I can't do it physically at all in Three seconds. There's zero percent chance that I can do it accurately in three seconds, right? So I'm going to set the par time at three seconds, and I'm going to figure out what it takes to physically get the gun out of the holster, shoot six rounds across three targets in three seconds. Once I do that now, I can start diagnosing, you know, what, what am I seeing? What am I feeling? Am I parking the dot? Is the Dodge is sweeping or the sights just sweeping the three targets? Is it stopping on each one? You know, whatever the problems that arise at that, at that above max pace that I'm at, I can start to diagnose. Then you isolate those problems, kind of work through them, right? Figure out whatever needs to be worked, and then you reapply that to the package. And that kind of training methodology, over time, you'll, you'll start to build, you start to isolate problems out, fix them, put them back in. And, and over time, you start to develop a higher level of total proficiency.

[Matt]

Right?

[Sean Griffith]

So, you know, you do that for two weeks, and now you can do it in three seconds. Well, good. My next part time is 2:5. Right. How do I make that happen in two and a half seconds? And it's the same thing over and over with whatever drill you're working on or whatever skill you're working on.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, because it's, it's a fine line of the training speed, and I think that's where some guys, the wheels come off of, of truly understanding it. Well, I see this guy on, on Instagram, he's just always shooting fast to be able to. Okay, well, there's maybe there's a reason why he's shooting fast because he's, he's, he's trying to see his limits, but you just see it as, oh, I want to be able to do that. And so that's what I'm going to emulate in a, in a shooting. Because I don't really go there. I don't ever. I don't even know what my, my really does. I just know that I should shoot fast. Well, yeah, but there's more to it than just that part of it, because I look at it in simulations when, when or man, marker, whatever you want to call it. So someone said, oh, well, you just said what? You know what I mean, man, marking rounds. So whatever that is. But you see people just blazing and doing shit they would never do on a range in real life, on a call or anything like that. And that drives me crazy, dude. I think that's where we have failed in the law enforcement arena with the reality based training too, is not holding those guys accountable as well.

[Sean Griffith]

Becomes a game of paintball most of the time, right?

[Brandon]

Where it's just.

[Sean Griffith]

Unless you're holding high standards.

[Brandon]

Yeah. It's like, wait a minute, man.

[Matt]

Like, well, you know, just a queer quick. Sometimes you need to understand that the, the reason why you're shooting X number of rounds is that you're trying to develop recoil management and being able to keep the dot where you want or whatever your sights. Right. It's not about shooting seven, eight, ten rounds on this, but they go, well, that's the drill. I'm like, it is a drill in. Yeah, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm trying to explain this to you. You know, you know, rarely you ever put seven rounds. It's just never, I mean, has it happened? Yeah. Is it going to happen? The chances of that happening in your career in live shooting is so minimal. However, if you can shoot three or four, you can dang sure shoot one or two. You know, and it's like they don't have. There's that disconnect. Like, well, this is what I see. It's like you, you, I'm sorry, you just cannot come back to the easy button. You cannot just replicate what you're seeing. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, it's, it's the drill culture, right? Like, like I get guys message me every week like, hey, what, what? I, I'm having this problem. What drill do I shoot? And it's like that. Pick one. I don't care. Right? The drill doesn't matter. No, all that matters is that whatever thing you're having a problem with needs to be contained in whatever drill you decide to shoot. What matters is what you're paying attention to while you're doing it. Right. Like, so are you making, are you recognizing problems and then making corrections to fix it? That's what matters. Like, you know, like a bill drills, a great example like you're talking about, right? Six rounds. That just happens to be the reason it's six rounds is to be like a sustained string and to see if your, your grip and your structure is holding up through sustained fire. Is it returning the gun predictably over and over again through six rounds? Like, make it seven rounds. It's the same goal. Five rounds, whatever. It doesn't matter. Right? Like, and I think guys get really caught up in like, well, I need a sub two bill drill because the Internet said so. It's like, I. I don't care. What I care is, is the gun returning repeatably for six rounds in a row? Like, is your grip holding up for that duration of time? And then if it is, all right, can it hold up for 10 rounds in a row? Right. It's just you. The drill is just a tool for you.

[Brandon]

And it's a great tool.

[Sean Griffith]

Yep.

[Brandon]

Because if you're able to do that, that you have the hard skills, which. That's what we want.

[Matt]

Do not say that word. Just. That just invokes people, you know, Is.

[Sean Griffith]

That a thing here?

