Live Q& A with Matt Pranka at the TTPOA Conference

The word “dynamic” gets thrown around like it means fast feet and reckless decisions, but that’s not what we see in real CQB. From the TTPOA conference floor in Round Rock, Texas, we take live questions and pull the conversation back to what actually keeps people alive: strong foundational skills, honest accountability, and the ability to move from task to task with zero delay when the fight starts.

We dig into what makes a shoot house useful for law enforcement training and what quietly sabotages learning, from obvious bullet traps to target setups that let people memorize “the right answer.” We talk about how to build a progression that develops visual discipline, decision-making, and scoring standards, plus why many real shootings look like officers “shooting the situation” instead of shooting their vision. If your team wants better performance, we argue you have to stop chasing fancy scenarios and rebuild the foundation that tactics sit on.

We also get very specific for the officers paying their own way. If you only have 100 rounds for a range day, we lay out a clear plan that balances predictive doubles, reactive shooting, movement, and a final live check of your dry work. And we close with a hard truth about culture: after action reviews only work when people own mistakes, cut excuses fast, and walk out as a stronger team.
If you would like to train with TTPOA, here is the training link: https://ttpoa.org/advanced-training

TTPOA Partnerships:

Jorge Pastore Foundation 

Law Enforcement training is essential for preparing officers to effectively and safely perform their duties. Everyone benefits from training, and by providing greater access to meaningful tactical training, we improve the lives of officers and the safety of our community. JPF was founded to honor the sacrifice of Officer Jorge Pastore and his passion for training.  We are proud to provide foundation-sponsored classes at no or low cost to law enforcement officers in various areas, including firearms training, defensive tactics & wellness.  In addition, we provide funding to officers seeking training outside of the central Texas area when approved by their department or association. 

https://www.jpastorefoundation.com/

The American Warrior Association

The American Warrior Association (AWA) is a faith-driven, research-based nonprofit dedicated to healing moral injury among service members, veterans, first responders, and their families. We provide faith-based healing, practical support, and comprehensive wellness programs to foster lasting resilience and spiritual strength.

https://www.awa-usa.org/programs/explore-awa-programs

Transcript

Conference Floor And Podcast Booth

SPEAKER_09 0:02

You got the Texas talking bear cat rolling. Warrant serving trigger pressing door slamming back guy catching Son of a Gun Podcast. Woo.

SPEAKER_07 0:23

So we're here at the TTPOA conference 2026, Round Rock, Texas. We're at the Kalahari Resort. We got like over a thousand attendees here, right? Like participants, and that doesn't include, I don't even how I lost count of the vendors. It just it spilled out into the hallway. 255, I think. All of them are here. That's wild. Yeah. I told I told uh Dan last year, I goes, you guys are gonna need a bigger boat. I don't know how you're gonna do this. So already people are there's all kinds of stuff happening that would typically be happening. You guys got debriefs, there's a vendor show, there's a just a I there's a a camaraderie piece, like the the the folks get together, they get to see their friends, talk business, yeah, talk stories, and and just reconnect with people, which I think is probably one of the better parts of this conference of all the conferences I've I I've been to ever, and all kinds of different things. This one definitely has a different feel. But there's a match being run right now. There's uh two, two, well, over two days you guys got matches running right now. Uh, you guys just went out there and shot that. I want to hear a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

We shot that this morning.

SPEAKER_07 1:22

But I don't know, maybe you want to talk about uh the Pastor Foundation, George Pastor Foundation, and kind of where we're sitting and how this thing all came around.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

So in the past, we do these podcasts in a uh suite that we rent out. So all the coasts are in the suite, and that's all. No one gets to see it, no one gets to be a part of it. So we've been asked and tried to figure out how do we get this involved in the conference. And so last year, after talking with Scott when you came out, we kind of started brainstorming, like, hey, how can we do this? And we got a hold of Kim Pastor, like, hey Kim, here's what we're looking at doing. We want to build a booth, we want to do this. And she's like, hey, I got you. We're like, yep. And we just gave that to Kim and said, Kim, we really do appreciate everything you do for us and everything you have done. And I I can't wait to see what five years from now is gonna be your foundation, what it's gonna be doing. You're gonna you keep kicking it open doors, you don't take no for an answer. So, from someone who cares about this industry, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Well, thank you for that because I care just as much, and I'll keep kicking down doors, and it's my sacrifice the way you guys sacrifice, and together we're gonna change the game and make make things great. So, this is so much fun for me to see you guys in there. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah, so anybody who's who's seen the podcast booth, all these panels were shipped from Atlanta, Georgia. Got drove out and dropped them off, and they were all wrapped up, and all the furniture that you see here was in boxes. So me and Kim hauled it up here, unloaded it, opened all these boxes, put the stuff together. It was nine-hour project. So, yeah, there was a lot of buttons. I don't want to take this thing down now. So it's really hard. Next year you're just leaving it out. Yeah, we're just gonna leave it here and stuff. So it's really cool how all this has evolved over the years, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And and this is one of my favorite times of the year is this this this conference. So, yeah, that's it's the biggest one we've had so far.

SPEAKER_07 3:11

Yeah, it's so you guys are gonna need a bigger boat. And that said, I mean, like I sat down with you guys like a year ago, right? And got to meet Matt Matt Smith over here at the other end of the table, the co-host of the show. And it was interesting, like I didn't know what to expect. I kind of walked into that podcast last minute. It was with you two guys and Brian Williams, the Unicorn Chief, who is actually gonna be on tomorrow with our other guests, who we'll we'll chat up here in a second. But I learned so much from Matt in that in that podcast. And it was interesting because he was kind of sitting over there quiet, and then he would quietly kind of interject stuff. Yeah, the stuff he was saying was like like brain ninjas, right? Dropping into my head, going, all right, these in terms of the thought process, right? And on the on the topic that we were talking about. And if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. It's a great podcast. These guys did a really good job. But Matt, it's good to see you. Yeah, brother. Appreciate it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

On that note, though, in his contract, he only has so many words that he's got to speak because he's a prima donna. He's like, I gotta say this beautiful voice of mine. So that's it. So this year we have more words that he can say.

SPEAKER_10 4:09

So now I enjoyed it. You know, it was a great time meeting you, you know. And though your different backgrounds, you know, the commonalities, some of the stuff we talked about, and how it's just it's just solving problems. Yep, you know, and whether you're doing it your job, our job, whatever. And if we can get together and do that, man, it's awesome. So I enjoyed it. Glad to have you back. Brandon told me you're coming back. I was really thrilled to hear that you're coming back. I'm honored to be here. Looking forward next year already. Yeah, same, same. This is been great.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

And Scott, man, just thank you for all that you do for this community. Um, you you're changing things. I know uh your podcast and just how you dive into whatever subject it is. It's it's it's unique because most people don't want to know about the person they're talking with, and you do, and that's a that's a a very unique gift because most people, I'll tell you everything you want to know about me, and they never invest back. And and and you do that, you've been in my house. So you're you're one of my friends. So I I do appreciate all that you do for us, and you're part of this family and the TTOA and all the equipment that was Scott doing this, so this is we couldn't do this without him as well. So we do appreciate that you do.

SPEAKER_07 5:13

I appreciate those sentences. Oh, like I said, I always say this like I'm I'm honored to be here. I'm not quite sure how I got here, but it wouldn't be without the support and the help, guys like you and me and invited and entrusted to do this stuff. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, and then Matt, man, welcome back. Mr. Matt Franka, the notorious Matt Franka. This is, I think, what your fourth one with us or something? Uh TTPOA. Yeah, the fourth podcast, maybe. Yeah, I think it's the fourth one. Was the first one that you did? Was it in our training facility that had no air air conditioner? And I think we titled it your your back size like a cargo net or something. I think that's what it said.

SPEAKER_08 5:48

Yeah, looks like a dirty cargo net back there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Man, that was a long time ago, I feel like.

SPEAKER_08 5:54

That was that was that was the first one. So now it's it's been great.

