← The TTPOA Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign to the TTPOA 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, Derek and Brandon. And Brandon. All right, boys and girls, welcome back to another TTPOA Train up edition. So we're coming to you from the backyard honky tonk. We got some nice rain came in here tonight, so it's really nice this evening. So it looks like I got a casting couch going on with my video on the tripod and the little light shiny. Yeah, y' all look pretty in that, in that light. So I got my two set the.
- [00:55]
B
Mood for sure bright light.
- [00:58]
A
So I got my two boys over here on the, on the casting couch and I'm out of the the video. So that, that's good. So I'm more like the Dr. Director. So with me on this Train up episode is Chansey and Brian. Man, how y' all doing?
- [01:09]
B
Good, man. You good, y'. All. Thanks for having us out, man.
- [01:12]
A
Yeah, get your bellies full and stuff.
- [01:13]
C
Good. Yeah, groceries were plenty good.
- [01:16]
A
Yeah, she's a pretty good cook, man. I, I, I'm pretty fortunate with, when it comes to meeting.
- [01:21]
C
Better you better keep her around. You might wither away if you don't.
- [01:24]
A
Yeah, I know. She's, she's responsible for the, for the little belly I got sometimes and stuff. So no. So we wanted to do. So our first TTP way train up that we did was with Steger about kind of just the fundamentals of shooting and went over that. And so now I wanted to get y' all out if you are actually teaching in tomorrow's advanced SWAT school for two days. So y' all talked before with me before. So I like the way y' all approach things. Y' all come from the practical side of it, but y', all, what makes you unique is that you're actually implementing it in law enforcement. Y' all are in a big agency here in the North Texas area. So when y' all are doing something, it's a lot of folks. So anybody that has a big agency, y' all can relate. And then obviously, if you have a smaller agency, you can definitely implement this kind of stuff. So one of the topics we wanted to cover, so we're gonna break this down in probably about four different segments. So the first one we want to kind of tackle is training recruits. What does that look like? How do we do it? I've been stuff. So kind of walk us through. What does it look like to take the Practical style of shooting and implement that into a training a recruit from, for an academy because y' all run y' all's own academy and stuff like that. So what does that look like for y'?
- [02:38]
C
All?
- [02:38]
B
All right. Yeah. So day one, the first half of day one's all classroom stuff obviously, right? Getting all the gear issued and PowerPoint and stuff nobody likes to do.
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A
Boring.
- [02:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. After lunch on day one, we do all dummy drill stuff basically. Weapon manipulation, loading, unloading, stoppage clearance. This is the tactical or sustained loads, emergency stoppage drills, all these, all these things with, with dummy rounds. Just getting, getting them to manipulate the gun and kind of evaluating them, their weapon handling skills, you know, in a raw setting.
- [03:11]
A
And these are folks sometimes that never even held a handgun.
- [03:14]
B
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, at the end of the day of day one, it's three mags to capacity and it is zero instruction and it's from the five yard line and we just let them shoot. And you know, it's not a free for all, just mag dump. It's, you know, it's structured. But we want to see basically just take note of what we're seeing with each individual student and you know, we walk the line and, and take a lot of mental notes.
- [03:44]
A
So many students, we Talking about average, like 30.
- [03:47]
B
Yeah. Now, I mean, so like, you know, a normal size class for us is anywhere between 40 and 55.
- [03:56]
A
Okay. So yeah, large group of guys.
- [03:58]
C
So I am 30. Yeah.
- [04:02]
B
Per group. 30. 30ish per group. Like, you know, we got a class starting tomorrow or not tomorrow, I'm sorry, next week with 27. Okay. Lateral guys. So yeah, I mean they're, they're bigger, they're bigger classes, you know, not the biggest ones, but you know, they're not, they're not small ones. So. So yeah, that's day one, man. Day two, we go right into the fundamentals that we, we feel are the most important, which is grip, what, what proper grip looks like. You know, we discussed the whole fundamentals of shooting and talk about how stance is a luxury and all these things because you're not always gonna have a perfect square flat range and blah, blah, blah. And you know, and, and your feet aren't going to be perfectly shoulder width apart. So we go into all that, but we focus more on grip and then the manipulation of the trigger. We show them how, what you can get away with if you have a proper grip. And we debunk the whole do not slap the trigger thing right out the gate with them.
- [04:54]
A
Oh, so Y' all don't teach trigger reset. Get to the wall, man. Blasphemy. Blasphemy.
- [05:01]
C
With that whole deal with. It's a fitment thing with some people, too. I mean, because most, at least, you know, bigger outfits that issue guns like we issue Glock 47. And what we'll do there is. I mean, you got some guys that come through there with giant hands. You know, if you give them a gun that's just out of the box.
- [05:16]
B
Call it what it is. Chansey, they're giant.
- [05:17]
C
What? Sandwich. Grab our first chance.
- [05:20]
A
Chance isms.
- [05:21]
B
All right, I'm gonna pull them out of them.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Go lunchbox hands. Now. It's the whole deal of putting the back strap on the pistol.
- [05:29]
A
Yeah.
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C
Well, that matters as far as how so that they can just naturally lay their finger on the trigger to be able to pull the trigger.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah.
- [05:35]
C
Well, those little things matter. And before. What's the. At the end of the day, what. What are we. What are we trying to do? We want the right kind of contact index points on the gun. Okay. Because grip. And we, like you mentioned talking about that with Ben, and I can only imagine, you know, listening to that.
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A
Yeah.
