TTPOA "Train-Up's" - Ben Stoeger Discuses Dry Fire Training

Summary

TTPOA Podcast: "Train-Up's" with Ben Stoeger Discusses Dry Fire Training

Release Date: December 9, 2024
Host: TTPOA Host (Ben Stoeger)
Guests: Brandon and Ben Stoeger

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Introduction to Dry Fire Training

In this episode of The TTPOA Podcast, hosts Ben Stoeger and Brandon delve into the critical topic of dry fire training—a fundamental practice for first responders aiming to enhance their shooting proficiency without live ammunition. The discussion begins with an acknowledgment of the often-overlooked importance of dry fire training and its misconceptions among practitioners.

Ben Stoeger initiates the conversation by addressing the prevalence of dry fire training:

"I hear a lot of guys, dry fire, they do it all the time. And then when you start asking them, they're like, no, I don't. No, I really don't. So I think this word gets thrown around a lot."
(01:09)

---

Understanding Dry Fire vs. Live Fire Training

Brandon emphasizes the distinction between dry fire and live fire training, clarifying that dry fire is essentially a form of practice:

"If you're going to ask him a question, do you dry fire? What you're really asking is, do you practice?"
(01:44)

He underscores that dry fire should be viewed as a daily or near-daily habit, integral to maintaining and improving shooting skills:

"It is a thing that you want to engage in. Like, that's how you practice with your gun for all that."
(02:25)

Ben Stoeger shares a personal anecdote highlighting the benefits of consistent dry fire practice:

"I was studying for our lieutenant's test... I didn't go to the range. I rarely dry fired... I got to start doing this... it wasn't super intense, but it helped."
(02:58)

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Setting Up an Effective Dry Fire Environment

Brandon outlines the essentials of creating a conducive dry fire training space, often referred to as a "dry fire dojo." He recommends dedicating a specific area, such as a basement, to safely conduct training:

"I have a dry fire area in my basement... if a gun goes off down there, it's less of a big deal."
(04:10)

Key components of an effective dry fire setup include:

• Loaded Dummy Magazines: Using magazines loaded with dummy rounds or weighted dummy rounds to simulate the weight and feel of live ammunition.
• Scaled Targets: Incorporating targets that mimic real-life scenarios and distances to provide realistic training conditions.
• Timers and Beepers: Utilizing timers to create timed drills, enhancing speed and efficiency in drawing, aiming, and transitioning between targets.

Brandon stresses the importance of low-friction setup to make dry fire training a seamless part of the daily routine:

"Making it low friction is important to me."
(07:22)

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Benefits of Dry Fire Training

The hosts discuss numerous advantages of dry fire training, including:

1. Muscle Memory Development: Consistently practicing movements and techniques helps engrain muscle memory, making responses more instinctive during high-pressure situations.
2. Technique Refinement: Dry fire allows for focused practice on specific elements such as grip, stance, draw speed, and transitioning between targets.
3. Error Identification: By simulating live fire scenarios, practitioners can identify and correct technical flaws without the costs and safety concerns associated with live ammunition.

Brandon provides a practical example of how dry fire training addressed his own technique deficiencies:

"In the class today, a lot of guys...their support hand was not doing a very good job on the grip... Dry fire is your practice to solve that problem."
(10:06)

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Implementing Dry Fire Training into Routine

Brandon and Ben outline strategies for integrating dry fire training into a regular schedule:

• Dedicated Time Slots: Allocating specific times daily or near-daily for dry fire practice, such as 10 minutes before starting the day's duties.
• Structured Drills: Incorporating various drills that simulate real-life scenarios, ensuring comprehensive skill development.
• Continuous Assessment: Regularly evaluating progress by measuring improvements in draw time, transition speed, and overall efficiency.

Brandon shares his regimented training approach:

"Each day fits into the training cycle... six weeks or a couple of months... then change the focus of the training."
(16:36)

Ben complements this by highlighting the importance of combined live and dry fire sessions:

"The most effective practice I can do is a combined session of both... live and dry type of session."
(15:42)

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Avoiding Bad Habits in Dry Fire Training

A critical aspect discussed is the potential for developing bad habits during dry fire training. Brandon advises:

• Reflective Practice: Using dry fire sessions to address and correct issues identified during live fire training.
• Consistent Technique: Ensuring that movements and grips during dry fire mimic those used in live fire to prevent ingraining incorrect habits.