SPEAKER_07 5:58

Glad to be back, man. I'm glad to be at the conference. Repeat offender. So we're tied. So he's been this is actually, Matt might not remember this, but this is the fourth time we've collabed on a podcast too. We had the first one that we did, which you know, I publicly thank you Matt for making a trip out to Las Vegas when I was in SHAT Show my first time. He he came out and on the very last day, it was a very long week for him. He was training in Arizona and drove over or flew over like last minute after he finished up his course, maybe late in the afternoon, like it was on a Friday or Saturday or something like that. And that Matt was on my bucket list for a long time for a lot of reasons, but uh we had a really great conversation then, and then you were on again. We were at Combative Summit together. Yep, yeah, we did the Combatives one. Yeah, sat with John and and and I think it was it was Jeff from Tenacor. Yep, yeah. Jeff Mao from Tenacor, and then had John again with with Mike Pannone. You guys came out and visited. I think you guys were teaching a course together up in my neck of the woods out in California, and you stopped in and we did another one. So we're tied. So we're tied.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Good. Well, Matt, you've been a a huge friend to to me and to the law enforcement community. So we just appreciate what you've been doing. I told you earlier, like you're the one that kind of started in the law enforcement in my community, at least in my area in Texas, and got me turned on to the whole practical side of shooting. Hey, here's how we put performance into shooting, and we get better this way. And you came across Hey Graham, how you doing? You you you came across just officers throughout the the uh time of your training and and put us all together in this tier one cop thread, and it just keeps growing. And it's really neat to see just all the knowledge that's shared and just all the camaraderie that there's guys across from all over the country that I'm like, I've never met this guy, but I know who he is now. Or we come to conferences and there's like seven or eight of them that came out just to help out with the hit factor match. Some of those guys had to take off their own time because the department didn't give them training time. So, I mean, that's the commitment level that these guys are are are involved in. And I think that's the same thing that you're into is like you told me early on, hey man, I'll meet your commitment level, you know, 100%. And and I think that's important. I kind of I kind of adopted that as well when I start mentoring people. So thank you for what you do. I know you get sometimes a bad rap for you being did Kimballs fall down? What the hell? Vinny, did you push her down? I turned my back for one second. She's coming out of the booth. Yeah, I turned my back your hair tripper.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

I I I stole a suppressor, so it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Oh, okay, good, good, good, good. That's a proof. But sometimes guys will say, you know, you talk shit about cops and this and that, you're not a cop. And I'm like, you don't know Matt like I know Matt or some of the other guys know Matt. You care so much about law enforcement. And it's like me, man. There's a standard, and when you below go below that standard as a cop, I get I get offended by it. And you're the same way, you're like, man, just put in the work. Don't talk the shit, put in the work, and everything washes out for itself. So with that being said, it's not kissing your ass, but I do appreciate the friendship. I do appreciate just what you do for this community, man.

SPEAKER_08 9:04

No, my pleasure. You know, I think it's you know, the bad rap doesn't really affect me. No, it's not. I think it's it's more uh it's more reflection on the people that don't like to be have truth spoken to them and and understand like, hey, recognizing like where you're at, like that's the step one for development, right? To get better.

SPEAKER_06 9:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 9:24

You know, and don't believe your own hype and get out of your echo chambers and stuff like that, which uh I'm glad I'm able to do it. Glad to be a part of TTPOA, yeah. Um, you know, and and share this time with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Yeah. And then the other rumor is you're the keynote speaker. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 9:39

I am. I think I'm I'm waiting for Dan to realize how bad he fucked up.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

I I do want to know when so you and Chris Palmer are good friends. When he spoke a few years ago, he looked fucking amazing. Suit, are you gonna be as good looking as him or not?

SPEAKER_08 9:53

I do, I did bring some actual nice clothes. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

So I like it.

SPEAKER_08 9:57

Vans still though? No, I don't tux and vans? No, no, did you bring a tuxedo? It's a tuxedo t-shirt, all right. It says that I love it, am relaxed, but I'm also formal, but I'm always ready to party. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

I love it. I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_07 10:12

So badly taking notes.

Designing A Shoot House That Matters

SPEAKER_02 10:15

So our our thought process with this, oh, okay, here's our first question. So our thought process with this when I got with Matt, he does the redneck live on his IG, and we kind of wanted to do that and also like a Charlie Kirk version of come in and ask questions, and then we're gonna read questions that we got from the uh IG post we posted last night. So, hey, we got our first question. So, who are you, man? Tell me us about you.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

So, my name is Justin Torres. So, I'm the owner of a Battlegrounds CQB house in San Antonio, Texas. Okay, I'm also a police officer in the San Antonio area. All right. Uh, I work for a really, really small town. We have about 15 officers total. So I built Battlegrounds really just to get the smaller agencies to get training. It's a 7,000 square foot building, and I put a lot of modular walls in there. Oh wow. One of the things I wanted to ask is what is something that you guys would think would be beneficial for the shoot house to have to make it more practical for law enforcement or whoever needs to go in there as far as people getting trained and people that are actually in their training.

SPEAKER_08 11:17

So I I think from what I see most of the time with shoot house construction is that it's very unique to shoot house construction, right? It doesn't really mimic what an actual you know residence looks like or a commercial thing. It kind of has elements of both things, right? So you have longer hallways and maybe bigger rooms and things like that. It doesn't really matter, you know, what the house, the layout of the house, you know, I think it would make the most sense to take a larger house and just build a shoot house based off a residential structure, you know, because you can still get the elements of commercial construction, schools, and things like that out of those houses. But the primary thing for the law enforcement world, right, is warrant service and residences that are that are small and able to hit from multiple breaches, you know, that would be a huge benefit. And then I think obviously I know it's for a lot of agencies or departments, it's a bridge too far. But you know, to be honest, live fire CQB is completely different than doing CQB Sims on Paper. You know, I understand that, you know, departments and agencies do that for safety reasons and time of training. There's a lot of different issues that drive them to using like Sims on Paper or Force on Force. But I think what needs to happen is like departments need to build actual live fire shoe houses, right? With no bullet traps, with walls that are ballistic where the targets can go on the walls, because obviously there's a huge element on the training side. If you have bullet traps, that's the indicator that there's a target there to shoot, right? And you you lose a processing value in the training. But live fire shoot house is really kind of mandatory in my mind. You guys do it for real live, and then what I see is with force on force training, you know, that's a whole separate piece, but Sims on paper, guys will attempt to do things and try to do things with a rifle because it's Sims that they absolutely know they cannot do live, right? And that is a huge disconnect in terms of application and training. So I think, you know, the layout or whatever, don't fixate on the layout of the shoe house or the structure, whatever, anything that has hallways and rooms and doors, right? For you to work all of the different elements that you know exist in CQB, that's fine. It's really how you conduct the training and how you are holding guys accountable. You know, how do you score it? Right? That would be like the first thing. Like, how do you actually score CQB? You know, and that understanding and the actual training methodology of how I like to train CQB, I think that's the most important thing over really what the structure is.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

So, what you're saying is you're gonna put on a class here in uh in underground. See to show us how it's done.

SPEAKER_08 13:58

There's the question. I would, you know, I love coming to Texas. I have no problems coming down, you know, and teaching there. You know, we've been doing CQB classes in Ohio because we have so much infrastructure there to do it. Because in reality, I like to do two days of shooting, three days of CQB. It's a five-day course, and it it makes it really hard to train for three days at the pace that we train all in the same house. But I would love to come down, you know, in one day information shares or two days, things like that in a in a sim shoot house. Yeah, I have no problem. I would love to do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Definitely got to set it up. You know, obviously with with Kim and her foundation, it's definitely something that we can do. Super big on just getting people out there. I want to get not my name out there, but I want to get you know training out there. I want people to really like grab a hold of what's being taught because there's a lot of instructors out there that teach really, really good stuff, but people are afraid to take those classes because like if it's a regular patrolman, like, oh well, I don't want to go to that class because I can't keep up with that, or I don't know the basics and I gotta get the basics down first. So just kind of bridging that gap. How would how would you bridge that gap from a patrolman to a operator?

SPEAKER_08 15:08

I I teach it the same way, right? Until until a you know, a SWAT team can show that they can do technically perfect runs in a very clean shoot house, you stay on the basics. And I would say, like, you know, just the way how I conceptualize and look at hard skills feeding into TTPs, every CQB is a very basic thing, right? There's no advanced anything in it, right? Guys will overcomplicate it because they, you know, it's it it has to have some sort of value in terms of a product that I'm selling. But I I I say it in every class that I do. I think if people realized how simple CQB is, they would be disappointed. Now it's not easy, but it is very simple in terms of what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to do. So I I think it you you stay on the basics, right? And then what becomes advanced is how well, how fast, how accurate, how precise, you know, how hard can you execute something with accountability, control, and performance, but you're only still doing basic things.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Perfect.

SPEAKER_08 16:14

Right. Moving through a doorway and I'm moving to a spot. That's it. It's it's just that simple.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Again, I appreciate you guys' time. Thank you so much. It means a lot. Appreciate it. Oh, thank you for the question.

SPEAKER_07 16:26

I got I got a follow-up question to that actually. So I had a group of guys on here, uh Chris Curris in here yesterday, and Tommy and Kevin from Rogue Targets. And this this came up just with regard to targets inside shoot houses. And you mentioned something there about the bullet traps, and so that's an indicator that there's a target there, that being what I'm processing. So when you walk into the room, you're looking and you see that target trap, so you know it moves you to the next step in the process. I am going to be shooting that target. And so it the discussion started around kind of how Kevin started developing his targets, but guys were cutting out the paper from around the silhouette or whatever the target was, so that you didn't see that pre-indicator of that that margin on the paper when you're, you know, you're starting to. Yeah, the big rectangle or whatever. I wonder, I wonder I just I wonder about that question, and it's a little bit maybe it's a little bit basic, but I wonder advice for guys like this in terms of like what their what their target setup looks like in there and how to make that better. You know, I mean he's asking a question like how do I make this the best?

