Today’s society of gun owners has found pathways to everything BUT proper training in many instances. Many people become entangled in appearances and images rather than any form of true skill. It would be my opinion that such folks have their priorities a bit out of perspective. Looking Tacti-Kewl never helped anyone shoot better! Kewl Guy guns, Kewl Gal clothing. True skills function just fine in blue jeans and a T shirt! Fancy gizmos and gadgetry never forced anyone to shoot better. Skills can not purchased in a box. Skills don’t come with a carry permit. True skills must be learned and earned.
I choose to approach the challenge of training from a different point of view. Don’t misinterpret what I am saying here please, as it remains true that there is often more than one way to the top of the mountain. The point being, that you actually are heading toward the mountain top!
Many instructors want folks to believe that they possess the Dali Llama secret shooting method. There is sometimes a shock and awe factor used to cleverly lure prospective students into signing up for a year’s worth of classes. I choose to teach and function on basics,,,, very well refined basics, that will take you ANYWHERE you want to go with your shooting. There are NO magic guns, NO magic calibers, and NO magic holsters and gear. If one is forced to use a firearm in a defensive mode, there are ONLY three things that count. #1 shot placement, #2 shot placement, and #3 shot placement. Shot placement will greatly determine the outcome of any defensive encounter. Your skills, or lack thereof will determine that shot placement.
Many people are put off and confused by the word training. Some may wrongfully assume that it will be a military like experience. Actually, nothing is further from the truth, at least with my approach! I train nobody to be a killer. Remember, your role in this is to be considered in a defensive sense. It will be important that you have a skill set in place, as muscle memory, to function from when a violent attack occurs. There will be no time in such an encounter for any form of a learning curve.
MY APPROACH:
Ultimately our first concern should be safety. I have found that many people harbor fears toward firearms. This tends to be associated with lack of knowledge. Once a person understands the mechanical workings of a firearm, and they handle it safely, the fear soon disappears. Assuming this step is covered we can move on.
For starters I like to introduce a technique. I like to thoroughly explain why the technique is important. I too like to explain what the technique will do for one’s shooting ability. Too many instructors out there simply say “do it this way” and often display a rather arrogant attitude of “don’t ask why”. I feel it is important you understand what is to be gained. I love people who ask questions, for by asking it shows you are thinking. The thought process is important here.
Next I like to demonstrate a technique. I NEVER ask students to do ANYTHING I can’t do. I can’t teach what I don’t know. Demonstration may involve the use of “Blue Plastic Training Guns” or actual live firearms. It may involve me first demonstrating as students observe. Immediately after I will help the student correctly position hands, fingers, thumbs, feet, arms, etc. until they thoroughly understand how to and why. I have had a few people assume because they have watched a video on the Internet they will be able to perform a technique. My experiences have shown that it takes more than watching. I prefer to instruct by the hands on and doing method,,,,,your hands and you doing!
Finally I like to have people perform repetitions of the newly learned technique until that technique becomes a usable skill. I like to think of it as refinement by repetition. Repetitions often provide opportunity for a student to tune a skill to their personal needs and abilities. This is something that simply can’t be accomplished in larger class settings. Often in large group environments student’s abilities and learning rates vary greatly. This may cause some to miss out on opportunity and learning simply because they are keeping pace with a larger group instead of moving at their own pace. I refuse to work in large settings as this. I would rather feel a sense of accomplishment by helping one or two people that I would turn large numbers of students.
Only after one has some basic, safe, gun handling skills established, can they then begin to advance onward. Today, there is far too much emphasis on shooting fast. Speed without accuracy is useless,,,,you just can’t miss fast enough. Accuracy is paramount.
MINDSET:
I firmly believe that a fight will be won in the mind the handgun in this case will be a mere extension of one’s arm. To take this a step further I will define my defensive triangle:
The first leg of the triangle is equipment. Equipment will be comprised of handguns, holsters, carry gear, spare magazines, ammo, etc. This will be the LEAST important leg, but unfortunately this leg is where many stop as far as being prepared is concerned. They possess a false sense of security simply because they purchased the latest version of King Kong Killer bullets,,,,,you get the picture.
The second leg of the triangle is skills . One must have a variety of skills available to be called upon in a split second notice. Two handed shooting , one handed shooting, weak handed shooting, using sights, point shooting, retention shooting, etc. the fight will be the way it is. In order to overcome we must be flexible enough by means of variety and options to choose from as need dictates.
