The other day I posted a comment about training and how good training provides a lot of shortcuts to the student. A reader replied, “When it comes to personal defense, there are no shortcuts.” Well, dear reader, I beg to differ.
Working with a good trainer minimizes the time we spend, the effort we take and the mistakes that we make. Take for example, a simple thing like trigger control. Yes, we might go to the shooting range and work that out on our own, but the expense would be lot of time and a whole lot of ammunition. On the other hand, that trainer will often have students performing a good trigger press having fired less than 100 rounds of ammo.
In addition, when trying to learn on our own, we often are simply not aware of the mistakes that we are making. We don’t realize the importance of a good, athletic stance while shooting, and we aren’t aware of all the wasted motion involved in our draw stroke. A couple of hours under good instruction will fix all of that instead of us going months and months, still wondering what we are doing wrong, and in the end, we have fewer bad habits to overcome.
Another value of defensive training is learning the mindset and having a better understanding of criminal behavior. Being in the midst of an armed robbery or home invasion is not the best time to learn those things. On-the-job training is not the best way to learn about gunfighting or related matters. Obtaining training from one who has some experience dealing with criminals is not only a shortcut, it’s also a life-saving shortcut. We can quickly pick up tactics and techniques that will save our lives.
Finally, good training embeds gun safety into our minds and being. Those of us who go armed owe it to our fellow citizens to never place innocent folks in danger. Accidents are inexcusable. Training helps us adopt basic safety rules that work and the commitment to follow and enforce them 24/7.
So, yes, we can learn a lot on our own. Of course, that would take thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition, a lot of it wasted. And then there is the wasted time, energy, and motion. And we don’t even want to talk about the negligent discharges that might occur. Or we can simply shortcut all of that with good training. Good training creates a solid foundation upon which our own personal defense is constructed.
A shortcut? Sorry, pal, good training is definitely a shortcut...an important, valuable shortcut.