SPEAKER_08 17:26

Like I I think in terms, right, you you know, you start guys off at you know, remove remove that when we're looking at, you know, exit technical per technically perfect execution of the technique we're trying to do, whatever that is, right? We want to remove discrimination, right? You very gross discrimination, brown targets and white targets, shoots and no shoots, right? I like USPSA metric targets because they have it's a humanoid target with a head and it has scorable zones that now you can actually apply some sort of score to it. The benefit of that, it's a very plain target, right? So it allows you to still train the vision piece, something that we stress all the time in shooting. Can you be visually precise with visual control, connect to the right part of the target? The discrimination piece is easy. And I would argue for anyone that that discrimination piece on white versus brown is very similar to discriminating an actual person, right? You're gonna do the same things, right? I have a loop that I go through, it's demeanor hands decision, right? And I assess demeanor, look at the hands, make a decision whether I'm gonna leave or check up on them or I'm gonna address them because I've met that threshold that he needs something. And I think white and brown does that. As soon as you go two two-dimensional photographic targets, interesting, you know, now you're adding another layer to it, right? That guys have to be precise. You know, you can train a lot of vision piece with photographic targets because as we've all seen it with like Sims on paper, even or even live fire on paper, the guns get terrorized and that gets shot because guys look at the target as they discriminate, they assess demeanor, they look the hands, they connect to the gun, and then they start shooting and they shoot the gun. Got it. Right. And that is something that you feed back into training. You have no, you know, visual control is you're not in control of what you're doing visually because you're connecting to a part of the target that you're not supposed to hit. So I think when you understand all that and you learn all of this stuff back on the range, not in the house, that you you start to understand like it is very, very important what type of targets that we shoot. I've been a fan lately of this company that makes AI targets. I think I bought 300 targets, 50 no shoots, and 200 shoots, and not one target is the same. Yeah, right. That's I think that's what I was asking. And they're made in size-wise to fit really nicely on a USPSA paper. So they give you different demeanors, different hands, different signatures. Right. But it's that's a progression. Yeah, it's impossible to memorize any target. Right, right.

SPEAKER_07 19:54

So you're not seeing the the the talk yesterday was the the lady with the 80s dude with the big glasses that has this holding the pistol, the revolver, right? That over the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_08 20:01

I could tell you we all we all know all of the targets, right? It's like the guy with the yellow jacket. Yeah, that's a shoe target. Dog the bounty hunter behind the couch. There's like the same 27 target.

SPEAKER_07 20:12

Or the construction zone background or whatever.

SPEAKER_08 20:13

Yeah, for over a decade. The guy with the light, you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

You're like, yeah, that I know her. Yeah. Yeah, that's always, you know, I love it. Yeah. Well, thanks for the man for the question. Really, dude. You're the bravest one out here so far.

SPEAKER_07 20:27

Yeah, there there were some other questions on the uh

Targets That Prevent Memorized Runs

SPEAKER_07 20:30

on Instagram. Yeah, let me look at that real quick. I got I didn't bring my readers either. It's gonna be interesting. Yeah, that's actually that's an interesting point. I mean, I've been in several shoot houses, and you're right about that. It's always trying to make we're trying to do a lot of things in there, right? We're trying to give like this is our place to work, so we have to have all these different exposures or whatever, but none of them have been the way that you you you described. Actually, there was one that I was into in South Florida once that had it was so large they had kind of different sections in there where it was a lot tighter, closer hallways, short hallways, less doors, you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_08 21:04

I think it's it's not just shoot houses, it's anytime you you know, you start. We were having this kind of you know, CQB isn't a unique, isn't the tactic for a shoot house specifically. It's anytime you're in close proximity and you're fighting. It's around vehicles, it can be in open air. It it doesn't, it's not specific to a house. But when guys do that, when they go into a shoot house, they're trying to maximize all of the training, right? So it becomes a cart before the horse mentality, right? It would be like we we take a quarterback and we're trying to get him very, very nuanced on a reading of defense, right? Calling audibles on offense, you know, and assessing what the defense is doing and then making adjustments on the fly and ignoring the fact that he can only throw the fucking ball 10 yards. Yeah, gotcha. Right? It's like you have to do certain things at certain times, right? And if if when we talk about the execution of a technique, if the technique doesn't just run in the background, if it's not something that is ingrained, and I hate to say, but like in your personality, like you can just regurgitate this over and over, then talking about the what-ifs and possible contingencies is an absolute waste of time and you're muddying the waters of the training that you're doing. Yeah. Right. And I and I think that becomes most CQB training. Right. You can't be technically perfect in a very vanilla house, and guys don't understand how important it is to do that because how that feeds in when the environment gets more chaotic, you all of a sudden are not going to get more technically perfect.

SPEAKER_07 22:39

The other interesting point I took away from that was the breaching part with regard to like window breaching specifically, like what's going on on the perimeter, right? And and adding that in because I've been in places where there's window cutouts and stuff, but never actually saw anybody. The only thing that that window was there for was either it was blocked, yeah, right? Like this is out of play, kind of thing. There wasn't like this is also happening on the outside while we're working on the inside. And I'm sure that happens in places I've just never seen it. I don't have nearly experienced you guys have. I I'm an idiot, but at the at the same with very few exposures. But I think that's a good one if you're looking at building a place. And to your point, with regard to agencies building building these things, if they're gonna put the money into it, this should be part of part of the deal. I never really thought of that. It's usually like we get a an abandoned warehouse somewhere that's being leased to us by the city or given to by some pro police landowner or property owner or whatever, and we just make the best out of what we got. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

So my 21 years on the team, our department's never built anything for us. It's all been us. Yep. Digging the trash can, having someone had a connection here and all that. Dallas, y'all the same way. Like y'all's facility, y'all hell you for a long time. Y'all don't even have one. You're using ours. Then y'all finally got one who built it, who's continuing to maintain it. Who picks up the trash? It's like it's it's it's insane that and it's not just us, it's it's you look around everywhere, it it's crazy what they don't do for for us because they know we're self-motivated people, so they're no, like, well, we're not gonna have to do it because they're gonna do it themselves. So we're our own worst enemies, but if not, then who's gonna do it? So we have to.

SPEAKER_08 24:16

I think the best way to look at it is when you when you if you look at teams that have access to very, very good live fire shoot houses and you see where that team is in terms of progression, even as a part-time team versus a full-time team that doesn't have that, it's night and day. Right? I've trained with a team up in Ohio that has access to a you know tier one quality live fire shoot house, you know, they can do a lot in it, they could breach, you know, shoot live rounds, and to see where they are at as a baseline metric of skill versus other teams that do not have access, that never get to do live fire CQB, it's night and day.

SPEAKER_10 24:59

Well, yeah. Well, yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say coming on to our team, we have a live fire shoot house. We're one of the few ones that do. And very early on, you realize you're gonna spend some time in here. And you're doing your walkthroughs, and then it progresses to live fire, and you're doing the basics, and they're watching you. And like that, you're building upon where that trust where they actually let you do something live on a real op. And you got to do that. And like I spent hours and hours in that shoot house. And we would go to the range, like, okay, for the first 90 minutes we're gonna be over here, you're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And so they're imprinting into you, you know, the senior guys, what they want. And uh somebody said to me one time, goes, CTB can be hard, it's harder if you're stupid. You know, you know, and there's a lot of truth to that. And so, like, you're going to learn you know, our way of doing it, so to speak, and you're gonna have to be safe about it. But the problem with I think, let's see, with shoot houses just in general, is that the overriding thing is safety. It it get it gets so far over there where they've taken the the organic and the the realism part of it out. That the rooms are so big, the hallways are big, they're they're designed to be offset and I and I understand that safety component of it, but you're like, this is these are nothing like any of the op any of the houses I've ever been in. And there's like no, there's you can't put furniture, you can't put this in there because they're so worried about a trip hazard. I'm like, every op we do there is is full of stuff in the room. You know, and so you need to be able to do it, but it does it'll never replicate everything because of the safety component of it.

SPEAKER_08 26:26

The the safety, I think, you know, departments and agencies need to to realize like for SWAT teams, for specialized teams, the the number one safety mitigation factor is individual skill.

SPEAKER_06 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 26:40

Right? And if you want it to be safer, put more effort into developing individual skill. No, put more effort into selecting better guys. Yeah. Right? That's because it's it you don't need the best guy, you need a type of guy.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Right.

SPEAKER_08 26:52

You know, and then in terms of Cliff Bowery, what's up, man? What's up, Cliff? Why is it, you know, why can we do, you know, points of domination, you know, very fast, very aggressively in terms of execution? It's because the individual skill level is extremely high and guys are very competent, you know, on the shooting piece of it.

unknown 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 27:12

You know, and I think that's hard for a lot of individuals to actually accept is like, hey, we do this TTP because our skill level, like this is all we could do. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 27:24

Well, we guys come in training, they've been on their team eight, 10 years, they've never spent one day in the line of our shootouts. Yeah, that's horrible. Yeah, you know, it's coming from my point, like that's um I can't even imagine. You know, I'm so fortunate to have what I have. And so it's I think it's really hard for some guys to get that. No, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Kim, you definitely need to get with Cliff, he's a good dude. You need to bring him in for your organization.