The third leg of the triangle is mindset. This leg is the most important from my perspective. For it will be mindset that drives the skills that works the equipment. Mindset is the catalyst paramount to it all. Mindset is something too that must be learned, refined, and maintained. I believe training to be mental before physical,,,,90% mental and 10% physical. I hear many folks say “ I hope I will survive”. Hope alone is NOT a strategy, but faith in one’s mindset and abilities is. Our response to a “situation” will be directly based on our current confidence level. Shooting being the perishable skill that it is requires constant learning, maintenance and upkeep.
DEFENSIVE PISTOL SKILLS TRAINING CODE
I am committed to the safety of my students, and hold that the expected benefit of any training activity must significantly outweigh any known or perceived risk of that activity.
Safety, for both my students and myself, is always my first priority. Because without the instructor having the proper frame of mind, even the best safety rules can and will fail.
We all know that shooting guns in a training environment involves some level of danger. We attempt to minimize our exposure to that danger – our risk level – by taking precautions. There is, for instance, always the danger of hearing damage whenever guns are fired. We reduce that risk by wearing hearing protection, allowing us to engage in shooting practice without having to worry about our ears.
If we didn’t do that, the damage to our ears would outweigh the benefit of the training. By using ear protection, the benefit of the training is greater than the risk of hearing damage. I require my students to wear hearing protection so that the benefit of their training greatly outweighs that particular risk.
All safety rules should serve to reduce the risk of the activity, and I will require that my students follow them. Sometimes that’s not enough; sometimes there is no rule or procedure that can make a particular activity safe in the way I’ve defined it. If that happens, then the activity needs to be modified or eliminated so that the risk/benefit ratio is maintained.
This isn’t a cookie cutter or paint-by-numbers approach to safety because as a professional instructor, it’s my job to understand safety at a higher level than that; it’s my job to understand it as a lived concept. I need to know how to apply the concept in ways that keep my students safe, and one way I can do that is by having rules and procedures that are relevant to the student’s needs and abilities.
I constantly look at all of my planned activities and drills and ask hard questions:
I believe that it is my responsibility to understand not just what I’m teaching, but WHY I’m teaching any technique or concept, or offering specific advice.
It’s been my experience that few instructors really know why they’re teaching or recommending something; they haven’t spent a lot of time asking and answering questions about their material:
The right answer to the “why” question is “because it’s the best thing for the students, and here are the rational reasons which support it.” Every technique, every concept, every recommendation has to be considered by that measure.
Whether the technique or concept happens to be correct for any random student is irrelevant. That’s teaching by chance, and the occasional success isn’t meaningful if the instructor doesn’t understand why it is. The whole point of this tenet is a deep understanding of what’s being taught before it’s ever presented to the student, so that each one gets what they need and can apply directly to their own situation. It’s always about the students.
I recognize that defensive shooting skills, along with the drills and gear used, are inherently specialized and usually distinct from those of target shooting, competition and hunting endeavors.
It is evident that the tools used in defensive shooting are different than say, skeet shooting. It may be less obvious that there are equipment differences between self defense and IPSC or IDPA shooting. What many don’t recognize at all is that there are significant differences in the skills required, differences which lead to variations in the drills required to develop them. Shaving time off of a shot timer is NOT my first priority. It’s not simply about being pro-competition or anti-competition. The professional instructor needs to understand what, where and why the differences occur, and be able to articulate them clearly if he/she is to give the students what they need. This goes beyond the obvious stuff; it’s necessary to understand the nuances, the seemingly little things that actually require big adjustments in curriculum. This only happens if the instructor isn’t fixated to one point of view, and if he/she really understands what defensive shooting is about.
I will encourage my students to ask questions about course material, and I will answer them with thorough and objective explanations.
It’s actually very easy to discourage students from asking questions! Think back to when you were in school/college: how eager were you to ask, in front of people you barely knew, what might be seen as a ‘stupid’ question? Anything that the student perceives as being dismissive of their questions, or worse belittling of their state of knowledge, will put a damper not just on their desire for clarification – but the rest of the class as well.