- [05:51]
C
And how that correlates whenever you've got people out there is. You want. You want what. What feels right in your hand. Okay. Well, we need to gun. We need to link the pool to be right. Yeah. Somebody with huge hands and they're. And they've got way too much fingering on their. They're gonna fight it. You're gonna. You're gonna have them battling that from the word go. We try to knock that out up. Up front.
- [06:12]
B
And so, yeah, we'll go through a bunch of that. And then we talk about the return of the gun. Because the biggest thing that people. You know, the. Some of the things. So I'll pull the class. I'll ask, you know, how many. How many people have heard. Either they've been taught or they heard it somewhere or whatever about. You got to drive the sights back on target.
- [06:26]
C
Yeah.
- [06:27]
B
You know, the gun recoils, the gun lifts up. You got to drive the sights back. You know, so we go. We debunked that pretty quick. Where if you hold the gun properly, the gun's going to be a gun. It's going to return. Good enough. Right. If you do your part. So we'll demo that. You know, a lot of light bulbs start going on then. And we have less and less pushing on the gun. I mean, we still have it, obviously, because it's pretty much day One of actual instruction on. On the range. And then we go straight into doubles, man. We're running doubles and we run day two doubles. It's technically, it's technically our one live fire with them. All right, I like that, man, because the day, the day before, they had three mags, the capacity to just. Yeah, do whatever, do whatever. And I mean, that doesn't take but a couple minutes. So this is literally in the first hour of instruction on the range. We're running doubles.
- [07:12]
A
I like that.
- [07:12]
B
So, yeah, we do, you know, the reactive doubles, a string of reactive doubles, predictive doubles. We demo all those things and we hit the go button, man, and we start dissecting people there.
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A
So demo is very important.
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B
Correct.
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C
Huge. 100 huge.
- [07:27]
B
You better be able to demo everything.
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A
So when you're demoing for these recruits, like, what kind of speed are you trying to demo at to show them you're not trying to like, go, hey, man, look how badass I am?
- [07:36]
C
No, no, no, no. Initially, we're going to go out there and we're going to show them what is a very controlled pace at it. Okay. And it's, it comes back to that whole what's. What is acceptable. Yeah. What is pretty good. And then what is like, okay, this is where we're wanting you to strive for and to get them to understand what they can get away with or is confirmation levels where we're shooting at closer distances and how aggressive can you be on the gun still hold an acceptable level of accuracy? Well, they have to see and feel that for themselves.
- [08:04]
A
Yeah.
- [08:05]
C
It can't be just some regurgitated stuff. That's from the days of old, the old PPC style of shooting. And we got to get them to where they can see it themselves. And whenever that starts happening, you see guys. Guys and gals that get a lot more confident. Yeah.
- [08:20]
B
I think the biggest thing too, with, with demos. Right. Is obviously like Chancey was just talking about, you want to show them what's possible with the gun, you know, but we've been doing this for a little bit, and I think we all know we've been in this game long enough to know that there are students, students learn different. And some students will try to emulate what the instructor is doing.
- [08:39]
C
Yeah.
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B
And not hear a word that's coming out of my mouth. They just watch me demo. So if I go, if I'm running, you know, as fast as I can, running, you know, predictive doubles, or I'm running a sub 2 second bill drill right out the gate. Yeah, they Aren't going to do anything other than that when maybe they. They aren't there physically yet with the grip on the gun or the fitment of the gun or the hand placement or the index or whatever the case may be. So they're. They're literally getting nothing out of that drill other than making six bullets into brass.
- [09:10]
A
Just frustrated.
- [09:11]
B
Right.
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A
They can't do the trick.
- [09:14]
C
Another. Another huge things. We issue dots, we issue SROs. And a big thing with people, especially if you have. Because the majority of people that come through, if they do have time on the gun, it's irons.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Well, is. And everybody that shot a dot for a while, that's into doing this and trying to get squeeze. All the performance they can get out of it is they understand how important the index is.
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A
Yes.
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C
Well, that's a huge thing that we harp on with them, especially whenever they take their guns home at night to dry fire and to understand that there's nothing in this world that's straighter than your line of sight.
- [09:46]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [09:48]
C
So bring the gun into that, and we'll literally take the gun, hold it up in front of her face, and show them what it's like. If the dots in the middle of the window, to have them look at. Actually look at the gun that we're holding so they can see whenever we move the gun up, lift the muzzle just enough where the dot leaves out the top of the window, bring it back to the middle down till it just leaves left and right. And it's a very, very small area. And that's where you have to bring. That's. That is your index. Yeah. You have to find that. Yeah. That's what just go to when people, they're like, okay, now it makes sense to them.
- [10:19]
B
And that drill, like, Chance, he started doing that drill, right? He. He was talking to me about it, and. And he just. He's like, hey, I want to show them this, like, what little movement it requires. If you index again, properly, what little movement it requires to bring the dot back.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah.
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B
Into the glass. Right. And. And I too, like, when we had Matt out, you know, somebody made a comment like, well, how do I find the dot? And Matt's like, why are you looking for it? Just bring the gun in front of your face.
- [10:47]
A
Yeah.
- [10:48]
B
You know, you're talking about Matt pranking. I am. Like, intercept your vision with the glass. The dot's gonna be there, you know, and. And. And it really kind of combats that whole, like, you know, that whole crazy head movement and, like, the big rotations of the wrist trying to find the dot. And like, it looks like they're doing this choreographed dance when really all you have to do is just lift the gun to your face, intercept the vision with the glass. And the dots going to be there.