Brandon provides insight into his method of correcting support hand grip issues:

"Come back to dry fire and actually train to correct the problem... do rep, rep, rep... until it becomes a practice thing."
(10:06)

Ben Stoeger adds that physical indicators, such as sore support hands, can signal effective practice:

"When you're dry firing, your support hands should probably be sore... that's an indicator."
(12:16)

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Advanced Dry Fire Techniques and Competition Preparation

Brandon shares advanced techniques used in competitive shooting environments, including:

• Scenario-Based Drills: Simulating stages of competition without live fire to enhance tactical decision-making and movement.
• Timed Drills: Using timers to create pressure and improve reaction times during transitions and target engagements.

He describes his approach to competition preparation:

"I have a competition stage set up... go through the entire stage dry... get your sights on each target really aggressively, run to the next spot."
(12:34)

Ben highlights the value of integrating classifier training into dry fire routines for competitive shooters:

"I think you can learn a lot from classifier training because it's going to be measurable performance."
(21:21)

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Personal Training Routines and Insights

The hosts exchange personal training routines, offering listeners practical examples to emulate:

• Brandon's Routine: Typically spends 60 to 90 minutes at the range, firing between 300 to 900 rounds daily. His training is part of a larger cycle aimed at specific goals, such as distance shooting or movement drills.

  "I'm going through a cycle of like, doing this training for a couple of months, then I'll flip it and change it to something else."
  (17:28)

• Ben's Insights: Emphasizes the synergy between live fire and dry fire, advocating for a balanced training regimen that incorporates both methods to maximize skill retention and improvement.

  "The most effective practice I can do is a combined session of both live and dry type of session."
  (15:42)

---

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with Ben and Brandon reaffirming the importance of disciplined training routines and the integration of dry fire practices into daily habits. They encourage listeners to adopt these methods to enhance their readiness and effectiveness on the front lines.

Brandon humorously attempts to lighten the discussion with banter, highlighting the camaraderie between the hosts:

"I'm trying to monetize Grindr... that's not bad."
(23:26)

Ben wraps up by motivating listeners to take actionable steps based on the podcast’s insights:

"Don't just listen to it and don't do anything about it... we're giving you the information. It's up to you to go out there and continue to train."
(24:50)
"Train hard, guys, and take care of business when you need to."
(25:05)

---

Key Takeaways

• Consistency is Crucial: Regular dry fire practice is essential for maintaining and enhancing shooting skills.
• Structured Environment: Creating a dedicated and safe training space facilitates effective dry fire sessions.
• Balanced Training: Combining dry fire with live fire sessions yields the best results in skill development.
• Continuous Improvement: Regularly assessing and adjusting training routines ensures ongoing proficiency and readiness.
• Avoiding and Correcting Bad Habits: Use dry fire to identify and rectify technical flaws observed during live fire training.

By incorporating these strategies into their routines, first responders and competitive shooters alike can significantly improve their tactical proficiency and operational effectiveness.

Transcript

[Brandon]

Foreign.

[Ben]

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, Ben and Brandon.

[Brandon]

Wish you could record.

[Ben]

Re.

[Brandon]

Record this terrible ass intro.

[Ben]

I know, I got to get that taken care of.

[Brandon]

It sucks anyway, so it's fine.

[Ben]

Sorry. Yeah, we got to get that taken care of. I might have, like the macho man or somebody do it for me.

[Brandon]

I mean, I think sauce it up. Yeah, I think if you don't have to run it by hr, then.

[Ben]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think we have an hr.

[Brandon]

But if I want you to go so hard on the intro that they.

[Ben]

Didn'T that I had to go see hr. First time in TTPOA history we had to develop an HR just because of Brandon and you would be behind it.

[Brandon]

I'm all for it.

[Ben]

Yes.

[Brandon]

I'm all for that stuff.

[Ben]

Notorious Ben Steger. So. All right, so this is going to conclude and wrap up whatever word you want to use with our TTPOA training tips. We're going to talk about dry fire. So I hear a lot of guys, dry fire, they do it all the time. And then when you start asking them them, they're like, no, I don't. No, I really don't. So I think this word gets thrown around a lot. I think some people don't even know how to drive fire, but they think they do. So, ma'am, let's clear this up.