SPEAKER_04 27:45

We go way back.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Y'all do?

SPEAKER_04 27:47

Okay. An hour and a half.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah, y'all you need to get him out for one of y'all's

What Dynamic Really Means In CQB

SPEAKER_02 27:52

deals.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

I'm gonna go to Bernie and watch him do a training. So I'll already be down there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

He's a great guy. So one of the things, one of the conversations that has been a hot topic here here recently and uh is the whole dynamic, deliberate, and stuff. And we were having a conversation about over pizza uh before we did this. And your definition of dynamic. What is your definition when when this word gets thrown around? We talked about it. I really liked what you had to say about it.

SPEAKER_08 28:20

Yeah, I think you know, I think we gotta go back to the deliberate and dynamic, right, has been like an infection in the law enforcement world as as well as with the military, right? Deliberate doesn't mean slow, and dynamic doesn't mean fast. And I would argue if you look up the definition of dynamic, everything that police officers do, every situation you're in is a dynamic situation. Yeah, right. And what they're really talking about is, you know, the speed of execution of what they're doing. But for the sake of argument, let's say dynamic CQB is fast CQB, right? And no other no other sport, no other specially combat sport where there is two opponents that are playing to win, is being slow, valued to win. It doesn't exist. Doesn't exist in fighting sports, it doesn't exist in in the law enforcement, in your your guys' business. If you were, we were to go out here into the parking lot and say, yep, I've just lost my shit, and you guys are gonna arrest me, right? Two or three guys go out there, I would ask, like, how are you going to set up to arrest me? Right? The end you're gonna set up into an L-shape. Yep. Like, why do you do that? Because it is the most confusing way for you guys to approach me, right, is to be in L shape. I can't focus on three guys from two different sides all at once, right? And then how are you going to take me down? Is it going to be slow or is it going to be fast?

unknown 29:49

Right.

SPEAKER_08 29:50

And then if if I'm fighting, do you want me to fight at full speed or fight in slow motion?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

I want you to fight very, very slow.

SPEAKER_08 29:58

Yeah. So if you look at this from an adversarial standpoint, somebody that wants to fight you in a structure, they want you to go slow. Yeah. Right. Where I look at that fight is is now you're you're trying to leverage, you know, a time component, right? You're trying to steal time away from the adversary, present an unwinnable fight to to bad guys that want to hurt you for the sake of your own safety, right? So now it talks about you know the aggressive execution of it, and real dynamic CQB doesn't have a whole lot to do with how fast you move across the ground. It's how fast you're able to go from one task to the next task with no delay. The efficiency of it, the efficiency of it, right? I mean, how many times do we see when you're doing CQB training that guys are walking to a corner with nothing in it and not moving until they get there?

SPEAKER_02 30:49

They paint the wall.

SPEAKER_08 30:50

And then they collapse their sector, right? So they're there's in an ingrained lack of understanding in what they're actually trying to accomplish in the room and the sequence of order of tasks and how quickly can they go from one task to the next to the next. Right. And and to me, that is what real dynamic CQB is. Now, when we focus on the hard skills element, right, and guys get better at shooting, they get better at moving, they get better at processing what's happening with their sites, with the tools that they have and reading situations. That's a byproduct of being inoculated to those situations over and over. You know, the first warrant service you go on is going to be completely different than the thousandth that you go on, yeah, right, in terms of how comfortable you are. So there's a natural progression of development with that. But in terms of training, you know, the the training pace needs to be significantly faster than what the execution pace is, right? I can always slow down. If I am, if if part of my job is to run 100 meters in 11 seconds, why would I ever fucking try to practice it for 15?

unknown 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 31:56

The application piece is I have to do this in 11. I've been in situations where it has to be, it has to be 11 seconds. So now, why what do I gain by doing it in 15? You know, so you start to apply this understanding of training, of balancing, you know, a speed component, which in anything that you do in terms of fighting or whatever, there is a speed component, whether it's in your favor or not in your favor, right? And everybody likes to talk about the difference between uh, you know, a dope warrant versus an active shooter. And I agree, they, you know, if conditions change and the adversaries change, then the execution, it makes sense that that changes. But the reality is the worst or most, the hardest or most dangerous situation that you have to go in, I don't think it would be hostage rescue. I think it would be active shooter, right? But in terms of speed, the execution is the same. So if you know that you're you guys are the ones that are called for active shooter, right? And it's going to potentially, you know, more time than not be inside a structure, why would you ever train to do that slowly? You're never going to show up then on the day and then all of a sudden have this reservoir of skill that you can call on, right? For most guys, I think what I've I've talked to plenty of cops that have been in their first shooting, and that is the first time they have ever run that gun that aggressively was in that environment. So why don't we create an environment where running the gun that hard is just a normal part of training? Yeah. Right. Why don't we create an environment where the way that we are we are executing whatever technique we use of CQB, the the aggression of the execution is there, right? That it would be in that dynamic world.

SPEAKER_10 33:39

Well, I think people focus on when you're running a war, they go, Why are you chasing dope? Why are you trying to rescue dope? The dope, I can care less. Yeah, that's true. It's a byproduct of what we do when we secure everything. We're doing it because we have the data and everything to show why it's safer for us and for them. For the, you know, we shoot a lot of those people on dynamic warm service and I have the data to prove it, than we ever do on surrounding call-outs. And like we, it is without question, it is safer for us, safer for them. It's it's just it's just a better way of doing business. But people that don't agree with that, they go, You're just running to your death, you're running to save dope. I'm like, that's a week to say that because I assure you that is not anywhere in our plans while we're doing it.

SPEAKER_08 34:18

I hear it nonstop, the right running to your death. Yeah, right. I've been doing this as a profession since I was 18 years old. I'm 50 years old now. I'm still not dead. So try another argument, bros. Like give me something else. Yeah, right. It's and it and also I would say if your idea is is like, I'm not trying, why would I rescue dope? Then don't go.

SPEAKER_06 34:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 34:44

Right? Then don't go in there, right? It's not rescuing dope. No, if you can't equate that fighting at full speed is going to be safer for you, right? Because really lethality turns into dominance, dominance turns into safety. When we talk about you know, fighting in close proximity, going slow doesn't, right? Going slow works because you're not opposed. Go in there with just flashlights, then you'll have the same outcome. If the guy doesn't want to fight with guns, does it really matter how you go in? No. I would say no. And I I agree with that. The problem is I'm not talking about what you experience, you know, 90% of the time. I'm talking about the one time when it does happen, if you don't have that skill, you're gonna pay in a way that you might not want to pay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

I I think too, the the the whole argument when when guys say, well, we're we don't rescue dough, our lives are not the all that. Like, but I guarantee you, those are the same guys that are going out and making traffic stops. That's the same administration that's gonna say that, but allow their guys to make traffic stops. To allow a guy to ride around on a motorcycle and make traffic stops and never check out on the radio, what's more dangerous? Statistically speaking, the the traffic stop is way more dangerous. And I'm like, so if rescuing dope is so dangerous, why is riding a ticket not dangerous?

SPEAKER_10 36:04

Well, family violence calls and traffic stops equate for the most police evolved shooting. Yes. So if you want to say, well, we're gonna do the safest thing, you wouldn't do either one of those. No. So you'd be like the fire department and stage and wait for okay, he's left now. Okay, now we'll come in. Well, what gets me is that they say we we we don't do this because of this. Or I've had them tell me we're not confident or competent enough to do a warrant dynamically because we got a lot of guys that never done it before. Okay, fine. I I believe what you're saying. And that's a fact. But but would be but you're SWAT, right? Yes. What if you get called out tonight on an HR? So on a pre-planned op that you're have all the advantages, you say you don't you can't do it. But then in the middle of the night, when you don't have all the advantages and it's already gone bad, that's why you're getting called out. Yeah, you're gonna sit there, we can pull it together now and be dynamic and go do an HR. Like, no, you can't. You cannot, you cannot. And so, but they tell them their sales that because either their command is saying you can't do it, or this is be honest, some of them just can't do it and they don't want to admit that, and they're saying, well, we don't want to do this. I'm like, Well, I'm telling you, uh, have you done my share of them? It's the same speed. It's it's how you can process the room at speed, clearing on the move. And if you can't do it on a warrant, I would suggest you you're not gonna be able to do it on HR either.

SPEAKER_08 37:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 37:15

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_08 37:16

Yeah, no, and I would say, you know, it comes up a lot to where dynamic versus deliberate or the speed of execution, you know, well, it's processing, processing, processing, right? And I don't I don't believe you, there is no way to train processing. Right? You're like my phone has X amount of gigs of RAM, right? Whatever it is, I don't know, 16 gigs of RAM. I can never make it have 24, no matter what. The only thing that I can do is I can shut down all these apps and programs running. So what it'll appear is that the processor is running faster and more efficiently. Yeah, right. You do that, we're like, hey, we're we're our team is not competent to go faster, we we're not comfortable there. Cool, let's go back to the range. What do we have to do in terms of hard skills that will feed into our TTPs? Because people don't understand. I you know, years ago I stopped calling them, you know, fundamentals, they're foundational skills. It's the foundation that everything is built on, you know, when it comes to fighting. And if if the foundation is three inches thin and made out of sand, the house you build on it is going to be unstable. If the foundation goes 300 feet down into the ground and is reinforced with steel and concrete, you can build a much bigger house on it. So why would you not spend the effort to develop those skills before you start doing anything within in terms of tactics? But I think guys want to go the tactic route or the scenario route because it's more interesting than the isolated work that's required to actually develop skill as an individual.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah. All right, I'll look at looking at one of the uh questions that was in the uh comments.