In order to encourage students to ask questions it’s imperative to make sure that the environment is conducive to inquiry. Every student needs to feel comfortable asking any pertinent question, and moreover it’s important to always prompt for those questions. The students need to know that they can ask even the most probing questions about the material without being made to feel that they’re unworthy.
To maintain that atmosphere some care must be given to the answers which the student receives. Answers need to be complete and based on fact, logic, and reason. Too often I’ve seen instructors give the flimsiest answers to even simple questions, using flawed logic, unsupported data, and incomplete or out of date evidence. There should be a good reason – preferably several – for every answer that I choose to present, and they should all be factually based.
The very worst situation is when questions are answered with dogmatic sound bites: pithy statements that contain no fact at all, but designed to be memorable and boost the instructor’s ego. In one of the first classes I took, many years ago, the instructor had a particular stance he wanted the students to use. When asked why he didn’t use another specific stance, he barked “because it’s not a FIGHTING stance.” That was the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned. There was no reason behind the statement, no definition of just what “fighting” meant or how it was determined or who determined it, just a sneer delivered with the kind of body language that signaled no further inquiry would be tolerated.
Student questions, to be sure, can be dangerous because they can quickly expose an instructor’s weaknesses. If he doesn’t really know the material, why he’s teaching it, and how it fits into his student’s lives, any but the most superficial questions will reveal his lack of knowledge to the class. Discouraging questions isn’t just a sign of poor communication skills; it may be an indication that the instructor really doesn’t know himself why his material is important.
The professional gives the students plenty of opportunity to ask questions. He maintains an atmosphere in which discourse about the topics is not only allowed, but encouraged on a continual basis (once at the beginning of class isn’t enough). The answers to all questions are respectful of both the material and the student, and are based on provable and supportable facts – never mere opinions or sound bites.
I understand that Integrity and Professionalism are subjective traits and I strive to maintain high levels of both. I am capable of, and willing to, articulate the reasons for the way I conduct my courses and how I interact with students & peers.
If you knew that you were going to answer to someone, do you think you’d run your classes a bit differently? Yes, I know that ultimately we’re all accountable to our students (in a financial sense, if nothing else), but actually having to answer questions – from them or someone else – about how we behave and how we conduct ourselves definitely serves as a moderating influence.
Professionals in other fields have boards of inquiry or standards that ask those questions and censor those who come up short. We don’t have that in the defensive shooting world, and I’m not sure we’d want it, but each of us should behave as though we do. I should commit to being above board with how I run my businesses, and how I treat all the people involved with my training business. I do it voluntarily, not because someone is waiting in the wings to take away my credentials to teach if I don’t.
This requires me to be self-motivated rather than having someone in authority push me into doing the right thing. I need to be willing not just to be accountable to my students for everything I do, but to myself as well. As a professional instructor I should judge my own conduct against high standards, and be open to constructive criticism when I come up short.
I believe that it is valuable to engage my peers in constructive conversation about differences in technique and concept, with the goal of mutual education and evolution.
The field of defensive shooting has for too long been dominated by fantasy & egos. I’ve even heard stories from some of the senior people in this business about certain high profile trainers refusing to talk to other high profile trainers when in the same room. Gimme a break,,, if you are that high & mighty, then maybe you should find you own island to live on.
Being able to talk to another professional instructors about what I do, and finding out why they might do something different, is the basis of professional interaction. People in other fields do it, and it’s about time we defensive instructors made that a normal part of our activities as well. That’s why this point is a vital part of the Code.
Of course understanding what we’re teaching and why we’re teaching it is a prerequisite; it’s very difficult to tell someone why we teach something if we don’t know ourselves!
Every professional interaction I’ve had with other instructors has been an opportunity to learn, even when our approaches were quite different. In each of these I’ve come away with something that made me a better instructor – if only because it gave me an opportunity to advance my ability to articulate what I do.
Professionals talk to each other – they don’t throw rocks.
I believe that the best instructor is an avid student, and I will strive to continually upgrade my own skills and knowledge. As part of this belief, I understand that my own teachings need to be subject to critique and open to evolution.
Being an avid student doesn’t mean just signing up for another class from one’s favorite guru, nor does it mean taking a class from someone whose curriculum is largely consistent with one’s current worldview. It means seeking out new information and different approaches; being open and receptive to new ideas and giving them full (and honest) consideration.