[Brandon]

How about clear it up?

[Ben]

Yeah, let's clear.

[Brandon]

All right, so I think the first thing to say is, like, you might as well. Like, for the guys listening to this, you might as well say, if you're going to ask him a question, do you dry fire? What you're really asking is, do you practice? Yeah, right. I mean, hate to say it, but it's like, this is. This is the way that you actually practice this stuff. Live, like, live ammo. Usually you can go try some stuff, demonstrate concepts, you know, that kind of thing. But your actual training, when you're repping it out, it's going to be without ammo. And that's the first thing is like, hey, this is. This is the way you're actually going to practice. So I think what you want to do is view, view dry fire. It is like a daily or near daily type of habit. It is a thing that you want to engage in. Like, that's how you practice with your gun for all that. Yeah, right. It's not at the. It sounds weird to say it, but at the Most basic level, you have to understand that this is how you're going to practice. Like, if you're not doing dry fire, you are not practicing.

[Ben]

Yeah, no, because I just look at what it does for my indexing, my vision, my grip. I mean it, right? There's so many things that you're saying.

[Brandon]

Like, yeah, look, I practice and I get better.

[Ben]

Yeah. Yeah. And there was. There was a time where the beginning of the year, I was studying for our lieutenant's test. So three months of my life, I was just reading and reading, reading. And man, I didn't go to the range. I rarely dry fired. And then I was like, okay, I got to start doing this. And I would just do it on like a little break and I would set a timer and then go back to read. And it was funny. Like, when I went back to the range, I wasn't really. I wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I was like, okay, that's. It's still there. But I contributed that to the dry fire stuff that I was doing. And it wasn't anything that was super intense. It was just, just getting some reps in and just getting, you know, just kind of. I didn't have to read anymore for basically, to be honest, I was like, I got to get something doing something else. But it did help just doing that little bit of that.

[Brandon]

So I would say, like, the way that dry fire gets structured is most guys have their little dry fire dojo or they have a dry fire area. This is very good. Yeah, this is very good. So like having a space where you can do it, it could be anything. It could be like you have. You all don't have basements here. Be better if the state did have basements.

[Ben]

I love a basement.

[Brandon]

Amazing.

[Ben]

Especially when it's hot.

[Brandon]

But to me, I like, I have a dry fire area in my basement. So should a gun go off down there, it's less of a big deal, right? It's like it's going through a wall, are going to hit one of the neighbors. So I have an area that is safer, you know, like, should there be some kind of an accident. And I have targets that's that live there. They stay up. I have magazines loaded with dummy rounds that I can use for my dry fire training. Have timers there. Like all of the things that I would normally use for shooting, aside from hearing protection and ammunition, I have it there. I have all there, right. So that's the first thing is have an area or a space or something where it's like yeah, this is where I do my dry fire. Dedicated to something that sounds like maybe kind of basic, but a lot of guys, they spend so much time just talking about this stuff. It's just. No, set up your little area and count out and carve out the time, which I think the best time to do it, especially for the guys, like working patrol, it's like before you like, whatever, check in for the day or whatever the, like, put your stuff on just 10 minutes early, put your belt on and just work, work, work with the, you know, work with the skills that you have, like do the drills, whatever you want to do. Whatever you want to work on. Yeah, Just make it a part of your daily routine for that. That is. It is a thing that you are regularly going to do.

[Ben]

So what. So you said W round. So those are listening. What do those do? What does that help? How does that help you in dry fire?

[Brandon]

Sure. So what, I mean, what I want from my dry fire is that it's kind of as close as I can make it to what happens when I shoot live ammo. So for one, we reload the gun with full magazines. When my, My gun comes out of the holster, the magazine and it's full, it changes the weight of it, all that stuff. So it's very, very common in competitive shooting circles that we're going to have weighted dummy rounds. Mostly. It's like a actual. It's a live round. Right. But it's not live, it's dummy. But it's a real bullet in a real. In a real case. No, no primer, no powder. Right. So having that with your magazines full of that now stuff feels more real.

[Ben]

Okay.