Loyalty And The Traits Of Teammates

SPEAKER_02 39:01

So it says, I'm sure there's going to be I don't have my readers on, so I'm gonna get some harder. I'm sure there's going to be top, I guess, cop talk about shooting. So I'll ask a question if in a different nature. What's the most important characteristic of a man and what makes someone a good teammate that you would want to work with?

SPEAKER_08 39:24

You want me to go?

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Oh, yeah, this is your show, man.

SPEAKER_08 39:27

Not my show. Dude, the most I'll tell you, you know, for me personally, you know, the the biggest characteristic that I assess in anybody is loyalty. Not necessarily loyalty to me, but what are you loyal to? Right? That is because that's something you can't you can't program, you can't train, you can't fake it, right? You know, so loyalty would be the first thing that I would I would assess for, you know, and then willingness. How willing are you to actually do whatever we're about to do? Yeah, right. And and and guys will demonstrate that different ways. And then, you know, so as an individual, like a good teammate, you know, I don't need to have a teammate that is is the fittest dude on the planet, right? We can work on that, we can always build on that. He doesn't need to be the best shooter in the in the squadron or in the trip. We can always, that's something that is part of our job, we're gonna continuously build on, right? However, you shoot today on day one is probably not how you're gonna shoot 10 years from now, you know, if you're putting in consistent work. But how loyal you are on day day one and and kind of those ingrained personality traits that you you had from a young man up to that point of of your job of whenever I met you, like I hate to say, but like if you're a fucking unloyal piece of shit, you're not gonna be able to hide that. That's how very loyal it's hard-coded and it's not coming out of the way. That is the way that you're you are hardwired, and that's how you're gonna behave. It's how you're gonna treat situations, you know. And I would say, like, for me, I think that I'm probably loyal to a fault with giving you know benefits of the doubts to people and and things like that. I want to see the the good in everything, right? Even when it's like staring me dead in the eyes. But I'll tell you, once I realize nope, it's not worth it, dudes are fucking dead to me. Like I have no problem turning my back on someone that I've known for 20 years. If if traits that are not consistent with how I want to live my life and how I'm gonna progress, you know, in terms of business, in terms of personal relationships, you know, for me, I've married, I have seven kids, right? If it shouldn't be a mistake to anybody, like where my grounding exists, you know, in the reality of my family and that. So if if when I run across people that don't share kind of those same values or things like that, it's not that it's it's a it's a negative, it's a big turnoff, but it's like, hey, you know, it's maybe you're not exposed to it or whatever, but now let me see how you I would assess like your loyalty and other aspects of it. Like how fare you, like in business, how fare you, you know, with personal relationships, right? Because in the in this environment, like this conference is a prime thing, it is it's personal relationships that are combined with business relationships. Yeah, right. And they are intertwined, right? And sometimes on the business side, you you can do things on the business side that are going to be a benefit for business, and then but they might degrade personal relationships. And for me, it's I'm not willing to do that a lot of times.

SPEAKER_10 42:35

Well, the team is successful when individuals work together in their skills for the team, right? You can, you know, we all have people that, you know, good athletes or whatever, and they're not working in the same mission that you are. What good does it do?

SPEAKER_06 42:49

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 42:50

No, you can have a whole team of superstars, man, that are all out for themselves, right? Worried about that next contract.

SPEAKER_06 42:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 42:57

Right? And they never go to the Super Bowl, they never make it to the playoffs, right? But individually, guys have amazing numbers.

SPEAKER_06 43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

So No, you're right. All right, there's another one that came out. Basically,

Predictive Triples And Shooting Your Vision

SPEAKER_02 43:08

he went to a class in 2025 and you were talking about shooting triples. So, what's are you still doing that? Is that something in your training regimen? If so, what have you advanced with that and how's that different from shooting doubles?

SPEAKER_08 43:22

So, for guys that don't know, like doubles the predictive progression in the way that I I look at it, you know, predictive shooting as the primary training tool to develop foundational skills, like it's been instrumental for me. I think the next progression, you know, for guys is is working into like a predictive triple, right? And then four rounds, you know, at that predictive pace, paying attention to, you know, all of the things that we we emphasize: grip, visual focus, visual control, visual discipline, right, and learning from that. And I think for a lot of guys, they're very good at the doubles progression. And they start to look at doubles not as a training tool, but as like a scorable exercise that they're trying to shoot, where they're, hey, all alphas, all alphas. And what I noticed with guys like as soon as you're very good at doubles at 10, 12, 15, maybe even out to 20 yards, right? You're holding, you know, above 90% alphas, you're understanding the cues, then the next obvious progression would be add a third round to it, right? And see how does that change foundational elements, right? How does that affect you visually? How does it affect mechanically in terms of how you're gripping the pistol? And then pretty soon, you know, as you're you're at those training distances that are, you know, beyond 10 yards, 12, 15, 17, 20 yards, and you move up to actual engagement distances, now you have like by accident started to mimic an actual engagement pace. Right. And when you tie that together with reactive shooting, which is the engagement strategy, right? Understanding the confirm confirmation levels, you're you're starting to see things much, much faster than you could have before. So now what your perception of confirmation to or color confirmation has completely changed. Right. And to me, that's a benefit. Yeah. It's a positive.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

So to kind of break it down for an officer that says, Hey, I hear the training in a very fast pace and shooting predictive as opposed to reactive of the way I should shoot in a real engagement. Is that kind of the same philosophy when you were if you're shooting in a match, hey, I'm not going as fast as I normally train because I'm having to make sure I'm shooting an A or a somewhat Charlie and just not just going as fast as I can. Is that does it qu I guess my question is, does it correlate the same as shooting a match pace as should be shooting a OIS pace pace?

SPEAKER_08 46:00

Yeah, so yes, yes. I believe it, I believe that's true from from this aspect where at a match, I'm always gonna shoot my vision.

SPEAKER_06 46:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 46:12

Right now, I'm gonna bend what's it what what is acceptable based off target distance, difficulty, where I'm at in the match, and what I'm willing to risk to miss. Yeah, right. But I'm always programmed to shoot my vision. The same thing holds true in an engagement. You know, and you ask a lot of officers, like, what tells you when it's time to shoot? And the resounding answer across the board is well, I saw I saw a gun. But I'm like, no, that just told you the game is starting. That now you're playing this game. What should tell you when it's time to shoot is when you see what you determine is acceptable. Right? What is acceptable? Look at for that target distance, that difficulty, and most importantly, how much are you willing to risk to not get it, get the hit that you need, right? Where I think more more often than not, what you see in like body cam footages of shootings is is officers that are shooting the situation and not shooting their vision. No, right? I'm shooting into the situation because it's it's happened, it started, and now I'm just shooting rounds, right? And then you see reloads having to happen. And I've seen it plenty of times, you know, five, six officers shooting into a vehicle, right? And then at the end of it, they're barking commands and hands come out and the guy gets out of the vehicle. My initial question is what were you aiming at? Yeah, were you shooting the vehicle, the situation, or were you shooting the threat in the vehicle? Right. And take that back to the training side. It goes into like, if you understand, you know, predictive shooting as a tool and then reactive shooting as the engagement, right? It's gonna get you, you you'll realize like if there's nothing for you to shoot at, there's don't pull the trigger. Yeah, but that happens more times than not, where guys are just no, they're shooting into the scenario, into the situation, and they're not shooting to get effects.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

No, no, for for sure. Here's a here's a good question. I thought that was pretty interesting. Yes, ma'am, Kim. What you got, girl? He's got a question. All right, got a question.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Hey, uh, was just curious on uh which optic plates you like to run.

SPEAKER_08 48:20

This is a loaded question. That's Jordan from a rise manufacturing, but all my guns are direct milled. So my preferred optic plate is no optic plate. But on my work MOS guns, I do have a low rider. There's a plug for you. Yeah, I got it. And I love it. I I do like I do like the lowrider, you know, because for my for my work pistol versus like my own guns, it pushes the optic as low as it possibly can and still have good connection. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

With the tight tolerances.

SPEAKER_08 48:57

Yeah, yeah, with tight tolerance. Still have have not had one fail yet. So, you know, knock on wood, but no, been a positive, man. And Jordan's been great with like you know, supporting. I know all the dudes I work with, they love them, so it's been good.