[Brandon]

Yeah. No, he's.

[Matt]

No, no, it's. You know, the joke is hard skills.

[Brandon]

Like.

[Matt]

Well, what is hard skills? You know, like, some people have a hard time understanding what that is. And it's like, it's not just one thing. It's not just one drill.

[Sean Griffith]

It's like, it's like all of your core competence.

[Matt]

Yeah. It's like there's all these. But the joke is, is that, you know, you. You go out to the range, hey, we're going to shoot this. Okay. And like, to your point, what drill fixes this? It may not be a drill. It may be just you dry firing. It may be just you recognizing your. The dots not there, whatever. And so I think the hard skills, you know, and that term's funny because some people laugh about it. Like, it's encompassing a lot of different things.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, it's like the whole package of yes shooting.

[Matt]

But people don't want that. Whatever they want you to clearly define. These are the seven things inside hard skills. And if I work on them one a day, I will be better.

[Sean Griffith]

Maybe that's. I should start writing books. Like, the six things you need to do to be better.

[Matt]

No, people want to ask.

[Sean Griffith]

That was for sure. So I'm not doing it.

[Matt]

Yeah, no, it's just. But they, you know, but, you know, does that make sense? What I'm saying is that that's what they want. And it's like, start with your draw, you know, get that and get the presentation where you're seeing your dot consistently. If you're not doing that as fast as a pulling trigger will not matter. You know, but they. They don't want to hear that because to your point. Well, I want to shoot the build draw. I want to do this. And in sub. Whatever times. Like, it does not matter if you cannot do it, you know, consistently. So the hard skills is. It's kind of like a running thing with us is like, it's an encompassing. It's a living document. It's great. It is hard. Skills is gray. It's not black or white. But they want it to be because, again, it's back to the easy button.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Matt]

You know, that makes sense.

[Sean Griffith]

That's not. I don't think that's exclusive to law enforcement, because a lot of time it's even, like, competitors, like, hey, I'm having trouble, like, entering. What drill can I use? It's like, I don't know, just pick a drill that you have to enter on some stuff and.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

And, yeah, pay attention. Like, there's no magic answer to the, to the question. Right. You just have to work through it and figure out, you know, isolate stuff down. And it's the same thing with.

[Brandon]

Well, I think, too, like, the micro drills of, like, you were doing one today with, hey, I want you to point your gun at this target, but I want you to look at this other target. And then on the beep, transition to where you're looking. Yep. Like, I think that's. That's. That's one part of the whole transition, but you're building. That's part of that hard skill. But you're just isolating that one hard skill in isolation. And now we're going to bring another one, and at the end of the day, we're going to put all those together. And that total. That makes the total of that hard skill of transition, what that looks like. But you see someone on Instagram or whatever, and they're like, okay, well, that's the drill I got to do. Well, that's just one portion.

[Sean Griffith]

One little piece.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it's just a little piece of it. And that's. So I think guys get wrapped around that, especially cops. Like, I mean, we all said it over and over again, man. We want all the answers to the test. I'm like, you know what? 15 to 20% is you thinking about it. Like, that's. That's the test is what can you do? Know the rules, but know how to get out of those rules and what that means and, and, and. And all that kind of stuff, because I get so tired of that. And CQB especially is like, man, just. Or you'll have guys ask you, okay, our team runs a rabbit. So what do you think? I don't give a one. Man's never wrong. Just go in there and get in there. You and your buddy, get in this room. Do it effectively, efficiently. And I don't know, like, I could put in all different scenarios. And if that's your SOP of your team, then why ask the question? Why? Is it because your skill set is not that high or. Or what? Because that is not always the right answer. It's just not. So. I mean, you had that when y' all and I saw that post, what's the rabbit? Deal? And I'm like, so, yeah, we had.

[Matt]

HR last week, and I put it in there because I vehemently hate the whole running the rabbit.

[Brandon]

I do, too.