[Brandon]

You know, and it, and it is actually better training. My pistol's the right weight. When I'm shoving a new mag in there, I have to overcome the spring tension of the, you know, the round at the top round of the magazine, you know, all the compressed spring. I've got to actually seat the magazine, send it home. I can practice stuff like drop, like, I can validate stuff like I can drop out an empty magazine with the slide back on my pistol, put in a magazine loaded with dummy rounds, release the slide, you know, and do. Doing this quickly, I'm ensuring like, okay, like I'm at. At speed. I'm actually reloading the pistol effectively. And it's all working well. Right. So having that kind of stuff makes things easier. Having scaled targets, that's a, That's a key thing. So that's, you know, a target that. Whatever target you want, maybe your Qual target is what you're interested in? Maybe USPSA target, whatever. I have those things scaled down so that it, it looks appropriate inside my dry fire area. And it, it presents the targets that I want to train on.

[Ben]

So if you're at three feet and this is simulating, hey, this is the distance or 6ft or whatever the case is.

[Brandon]

Exactly. So I have that stuff that just kind of lives in that area. So to me, I like it to be very low friction. So I mean, I have, you know, I could just like put my belt on. It takes just a few seconds and then slide right into the. Pick up a timer and slide right into the training. Yeah, that's what I want to do. Like making it low friction is important to me.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah. I think the, the old timer is a good thing because makes you have to go off something and not just your own and like something simulating. Hey, it's time to go.

[Brandon]

And then it, you can set up just the par settings so you set a second beep so that like, oh, I'm going to give myself, you know, 1.6 seconds to draw and index the pistol on this target. Look to this second target and then see the flash of red from the site on the second target. Yeah, whatever. Okay. Set the time. And then it's actually, it's actually putting out two beeps. Like that's 1.6 seconds between them. So, you know, it's giving me again, it's giving me something that's going to push me and it's. I can measure on some level like how fast I'm going, that kind of stuff.

[Ben]

And I think that's important because you have to start working towards something. Hey, I've gotten better because now my, my draw time has gone from this to this or my transition time. Whatever time you're trying to, you know, figure out, I think that's, that's a good thing I got. I think it's like a dollar a month for the dry fire King on YouTube just gives me something different than just staggered stagnant paper targets. I thought I'm like, okay, that just, it interests me to just kind of change some stuff up. Do I do it all the time. I'll still go back to the paper targets or if I'm working out in the gym, whatever, having my garage and stuff, but just it changes it up, which I think is good as well. So the, so that's the time like, hey, there's no, you're not gonna say, hey, you got to do 15 minutes. It's because I hear that all the time, and cops want all the damn answers to the questions. To me, it's fitted in somewhere. I mean, some guys do two sessions, some guys do a longer session. I think, to me, I Would you agree that it's up to that individual of how they learn and.

[Brandon]

Yeah. What they do and, and that's why it's. I'm trying to impress, like, just make it a habit that you do it.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Like on a, you know, near daily type of thing. If you're regularly doing it and you're interested in it and you're, you know, you're actually trying to improve, you will get sucked into spending more time. You. You will want to do more reps so that, you know, you're gonna, you'll. You'll do that on your own.

[Ben]

What are, what are things to look for in dry fire that could, could develop bad habits?

[Brandon]

Right. That's actually great. So dry fire, a good way to conceptualize it is you're gonna go to the range and shoot live ammo. At some point, everybody listening has shot live ammo. Right. But the lessons you learn with live ammo or like, as you shoot live, you're like, you're seeing like, hey, I'm not doing this thing right. Or, hey, I've got this problem. Dry fire is your practice to solve that problem. So a good example. A lot of guys in the class today, like, their support hand was not doing a very good job on the grip. Right. So draw the pistol, and they wouldn't connect their support hand to it. Very good. Start shooting live ammo, and by three, four, five rounds come out of the gun. By then, their support hands really not doing anything. They're dominant. They're sensing a loss of control of the pistol. Right. And their dominant hands taken over and they're starting to drive the pistol down, down into the left. All right? So if you recogn, you know, dry fire is going to start with live fire, ironically. Right. So you have that experience from shooting the gun live, and then you go to dry fire and you actually train to correct the problem. Okay, hey, I'm gonna come out of the, come out of the holster aggressively, get that support hand connected to the pistol correctly index it on a target, and you're like, you do rep, rep, rep, rep, where you're really rigidly assessing just that one element.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Right. So you see that your, your experience shooting live ammo, now it feeds in like that. That informs you. That's telling you what to practice dry. And you'll do that. You do that dry practice until you, you're kind of doing the right thing with your technique without having to think about it too much. Like it becomes a practice thing. You become trained for that, right. And then the next time you go to the range, you shoot there, like, see what happens. Like my dry fire training, did it work? Is it effective? Yeah, like am I doing the better now or is it the right thing or is it not or do I need to change something?