- [11:09]
C
Yeah. You see people turkey neck in a lot. You know, they're. I mean, they're moving their head all over trying to find it, and there. I mean, they are. That is so counter Productive. Yeah. To find, you know, to being able to do that. And once the index is there, well, goodness, man. Now, I mean, that's. That's the huge part of it.
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A
Yeah.
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C
You know, then it's just a matter of so showing them that small window is how finite the movement has to be to make. I mean, to move the dot a long ways as far as whatever the target is.
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A
No, for sure.
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B
Yeah. So, like, there's no secret sauce in finding the dot. It should bring the gun to your eyes.
- [11:39]
C
Yeah.
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B
Put in front of your face, you know, and I mean, it sounds easy. And I know there's. You know, some people are like, well, I still have trouble finding. Well, here's. I mean, here's the secret, guys. Like, I've been shooting dots for a little bit. Yeah. So it's chancey. And we. I don't find the dot 100% of the time. Every single time.
- [11:55]
A
Yeah.
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B
Like, it. Sometimes crazy movements are getting in and out of position. Like, hey, it's not there. And I got to make a small adjustment, you know? You know, but showing them that and what. What little it takes to actually index the gun properly.
- [12:09]
A
Yeah.
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B
For that, you know, so. Yeah. So we do doubles, and then we'll run doubles for probably 12 to 15 mags.
- [12:17]
A
Okay.
- [12:18]
B
And we jump straight into bill drills. We talk about the draw, marrying the hands early, building the grip early, just lifting the gun to your eyes. I'll let Chansey talk about that because Chancey's got a real good port, like, section or portion that he does with the. With the class. But then we go straight into bills.
- [12:33]
A
Wow.
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B
And. And we start hammering bills right out the gate. We'll probably run 15 to 18 mags of bills. I mean, straight. It's like, keep loading mags to capacity.
- [12:43]
A
It's funny because I've. I don't know, the last probably three or four basic SWAT schools that I've had. I'll talk about the kind of performance status, shooting and stuff, and I'll take a group away from the instructors and run a. Like a drill or. Not a drill, but a kind of A practical stage and stuff. And then we'll shoot a bill drill. And it's amazing how many of these officers have never even heard of what.
- [13:08]
B
I don't even know what it is.
- [13:09]
A
I'm like, it's crazy to me. And that's awesome. That yard, I mean, that's day two. They are. That you are doing that. Because to me, I think that's probably one of the most effective, like, things for law enforcement.
- [13:21]
C
As long as you're paying attention. Yeah, that's the. What we find with some people is they'll get up there and they'll put the gun in front of their face. They see gun oriented towards target. Just pull the trigger six times with no conscious thought about what's going into that. Well, the huge deal, you know, the way we take off with it is shooting it very reactive out the gate. Yeah. But I talk about the draw because no matter how good you are with the gun in front of your face, whenever it's aimed, if you can't get it there, then what good are you? So the efficiency of the draw marrying your hands early. I mean, if you can get two hands on the gun. Get two hands on the gun. Well, lifting the gun to your eyes. Okay. And to. And to be willing to accept the fact that if you're shooting a builder, albeit even reactive, that the dot's never going to stop moving. Now it's working on levels of confirmation. What do you need? Yeah, well, what happens when you start shooting the gun quickly? That. That dot just sucks you. I mean, it's like a cat and a laser, man. I mean, you want to. You want to watch it. Well, what do you have to do?
- [14:15]
A
Lock your eyes on?
- [14:16]
C
Well, that's whenever. We're really, really harp on staying target focused.
- [14:20]
A
Yeah.
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C
And whenever. And talking about how don't put so much energy into it, because we'll demo it all the way up to where it's the point of trigger freeze and lurching forward on the gun. Yeah. Okay. And as. And we tell them, I said, look, guys, y' all are going to do this. If you're really pushing the speed, you're going to come into some trigger freeze. Well, you have to fix that in real time.
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A
Yeah.
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C
It's not a matter of just pulling the E brake on this. Let's make adjustments at speed so you understand what's going on there? Yes. You can process this. Well, like we've. Like we were just talking about earlier, you know, before we started recording. You have to learn how to go fast. You have to go fast, to learn how to process fast. And like you mentioned that most cops have never, they're like, wait a minute, this is, this is reckless in this environment. In our class, it is not because we're shooting where, where it's safe for bullets to go. And if you, if you chuck them off the target right here, what caused it?
- [15:12]
A
That's big.
- [15:13]
B
That's where learning occurs.
- [15:14]
C
Yeah, you have to, you have. What caused it? Well, most people, whenever they even they're shooting a build drill, if they're stringing high, what are they doing? If you're pushing as a right handed shooter, if you're pushing rounds low into the left, then what are you doing? It's too much. Strong hand.
- [15:31]
A
Yep.
- [15:31]
C
It's the, it's, it's. Your strong hand on the gun is doing way too much work. Okay, so what does that feel like? Yeah, well, you're going to have to shoot, build drills to be able to figure that out. Okay. And as we, as we run through this, we explained to them that if you push the gun down and your shots are going low and left, you're pushing it past the point of where you wanted to shoot. Right. And they're like, yeah, we get that. Okay, so are you working too hard? Yeah. And they're like, yeah, I said, okay, they quit working as hard at it. Lift the gun in front of your face.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And just like, I'll tell, I'll tell students all the time, like, here's the deal. Have you ever heard an instructor tell you to be lazy? I want you to be lazy and I want you to fail. You know, and I want you to be lazy when you shoot a gun. You know, some of you guys, I mean, like, I'll flat out tell them, like, dude, you could forego going to the gym. Just come shoot and you'll have like Brock Lesnar traps. You are all hunched up on this gun like it's, it's whooping you, you know, so yeah, yeah, we, we dive into that and we do a lot of, there's a lot that comes from bill drills, you know, and then we, we automatically jump out of bills into transitions and we teach transitions backwards.
