Chapter 19

INTEGRITY IN TRAINING

Integrity (in teg ri ty) - noun

1 - the quality of being honest

2 - the state of being whole, unified, unimpaired, or sound in construction

3 - internal consistency or lack of corruption

In a way, this entire book is about integrity in training to survive a criminal attack: integrity in what you train, integrity in how you train, integrity in your practice, and integrity in you as a student.

Can you train without it? Certainly - many people do, every day. I don’t believe that doing so leaves you in the best position to defend yourself, however, and I also believe that it wastes valuable training time. I shouldn’t need to remind you, but your time on earth is limited. Why waste it?

HONESTY

Integrity demands that you be honest with yourself. Are you carrying your revolver because you actually have the determination to use it, if it is necessary and appropriate to do so? Or are you carrying it, as so many do, because you feel it keeps you safe but you’d never actually be able to drop the hammer on another human being?

If you’re not ready for the awesome responsibility and the possible consequences of using a handgun to defend yourself, be honest enough and don’t carry it. To this day I run into new gun owners who buy a gun under the mistaken belief that they can just wave it at their attacker and keep themselves safe. While it’s true that the overwhelming majority of defensive gun uses do not involve actually shooting, those instances where shooting is both warranted and necessary make it imperative that the gun’s owner be emotionally and intellectually able.

It’s the resolute attitude of the defender which makes her formidable; the revolver just makes her more efficient.

Massad Ayoob has famously said that criminals don’t fear guns; they fear the resolute man or woman who is holding it. The source of that resoluteness is the defender’s honesty with him or herself: that he or she really is willing to shoot if it becomes necessary.

COMMITMENT TO TRAINING

You also need to be honest with yourself about your commitment to training and practice. Are you actually going to seek out training, or are you going to fall back on the “I’ve been around guns all my life, I don’t need to take a class” excuse? The honesty part of integrity is what enables you to admit that you don’t, in fact, know all you need to know simply because you had a .22 in the house when you were growing up. (The worst manifestation of this comes from those men who believe that they know everything they need to know about guns simply by virtue of possessing a penis. Sorry for the blunt and graphic comment, but it had to be said.)

Training can come in many forms. While attending a class is, I believe, the best way to train, not everyone can attend a live class with a competent defensive shooting instructor. First, because not everyone who hangs out a teaching shingle is in fact competent, and second because not everyone lives in proximity to a range where such training occurs.

Not everyone can attend a class with a world-class instructor like Rob Pincus, but there are many alternatives to get good training. Start local!

It’s possible to learn from books (like this one!) and videos, but it will take longer, you’ll make more mistakes, you won’t have informed correction for your errors, and you might miss key points without even knowing. Learning from books and DVDs will take more dedication and attention on your part if you are to get maximum educational value.

COMMITMENT TO PRACTICE

Once you’ve gotten some training, are you honestly going to put in the practice time to build and maintain your skills? Defensive shooting skills are perishable; they need regular reinforcement through practice in order to remain usable. Practice also generates and maintains the recognition-recall links that are so important to expert-level decision making. Without a commitment to practice you won’t retain the skills that you paid to acquire, nor will you be able to use them efficiently.

YOUR COMPETENCY IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Whether you’re taking a class or learning on your own, your competency is up to you. The effort you put in, your dedication to understanding the concepts and your willingness to practice - not the parts that are fun but the stuff that’s necessary - is what will build your competency.

When you go to a class, be a good student; have integrity. You’re there, presumably, to learn something valuable. Pay attention to the instructor, strive to understand the concepts behind what he’s telling you, and do what he asks. He may ask you to do something different than what you’re used to doing; he may have a new method you’ve not been exposed to. If you reject it out of hand you’ll not have the opportunity to develop competency. Do it his way; if after class you decide that it’s not for you that’s fine, but while you’re there give it a fair shot.

At the same time you should insist that he explain why he’s doing what he’s doing. His explanations should be reasonable, plausible, and backed by objective data or deductions. If the explanation includes a reference to a famous soldier or police officer or competition shooter without a rational reasoning for the reference, you should ask questions about how it fits into your context. A good instructor should be able to give you the logic and detail to answer your questions.

Beware the instructor who says “try these different ways, and pick the one you like most.” Defensive shooting techniques aren’t about what you like, they’re about what works well with the way attacks happen and with what your body does naturally. You’re there to learn what the instructor believes is the best way to do that, and why he believes it to be. If all he does is tell you to pick your favorite, you can do that yourself without spending any money.

Am I saying that the instructor should have a “my way or the highway” approach? To a limited degree, yes. He should be professionally insistent that you put forth some effort to assimilate the techniques he’s teaching. You, on the other hand, should really put forth that effort without telling yourself that you don’t like it or it’s not like the method someone else taught you.