[Ben]

So what? When you're dry firing, your support hands should probably be sore maybe afterwards or feels like have been doing that.

[Brandon]

That'd be an indicator.

[Ben]

Indicator.

[Brandon]

That's an indicator. It's not decide, you know, not.

[Ben]

That's a good, good starting point. As far as movement, you could probably do what bar drill, dry fire. You do pretty much anything that you do on the, on the range, movement wise, you can simulate that.

[Brandon]

Well, let me tell you, I have one, one thing I do in the open enrollment civilian competition classes generally is we'll have a, a competition stage set up. I'll go over there and be like, all right guys, gather on to do all this and we'll go through the entire stage dry, okay. Where they don't even pull it. Like, don't pull the trigger. We're not doing that. Just like index the gun on the target, see the flash of the sites that you want for that particular target, then look to the next target and again and again they go through the whole stage dry without fire. You know, you're not shooting, not pulling the trigger, not simulating the shooting. It's just get your sights on each target really aggressively, run to the next spot, do it again, run to the next spot, do it again. So on it'll be like, hey, I'll tell the guys every time. Like, this is going to be what you get the most out of today. It's the dry runs on the stage for that. Right. And in my opinion, you want to come as close to that in your home dry fire training as you can. Now, you can't have like a outdoor range type of thing where there's targets 30 yards away, right. Doing 25 yards of movement. There's walls and everywhere. That's not going to happen.

[Ben]

Right.

[Brandon]

But come as close to that as you can with the space that you have with working within your limitations where, yeah, you're moving around dynamically, you know, or you're, you know, holding the, holding a good sight picture on a target as you move. That kind of stuff.

[Ben]

Yeah, it's funny, I think for me, that's where I need to start putting more emphasis. Emphasis on my dry fire is the movement part. When we were talking about.

[Brandon]

Everybody was talking about it today. They're like, man, Brandon's pretty good. His movement's.

[Ben]

It's just getting comfortable and like, kind of like, okay, let me, let me do it this way. And I think there's so many, you know, nuances to that, but that is one thing I feel like I definitely need to start implementing more to, to, to get better and, and just be more efficient in my, in my shooting and stuff, so. But I appreciate you pointing that out to me. I asked for it, so, I mean.

[Brandon]

I pointed it out to the whole class.

[Ben]

Yeah, I'm sure you did. But no, I got really good feedback and I, I like to dry fire on the range as well. Like, there's been times where I've shot some stuff and I'm like, man, what's going on here? Yeah, and then I'll drop a mag and, and, and then sometimes I'm like, oh, this is what I'm doing.

[Brandon]

That's such a good point. And so I want to say a couple things about that. So first I tell everybody, it's like, hey, man, practice is practice, like live fire. I mean, the more experience I've gotten, the more I've shot, the more I've dry fired, the more I come to the opinions. Like, practice is practice. Yeah. I can spend my time doing dry fire. I can spend my time doing live fire. Most effective practice I can do is a combined session of both. Yeah, obviously that has to happen at a shooting range, but like, to me, the most effective training is a combined for doing that live and dry type of session. And that's absolutely right. Like, the way my personal practice is structured now, it's like I just go to the shooting range because I'm going to go every day go to the shooting range, and it's a combined thing. I'm doing live reps, doing dry reps, and working on different concepts for that.

[Ben]

So what's a, a typical training day look like for you? Like, how long are you there?

[Brandon]

Like, for me at, like, typically 69, 60 to 90 minutes. I'm at the range, I'm going to shoot, I don't know, 300 at the very low end.

[Ben]

Okay.