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A
Okay.
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C
Huge benefit to it.
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B
We treat, we teach the back end of transitions because obviously, you know, the traditional way of teaching transitions in law enforcement, you had two targets facing each other, you know, facing. And they're shoulder to shoulder, whatever. And it's like one on this one, one on this one, or one, two, one or whatever, whatever it is. Right. However you want. Spread fire. Or whatever fire, like whatever you want to call it. Right. But the eyes have to lead the way in transitions. And we teach them that the gun's not always going to come from the ready position or always come from the holster. It could come from any direction. So we do a drill we call bring it home, which is a bastardized drill. Can I say that? Yeah, we can guess a bastardized drill of, you know, something I learned from. From pranka on running in and out in a class that he. We had him down for. And it's literally just gluing your eyes to your target. Your eyes never leave your target, ever. And you aim the gun somewhere safe downrange.
- [17:28]
A
Okay.
- [17:28]
B
In any angle, any direction. I don't care, as long as it's safe downrange. If it's seven targets over, it's at the. If it's at the bottom of your target. If it's wherever it's at, I don't care.
- [17:37]
A
As long as you're staring at a certain spot.
- [17:39]
B
On the command of shoot, you bring the gun to your eyes, which are locked on your target, and you fire however many rounds.
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A
Okay?
- [17:45]
C
Right.
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B
That's working the back half of transitions.
- [17:47]
C
Like, we.
- [17:47]
B
Our eyes have already left wherever our gun is pointed. They're now on our new target. We need to bring the gun to our eyes from wherever that is in space, you know, and fire some shots. And then we go from that to regular transitions where we have multiple targets at multiple distances, where we're making them transition with different shot sequences.
- [18:06]
C
The thing is, is to keep them from thinking that they need to find the target to be able to shoot it. We take that part out of it.
- [18:11]
A
Yeah.
- [18:12]
C
Because what's the first thing you got to do? You got to look at it.
- [18:15]
A
Right.
- [18:15]
C
So get that part done. And then work. Work on just the shooting part.
- [18:19]
A
That's interesting. So I'll ask a dumb question. I know the answer to it, but gotta ask some dumb questions. So it's not me being dumb, but. So what's. What's the importance of transitions in law enforcement? Like, because I've seen guys go, well, I would never shoot three. I mean, you want me to shoot three? Bag out? No, dumbass, it's not three bad guys.
- [18:38]
C
Where you better get your eyes on them to see what. Whether or not they need to be, though.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah, like there, There. There's. There's a lot of. There's. There's more to this, the transition, than just, I got three bad guys or four bad guys.
- [18:49]
B
Right.
- [18:50]
A
So explain that as a Range guy. What is, what is, what are we, what are we teaching these guys to do when we're talking about transition in multiple targets and things?
- [18:58]
C
Visual acuity, okay. Because if we've got. It's like whenever we set up different targets, like say you've got no shoots mixed in there, you know, or you've got. You're having to ID targets.
- [19:09]
B
Right.
- [19:09]
C
When you get to that point and in the training, what do you have to do? You're going to have to look at every single one of them and decide whether or not that. Whether they pose enough. Right. To where you want to justify deadly force.
- [19:19]
B
Right.
- [19:20]
C
Well that's part of transitioning. That doesn't mean necessarily that the gun's going to go there. But if you're sitting here, say at a ready position and you see something needs to be addressed, okay. You address it. If something else catches your eye, what's the first thing you have to do? Train it. Right. You lead with your eyeballs. You see if it needs a gun, then. Okay, we bring the gun to address it.
- [19:37]
B
Right.
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A
And then the other one would be what? We don't just shoot standing non moving people. They move. Right?
- [19:46]
C
Right.
- [19:46]
A
So we're having to also work on tracking someone who's moving because they're getting shot at or they're trying to get an advantage on us or whatever the case may be. So that's another aspect of that as well. When you're talking about processing and guys that are on SWAT teams that go into houses and stuff, it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing.
- [20:08]
B
100 it's.
- [20:09]
A
It's exactly. I'm having to look at all the things that I have to look at. What's danger, what's dead spot, what's this? What's that?
- [20:16]
C
See, I equate it to this. You whenever all of us here in the. In the time that we've done on. On teams and you're still there. It's been, it's been a few years since I was on ours. Brian, Same thing with Brian. But we've all done several years in that realm. And you got to think about the first time you made an entry whenever you were the fng.
- [20:33]
A
I didn't know where the I went.
- [20:34]
C
The world is moving so fast. You're like, holy. You end up in a back room. You got. I mean you're like got some dude proned out in the back room and you're like, how the hell did I get here?
- [20:44]
A
Yep.
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C
You don't know how you got There. This is just where I'm standing. And then as time goes on and you learn to process, it's the same thing with shooting.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Now what happens, you see the dude went on approach that's sitting on the front porch, and he's a lookout, and he pitches the baggie of heroin. And you go in, and you're telling your teammates to step over the dog shit on the approach. Yeah. You know, and you go in and you see all of the things. Like, you're able to take in so much more information because you. Because of repetition.
- [21:08]
A
Exactly.
