Armed Lifestyle - Issue 2 - June 2022

CHOOSING THE RIGHT
TRAINING CLASS FOR YOU
BY ROB PINCUS
For many people, choosing a training class (above the level
of the kind you need to get a CCW permit or a CPR certification)
seems to either seem really simple or really hard. Which way
one leans has a lot to do with the personality of the human
in question and their perception of “how much they already
know” before choosing a class. Some people tend to overthink
things and some people fly by the seat of their pants. Some
people believe that they could benefit from any class and
others think they know so much that they need something
really special to get anything of value. In my experience, those
at the extremes of these points are almost always wrong. Sadly,
because they already have their minds made up, they often find
a self-fulfilled prophecy at the end of the course. The know it
all could take a great course and get very little out of it and the
neophyte could take a horrible course and think they’ve gotten
an amazing return on their investment of time and effort.
In the 1990’s I became what most people would consider
a “training junky”. I took any course I could get into for over
a decade. I bought into the (false) cliché’ that any course is
worth attending “even if you only learn one thing”. Now, for
me, it all turned out okay… one of the reasons that I think I’ve
been so successful as an educator in the shooting industry is the
perspective on gained from both good and bad instructors and
good and bad classes. My experienced ended up being a great
preparation for my 20+ year career. I even got paid to do some
of my “research” over the many years I wrote training course
review articles. But, I have o assume you are looking for life &
death skill development, not doing research for your life’s work.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve also spent a lot of time training and
mentoring defensive shooting instructors on how to build, run
and market courses that will be of real value to their students.
So, based on those experiences and my observations, I’m going
to give you my advice on how to choose the right training
courses for you. Let’s start with a series of questions:
1. Is the course covering a topic you are not already skilled in?
2. Is the course intended for someone like you?
3. Have you learned anything (already) from the Instructor?
4. How big is the financial and time commitment required?
COURSE TOPIC?
While this may seem obvious at first, I find a lot of people who
take multiple courses on the same topic; defensive handgun,
home defense tactics, precision rifle. At some point, you simply
become a hobbyist if you keep taking courses on the same
topic, and that can be fine, but you’re not the person this article
is for. The right answers to the questions that follow will help
you find a course on a topic that you need that should give
you the required skills sets and methodology to practice those
TRAINING vs PRACTICE
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