[Brandon]

Maybe eight, 900 rounds on a day. Like, it could be more, it could be a lot more depending on what I'm doing. But it's going to be like, let's say a good average 400 to 600 rounds, maybe 500 rounds. Right. It's usually on the shorter end of that. It's usually more towards 60 minutes. It's very rare. That's not very rare. But it's like it doesn't usually happen that I'm, that I'm at the range for more than an hour. So I mean my truck driving into the gate and my truck leaving.

[Ben]

Okay.

[Brandon]

About an hour. Like I'm not around a whole lot.

[Ben]

Are you already like have something written out or is it in your head? Hey, here's what I'm going to do. Magazines already loaded up and all that.

[Brandon]

Magazine's not loaded. My. I have each day of training it's like it fits into the, the training week, right. Which there's stuff happening for the week, right. Maybe there's distance shooting this day, shooting on the move this day. You know, I have a plan or whatever that I'm trying to accomplish. The day fits into the week. And then the training cycle like typically is going to be like six weeks or a couple months where there's like I'm trying to accomplish something or train something or do something over that course of time. And then usually to me like then it's time to change the focus of the training. So if the guys, I don't know if they're following me on YouTube or on Instagram or whatever, you might see that after like six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, like Ben's got a different gun. Yeah, yeah, right. That's what's going on.

[Ben]

Your little box of guns over here. Quite interesting.

[Brandon]

Right, Right. So that's what's happening. It's like I'm going through a cycle of like, like doing this training for a couple of months, then I'll flip it and change it to something else for that. During the competition days it was like, hey, the area match or whatever, there's big match in May and you're the train up is you know, March, April, then early May, we hit this match. Then there's a rest cycle. Like no training for a week, light training for a week. Now we're into a four week cycle for the next big match and you get three days rest then heavy training for three weeks into another major. Like it's all planned. It's all part of a larger picture for all that.

[Ben]

Yeah, I can see how your training like mindset is different now because you're training to train others.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I'm trying.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

So I'm training myself. I'm doing all stuff. But yeah, yeah, it's. But just understand like each day is gonna, it's, it's part of a larger picture. It's not a self contained thing. But anyway, normally I'll go to the range, we'll come on there, I'm gonna set the range up for the, for what I want to shoot. And I like to set the range up once, meaning I'll put out my targets. Not a bunch targets like steel targets, paper targets. What again, whatever I'm doing.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I'll put them out there and I'm going to typically set it up. So I'm not going to move anything around for that. Right. Because I like efficiency.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I like to do two or three different drills or exercises. Not a bunch. Right. And I'll tend to rep one out a lot. Like a couple hundred rounds before I want to change. Right. And that gives me just think about what we were doing in the class. It's like I want guys to shoot it a lot and explore it and have a chance to fail. And you know, you don't do that by setting up a drill and doing one, one or two reps on it. Being like, yeah, my shot. That's what I did on the thing. It's like that's not really like training.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So I'll, I'll shoot the exercises I want to shoot. Typically I'm going to shoot the most complicated thing first.

[Ben]

Okay.

[Brandon]

Right. And the least complicated thing last. And the reason for that is I'm. I have to test my cold shooting ability.

[Ben]

Oh yeah.

[Brandon]

So I want that test of ability to be on a complex type of thing.

[Ben]

Kind of like if you're in a squad car and all of a sudden, bam, you're in the shooting. Yeah.

[Brandon]

Warming up. You're not like, oh, let me check my zero over here, bro. Like this. It's like, no, I'm, I've got a train to put my gun in a case, fly to a different continent, take it out of the case without shooting it and competing or whatever.

[Ben]

No, that's a good point. I do like the performance on demand. Are you pasting every everything? Are you pacing only thing outside of a zone or just depends.

[Brandon]

It depends on what I'm doing. I'm going to be accountable for every round I fire. Right. So if there's any questions, I'm like, everything's getting pasted every time. Maybe depending on what I'm doing.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

If I'm shooting at the five, like bill drills at the five yard line, I may not be doing a lot of pasting.

[Ben]

Right. Because you see, yeah.

[Brandon]

I can See what's going on now.

[Ben]

Let me ask you this. This is kind of off the drop fire topic, but it kept brought a question in my head. So if you're, if you're say, new into the competitive shooting world and you're trying to make some type of rank B class, a class M class or whatever, are you training the classifiers? Are you training a combination of that? Or what would you suggest?