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C
And working at it. Well, it's no different when it comes down to shooting and ID targets and doing those things you have to see first.
- [21:14]
A
No, you're exactly right. And I think that's why competing, because that's the same thing. You go out and shoot a USPSA match. Man, you talking about processing just like you would in cqb. And. And you know where the targets are, man. You get to walk through it, and you still.
- [21:31]
C
Right. But how many cops will be out there? And they'll be like, oh, well, that's not the real world. And I'm like. And my. In. My rebuttal to that is this is. If you go out there to a match and I'm. And I'm a newbie, USPSA stuff. I'd be the first to tell you, but I made up with it, man. I love it. And you go out there and there's. There's a field course that's got, I don't know, 12, 13 targets in it. You know where every one of them are at, and you can go in any position out here. As long as you're pointing a gun down range and you're in your safe with it, you can shoot them in whatever order you want. Who can do that the fastest with the greatest degree of accuracy?
- [22:05]
A
Yeah.
- [22:06]
C
The. The scales are trying to balance. You want all of both.
- [22:09]
A
Yep.
- [22:09]
C
Okay. And you'll see cops that will show up, and they'll be like. And they make excuses about why not. Well, then why is it that whenever you know where they're at, you can't. But you figure that you go in.
- [22:18]
A
The house and you don't know where they're at, and you don't know, and.
- [22:21]
C
You think that all of a sudden you're a bad mother.
- [22:23]
B
Yep.
- [22:24]
C
And you need. You need to check it, man.
- [22:25]
A
And it ain't paper. It's real people. And they might not be shooting at you. It might be somebody else.
- [22:31]
C
You better be able to pid.
- [22:32]
A
Yes and no.
- [22:34]
C
You're.
- [22:34]
B
That's the biggest thing. It's just.
- [22:35]
C
That's.
- [22:36]
B
That's like our first little kind of scratching the surface on vision with them, you know, because, you know, we've said it before, and we harp on it a lot, and I know our students probably get sick of hearing it sometimes, but shooting is all seeing and feeling, man.
- [22:50]
C
Yeah.
- [22:51]
B
What looks right and what feels right, that's it.
- [22:54]
A
So after. So then kind of what real quick is we're kind of getting about 23 minutes into it, so what else would that look like as far as. Just continue to progress in.
- [23:04]
B
Yeah. So we go fundamentals. We start going into confirmation drills. Levels, confirmation. And we back them up to 25, put them on steel. Morning of day one, technically, on the range. Day two, really in the class. And then we get their feet moving. It's. It's. And we don't stop their feet moving.
- [23:19]
A
We actually move and shoot.
- [23:21]
C
Wow.
- [23:22]
A
Man. That's.
- [23:23]
B
We have. We have.
- [23:23]
A
We can do that.
- [23:24]
B
Yeah.
- [23:25]
A
Yeah.
- [23:26]
B
We have students running all around the range with their gun out.
- [23:29]
A
Oh, that's scary, man.
- [23:30]
B
Running towards each other with their guns out. Engaging targets downrange, obviously. But, I mean, it's. Yeah. The drills you set up, it's. We treat them like how we expect them to perform on. In the streets.
- [23:41]
A
Yeah.
- [23:41]
B
A practical way, you know, not. Not the old, you know, ready to move, move. And it's a big, long accordion snake line. And that's. That's not natural. It's not. There's nothing natural about that at all. No.
- [23:52]
A
Because they get with their FTO and they get in their first foot chase.
- [23:55]
B
Everywhere is downrange.
- [23:56]
A
Exactly.
- [23:57]
C
No tactical tiptoeing.
- [23:58]
A
No, there's. There's not.
- [23:59]
B
There is a lot of tactical prancing, though.
- [24:01]
C
There is.
- [24:01]
A
Yeah.
- [24:02]
B
It's fun.
- [24:02]
A
So y' all don't want to. Y' all don't want them to run school or.
- [24:05]
C
No.
- [24:06]
B
Or. We don't teach. No, we don't.
- [24:07]
A
We don't index or anything like that.
- [24:10]
B
Oh, boy.
- [24:11]
C
I stroke out and talk mad to people when they do that.
- [24:13]
B
You want to hear some. You want to hear some redneck cuss words? We actually had a kid do that not too long ago, and Chancey about came out of his pants, and I was like, time out.
- [24:23]
C
I didn't. I didn't MF him. But, you know, and I will. I will give him credit is whenever he was moving up range, we were running our Eminem drill. It's kind of our culmination drill. Before we shoot the qual.
- [24:32]
A
Yeah.
- [24:33]
C
All of which is never staged. We, there's no stage in the qualification or any of that. But we have this drill. They move fore and aft and in a diagonal angle. Well, he came back and he was running with his gun downrange, you know, behind him. Yeah. And whenever he went to turn around, instead of turning to, to his right, he's a right handed shooter. So that his gun stayed down range, he turned to the left, realized, oh shit, yeah, I've got, you know, 25 people standing here behind me. And he pretty brought, as he was doing, he brought the gun up like the temple index and turned around and a little bit of life left him because I looked at him like I was, I was a little perturbed. But he didn't point his gun at anybody. And I told him, I said, do not do that on this range.
- [25:10]
B
Yeah. So basically, man, once we start moving, we don't stop moving. The fundamentals never leave.
- [25:15]
A
Right.
- [25:15]
B
And, and we, we're a firm believer in you set up a drill and you could have 25 students on the line and you can have seven or eight students doing a different drill with inside of that drill.
- [25:26]
A
Yeah.