SPEAKER_02 49:11

Yeah, I actually run one on my PDP. I got a little rod. Oh, awesome. Yeah, really appreciate that support, man. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I didn't even put it together until he said I was like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_07 49:19

Did you just say you have a PDP?

unknown 49:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 49:22

Did Brandon just come out of the closet? I'm not getting involved in that closet. Well, I have a Glock too.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

I shot a Glock today, man.

SPEAKER_07 49:28

I try to stay split in nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

So I'm uh Well, tomorrow you're gonna see I'm gonna run mechanics so you can make fun of me tomorrow.

SPEAKER_08 49:35

Hey, that's like a Turkish PDP.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Exactly. Thank you guys. Jim, you got a question, girl? You got a question for us?

SPEAKER_04 49:44

I was just gonna say you're already out of the closet. Uh huh. I missed that.

SPEAKER_07 49:48

It's a true statement. True statement.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

Please, girl. Come on. Okay, this was a good one, I thought.

Real World CQB Lessons From Fights

SPEAKER_02 49:54

What did the real world CQB teach you that training did?

SPEAKER_08 49:58

The actual application of it showed that like each each event, each shooting, each target is unique in itself. Right? They all have different elements that need different things in terms of execution speed, execution pace, you know, how the conditions change, what we're willing to risk, you know, to have success, or what we're willing to risk to potentially not have success. You know, so they're they're all a little bit different. But what it taught me though, that was like regardless of how each individual situation or each individual target varied, the common underpinning theme that when the engagement started, when it we hit that threshold where like we are now in a fight, the speed that that fight needed to unfold was identical across the board. Yeah, right. At the end of the day, you know, go back to like the competitive world versus the tactical world. We're we're both trying to do the same thing. We're trying to make the bullets go exactly where we want them to go as fast as possible.

SPEAKER_06 51:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 51:03

The level, the assumption of risk in a real application environment is obviously much higher than shooting paper, right? I can shoot Delta, shoot Alpha Delta on the on the range, you know, in a match all day long, and I'm penalized with points, and I walk away, and the only thing that's hurt is you know kind of my pride and and my willingness to want to do good. You know, but something like that, if you know shooting a couple deltas, you know, on a on an actual target, that might give that guy a window or a scene that he can exploit where he's now able to shoot. Right? Yeah. Now, caveat that with saying there's a lot of situations I've seen where the solution to the problem might have been delta alpha alpha. And that's what solved it, right? A very fast delta to to get effects, right? If you think of hit factor in terms of energy to the target, right? So I give an energy value of one and I follow it up with two energy values of five. Right. And that's and I can if I can do that at a faster than real life pace, that may solve the problem better than dropping three energy levels of five in four times the amount of time, right? Or, you know, whatever, four seconds longer than it needs to be. So they're all unique, but but the underpinning theme is that what I learned is is each one had a speed component to it that could not be ignored. No. Take that back to your training, right? And that's where it kind of, you know, coin the phrase Zach Harrison's sitting out there right now. He's we're we're training at a faster than real life pace. Right? We're doing that because then when we're in the real life pace, we've artificially introduced accountability and control. Because I'm so used to running like rats on acid at that ragged edge, like hitting everything so hard and aggressively, that when it goes to like what the real pace is, my vision is open up. I see everything very, very clearly, and I'm able to, you know, deliver and the the point of performance of work that I need to with tons of accountability and tons of control.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

So, how long, how long for you coming from where you where you were where you worked, when you were the quote, the new guy, did it take you to, hey man, I made my first real op entry. How long did it take you to really go, okay, my efficiency now is up to par with the other guys? To to that learning curve to kind of catch up with the other kids?

SPEAKER_08 53:36

I don't I don't think you ever get to the point where uh where you're like you feel like you're caught up. Right? I think I think from day one, you know, everybody is is safe enough to run, right? And that's the intent, is that you can run with a team. You are going to have to run with a team. Yeah, you made it, that's it, you know, and then over time, I would say for myself, it's I never felt like, yep, it's now all click it. There was always something to work on.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_08 54:07

There was always, you know, I could always be a little bit faster. I could always be a little bit more accurate, could always be more aggressive, I could fight harder, I could let let the situation, you know, doesn't need to unfold as much as it did. I recognized I was there much sooner. Why did I not react to that immediately? Yeah, right. Why did I why did I not react to nothing immediately? You know, I I think for me that's that is the most undervalued skill in CQB is the ability to react to nothing.

SPEAKER_06 54:36

Yeah right?

SPEAKER_08 54:37

People do not believe at what they're seeing or they're looking. They're looking at things, but they're not seeing things. So I would say I never got to that point where it's like, yeah, I'm I'm good, it's comfortable, right? And I and I don't think a lot of guys do at that place because that's not the that's not the culture of the place. The culture is like consistent, you know, progression. The the the the culture statement is excellence in everything we do. Like that's a huge order, that's a huge lift. Yeah, right. That shows like every single day you're you're working to be better than you were the day before. And then every single day you're training to fight yourself, yeah, or somebody that has similar skill.

SPEAKER_10 55:20

Well, it's a journey, not a destination.

SPEAKER_08 55:22

Yeah, it is. It's it's the journey with no discernible endpoint. It's okay. And if you don't enjoy the journey, like guys that didn't, they you know, they they came and went or they found something else. Yeah, guys that really did, it's you know, it becomes it you become a little bit psychotic about it in terms of like the performance side and and what we need to get out of it, which I for me, I thought that was a good thing. Yeah you know, I thought it was never an issue going fast, going hard. It was I knew I could always back it down and slow down because we were all professional. We were professional at training, we were professional at application. You know, we understood that sometimes sometimes it's the old number six, you gotta smash it, and other times it's like, hey, there is nothing driving us into it. Let's use these tools that we have to to get to. But we had a massive toolbox you know, compared to LE.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

Yeah, yeah. No, uh that's a that's that's good because it it always is evolving. Like I'm the same way. I'm like, man, I I just want to be always moving forward and and looking at you know how critical I am of myself, and that and that that does stuff because you drive it home, you're like, fuck, I shouldn't have done this, I should have done this, and it haunts you for you know a day on things. So but I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_07 56:41

The chasing of mastery that you know you can never actually master. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

I mean, it it's just like that match we shot today. Like you would run run stage, and then the next one you're like, how did I just bomb that thing? And then the next one you're like, okay, I'd a little bit better on this. And it's it's every every time you perform, there's always a new outcome. I think, you know, looking at the NFL, I mean, these guys are true professionals. All they do is practice, and then they have this game plan and they execute it, and all it takes is one guy to not step where he's been stepping all week, and the play is just blown up. And these guys just practice this all the time, and it's they know what they're doing. There's no like we got to read and react to this.

SPEAKER_08 57:23

So, so one of the things is interesting, you know, about NFL players, right? Do you know how long an NFL team practices for? It's not as long as you would think. 90 minutes. Yeah. The union, they can only practice for 90 minutes. Yeah. And I I've had the opportunity to work with some teams, and like when it hits 90, they can be in the middle of a play, they walk off the field. Right? So you think about like how developed are the the individual skills for every dude in that position? How dip the physical side, yeah, the the cognitive side, you know, the the technical side of with the ball running and all that stuff, how much is that developed so that at that level to win, you know, and I think a lot of people don't really understand when you when you see NFL players, you know, in real life, like practicing two feet away from them, and dudes are like, I could play in the NFL, like, absolutely not, you couldn't. Like, that's a Ferrari, you're a fucking moped. There's no way you can do that. So you you take away from that, like the the foundation that those guys have, it's developed, and a lot of it is natural ability, and then it's understanding of the game, it's understanding of like how they're training, you know, over time. You know, you try to apply that to like like the the uh you know the shooting world. It's the same way, like in a match, you're dude, how did I do that? How did I do that? It's like you're gonna fuck up, right? Did I did not shoot, shot the first two stages, absolutely horrible, you know? But it is it that was how I did at that time on that day, yeah, right. And it's it's information that you collect, and it should be feeding back into your train. Yeah, right. Because, you know, outside of a few different dudes, you know, in the world, like no one's winning every time.

SPEAKER_06 59:14

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_08 59:14

And I think that holds true in life. It's yeah, it's understanding and and not having the ego from a training perspective or the ego from a personality perspective, like, can I learn from my failures? Can I be honest about when I failed, when it broke down, and how am I going to feed that back in? And can I come up with a plan to get better based off what I saw from that data set? Yeah, no, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

I guess the question, look, we got a question. The president and the vice president right here, man. Serious. Look, look, look, what did your detail do an advanced scout on this? And it's pretty curious. I think I'm pretty safe. Okay, good, good, good.

SPEAKER_05 59:50

All right, so here's here's my question. Not

A 100 Round Training Plan

SPEAKER_05 59:52

every, not a lot of guys, as you know, some of these guys pay their own way to training, they got to pay for their own ammo. So obviously they want to focus on the hard skills. So if they had a hundred rounds of ammo that they had to buy themselves and they went to the range to train, what would you suggest would be the best thing for them to train with that hundred rounds?