[Matt]

I don't know if you know really what that is or not. So coming into an HR where the guy shielded up and some agencies do this where they just say, you're gonna run the rabbit. The first guy just pushes across, try to get him, to track him, to open him up. And like, well, that concept of just writing your guy off, saying, all you are. Is that the armored rabbit, the rabbit. You're running the rabbit. You're just riding one guy off and you letting everybody else. Like, we're not doing that. We're going to try to open them up for our own shot. Or my partner, like, if I track on you, you can either shoot at me or Brandon. You can't shoot at both of us. So pick your poison, because the other one's going to get you. And so we're working simultaneously together to try to open you up, to get you. So. So there's a lot of agencies that run the rabbit. And so we would hear this. Oh, I was like, there's no dang rabbit. I like, stop. We're not doing this. And so I wrote it on the board because this. The things they're searching through their sites. And I just wrote down the seven common mistakes that I wrote down my little cheat sheet. And I was like, asked all the squads that come back, because we have four squads and each squad teaches a block. And I was like, what are you saying? They're just listening. One, two, same thing. And Brandon, I've talked about this ad nauseam over the years when he would come out to the classes. It's the same six or seven things that you're. That they're doing, and it's eight. We have people coming from Anchorage, Alaska. Many people from around the country come to these classes because it's HR and they want to see this. And it's like, they're running the rabbit, and it's like, we're not doing this. But like Matt, you said earlier on this run in this same room, I need to do this. I took the hostage and turned him and put the hostage behind the suspect. And the suspect was turned around looking Away from the entry team coming, had the gun pointed at them, and they came in, and they're just. They just locked up. And I'm like, your swat, where you work, like, you gotta be able to solve these problems. But earlier, the same room, the same positioning, other than just rotating them around, it was this whole big running rabbit thing. And I'm like, like, look, it's gray, bro. It's not black and white. I need you to solve these problems. And it's the same thing by having a shooting. Shooting solution in your mind about when you're playing, picking up these targets. I'm like, you have to figure out what is acceptable and what. What is. And so we had Keith shooting from one room into the other room with Sims, and he was advancing on them with a SIMS, you know, M16 old style. And he's just wearing them out. And the guy turns around and he takes off running. He goes. He's like, well, I couldn't shoot him because it wasn't. The sims aren't like, why didn't you shoot him? He. He's armed. He's shooting at you. He just turned around, shoot him. They're like, well, he was gone too soon. I'm like, well, back to fundamentals. Your. Your rifle wasn't in your shoulder pocket. You weren't ready to fight. It's back to the range drills, and it equates to all this. I'm like, look, you weren't ready for that engagement, and he wore y' all out. Had you been ready, and you'd have been able to come up. And so he goes, well, I don't know. He goes, the rounds. Sims rounds are slower. I'm like, oh, my. I said, stop. And so I have a video. So we. We heard this. So I heard that. I have a video. Video of one of the new guys. So I took. I told him I got him the middle way through the. Outside of the. Of that. We have a big hangar at Naval Air Station. We have this indoor facade we built, movable. Anyway, so I put him a. Halfway up the building. I got past the end of it. I said, my hands are up like this. I said, I will not move for the rifle. It was. I have my Sims upper, you know, UTM ready to go. I said, I will not go to the gun until you take off running. I said, I don't care where you go. You just can't run into the building. You got to go past the. You know, you got to take off running. You can zigzag, whatever. And I Only get one shot. If I miss you, then you win. But if I. If I get you. And so I just. Like this. He took off running. I just came up and I boxed his butt in that eotech and popped him right in the back. And I got him. And everybody's like. And he goes, how long did you have me? I said, I had you for many steps before I shot you. I said, because it was a clean. Come up and get this. I said, And I was telling the guy, if these are things you can work on, like, you don't think that you can make this shot across a room. He's dumping rounds on you at 8 to 10ft away. I said, dude, you have no business going in and try to solve these problems. And so it goes back to, into. The tangent that we got into is, like, because it was the same room, but different scenario, they wanted that black and white easy button. When you said to do this, I'm like, dude, we live in the gray. Like, you've got to be able perform that, whether it be a range drill or cqb. And we've sat up there and just talked about this to the. And, and, and some guys are really good. They come in and go, man, that's great. That's a great. That's a great perspective or a run or a scenario. I never thought about that. Or some of them go. And they just push back.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And I'm like, I can't help you, bro. Like, you're here for three days. We'll work on it.

[Brandon]

But, you know, so.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, I love cops.

[Matt]

Well, but the ones that come in there that really want to get after it and want to train hard and then make mistakes, like, dude, I love.

[Brandon]

You for that, man.

[Matt]

I appreciate those guys.