- [25:27]
B
Because it's more beneficial to those students for.
- [25:29]
A
Yeah, for sure.
- [25:30]
B
You know, and it's not, it's, it's not teaching to a script. It's not like everybody has to be doing this exactly. On each up command or whatever. And we'll get in students ears or grab them on a break or something. Be like, listen, on the next drill. This is what I want you to do.
- [25:42]
C
Give them tweaks. Yep.
- [25:43]
B
You know, and, and I know there's some instructors like, nah, that's not, you can't do that. It's not fair to the students. And I'm like, well then you're cheating those students.
- [25:51]
C
Right. Teach to the, teach to the student. Because some people have different needs than others. You know, we've got to run this the same, this battery of drills. But we have to, we need, we need to curtail this to where it fits the issues that somebody may have.
- [26:04]
A
Yeah.
- [26:05]
C
The little tiny things.
- [26:06]
A
So when it comes to moving and shooting, are y' all telling them, okay, we need to step here and then do this or do that. It's just natural.
- [26:14]
B
Here's a, here's point A, here's point B. There's your targets. I want you to shoot each target X amount of times. Move over there as naturally and as quickly as you can. That's it.
- [26:24]
C
And then big thing on sooner get the gun up. Have the gun up, arrive ready to shoot.
- [26:29]
A
Well, you can tell a cop, man, you put some barrels up and tell them who with a gun. And, boy, you know they're a cop. Right when you.
- [26:36]
B
Right when you see that bungee cord.
- [26:38]
A
Oh, my gosh, it's so funny. And I was one of those guys. I think that was. Yeah, I was one of those guys.
- [26:44]
B
We told him, stay mounted, man. Stay mounted to the gun, you know. And what I tell them is, like, if you knew you were going to round this corner right here and your. Your loved one, your mom, your significant other, your. Your child had a gun pointed at them and you knew you were going to round the corner into that situation, where would your gun be? And they, like, would be right out of my view, kind of lower down, so I could see everything. And then I just lift it up. I'm like, that's what I want. That's exactly what I want to do.
- [27:06]
A
So is there a certain standards that y', all, like, have to. To. Obviously, there's T coal and what and all that. But as far as y' all looking at, hey, we train this group, man, we feel really comfortable because, man, they can do these, these and these things, or how do y' all kind of judge that for. For y' all personally when you look at these classes and stuff?
- [27:25]
B
So it's at the end, man. We run our. Our department call, which is significantly more than the T cold minimum, obviously.
- [27:33]
C
Right.
- [27:33]
B
So we run a department call, and.
- [27:35]
A
That'S just to check the box.
- [27:36]
B
We all know it kind of is. Yeah. I mean, it obviously for admin. Yeah, But I mean, that's of.
- [27:41]
A
But you're not training.
- [27:42]
B
We never teach the qual. They never see a course of fire on the qual until they shoot the qual. Never.
- [27:48]
A
Because it comes down. If you have the foundational skills.
- [27:51]
C
Correct.
- [27:51]
A
You can pass this call.
- [27:53]
C
Yes.
- [27:53]
B
We used to do stage quals, and they'd watch instructors shoot calls, and we'd give them all the answers to the test before they took the test. And, you know, we went away from that a little bit ago, thankfully, but they don't ever. They don't see the qual. It's like, toes on the line, here's what we're going to do kind of thing.
- [28:07]
C
Yeah.
- [28:08]
B
And we've had great success with that. Like, we had a class of 47. And the overall class average for. They ran nine different quals total. The overall class average was 98.97.
- [28:26]
A
Dang.
- [28:27]
C
Wow. And they don't See turning targets because we got a two target system.
- [28:30]
A
Okay.
- [28:31]
C
On Turners and they don't see that until roughly one hour, maybe hour and 15 minutes before they actually shoot the call.
- [28:39]
A
Okay.
- [28:40]
C
Because that's their cue instead of most time. It's an auditory thing. It's a beat, right. It's a command, something like that. Well, now it's a visual. Yeah. Okay, so now we introduce that and that's whenever we get into the one handed shooting part of it.
- [28:51]
B
Okay.
- [28:52]
C
We've got a little bit of our call which obviously is one handed shooting. So we go up there and show them that side of it and we get them to reacting to that. One thing we found too, that helps immensely with the recruits is we teach them it's two hands on the gun. Two hands on the gun all the way until we get to the point of. Now we need to get them in some one hand shooting. Okay, well we're gonna, we're gonna practice dry doing that, sending the gun with one hand. And now whenever we start adding two to it, we ask them to say, okay, how much better is your index now? Because you had to get a little more finite with things. Whenever you've only got one hand to put the gun in front of your face and they're like, yeah, it makes it better. I said, okay, that's another thing to layer into your dry fire. Get some one hand draws out there.
- [29:33]
B
Yeah, that's one thing too. I talk about a lot in, in like we do in our, in our instructor schools is all right, we got.
- [29:39]
A
Some rain on the tin roof.
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, sounds amazing. But yeah, you know, people, people, for some reason when you put just one hand on the gun, their index changes the, you know, they put a hard cant, which is fine me if you have a little cant, whatever, you know, but they think they got to bring it to their dominant eye if they're left side dominant, right handed or whatever and they're doing all these wonky things with their, with their head and their body positioning and I'm like, man, your index is your index, right. You know, and I'll put two hands on the gun and I'll take my support end off and I'm like, this is my one hand index, this is my two hand index. My index is my index which is in front of my face. Yeah, I mean that it doesn't change because I have one hand on the gun.