SPEAKER_08 1:00:09

Oh man, I just got asked this. That was the president Dan Colossal. So so if I if I had a hundred rounds, what I would do is I I would dedicate, I would dedicate 40, 40% of the rounds to doubles, to predictive shooting, right? But with that, with anything that I'm doing, I would do it dry four or five times, and then I would do it live. So for every every block of doubles, which is eight rounds, right, I would run through that block five to ten times, right? With the pulling the trigger each time, assessing the grip. So it would be a dry and live combination. So 40, 40% of the rounds would be to doubles, 30% of the rounds would be into reactive shooting, you know, more than two rounds, probably less than than four or five rounds on multiple targets, right? So I would I would be training transitions, but primarily shooting my vision, right, at closer distances, going back to farther distances, right? And in whatever the target array would look at, I would commit, you know, 30% of the rounds to that. 20% of the rounds would be movement, right? I would be moving in some capacity, lateral movement, forward lateral, and then shooting into and out of position and shooting on the move, right? I would dedicate the 20% of the rounds to that, and the last 10% of the rounds would be whatever I was working on in dry fire, I would check that in live. So if it was a gun handling element, I would do that. Or if it was just something that I wanted to explore, I would dedicate 10, 10% of the rounds to that.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:49

That's awesome. That's that's I think that's important because a lot of guys don't have a lot around. I mean, some of some of us are fortunate, but that's that's good. That's I was wondering that.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:58

No, I no, I think for a lot of guys to understand, you know, there's there's very good examples, you know. Uh yeah, Juanza Kim is one of them where he he was able to achieve so much off of just shooting 2,000 rounds. And it's not shooting 2,000 rounds to build up to a level, it's 2,000 rounds total. But the way that he conceptualized dry fire with studying video of his shooters, like within 2,000 of firing about 2,000 rounds, which I think that is the count, he was like finishing in the top one or two of area level, national level matches, right? It's it's not really the volume that you're shooting. Yes, time behind the gun does help, but it's it's the training mentality and training methodology that if guys can embrace that, like because practical shooters primarily fund their own training, right? They they're not sitting on like mountains and mountains of ammunition, they don't have unlimited ammo, you know, like some people do. So so what they're doing is they're getting really good at when they're shooting, when they're shooting rounds, they're making everyone count, right? And you think of it like a 10 to 1 rep. If for everything that I'm gonna do on the range live, I'm gonna try to do that at least 10 times dry, right? And then apply the same cues and dry and live and be very, very objectively honest and hard of myself in dry fire that I'm accomplishing the things that I want to. So when I go to live, I'm not just shooting, I'm actually training.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:27

I think that I think the dry fire piece is the missing piece. I think a lot of guys, well, they don't do it at all, or if they do do it, it's not they're not concentrating, like you're saying, they're not focused. And then they they get out to live and and they're not they're not doing that. So the I think the dry fire piece is missing a lot of times. And then they go out there and like you're saying, instead of quality reps, it's quite like, oh, I'm just gonna shoot a bunch and not and not focus on the dry. But I think that I think the dry is is very important, and it's something that a lot of people they don't do. And I've I've read before things that you said is hey, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, like everybody thinks it has to be like an hour, but it it doesn't. I think 10 minute sessions is if you're if you're doing it like you should be doing it, those 10 minute sessions are going to be pretty demanding.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:12

Yeah, I think for most people, if you're if you're gripping the gun the way you do live and you're you're cognitively engaged the way you should be, paying attention to what you need to be, 10 minutes, 15 minutes is about max. So for me, like I'm I'm a 10 to 15 minutes a session. If I want to do more, I'm adding multiple sessions throughout the day.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:32

But the volume still accumulates, right? And you're still working it at the appropriate intensity for whatever those 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minute sessions. It's micro sessions or micro dosing your training, which works the same in a lot of different ways in terms of what your brain can handle, what your body can handle. Yeah, what's actually going on before you start to fall into a rhythm where one of those things starts to fall off, the intensity, the focus might fall off, whatever else.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:55

I think for most people, you know, just like working out, exactly like that, the intensity is not anywhere where it needs to be. You know, people can't artificially introduce that intensity, right? For working out, it's like if I want to have a really good workout, it's I use pre-workout, right? To kind of like chemically induce the intensity that I need, right? So, but you can't do that with dry fire. So, like, how do you you do it? For me, like I use I use rate of perceived exertion, right? I I understand where my 100% is, and then I start, and you know, I may start at 80, but the bulk of the training, maybe I'm two minutes at 80%, and then the next eight to 10 minutes at 100%. And what I'm trying to do is be absolutely consistent with absolute precision, with very high levels of accountability cognitively, like in terms of what I see the dot doing while I'm going 100% of what I can do at that time on that day.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:54

So there's two metrics there, actually. So there's the there's there's intensity is used kind of two ways, and what I just heard you talk. About one is the effort level, right? The foot the the focus, the intention that I'm putting into the training. Yeah, and then intensity is also measured in the speed, right? Of what it is, maybe that's it, or the and or the accuracy that you're trying to obtain with that kind of focus. So there's kind of two parts to this. Like it's not just how fast you're going, it's what's actually happening, and that's in the dry and the live fire.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:22

Yeah. And for for me, like early on, I I noticed a huge disconnect and what I could do in dry fire, I could not replicate even close to that in live fire. And what I realized I was doing was I was not paying attention to the visual side of what I was doing. So as soon as now I started adding aiming and accountability, it fell apart. The performance fell apart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:44

It's like speed training or whatever else, or when you're like velocity-based training, it's about moving lighter weights faster. And as soon as the speed starts to slow down, well, we're done. Like I'm done for that part of the session, and I move on to the next thing that takes less speed, whatever that is. So maybe that maybe we're moving into something different, but that's the advantage of microdosing because you can make sure you're focused for that amount of time for that 10 or 15 minutes. Step away, evaluate what you did, refresh the brain, refresh whatever, especially if it's live fire, and get back to it for your next session.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:17

Every time you say microdosing, I think about a little challenge that was like back in my recon days, it was shot a beer every minute for as long as you can. You're like, dude, that's easy. No, it's not. After about 45 minutes, you're you're naked and dancing on the bar. By 60 minutes, you're begging for help and you're in the jail. Yeah. If it's only a little glass of beer, that's microdosing is wildly effective.

When Slow Makes Sense And When It Fails

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

Is there a time and place for quote slow CQB where you're moving through the room slowly, not non-HRT?

SPEAKER_08 1:07:57

Yeah, yes, there are conditions when the conditions are present where you don't have to leverage speed, right? You think of the the triangle of the principles of CQB, right? Surprise, speed, violence of action, right? They're in that order for a reason. If we never give up surprise, then we there is no reason for us to leverage speed, right? And but conditions have to be present for that. Typically, you know, in the military world, it's complete darkness, right, with walls that can stop bullets. That's what gives me the, you know, that element of surprise gives me the ability to now be a little bit slower in terms of of assessing a threshold or something like that. But I would say even even on like what we would call combat clearance in the military, the threshold assessment is one piece. It's still not a slow thing, right? I'm assuming a lot of risk because it's dark, because of wall stop bullet, because I have a lot of standoff from the door, right? That I'm able to now throw infrared light in there, look through it on nods, and assess what I can see. But when I commit to the room, the movement into the room is the exact same if it was daytime in NHR. I'm just not making any noise when I'm doing it. But I'm still aggressively moving through that fatal funnel and I'm collapsing. I'm doing the priorities work, the order of battle in the room, you know, primary, secondary, secondary sector, sector in depth. Gun down, head up, leave the room. Right? I'm going through those tasks so quickly, you know, and just understanding that the conditions are present to where I it gives me a little bit more time to assess the room from outside the room. There's nothing that's that's sucking me in there really quick, but a lot of a lot of guys in LE don't understand like where the nexus of that TTP came from and what was the threat that we were mitigating, right? It was it was guys that were blowing themselves up in the room. You know, so if that threat doesn't exist, like why why would you say like most LE guys are now favoring a very extensive threshold assessment and like a limited penetration CQB? And it goes back to like it has nothing to do with the adversary, you are more concerned about officer safety than you are about solving the problem and winning. Yeah, so if that's the case, like you can't really combat that until you can get until you can get guys to understand like you're wanting something to be safe that's inherently dangerous, we can't make it safe, and you're value with your value of safety, what I see is your willingness is in the fucking basement, right? You have no willingness to fight, right? So in that thing, it's like until you can get guys to flip that on its head, right? The willingness has to be there, right? And and erase all of these things that guys say, I'm not trying to rescue dope, I'm not trying to run to my death. I've never once in my life tried to run to my death. I also would say on target, I don't do, I don't take risks on target. Doing dangerous shit and taking risks are two completely different things. Yeah, elaborate. I do dangerous shit, but I mitigate that risk, but I've been doing it for a long time, and I put a maximum amount of effort into developing individual skill. Okay, right? Like, I don't think that there is somebody that I'm going to meet in a room, in a structure that can do the things that I can do with my rifle at that distance. Right. I believe that. I think you have to believe that, right? And you have to train yourself to a level where you know that, hey, in application, this is the point of performance of work, and this is what I can deliver. Right. So, in terms of mentality, like there's a completely different mentality between guys that want to hit stuff dynamic and guys that are concerned about safety and going home. And I think it begs a bunch of different questions that have to be asked and discussed, you know, that a lot of guys don't want to have the discussion because they don't want to ask the question because it with the with the the question's gonna come the answer.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:13