It’s hard to admit that I don’t have all the answers, or that our chosen school/guru might be demonstrably wrong about something. This is why Tenet #2 is so important, because clinging to something out of pride, emotion, or misplaced loyalty instead of logic and reason serves as an impediment to being a student. It keeps one stuck in the same place with the same people doing the same things for the same misplaced reasons.
If an instructor is truly interested in broadening his knowledge and skills, he needs to get beyond that rut. He needs to be able to compare what he knows now with what he’ll be learning, and come to a decision that’s based on fact, not emotion. Sometimes he’ll find that what he’s doing is in fact the best thing for his students. However, if he finds that not to be true he owes it to himself (and his students) to change.
You have to be open to change. You have to be willing to evolve. You have to look at your curriculum honestly and be willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don’t have all the answers. Someone else may have one that you’ll need for next week’s class, and if you don’t seek it out it’s your students who suffer.
Being an avid student is intellectually risky. This tenet begs you to take those risks.
More than anything, I think, this point serves as a sort of test for the professional instructor. Professionals in other fields, like medicine, engineering, law, architecture – heck, even electricians and plumbers – are required by their associations or professional licenses to have a certain number of continuing education hours every year. The idea is that they’ll be exposed to the latest knowledge that their fields offer, so that they can put that new knowledge to work immediately. In the training world we don’t have that – yet – and it’s up to the individual to do it on their own.
Conclusion
I don’t know any instructor, myself included, who is 100% on all of these, all the time. I’m not sure such a person exists. The difference between the Professional and everyone else is that he can go down the list and admit where his weaknesses are: “I wish I followed that one all the time; I need more work on that one; this one I’m pretty good on, but could always be a little better; DUHHHHH! “, and so on. There is always room for improvement, for progress, for evolution, and the Professional understands that. He doesn’t stand still.
The Professional will look at the above, and agree with all (or at least the majority) of them, while at the same time admitting to himself that he doesn’t always live up to them. Being a Professional isn’t a destination at which one arrives, it’s a journey one makes,,, just like developing & maintaining a true defensive lifestyle is. It never ends. A Code, like this one, is my personal guidebook for that journey.
If you’re a student of defensive shooting, the above is what you should expect of your instructor. It is what I strive to provide.
I choose to approach the challenge of training from a different point of view. Don’t misinterpret what I am saying here please, as it remains true that there is often more than one way to the top of the mountain. The point being, that you actually are heading toward the mountain top!
Many instructors want folks to believe that they possess the Dali Llama secret shooting method. There is sometimes a shock and awe factor used to cleverly lure prospective students into signing up for a year’s worth of classes. I choose to teach and function on basics,,,, very well refined basics, that will take you ANYWHERE you want to go with your shooting. There are NO magic guns, NO magic calibers, and NO magic holsters and gear. If one is forced to use a firearm in a defensive mode, there are ONLY three things that count. #1 shot placement, #2 shot placement, and #3 shot placement. Shot placement will greatly determine the outcome of any defensive encounter. Your skills, or lack thereof will determine that shot placement.
Many people are put off and confused by the word training. Some may wrongfully assume that it will be a military like experience. Actually, nothing is further from the truth, at least with my approach! I train nobody to be a killer. Remember, your role in this is to be considered in a defensive sense. It will be important that you have a skill set in place, as muscle memory, to function from when a violent attack occurs. There will be no time in such an encounter for any form of a learning curve.
MY APPROACH:
Ultimately our first concern should be safety. I have found that many people harbor fears toward firearms. This tends to be associated with lack of knowledge. Once a person understands the mechanical workings of a firearm, and they handle it safely, the fear soon disappears. Assuming this step is covered we can move on.
For starters I like to introduce a technique. I like to thoroughly explain why the technique is important. I too like to explain what the technique will do for one’s shooting ability. Too many instructors out there simply say “do it this way” and often display a rather arrogant attitude of “don’t ask why”. I feel it is important you understand what is to be gained. I love people who ask questions, for by asking it shows you are thinking. The thought process is important here.