- [30:15]
A
And so y', all, so yalls whole kind of mindset going into and what you are wanting to accomplish is to teach the fundamentals of shooting and then drive those home. And then, though, they have to learn on their own pace because everybody learns in a different pace. And you're coaching them through there. You're giving them the ability to fail. You're giving them the permission to. To do that, and it's okay. And then you're seeing them all putting it, putting it together with some slight tweaks in here that you are recognizing that and you're seeing. And then at the end of the day, you're like, man, this. This product is looking way better than what we were taught or how we were trained and things like that.
- [30:59]
C
We are both guilty of the old dogmatic.
- [31:02]
A
Oh, yeah, we were.
- [31:05]
C
We were the guys that were out there with it until we finally woke up.
- [31:08]
A
Yeah.
- [31:08]
C
It's the way I would describe it. Yeah. And we decided, you know what, we're going to jump headlong into this. We're going to screw it up by the numbers a lot.
- [31:15]
A
Yeah.
- [31:16]
C
And do that until we can start figuring out what it truly takes to do it. It's not complicated.
- [31:21]
B
Yeah. I think the biggest thing, too is building on the fundamentals. Right. We talk about the fundamentals and we teach. The fundamentals are out the gate. And then when you start making people move and they don't realize how much they're working more on the fundamentals, because when they move, they're breaking their grip down and building their grip back up every single time at every position. You got to shoot. You got to break your grip down to get there, because I want you to haul butt to the next position and then build your grip, arrive ready to shoot. Shoot. Break your grip down.
- [31:46]
A
Find your vision again. I mean.
- [31:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, people are like, oh, my God, you can't do shooting and moving that soon. I'm like, all that's doing is strengthening their fundamentals. We're forcing them to break their grip down and build it back up properly every single time. And that's another chance for us to evaluate the student and tweak minor things.
- [32:04]
C
Yeah.
- [32:04]
B
On the fundamental side, whether, you know, that we wouldn't be able to see maybe if we were static on the seven yard line for that, you know.
- [32:12]
A
So, Chansey, what. When you said it changed, what. When did the light bulb start coming on and going, hey, you know what, what I was taught, man, I need to. Because we've been going to a bunch of classes for a long time in. In TTPOA classes and stuff. So what. What was the kind of the moment.
- [32:28]
C
That you're like, man, I. Honestly to think about, because, I mean, I've always loved, you know, shooting. I mean, it's.
- [32:34]
A
I didn't.
- [32:35]
C
I didn't shoot a pistol hardly at all until I came to the police department, you know, but got into it, loving it the whole time through. And really, whenever I.
- [32:45]
B
What.
- [32:45]
C
What we were teaching. Okay. And the results that I was personally able to get. And then what I'm telling someone else to do is not what I'm doing to get that result for that result with me. So it's a matter of. Okay, I'm saying. I'm saying, hey, we need to do A, B, and C. But I'm not doing that at the end of the day, if I'm being perfectly honest.
- [33:03]
B
Yeah. We're doing D, E, and F. Yeah.
- [33:04]
C
Okay. And that. And that's not talking about okay. Because how. How well you can shoot, but I'm talking about what. What pieces it takes to get there. Yeah. You know, what. What materials I need to be able to build this. And then it's a matter of stepping all the way back. And I. And I personally, I just wiped the slate. Okay. The first time that I was really ever introduced to this and you were out there was back in 2016 with Rob Latham. Yeah. Okay. You can shoot. Yeah, he's all right. He's all right. Double knee replacements in mid-50s. And he's pushing. Everybody's in.
- [33:35]
B
Yeah.
- [33:35]
C
And personally, it frustrated the hell out of me.
- [33:38]
A
Yeah.
- [33:38]
C
You know, and I didn't. I didn't even wake up just then.
- [33:41]
B
Yeah.
- [33:41]
C
He's like, oh, yeah, it's pretty good. You need to compete. You need to. This. You that. Well, never mind. I waited 10 years.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah.
- [33:46]
C
You know, to finally get a damn grip on a personal level. Well, guess what, man. What? You. How you're getting the results that you're getting is not from what you're teaching other people to do, and that's a disservice to them.
- [33:57]
A
Yeah.
- [33:57]
C
Let's be honest about it.
- [33:58]
A
Yeah.
- [33:59]
C
Let's quit. You know, it's not a matter of holding anything close to the vest and not willing to give it. It's a matter of understanding how to. And that takes an immense amount of failure.
- [34:07]
A
Yeah.
- [34:07]
C
No, I can't stress that enough.
- [34:08]
B
I think the biggest thing, too, is. Is. Is talking to people and networking with guys and shooting with guys that come from all walks of life.
- [34:16]
C
Yeah.
- [34:17]
B
You know, like, you have the panones, you have the prankers, you have the stegers, you have the guys that we've gone to Class with. Or, you know, like, Mike's come to our class and stuff, and we. Man, we literally sit there and just. And pick each other's brains. Well, you've been a part of those sessions. We went out to dinner. Like, we're literally drawing drills. Napkins, you know, like at dinner. I mean, we're just.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah.
- [34:36]
B
We're eating up with this stuff and. And talking to those guys and. And. And finally realizing, like, there is such a better way.
- [34:43]
A
Yeah.
- [34:44]
B
Than what we've been doing.
- [34:45]
A
No, for sure it is. It's funny. You talk about Rob's class, and I go back and I'm like, damn it, man. I was given the answers to the test.
- [34:55]
C
Yeah.