[Brandon]

I think you should train concepts and also try classifiers. A lot of guys don't like the idea of shooting the classifiers outside of a competition. I think that's a little bit weird. I think you can learn a lot from those things because it's going to be measurable sort of performance. So it is very beneficial to understand where your. How your performance measures on those classifiers.

[Ben]

So do you think this would be. So if you're some team out there and you're like, hey, let's pick a few classifiers just to see where we stack up. Because these things are. I mean there's, there's all kinds of metrics on there. Is that something. If someone looking for some drills to do those be something you'd recommend some classifiers or, or not.

[Brandon]

If they look like you could easily set them up at your range. Some of them are complicated now as far as the setup, but if you, if you can easily set them up and try them, I think that would be great.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And I think for. I mean, I can imagine some of the guys listening to this are really into shooting.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But they're on teams where a lot of the guys aren't. This would just be like. I think a lot of the guys on the team that aren't into shooting would like shoot, then see their score and then look at what the high scores are. And they, it would be genuinely confusing. They'd be like, what? Yeah, what is this?

[Ben]

I see it all the time of when I have advanced SWAT and basic swat.

[Brandon]

I'll.

[Ben]

I'll have all my instructors out there in a round robin and I usually will have some type of practical stage set up and I'll just grab people off the line and have them run it. And man, the looks on their eyes. And they're like, can I run it again? Like, yeah, you get to run it again. But your first cold one, that's your score, man. But we're going to practice after that. And it's so funny. Just because they want to shoot slow and they want to dip their gun down and that they don't know how to run with Their gun. It's been. It's been a fun journey to watch that, and I'm obviously no freaking professional at it at all, but it's funny to watch that. But I think all the guys afterwards, the feedback is so positive, and they're like, man, we want to do more of this. I want to bring this back because everybody I bring in to shoot is geared towards that style of shooting. So they're getting it from all different directions, and now they're actually putting together in some type of match form and stuff. So it's always good.

[Brandon]

Bukaked with.

[Ben]

Yes, I like that. Maybe that should be the title of. Of this whole series Bukkake was shooting.

[Brandon]

I like it.

[Ben]

That should be one of your stickers, man.

[Brandon]

No, I'd be like, wow, that's. That's not bad.

[Ben]

Yeah, I see your mind working on it.

[Brandon]

I'm trying to work in, like, a bukkake choke. Slam something into that because I think that'd be even funnier.

[Ben]

I love it.

[Brandon]

I like where you're at.

[Ben]

Oh. Anything else, man? On the. On the dry fire and just kind of training for le guys?

[Brandon]

No, man. I'm just seeing how much sex talk I can work into this before you kill it.

[Ben]

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Well, Ben, it was a pleasure, man. I really do appreciate you taking the time out of the evening each night you've been working your ass off on the range, and you have your own personal stuff that you're doing with your business late at night, all that kind of stuff. So I don't know what you're doing late at night on Nobody knows your Grinder account or whatever. I don't know.

[Brandon]

But trying to monetize Grindr. Yeah, I like that, but.

[Ben]

But I really do appreciate it, man. I appreciate just the feedback today at the class, man. Guys loved it. Guys were pulling me off on the side and talking to me about what they learned and what a. Just a. Just a genuine person you are on the range and just how much they learn from you.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And I think they were really impressed how I could, like, weave profanity into so much different stuff.

[Ben]

Yeah, that is. That is another gift that you have, man.

[Brandon]

It's a lot of practice for that.

[Ben]

Yeah. And just the curls now that you have with the hair and the flocks, man, it's just. Girls love the curls, man, so.

[Brandon]

Type of girls that like me obviously don't like guys that cut their hair too much, so.

[Ben]

Well, I appreciate this, man. I hope y'all get a lot out of this and don't just listen to it and don't do anything about it, because it's up to you. We're giving you the information. It's up to you to go out there and continue to train it.

[Brandon]

Training. Listen to podcasts.

[Ben]

Yeah, that's. You'll be the best shooter ever.

[Brandon]

You're gonna be so good.

[Ben]

That's it. So train hard, guys, and take care of business when you need to.