By Chris Sajnog, Author Navy SEAL Shooting
If you are not where you want to be in your shooting game, you’re either not motivated enough, you’re getting poor instruction or you’re not using a custom training plan. I’m putting my money on the last choice. Chances are pretty good you are following a firearms training plan that worked for someone else or was just randomly made for anyone. How in the world is a random plan going to help you? I guess if you’re hoping for random results?
Anyways, if you’re hoping for specific results, there are three elements you need for any firearms training program to be effective…for you…I call them the 3 D’s of effective training: Definition, Direction and Drive.
Definition: Aim Small, Miss Small
As a New Rules shooter, you need to know exactly where you are in your training and where you want to be. 99% of training plans out there are cookie-cutter plans that are worthless — this is Old Rules thinking. Everyone is at a different place in their learning process or skill level and has different goals they want to achieve. How in the world is a training plan for Mike going to work for Michelle? Answer: It’s not, and it’s the biggest problem with most firearms training methods today. But it’s not the methods themselves; it’s the plan, and a method developed for someone else is not an effective plan for you.
The first thing you need to do as a New Rules shooter is to get an accurate assessment of your current skill level so you or your instructor know what you need to work on or what course you should take. Next, you need to get clear about what your goals are and what you want to get good at. It’s easy to think that others have the same goals as we do, but ask just a few shooters and you find out this is far from the truth. Once you know where you are and where you want to go, you can come up with a plan.
Direction: The Shortest Route from Point-A to Point-B
Only when you know where you are and where you want to go will direction be of any use. Your training plan could have the best directions ever invented — super detailed, dyno-awesome-video, surround-sound-audio, with turn-by-turn directions (methods) — but if you’re starting at the wrong point, these directions will be meaningless. If your goal is different from the directions, you will never end up where you want to be. Either way will lead to desultory destruction of your training plan. Normally, the lessons you’re getting are not wrong — they’re just not what you need.
Figure out what you need to do to get from point A to point B or hire a professional firearms instructor if you need help. Write down your plan and include what you need to work on and when you need to do it. Include any courses or classes you need to take, but remember this: A course is not a plan — it’s only one part of your path to perfection.
Drive: Skinny Pedal On The Right
Drive means that you have a reason for training. You love your family and don’t want some worthless P.O.S. to take them away from you or you away from them. You love your country and want to protect it. Hell, you just love to win and want to be on the top of your division! Whatever it is, your drive is the reason you get out of bed early to train. It’s what makes you excited and energetic about learning and growing or investing in the best firearms training courses. Without having drive the best you can hope for is to be mediocre; you’ll get up early for a week or two, but then your little reserve battery runs out of juice and you find it’s easier to sleep in than to get up and train.
I’ve been running online firearms training courses for four years now and I’ve had 100% success with those that know why they want to improve, know where they want to go and aren’t afraid of a little hard work.
Let’s Get You Where You Want To Go
In the old days we used maps and compasses to get to where we wanted to go. Those were the old rules. Today we have new technology where we have satellites in orbiting our planet allowing us to use our personal GPS devises to get to where we want to go easier and faster…the same is true for learning to shoot.
New Rules Shooters Use A G.P.S.
Gather information: Find out exactly where you’re at and where you want to go.
Plan your training: Take your time to find the best, fastest way to get there.
Start training: You need to get going to get better.
The GPS Firearms Training Model
To get all of these things working together for you (and you do need all three), you want to employ what New Rules shooters call GPS Firearms Training. GPS training works just like the one in your car. The first thing you need to do is tell the GPS where you are. If it doesn’t know, it can’t give you directions. If you don’t know where you are, a good New Rules instructor can also work like a GPS to define where you are — but depending on interference (cognitive dissonance) it can take a while to pinpoint your exact location.
Now imagine if at this point the GPS just starting giving you directions. Where the hell are you going? You need to tell the GPS where you want to go or you’ll end up wasting your time and gas driving around all day. Even then you may never get where you want to go and there’s a pretty good chance you’re going in the wrong direction.
So only when the GPS knows exactly where you are and where you want to end up can it give you helpful directions. And with well-defined start and end points, the GPS will also be able to tell you as soon as you veer off course (I’ll discuss constant feedback in rule #7) and give you new directions to get you to you destination faster.
If you’re not measuring your training, what you’re doing is called playing.
Are We There Yet?
After you’ve defined your points, the rest is up to you. Drive! Start moving, do something — if you’re heading in the wrong direction your GPS will tell you — “recalculating; make a U-turn as soon as possible.” But none of these critical elements will work alone and one or more is missing from most training plans out there (for those that even have a plan). You do have a plan right? Not just watching random YouTube videos?
Again, a method or technique is not a plan, a CCW class is not a plan, even the best firearms training course in the world is not a plan. A plan is your personal long-range path to get to where you want to go as a shooter. Without a plan, you’ll never get to where you want to be. Don’t let it happen to you. Using the GPS Firearms Training model is the most effective way to get from where you are now to where you want to be and it’s a requirement for being a New Rules shooter.
New Rules Review: PLANNING
- Without a plan, how can you expect to get where you want to go?
- Someone else’s plan likely won’t work for you.
- Use the 3-D’s of New Rules Shooters.
- Definition: Figure out exactly where you are as a shooter and where you want to go.
- Direction: What do you need to do, in what order? Write it down.
- Drive: What are you training for? Better reason = better results.
- Remember, New Rules shooters use a GPS to get there faster.
- Gather the required information.
- Plan your route.
- Start training
Ready to get started?
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Chris Sajnog is the bestselling author of How to Shoot Like a Navy SEAL, a retired Navy SEAL Master Firearms Instructor, Neural-Pathway Training Expert, speaker and Service Disabled Veteran Small Business Owner. He is one of the most experienced and respected firearms trainers in the world, being hand-selected to develop the training for the US Navy SEAL Sniper program. As a Navy SEAL he was the senior sniper instructor, a certified Master Training Specialist (MTS), BUD/S and advanced training marksmanship instructor.