[Brandon]

Those are my favorite.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And you'll. You'll. You'll rerun that run again just for them because, like, hey, Mac, I get no, like, I want. I messed that up. Set that thing back up. We're running again. Yeah. And so you appreciate those guys? Because I've been. I've. You know, I was very fortunate to have great dudes that really do this job like you. I, too, that they showed you how to do it the right way and, like, you will do it this way. Like, this is the right way and you're going to learn, and you were held to a standard. But I appreciate them every day even more, you know, because you worked hard. They took the patience to train how to do this job. We all had to learn it. You had to learn. We all had to learn how to do this job. Nobody walked in here knowing it clean, you know, right out of the box.

[Brandon]

So, you know, I'm still learning this job.

[Matt]

Yeah. 25 years, I'm still learning, still learning.

[Brandon]

And I think that that's why you have to build a culture of, of that for, for your team, for the group of guys that you're with, whether you're on a team or not. In patrol, get guys that are girls, whatever. I use guys, generic operators. Yeah, whatever that is. But invest in other people that have the same values that you have and do that. Like, like I said I was, man. There's guys that come to TTPOA now that years ago wouldn't have come that most of the classes. When I do shooting classes, it's not the quote, SWAT dudes that come, it's the patrol guy, it's the sro, it's the whatever guy is coming to these classes because they want to go. When I do any, any class, man, I don't care if it's cqb, most of the time it's a split between team guys and just patrol guys or some dude that works in a school. They're just wanting to get better and they might not be really good, but they're wanting, they're wanting to get better and they understand that. And I think when you understand that, hey, my skill level is not where it needs to be, but I wanted to get it there, man. You're on the track to get better. I mean, you're going to.

[Matt]

Last week, 40 people in the class. 10 of them.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

One quarter of the class was DPD. Non.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt]

So one quarter of our class was just guys that had worked for us that signed up that wanted to take the class an HR school because they just wanted to want to reps in because they know it helps them to get time with us and everything. But you wouldn't have seen that five years ago.

[Brandon]

No, you wouldn't.

[Matt]

No. No way.

[Brandon]

Yeah, you definitely would. And I'm glad because yeah, it's great as an organization. Yeah. Where the Texas Tactical. But what the tactical really mean? I mean everything is tactical in police world. I mean, whatever that means. So it's not just for teams or anything like that. And I'm proud of that because I want more.

[Matt]

Well, the class, y' all asked me to do, the shooting class, I do the conference all the time. Yeah, it's not a SWAT centric class. It's open air multiple threat thing that I do. You know, this is the Patrol guy walking into Walmart in some, you know. You know, whatever, you know, it's. It's not. It's not a swats class by any means.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And we have everybody in that class. I have a. A Houston narcotics guy. He's taking that class twice for that. Yeah, he just like that last shooting in his class. He's taking it twice. And he's narcotics. He. He's undercover all the time. He's. I just like coming out shooting your glass and he's done. Yeah. So I appreciate that.

[Brandon]

And that's the thing that really, there's very. Just pure. Just SWAT classes. Unless you're just putting on a. We're doing an explosive breaching because that's. That's a function of us. Or push and pull with. There's. There's some. But for the most part, a shooting class. I don't care. There's no SWAT shooting that's different than any other shooting. It's. It's all shooting or, hey, we're just working on movement in a house. Okay. Yeah, you. You. You do it as a team, but you're. You're going to have to do it with other officers on your department. So the concepts are going to be similar, you know, So I think that's where I think we do a good job of just marketing and wanting guys out there and stuff, so. Well, y' all got anything else to add, man? I'm sorry I took about 30 minutes of your life away and didn't record up in that.

[Matt]

Oh, Sean, appreciate what you do, man, out there, you know, trying to carry all that, because that's a lot going on, you know, need people to do that.

[Brandon]

So.

[Matt]

Thank you for all your service out there.

[Brandon]

I guess it's. So if someone wants to train with you or just look at your beautiful beard in person, how they. How do they go do.

[Sean Griffith]

About. That's pretty nice.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it is. It's not as good as I had when I was in narcotics, but, dude, it's a start.

[Matt]

He was shaggy. I mean, he looks nothing like he.

[Brandon]

Used to because it was about down to my belly. And then my hair.

[Sean Griffith]

Mine doesn't get any longer. It just. It goes out thicker, down.

[Matt]

Yeah, he looked like something. Like something.

[Sean Griffith]

I prefer the term.

[Matt]

He looked like some kind of primal. But he looked good, though. He pulled it off and it was. He was. What you see is not what. What.

[Brandon]

You know, it's funny because guys that knew me. Yeah. That didn't know me before. I look without the hair and stuff, man. Would not Even recognize I'd come to classes. Yeah. Then I'd start talking. Oh my gosh, Brandon. That she. I was like, yeah. Oh my gosh. I had no idea that was you until you started talking and stuff.