Next I like to demonstrate a technique. I NEVER ask students to do ANYTHING I can’t do. I can’t teach what I don’t know. Demonstration may involve the use of “Blue Plastic Training Guns” or actual live firearms. It may involve me first demonstrating as students observe. Immediately after I will help the student correctly position hands, fingers, thumbs, feet, arms, etc. until they thoroughly understand how to and why. I have had a few people assume because they have watched a video on the Internet they will be able to perform a technique. My experiences have shown that it takes more than watching. I prefer to instruct by the hands on and doing method,,,,,your hands and you doing!
Finally I like to have people perform repetitions of the newly learned technique until that technique becomes a usable skill. I like to think of it as refinement by repetition. Repetitions often provide opportunity for a student to tune a skill to their personal needs and abilities. This is something that simply can’t be accomplished in larger class settings. Often in large group environments student’s abilities and learning rates vary greatly. This may cause some to miss out on opportunity and learning simply because they are keeping pace with a larger group instead of moving at their own pace. I refuse to work in large settings as this. I would rather feel a sense of accomplishment by helping one or two people that I would turn large numbers of students.
Only after one has some basic, safe, gun handling skills established, can they then begin to advance onward. Today, there is far too much emphasis on shooting fast. Speed without accuracy is useless,,,,you just can’t miss fast enough. Accuracy is paramount.
MINDSET:
I firmly believe that a fight will be won in the mind the handgun in this case will be a mere extension of one’s arm. To take this a step further I will define my defensive triangle:
The first leg of the triangle is equipment. Equipment will be comprised of handguns, holsters, carry gear, spare magazines, ammo, etc. This will be the LEAST important leg, but unfortunately this leg is where many stop as far as being prepared is concerned. They possess a false sense of security simply because they purchased the latest version of King Kong Killer bullets,,,,,you get the picture.
The second leg of the triangle is skills . One must have a variety of skills available to be called upon in a split second notice. Two handed shooting , one handed shooting, weak handed shooting, using sights, point shooting, retention shooting, etc. the fight will be the way it is. In order to overcome we must be flexible enough by means of variety and options to choose from as need dictates.
The third leg of the triangle is mindset. This leg is the most important from my perspective. For it will be mindset that drives the skills that works the equipment. Mindset is the catalyst paramount to it all. Mindset is something too that must be learned, refined, and maintained. I believe training to be mental before physical,,,,90% mental and 10% physical. I hear many folks say “ I hope I will survive”. Hope alone is NOT a strategy, but faith in one’s mindset and abilities is. Our response to a “situation” will be directly based on our current confidence level. Shooting being the perishable skill that it is requires constant learning, maintenance and upkeep.
DEFENSIVE PISTOL SKILLS TRAINING CODE
I am committed to the safety of my students, and hold that the expected benefit of any training activity must significantly outweigh any known or perceived risk of that activity.
Safety, for both my students and myself, is always my first priority. Because without the instructor having the proper frame of mind, even the best safety rules can and will fail.
We all know that shooting guns in a training environment involves some level of danger. We attempt to minimize our exposure to that danger – our risk level – by taking precautions. There is, for instance, always the danger of hearing damage whenever guns are fired. We reduce that risk by wearing hearing protection, allowing us to engage in shooting practice without having to worry about our ears.
If we didn’t do that, the damage to our ears would outweigh the benefit of the training. By using ear protection, the benefit of the training is greater than the risk of hearing damage. I require my students to wear hearing protection so that the benefit of their training greatly outweighs that particular risk.
All safety rules should serve to reduce the risk of the activity, and I will require that my students follow them. Sometimes that’s not enough; sometimes there is no rule or procedure that can make a particular activity safe in the way I’ve defined it. If that happens, then the activity needs to be modified or eliminated so that the risk/benefit ratio is maintained.
This isn’t a cookie cutter or paint-by-numbers approach to safety because as a professional instructor, it’s my job to understand safety at a higher level than that; it’s my job to understand it as a lived concept. I need to know how to apply the concept in ways that keep my students safe, and one way I can do that is by having rules and procedures that are relevant to the student’s needs and abilities.
I constantly look at all of my planned activities and drills and ask hard questions:
- What is the real benefit
- Is that benefit relevant to our student’s lives?
- Does that benefit really outweigh all of the risks we’re taking?
I believe that it is my responsibility to understand not just what I’m teaching, but WHY I’m teaching any technique or concept, or offering specific advice.
