Always a Student

We here at Citizens Defense Training LLC are students of our trade.  We believe one should never stop learning nor close one’s mind to new information, or new ways to share and communicate old information.  To that end, both of us attend training 2-3 times each year, improving ourselves and improving the training we bring to our students.

This past weekend was such an opportunity, as we attended two days of rifle and pistol training with Bob Keller, of Gamut Solutions.  You can read about Bob here;

http://gatehousenews.com/a-commandos-tale

Despite his significant background, Bob is a very approachable guy who is focused on ‘The Basics,” and in his experience that is what works in those situations where your training is called into service.

Bob started with a thorough Safety and Medical Plan brief both days, and rightly considered that to set the tone for a safe learning experience. Then we spent two days working on drills where an immediate, accurate response was required at defensive shooting distances.  With solid attention spent on stance, grip, sight picture and trigger control, we did repetition after repetition, trying to create a near perfect response to the stimuli.  With both rifle (all had 5.56 AR style rifles) and pistols (most were 9mm caliber), we worked on “perfect practice,” and when accuracy was consistently achieved we then pushed the speed until accuracy suffered, making incremental improvements to both through hard practice.

Students of Citizens Defense Training LLC would have recognized the emphasis on fundamentals, “perfectly practiced,” and for us it was rewarding to hear that message from this very experienced soldier.

As we heard many times over the weekend, there is no substitute for practice.  We all recognize we probably won’t get to the level of an elite soldier, but we can commit to be the best we can be with a dedicated and disciplined approach to our dry fire, as well as live fire, practice.