Chapter 21
CHOOSING A TRAINING COURSE
It’s possible to learn on your own - but it’s better to do so under the watchful eye of a qualified instructor.
As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, it’s possible to learn defensive shooting skills on your own - but it’s really not very practical. While defensive shooting is partly intellectual - knowing when to shoot and why to shoot - it is also somewhat mechanical and athletic, in the sense that you need to do physical things to be able to shoot.
A good defensive shooting instructor will give you a blend of both. He or she should be able to explain the need to process information before, during and after a shooting as well as how to draw the revolver efficiently and put the bullets where they need to go.
EXPERIENCE VERSUS ABILITY
There is a rather vocal subset of defensive shooting students (usually the ‘training junkie’ type, those whose hobby is taking course after course) who proclaim they’d never take a class from someone who hasn’t “seen the elephant.” (That’s a term meaning to have shot someone. They usually don’t make a distinction under what conditions such shootings might have occurred.)
The problem with this attitude is that it’s very difficult to find someone who has been involved in a sufficient number of private sector defensive shootings from which to draw appropriate conclusions. I quoted Rory Miller at the beginning of this book as saying that fights are idiosyncratic, meaning that they vary wildly in cause, execution, and conclusion. It’s really not possible, except in the most generic sense, to derive a whole lot about defensive shooting from a single - or even two - events. A body of knowledge, of expertise, is only gained from being able to experience a sufficient number of events from which to distill similarities and lessons. That doesn’t happen very often, if it ever has, in the realm of private sector defensive shootings.
Think of it this way, every so often you’ll find a news report of a completely untrained person who prevailed using a firearm against a criminal despite making every mistake in the book. In other words, he got lucky (as the saying goes, luck counts, but you can’t count on luck).
By the seen-the-elephant standard, this guy would be well qualified to teach others how to defend themselves. Would I take a course from someone like that? No. Should you? I can’t answer that other than to say it would depend on how much you value your own life.
Virtually all concepts and techniques can be shown dry, with nary a single shot being fired.
The other way that your instructor can learn about defensive shooting is by studying defensive shootings carefully, looking for commonalities and deriving lessons from the mistakes and successes of others. Not having ‘dropped the hammer’ on someone else doesn’t preclude him from learning, for he has the experiences of a wide range of others from which to draw. As Simon ben Zoma said, “Who is wise? He who learns from all men.”
ABILITY TO TEACH
In either case, whether from experience or study, the person who can teach is preferable to the person who can’t. This is perhaps the most important quality a good instructor can have; no matter how expansive someone’s knowledge, if he can’t pass that on to his students in a manner that they understand then he might as well not have the knowledge in the first place.
A good instructor should first understand his material at its highest, most conceptual level. He must understand it so well that he can show you how to apply it in the widest range of circumstances. Even though he may only use 10% of that knowledge in any given class, each class may use a different 10%; if his knowledge doesn’t go beyond that day’s class he’ll never be able to answer the questions from the next one. He is teaching beyond his knowledge level and his students will, sooner or later, move past his knowledge. At that point he either stops teaching or starts making things up as he goes along (and I’ve actually watched the latter happen).
Once he has a sufficiently high level of knowledge he must be able to articulate what he knows. He needs to be able to explain it to you in many different ways so that you can get a well-rounded feel for the ideas behind the techniques. An instructor whose command over the spoken language is poor is going to make a poor instructor, no matter how many times he’s ‘seen the elephant.’
IS BEING A GOOD SHOOTER A NECESSITY?
There is another subset of training junkies who insist that an instructor be a great shooter, and that he demonstrate his prowess before his students.
A demonstration may sometimes be the most efficient way to get an idea across to students. Language can be slow, but a visual illustration can be very fast. That doesn’t relieve the need for the instructor to be able to articulate his ideas, however; a demonstration should be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.
Note that I never said anything about shooting. Off the top of my head I cannot think of a defensive shooting concept that needs a shot for record (as opposed to a shot necessary to get the gun to operate for some reason). Virtually all concepts and techniques can be shown dry, with nary a single shot being fired. Stance, grasp and anything else that benefits from engaging the student’s mirror neurons can be done without expending a single round of ammunition.
A demonstration can be a useful teaching tool, but it shouldn’t be the primary one.
CONTEXT, AGAIN
I’ve talked quite a bit about context in this book, and picking your instructor or class is another instance where context becomes important.
If your instructor comes from a military, law enforcement or competitive background, it’s important that he is teaching things that are really applicable for your day-to-day activities in your office. Just because he’s achieved a certain rank, patrolled for a number of years, or won so many trophies doesn’t mean that what he’s teaching you, if based on his experience, is really applicable.
Again, knowing what’s plausible in your life will help you weed out the useful from the useless. The techniques and concepts must match up to your life, must make sense in your environment; if they don’t, it doesn’t matter how much experience he has. Don’t for a minute allow yourself to believe that a uniform or a sponsor’s t-shirt means anything to your life; ask questions, think critically.