It’s been my experience that few instructors really know why they’re teaching or recommending something; they haven’t spent a lot of time asking and answering questions about their material:
- Is this relevant to my student’s actual needs
- Does it make sense; is it supported by objective evidence
- Is it consistent with everything else I teach
- Can it be understood; am I capable of explaining it in a way that can be understood?
The right answer to the “why” question is “because it’s the best thing for the students, and here are the rational reasons which support it.” Every technique, every concept, every recommendation has to be considered by that measure.
Whether the technique or concept happens to be correct for any random student is irrelevant. That’s teaching by chance, and the occasional success isn’t meaningful if the instructor doesn’t understand why it is. The whole point of this tenet is a deep understanding of what’s being taught before it’s ever presented to the student, so that each one gets what they need and can apply directly to their own situation. It’s always about the students.
I recognize that defensive shooting skills, along with the drills and gear used, are inherently specialized and usually distinct from those of target shooting, competition and hunting endeavors.
It is evident that the tools used in defensive shooting are different than say, skeet shooting. It may be less obvious that there are equipment differences between self defense and IPSC or IDPA shooting. What many don’t recognize at all is that there are significant differences in the skills required, differences which lead to variations in the drills required to develop them. Shaving time off of a shot timer is NOT my first priority. It’s not simply about being pro-competition or anti-competition. The professional instructor needs to understand what, where and why the differences occur, and be able to articulate them clearly if he/she is to give the students what they need. This goes beyond the obvious stuff; it’s necessary to understand the nuances, the seemingly little things that actually require big adjustments in curriculum. This only happens if the instructor isn’t fixated to one point of view, and if he/she really understands what defensive shooting is about.
I will encourage my students to ask questions about course material, and I will answer them with thorough and objective explanations.
It’s actually very easy to discourage students from asking questions! Think back to when you were in school/college: how eager were you to ask, in front of people you barely knew, what might be seen as a ‘stupid’ question? Anything that the student perceives as being dismissive of their questions, or worse belittling of their state of knowledge, will put a damper not just on their desire for clarification – but the rest of the class as well.
In order to encourage students to ask questions it’s imperative to make sure that the environment is conducive to inquiry. Every student needs to feel comfortable asking any pertinent question, and moreover it’s important to always prompt for those questions. The students need to know that they can ask even the most probing questions about the material without being made to feel that they’re unworthy.
To maintain that atmosphere some care must be given to the answers which the student receives. Answers need to be complete and based on fact, logic, and reason. Too often I’ve seen instructors give the flimsiest answers to even simple questions, using flawed logic, unsupported data, and incomplete or out of date evidence. There should be a good reason – preferably several – for every answer that I choose to present, and they should all be factually based.
The very worst situation is when questions are answered with dogmatic sound bites: pithy statements that contain no fact at all, but designed to be memorable and boost the instructor’s ego. In one of the first classes I took, many years ago, the instructor had a particular stance he wanted the students to use. When asked why he didn’t use another specific stance, he barked “because it’s not a FIGHTING stance.” That was the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned. There was no reason behind the statement, no definition of just what “fighting” meant or how it was determined or who determined it, just a sneer delivered with the kind of body language that signaled no further inquiry would be tolerated.
Student questions, to be sure, can be dangerous because they can quickly expose an instructor’s weaknesses. If he doesn’t really know the material, why he’s teaching it, and how it fits into his student’s lives, any but the most superficial questions will reveal his lack of knowledge to the class. Discouraging questions isn’t just a sign of poor communication skills; it may be an indication that the instructor really doesn’t know himself why his material is important.
The professional gives the students plenty of opportunity to ask questions. He maintains an atmosphere in which discourse about the topics is not only allowed, but encouraged on a continual basis (once at the beginning of class isn’t enough). The answers to all questions are respectful of both the material and the student, and are based on provable and supportable facts – never mere opinions or sound bites.
I understand that Integrity and Professionalism are subjective traits and I strive to maintain high levels of both. I am capable of, and willing to, articulate the reasons for the way I conduct my courses and how I interact with students & peers.
If you knew that you were going to answer to someone, do you think you’d run your classes a bit differently? Yes, I know that ultimately we’re all accountable to our students (in a financial sense, if nothing else), but actually having to answer questions – from them or someone else – about how we behave and how we conduct ourselves definitely serves as a moderating influence.