[Sean Griffith]

So.

[Brandon]

Yeah. So anyway, I digress. How so if they want to train with you, how would you go about doing that?

[Sean Griffith]

So you go to the Website Griffith. Griffith shootingsolutions.com okay. All our classes are, are on there to sign up for and then the, the regular channel. So like you DM me on Instagram. It's Griffith Shooting. Send an email at [e-mail] okay. Set up classes or you know, I post a lot of information online on Instagram. I try and stay pretty active on there. Yeah. You know, putting out as much information as I can.

[Brandon]

And you're not a guy that's bragging or big show showmanship or anything. Like you're pretty just.

[Sean Griffith]

I like to, I like to think of myself as like grassroots.

[Brandon]

Yes. Training definitely are.

[Sean Griffith]

Self. Self marketing is not a strong suit of mind.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Well that's good.

[Matt]

I mean, well, if you're doing it the right way, people will find out.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah. So far it's worked out as, as well as I could have expected. So you know.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Matt]

If you're honest with people, it'll get out. Yeah, it will. People, people care about that.

[Brandon]

So you teach teams and stuff like that. If someone want the team.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah. Or whatever I teach, you know, kind of bread and butter is, is like performance handgun type shooting because that's, that's kind of my wheelhouse, you know. But I've, I've worked with a ton of LE agencies across the country and, and as well as like open enrollment competitive competition classes even if you're not a competitor. Right. As long as you can like safely handle the gun, you know, everybody's welcome do all that.

[Brandon]

So what's in store for 2025 for you?

[Sean Griffith]

Oh, this year is the craziest year so far. So this is kind of the start to my year is this class here. I'll be traveling around. I think I've got classes in New Jersey. Let me think. Indiana, Oklahoma, I think Idaho. And then the, the kind of the culminating event for me this year is I gotta a spot to shoot at the world Shoot in South Africa in September. So most of my, my focus would be on getting, getting ready for that. So that'll be a cool experience.

[Matt]

That sounds cool.

[Sean Griffith]

It'll be.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Sean Griffith]

A first time for me for sure. So.

[Brandon]

So how much training time do you put in like a. In a week, like range time and stuff?

[Sean Griffith]

So about two years ago, I bought some land in South Georgia where I'm at and built. Built a range at my house.

[Brandon]

Oh, nice.

[Sean Griffith]

So I could walk 60 yards out of the backyard and down my lane. And I've got a 25 by 25 yard bay, so I get on the range a lot more now. I usually shoot live fire probably on average twice a week and then dry fire, typically five days a week in between that, you know, 20, 30 minutes a day. But I'm shooting, you know, it depends. This year will be a lot more because of the world shoot. I'll ramp up the round count, which is awesome for my bank account, but we won't talk about that.

[Brandon]

So. Fill his classes up.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's going to be crazy, but, you know, world shoots in September. I'll shoot carry optics nationals, limited optics nationals and all those big matches. So there's quite a bit on the schedule this year already.

[Brandon]

Well, that's awesome, man. Well, it's been a pleasure just getting to know you and I look forward to. To having you back. I will. We'll set something up for next year.

[Sean Griffith]

Yeah, this has been awesome. Thanks, sir.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And then hosting. Yeah. So glad you enjoyed our time. Maybe we'll get a better weather for you.

[Sean Griffith]

Well, we'll be indoors tomorrow.

[Brandon]

Yeah, that, that is. I, I do think that that was a good hookup there. It's a little bit further dry, but I think it's gonna be worth it with the weather and stuff.

[Matt]

But, like in August.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's great in August, man. You'll love.

[Sean Griffith]

Probably not as. Or I won't say it's not as bad, but it can't be much different than South Georgia in August.

[Brandon]

That's, that's, that's, that's true. It is nasty. What's tomorrow? We'll change the class and it won't rain one damn drop.

[Sean Griffith]

I know, I know. I was looking at it today when we were leaving. I was like, man, it actually looks kind of nice out here.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it did. It hasn't. I think it was going to rain all night and stuff, so. Anyway. But hey, pleasure to have you. Anything else, Matt?

[Matt]

Oh, man, appreciate. No good. Best of luck of everything.

[Sean Griffith]

Thank you.

[Brandon]

All right, well, folks, I appreciate you listening to my dumb ass at least, so. All right, so y' all train hard and stay safe out there, guys.