- [34:55]
A
But I didn't really. But I think I was just not at a place in my career to hear it. And I don't. I don't know, because I go back to my man, why didn't I. I learned stuff, but I didn't just. It didn't resonate for whatever reason.
- [35:11]
C
Truly apply it. Wouldn't go back home and apply it. You can apply it there because. Because of ability. Okay.
- [35:16]
B
Yeah.
- [35:16]
C
You see these results and everything's good. But especially whenever. And I know we'll talk about it in the next one here a little bit. When you get into that team environment now, all of a sudden, we've got some cultural things going.
- [35:26]
A
Yeah.
- [35:26]
B
Let me ask you, as is how much of that was a comfort thing?
- [35:29]
A
It was probably that, too, because that's the biggest. I think you. Because that was really my first experience at performance shooting. And the guys around you, you want to impress them because, like, there's some good shooters out here. And so you're like, well, everything's got to be in this little tight group.
- [35:47]
B
Yeah.
- [35:48]
A
And the reality is now, dude, when I shoot, I'm like, dude, it ain't in a small, tight group anymore because I am pushing it. And so when I go these classes, I'm on the line with other guys. I'm like, I don't really give a. What you are doing.
- [36:01]
C
Yeah.
- [36:01]
A
Like, I want to compete. I want to, like. Because we've been to classes together, like we want, but we're always, hey, what'd you doing here? Hey, what'd you do this? Hey.
- [36:10]
B
We're.
- [36:10]
A
We're bouncing stuff back and forth, and I think that's where the learning really starts.
- [36:15]
C
When you learn how to battle with yourself.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah.
- [36:18]
C
For results.
- [36:18]
A
Yeah.
- [36:20]
C
When you learn how to battle with yourself with results, you're going to get them a hell of a lot faster than you Will trying to battle the person next to you.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah.
- [36:26]
C
If there's something that they, that you can take from them to learn, then absolutely take it. I mean, take. Everything's on the table.
- [36:32]
A
Yep.
- [36:32]
B
You know, it's funny because like Chansey and I, like, we never compete against each other in class. Like we'll have students sometimes like, oh, we want to see you guys run against each other. Like, we never compete against each other in class because I think we both know how that's going to turn out. We're going to be like, all right, one more rep, one more rep. And before you know what it's like been 40 minutes and chancing out or sweaty mess and the students are like, all right, is it our turn?
- [36:51]
C
Yeah.
- [36:52]
B
And I mean that's, I mean that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a good thing. But like it's, you know, when we go and when we, when we train with each other and we have training sessions a lot with each other, it's. I mean we're never, we're never like comparing times or hit factor or nothing. It's like when I'm running, he's videotaping me. When he's running, I'm videotaping him. And we're like literally micro drilling these things and breaking down, you know, footwork and hand placements and whatever the case may, vision or whatever the case may be, we can, you know, and that's what it's about. But to go back to what I was saying about the comfort zone, I think that was the biggest problem for so long with instructors. And I'm guilty of it too, man, you know, like, I think your comfort zone is the biggest vice anybody has. You know, like alcohol be damned, tobacco be damned, whatever be damned. Like your comfort zone is, is the biggest vice that everybody has. And we push people to get out of their comfort zone from day one.
- [37:46]
A
No, I think that's, that's important. I look at just the whole this, this and I can't say it enough. It truly is like you have to do your own work into it and what you are doing to be range guys, you have to do that as well as a range guy. And I know range guys that just don't go to training anymore because they know all the answers and they have and they're in their teaching, to quote the rooks. So I'm just got this low level. I don't really need to. I got what I got.
- [38:19]
C
Their pedals is established for them.
- [38:21]
A
Yes.
- [38:21]
C
They feel like they've arrived And I'm.
- [38:23]
A
Like, man, you're doing. You're doing these men and women disservice because things are. Things are always evolving. You're. I mean, take for Ben, for example, Steger. Every time I've ever been around him or talked with him with classes, there's always stuff new that he's adding. And I mean, he's one of the top level guys in the world and he's doing it. So some low level dude at the fucking local police department, range guy, I think you fucking need to do that too.
- [38:53]
B
Yeah, I agree.
- [38:54]
A
And y' all the same way, man.
- [38:55]
C
Y' all stop.
- [38:56]
A
Yeah, you're always adding stuff. I think that that big tech street that we're on, the tier one cops that that prank has set up for everybody. I mean, there's shit always going on over there. People are always testing, asking questions and. And that's the way it should be.
- [39:10]
B
It's a funny story, man. So like this recruit class we have, you know, that we just got done with, you know, my corporals, and he can't. He comes in and kind of hangs out in the class and stuff. So I started running drills and. And we went on break and he's like, where the them drills come from? And I'm like, I got a chance. You know, I just made them like we, we created them.
- [39:29]
A
Yeah.
- [39:30]
B
As a need. From the last class. Yeah, for that, like, the last class looks nothing like this class. I mean, all. We have to hit what we have to hit. We have to check boxes and whatever, you know, But I mean, we're constantly evolving and constantly pushing the students in different ways. There's no two class set. We run the same.
- [39:48]
A
Well, good. All right. We did, we did actually two episodes in one. We did about 40 minutes on that one. So that's all right. I think we, we know when we start talking about shooting, we can keep going on and on. All right, so we're going to end this one and then we're going to start. The next one will be, of course, training of officers that are already established in the department and how fun that'll be.
- [40:07]
B
So.
- [40:08]
A
All right, boys and girls, stay tuned for the next one. Train hard and get to shooting, folks.