Professionals in other fields have boards of inquiry or standards that ask those questions and censor those who come up short. We don’t have that in the defensive shooting world, and I’m not sure we’d want it, but each of us should behave as though we do. I should commit to being above board with how I run my businesses, and how I treat all the people involved with my training business. I do it voluntarily, not because someone is waiting in the wings to take away my credentials to teach if I don’t.
This requires me to be self-motivated rather than having someone in authority push me into doing the right thing. I need to be willing not just to be accountable to my students for everything I do, but to myself as well. As a professional instructor I should judge my own conduct against high standards, and be open to constructive criticism when I come up short.
I believe that it is valuable to engage my peers in constructive conversation about differences in technique and concept, with the goal of mutual education and evolution.
The field of defensive shooting has for too long been dominated by fantasy & egos. I’ve even heard stories from some of the senior people in this business about certain high profile trainers refusing to talk to other high profile trainers when in the same room. Gimme a break,,, if you are that high & mighty, then maybe you should find you own island to live on.
Being able to talk to another professional instructors about what I do, and finding out why they might do something different, is the basis of professional interaction. People in other fields do it, and it’s about time we defensive instructors made that a normal part of our activities as well. That’s why this point is a vital part of the Code.
Of course understanding what we’re teaching and why we’re teaching it is a prerequisite; it’s very difficult to tell someone why we teach something if we don’t know ourselves!
Every professional interaction I’ve had with other instructors has been an opportunity to learn, even when our approaches were quite different. In each of these I’ve come away with something that made me a better instructor – if only because it gave me an opportunity to advance my ability to articulate what I do.
Professionals talk to each other – they don’t throw rocks.
I believe that the best instructor is an avid student, and I will strive to continually upgrade my own skills and knowledge. As part of this belief, I understand that my own teachings need to be subject to critique and open to evolution.
Being an avid student doesn’t mean just signing up for another class from one’s favorite guru, nor does it mean taking a class from someone whose curriculum is largely consistent with one’s current worldview. It means seeking out new information and different approaches; being open and receptive to new ideas and giving them full (and honest) consideration.
It’s hard to admit that I don’t have all the answers, or that our chosen school/guru might be demonstrably wrong about something. This is why Tenet #2 is so important, because clinging to something out of pride, emotion, or misplaced loyalty instead of logic and reason serves as an impediment to being a student. It keeps one stuck in the same place with the same people doing the same things for the same misplaced reasons.
If an instructor is truly interested in broadening his knowledge and skills, he needs to get beyond that rut. He needs to be able to compare what he knows now with what he’ll be learning, and come to a decision that’s based on fact, not emotion. Sometimes he’ll find that what he’s doing is in fact the best thing for his students. However, if he finds that not to be true he owes it to himself (and his students) to change.
You have to be open to change. You have to be willing to evolve. You have to look at your curriculum honestly and be willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don’t have all the answers. Someone else may have one that you’ll need for next week’s class, and if you don’t seek it out it’s your students who suffer.
Being an avid student is intellectually risky. This tenet begs you to take those risks.
More than anything, I think, this point serves as a sort of test for the professional instructor. Professionals in other fields, like medicine, engineering, law, architecture – heck, even electricians and plumbers – are required by their associations or professional licenses to have a certain number of continuing education hours every year. The idea is that they’ll be exposed to the latest knowledge that their fields offer, so that they can put that new knowledge to work immediately. In the training world we don’t have that – yet – and it’s up to the individual to do it on their own.
Conclusion
I don’t know any instructor, myself included, who is 100% on all of these, all the time. I’m not sure such a person exists. The difference between the Professional and everyone else is that he can go down the list and admit where his weaknesses are: “I wish I followed that one all the time; I need more work on that one; this one I’m pretty good on, but could always be a little better; DUHHHHH! “, and so on. There is always room for improvement, for progress, for evolution, and the Professional understands that. He doesn’t stand still.
The Professional will look at the above, and agree with all (or at least the majority) of them, while at the same time admitting to himself that he doesn’t always live up to them. Being a Professional isn’t a destination at which one arrives, it’s a journey one makes,,, just like developing & maintaining a true defensive lifestyle is. It never ends. A Code, like this one, is my personal guidebook for that journey.
If you’re a student of defensive shooting, the above is what you should expect of your instructor. It is what I strive to provide.