If the instructor asks you why you do something differently than he’s asking, you should have an answer other than “that’s the way I was taught.” If that’s the only answer you have, it means your last instructor didn’t do a good job of explanation, or you didn’t do a good job of listening. It may also mean that your way of doing things may not have a plausible reason for existence. If you find yourself saying “that’s the way I was taught,” it might be a sign that you need to pay more attention.

At the end of the course, if the instructor has done his job properly by explaining the plausible technique thoroughly and you’ve done your job by keeping an open mind, you’ll have learned - really, truly learned - something new.

BEING WHOLE

The quality of being whole or of being sound means that the training and techniques you learn and practice really reflect and are applicable to your life outside of the range - your entire life, not just a piece here and there.

Carrying a 5-shot lightweight revolver in your pocket but practicing with a full-size gun on your hip isn’t being realistic.

For instance, most people aren’t going to do multi-floor house clearing of terrorists in their day-to-day lives. You can find shooting courses, however, where you’ll spend a lot of time and money doing exactly that. If that’s just not something which actually happens, why waste your valuable resources training for it?

Just about everyone plays several different roles in their lives. There’s home, work, recreation, religious observances, and probably a bunch more I’m missing. In each of those roles there are plausible threats, and what is plausible may even change between them. If all you prepare for are the plausible threats in one area of your life, the other areas may not be well covered.

Spending your scarce training resources in doing things that have no plausible use and ignoring plausible skills that might apply to the other areas of your life isn’t whole or sound.

This also applies to training with gear - including the gun and holster - other than what you can reasonably expect to use in a real attack. I see many people come to classes and train with full-size belt-carried guns but actually carry a small pocket gun on a day-to-day basis. (The worst offenders come to class with a big autoloading pistol on their belt but actually carry a J-frame in their front pocket during the week!) Part of your integrity as a student is training and practicing with the gear you are actually going to carry.

Yes, I know that you shoot the bigger gun ‘better.’ Unless you’re in that class or on the practice range to impress someone else, that’s irrelevant. The reason you train and practice is so that you can get better (more efficient) using the gun you’ll actually be counting on to protect you. Discard anything, including your ego, which interferes with that.

INTERNAL CONSISTENCY

In order for your training to have integrity it must be consistent, not just with itself but also with its expected use.

It’s not terribly unusual to come across training doctrine which conflicts with itself at some level. When training is based on unrelated techniques that are chosen because they look cool or because some famous military unit used them, you’ll often find that they don’t work together well. I watched a video of a class where the students were taught to bring their guns up through a ready position, much like I’ve described, when they draw. When they do their version of an assessment after shooting, though, they drop their guns down without bending their arms, into what has been derisively called the ‘urinal position.’ When they finish with their rather perfunctory assessment, they bring the gun back up into a high compressed ready, then holster.

That’s a lot of wasted movement and, for reasons we covered earlier, is neither consistent nor efficient. Their assessment was likely taken from one school of thought, while their draw stroke and ready position from another. The result was a conflict in action and a lack of internal consistency that resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort.

A higher calling?

Internal consistency means not just that the techniques don’t conflict, but that they also work together to support an overall philosophy. Throughout this book I’ve talked about training in intuitive skills that are efficient under plausible circumstances; everything I’ve written, I hope, supports that overall view of defensive shooting.

In the Combat Focus® Shooting program, which underlies a lot of my training philosophy, the very description says that it is an intuitive program designed to make you more efficient in the context of a dynamic critical incident. Everything that follows during a class reflects back on that statement, supports that statement, and is congruent with that statement. That is a perfect example of internal consistency.

“Tools for the toolbox”

There are things I could teach you that would be a lot of fun and look really cool in a video, but which wouldn’t really be applicable to any plausible scenario in your life. Yet, many people do teach such things and use the rubric “another tool for your toolbox” to justify it.

The whole concept of tools for the toolbox is often a smokescreen, a way to hide a lack of internal consistency. If the only justification for a technique is that it’s another tool, that’s an indication that it has no application to any sort of plausible scenario, that’s it’s been included because the instructor is impressed with it for some reason. (That, or he needs to make his students feel that they got their money’s worth.)

“Another tool for your toolbox” is a phrase which can mask a lack of plausible justification for a technique.

The toolbox metaphor is also a way for the instructor to avoid conflict; it’s a cop-out. It may be that the technique actually does have a plausible reason for existence and that it’s valuable to learn. There may be other people in the class, however, who cling to their existing technique because they have an emotional investment in it and won’t be swayed by logic. If the instructor doesn’t understand why what he’s teaching is better and/or lacks the ability to articulate that in a way which allows the student to come to that understanding, then he might fall back on the toolbox analogy.

Whatever the reason, the “tools for your toolbox” comment should be seen as a red flag; an indication that there is little internal consistency or integrity in what’s being presented.

Everything you learn needs to have a plausible application. If one exists, then there’s no reason to bury it in a toolbox along with a lot of other implausible tools.