Friday Makeup, Tying Em All Together: Finding a firearms Instructor.

SO, it’s Friday and I haven’t posted anything this week for mindset Monday or Tuesday training tip. Well I apologize for that but I have doing some training myself (more on that later so keep reading). I am going to use today to tie em all together! For mindset Monday it was time to talk about confidence in your mindset, one of the ways you get confidence in your mindset is to have confidence in your training (see it all comes together this week).

Having confidence in your training starts with having confidence in your instructor. When I first started training I got really lucky that I found an instructor in my friend Jay at “Michigan Combat Dynamix” that not only knows how to shoot but knows how to be an instructor. It is because of him and the passion for teaching and building on performance that he has,  that made me want to become an instructor. Like I said, I got lucky. there are a lot of firearms instructors out there. Many are like Jay and are in it because they enjoy teaching, but there are many that are just in it for the money. They are trying to capitalize on the massive influx of new gun owners that are out there right now, and they are the ones that we want to try to avoid. I like to think that I am one of the former type, but I will be the first to admit that I may not be the right instructor for everyone. So how do you tell the difference?

The first thing that most people will look for is reviews of the instructor, and those can be helpful but, should never be taken by themselves. How many times have you gone to a restaurant that had good reviews and not been impressed? Reviews can be old, or fake, take them with a grain of salt. I say call them and get answers for yourself.

Lets talk about what I think the first and most important thing to look at when finding a firearms instructor, safety. When looking at an instructor one of the first things to look for is have there been any accidents in their classes? If you can’t find anything online about anything call and ask them. If they are a good instructor they should be able to say no OR if there has been, they should be able to tell you that why it happened, how any damage or injury was mitigated, and what they have done since to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Next ask them what their safety S.O.P (Standard Operating Procedure) is. They should be able to tell you about what their process is if there is an accident or injury. They should be able to tell you about any medical training that they have gone through. Finely they should tell you about the medical and first aid gear that they have with them on the range at all times. Things to look for are tourniquets, chest seals, quick clot gauze, or at the very least kerlex rolled gauze, compression bandages and/or coflex dressing, as well as basic first aid things like band-aids etc.

After safety, I think that the next important thing to look at is the type of training they do.  Are they an instructor that says that you going to burn through 1000 rounds of ammo in a one day class? Or on the reverse, are they telling you that you are going to learn how be a SWAT team member with 50 rounds. The fact right now is that ammo is at a premium so most of us (myself included)  are going to have a hard time parting with any of our ammo, and I think that if they tell you need that many rounds for a one day class then there is a good chance that you are going to be throwing rounds downrange with little actual training value. That being said you can only learn so much from non live fire training. As with anything and even more important in shooting, you HAVE to actually shoot your firearm so that you can verify and improve on the non live fire stuff. Ask them about the course of fire for the class, what types of drills they are going to be doing, and how each drill correlates to the type of class that you want to take. A good instructor should be able to tell you how every round you fire will help you improve.

The last thing is completely subjective and probably the least important of them all. If you have called or emailed and talked to them, do they seem like someone that you WANT to learn from? Personality conflicts do happen, and while I am a firm believer that as long as the first two things we covered are in place then there is a very good chance that you can learn SOMETHING from them. Even if it is one small thing that helps you improve and the rest is how not to do something. If you don’t get a good vibe after talking to them, it’s probably better to not take their class. You will be uncomfortable and it will cause you to not enjoy what you are learning. In the end we are training not only to be better protectors, but hopefully because we enjoy the sport of shooting.

Now to why this week has been a little different. This week I did some training through USCCA to be able to teach their “Countering The Mass Shoot Threat” course. With everything going on I felt that this was an important course that I was not able to offer and now I can. This class will go over the data on mass shootings from 1998-2016 (those are all the years that we currently have all the data for)  with a focus on what if anything that has/is being proposed would have stopped them as well as how you, your company, or house of worship can develop a plan to mitigate your risk and any damage done if you find yourself in one of these unfortunate situations. Keep an eye out in the training section of this site and like our Facebook page to find out the new class dates. Also if your company or house of worship doesn’t currently have or has not updated their plans, Please get hold of us to see how we can help.