THE CODE OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEFENSIVE SHOOTING INSTRUCTOR
There is a national organization of self defense firearms teachers, the Association of Defensive Shooting Instructors (ADSI), in whose birth I played a small role. It’s composed of defensive shooting instructors from around the country, some famous and others who are only known to their students, who believe in the need for professional instruction in defensive shooting skills. They come together in the ADSI to share, learn, and advance the state of the art in defensive shooting education.
One of the requirements to belong to the ADSI is agreement with the Association’s Seven Tenets - a code of behavior, of professionalism, which governs how the instructor teaches, interacts with her students, and relates to her counterparts in the rest of the industry. They’re an indication of what the instructor believes and how he/she puts those beliefs into practice, and are what you should expect to find when you choose your instructor.
Tenet #1: 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.
We all know that shooting guns in a training environment involves some level of danger. We minimize our exposure to that danger - our risk level - by taking precautions. All safety rules should serve to reduce the risk of the activity, and your instructor should require that all the students follow them.
You as a student should require that your instructor carefully explain all of the safety rules, both the general ones and any specific rules or procedures for certain drills. If you don’t feel that the benefits of that drill greatly outweigh the risks as you understand them, you need to ask for clarification. Maybe the instructor forgot something, or perhaps he didn’t explain it well; no matter what the cause, he needs to live up to that commitment - and you need to hold him to it. Your life and health, and those of the students around you, depends on it.
Tenet #2: 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 a lot of instructors don’t really know why they’re teaching or recommending something. It usually because they haven’t spent a lot of time asking (and answering) probing questions about their material: is this relevant to the student’s actual needs? Does it make sense? Is it supported by objective evidence? Is it consistent with everything else being taught? Can it be understood?
The right answer to any “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. Your instructor should be able to answer the “why” as well (or better) than the “how.”
Tenet #3: 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.
On the chapter about training in context I laid the groundwork for what should now be self-evident: the techniques used in defensive shooting are different than competitive shooting games.
It’s not simply about being pro-competition or anti-competition. Your instructor needs to understand what, where and why the differences occur, and be able to articulate them clearly if he/she is to give 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 wedded to one point of view and if he/she really understands what defensive shooting is about.
Your instructor should demonstrate that he or she knows the difference, and can do that by acknowledging to you that there is a difference.
Tenet #4: 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 college: how eager were you to ask, in front of people you barely knew, what might be seen as a ‘stupid’ question? Anything that a 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.
Every student needs to feel comfortable asking any pertinent question, and moreover it’s important for the instructor 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.
Your instructor needs to give you answers that are complete and based on fact, logic and reason. There should be a good reason - preferably several - for every answer that’s given, and they should all be factually based. Of course, they should also be consistent with the rest of his answers and curriculum.
You shouldn’t accept flawed logic (like Appeal To Authority), unsupported conjecture or incomplete/out of date evidence. Don’t tolerate dogmatic sound bites that contain no fact and serve only to shut down further inquiry.
The professional gives 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 end 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.
Tenet #5: 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.
Your instructor should always be above board - not just with you, but all of his other students and his peers. He needs to voluntarily be accountable to his students and his colleagues for everything he does. He should demonstrably adopt and behave to a high standard, and be open to constructive criticism, especially from you the student, when he comes up short.
Tenet #6: 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.
Being able to talk to other professionals about what he does, and finding out why they might do something different, is the basis of professional interaction. 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.
How to tell if your instructor abides by this? Listen to him talk about other instructors; if he’s throwing rocks or bad-mouthing others, he probably doesn’t. There’s a difference between respectfully or jokingly needling one’s peers and talking trash about them. Professionals talk to each other - they don’t throw rocks.
Tenet #7: 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.
Everything evolves, changes, progresses. It’s how we as human beings make progress in any field - and defensive shooting is no exception. We’ve come a long way even in the last couple of decades, and I’m sure we’ll move even further - if for no other reason than to advance our teaching skills. The way the professional instructor does this is to be a student again.
Being an avid student doesn’t mean just signing up for another class from his favorite guru, nor does it mean taking a class from someone whose curriculum is largely consistent with his 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.
How to know if your instructor is really committed to staying on top of his knowledge? Ask him what he’s changed his mind about in the last year: what does he teach now that he didn’t twelve months ago, or what did he teach then that he doesn’t now? Don’t settle for a politician’s deflection; if he’s really learning and evolving, he should be able to tell you something specific that he either started or stopped teaching. This is really the litmus test for an instructor.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This Code is a description of an ideal, a list of traits that other Professionals agree are desirable and laudable. It’s not necessarily always achievable, but your instructor should always be working at it - and should be proud to tell you how he’s doing so. There is always room for improvement, for progress, for evolution, and the Professional understands that. He doesn’t stand still.
If you’re a student of defensive shooting, it is what you should expect of your instructor. If you’re an instructor, it comprises the things that you should want to do -- to better yourself, better serve your students, and move the industry as a whole forward.