I think this kind of goes back to what Matt was saying before, and that there needs to be an admission that we are not ready for this. Like I'm not I'm not good to go. So that goes back to the belief system that inherently they they don't believe that they can handle that problem at the level that it needs to be handled, therefore, safety becomes the default. Yeah, yeah. So how do you how do you I don't know, I'm asked. That's a question. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:34

I I think it is safety becomes the default, and then on top of safety, now I'm gonna throw 25 blankets of legal mumbo jumbo bullshit that doesn't really apply, but we're gonna say it applies, right? The the whole thing with like the you know, the the conversations that have been happening lately with the the the knock and announce or no knock, did you wait long enough? And and I think what everyone that understands is agrees with is when the warrant is signed by a judge, you have met the legal threshold to go do business on how you're you're you're allowed to in that warrant. Yeah, whether or not that induces a situation or prevents a situation is a byproduct of of a hindsight. You don't know like what's gonna happen. You know, the the one video that was just made from Dallas where well he didn't even know the police were there. Well, if the guy that made that would have spent, you know, 10 minutes on the phone talking to the guys that were there and realized there were cameras that saw them in the main house. They already went to another house, right? So the video you saw was them going up there. So that guy coming out to the door with a rifle was not coming out because he was confused about if if a SWAT team was at his house, he's been watching it, you know, for a little bit of a you know, up to a minute on his on his CCTV. He's coming out with a gun to fight. So the idea, like having the conversation, like, did we create that situation? And and as a law enforcement guy who was in a team leader position and not understanding how fucking dangerous that conversation is and what you're saying to have that publicly because you you want clicks and likes and follows on a podcast, and not reaching out to the team that actually did it, right? That it in my mind, it that's an ethical issue that you have no business being a cop, right? And I hope you never get on with the with the department you're trying to get on with now, because you have no business doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:39

Well, too, like there there was there was already elements of the team and different other structures besides that structure, because there was multiple structures within that. So it's like you don't even know the whole circumstances. Like the gig was up a long time ago to know who was there. I mean, I can make speculations on anything. I mean, I could just pull shit out of my ass and say, well, this and that, but I don't know. It's like it's like critiquing a football game. Like they say you got to watch the 22, it's the 22, it's it's all that. I can watch it as a as an ex a guy who's watching on the couch, but I'm not watching the game film like the coaches do and breaking down all 22 guys on that field. And that's the same thing we do with the debrief. I can sit here and say every every day, hey, that was a quarterback's fault, but actually, it wasn't a quarterback's fault. It was a receiver who didn't read the defense like the quarterback read. So without being in there, that's where the irresponsibility, like you said, is fucking enraging.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:34

I saw all that stuff too. Yeah, again, I'm just an outside observer looking in. One of the things that came up from came up for me was just kind of what you were saying there about like the argument around surround and call out, knock and announce versus no knock. If the judges sign the warrant and we're showing up to that, at any point, it's going to become, it could become an entry. Right? You're gonna have to go in there. Whether it's surround or call out, and then it turns into a hostile situation, or whether it's knock and announce, at some point you have to go in.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:01

The operation is not over until it's all secure.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:04

Right. So you're gonna have to go in at some point, going back to the funnels. You you what if you don't believe that you're good enough to go through whatever that process is, when that process happens, whatever the situation is presented, yeah, and you're defaulting to the safety thing, then again, all that other stuff kind of goes out the window. To me, the way I look at it is like, well, you still have to go in there. Yes, yes, and you may still have to go in there. So if every one of those situations ultimately talk, you know, turns into a dynamic entry, then everything that you've we've talked about up to this point has to be in play. Yeah. And the speed, because the surprise is over. Yeah. Right. So now it's comes to speed and violence of action. And where do you lie in those things? If you don't believe you have either of those two things, then I I I could see where it could be easy to default to the safety component. And I think too, there's guys I don't know if I'm right about that or not.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:56

I just well, there's guys out there that think that a a no-knock is a tactic. No-knock is not a tactic, that's a legal, that's a legal tip deal that they're whoever wrote that warrant is getting totality of the circumstances to present to a judge to give that grant. It's not a tactic. And there is guys out there that believe that is a tactic. It's not a tactic.

SPEAKER_08 1:17:20

So yeah, what I think dudes need to understand is like like this is this word, like there's there's very low levels of understanding of of what's happening in this business, right? The tactic is CQB, always has been, always will be. The techniques are all of the ways that you can accomplish that tactic. Yeah, right. So when people say, these are my tactics. No, the tactic is fucking CQB, right? And now inside a structure, you whether you're points of domination, strongwall, limb pen, threshold assessment, check, those are all techniques that you can apply to reinforce that tactic. But the tactic is still CQB, right? And then procedurally, those are all of the minutiae things that get introduced, right? Where most of them are inefficient ways to execute the technique, right? And if guys would just understand that, you know, that would be a game changer. I've trained more PDs and SWAT teams where I'm like, can I see your SOP? And the resounding answer is like, we don't have one. And it's like, why not? Like, then how do you train new guys? Right? Like, how do you a new guy should come to the team, and as soon as he gets there, you hand them a very easy-to-read document that's maybe three pages long and has some graphics in it.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:41

It's like, this is the structure of the structure and the standardization of what we do.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:46

These are corner fed, center fed room. It's gonna break up all the rooms. This is how we attack hallways, this is how we deal with doors. Yeah, yeah, right. These techniques, if you have that, now you have the framework for what we do, and then the training piece can be discussions about procedures, right? And then you can always give them another 40 pages of procedures and then another 40 pages of contingencies, right, as he progresses. Right. But what I see, like, even guys that have, well, this is our SOP, and you read through it, it's like this isn't an SOP. This is a this is a a list of contingencies, right, that you potentially could have, right? And how you handle contingencies, like where is the flow chart, the standard operating for how you execute your technique of what you want to have happen inside each room or inside the structure.

Force On Force Mistakes And Better Scenarios

SPEAKER_02 1:19:37

All right. What's the biggest mistake people do when they set up force on force training?

SPEAKER_08 1:19:44

The biggest mistake is you know, is kind of accountability. It turns into just paintball. Right? What resoundingly, what I see like force on force, you know, guys want to do scenarios and not, so it's very scripted, right? And and it gets to a point they're like, yep, stop. Right? Or in the CQB world, it's we're gonna cock the house, put all the role players in there, let them have guns, and then we're gonna go outside and we're gonna hit this thing in five minutes. Right? Anyone can maintain vigilance for five minutes.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:16

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:17

So now you get like guys that are laying in and like every role player in there is laying in ambush, and that is the validation that they say, see, this TTP doesn't work because I was able to shoot you from one room through another room into the hallway at the breach point. You know, well, I hate to tell anybody, like if you if you look at any way to do CQB, there is no solution for that, you know, in terms of shooting from a hallway through a room into another room. Yeah. Right? It's not a shot call, it's not anything. So when you're laying an ambush, then yeah, what would happen to that? Well, we would lay in, we would receive rounds from the ambush and we would pull back and we go into a barricade, surrounding call out, and we start gassing and using other initiative gaining tools to make that. So, so structuring, structuring training where it's unrealistic in terms of like the adversaries know you're there, right? Where I would say, you know, the most the best success that we have had when we would go do big training events in in other cities, the aggressors would be SWAT teams from those cities. So we say, hey, this house is cocked, you know, five or six houses are cocked all over the city, and we're at an airport somewhere, and got teams are gonna now cycle through to come hit these houses. So that house is cocked. It may be cocked for 45 minutes, it may be cocked for two hours. But when you go and hit it, then their first awareness that they're there is when we give up surprise, which that's the first thing you're gonna give up, whether you give it up with a breach, or you give it up because the first shots are fired, or they hear the helicopter land at the door. So as soon as we we give up one principle, we're gonna leverage the other ones. But now we get an actual good look because those guys are not maintaining vigilance for two hours. You know, after a while, their masks are off, they're talking or whatever. Oh, here they come. And now they're trying to get it together. So you create a little bit of a chaotic environment for them. And now we come in and are start executing like what we want to do and kind of force our will on the target, and then their reaction to it, you know, based off filming it and everything, gauges like was that TTP successful? Right. And for those conditions at that time it was, right? In the daytime, it's a speed game, right? And I I can't stress that enough. If you don't think it is, it's like I I you can't get past that barrier. If it's like, no, it's not speed, it's safety, yeah, it's safety because you're never opposed. You could go in with just flashlights, and the same outcome would be there. But when it's opposed, right? Cops go into a room, they play games in the doorway, they take fire at the doorway, what typically happens? You fucking leave, don't you? You leave the structure, you pull back surrounding calling, right? So because the execution was flawed, that you feel like the TTP is flawed, right? You you you paid the penalty for violating a rule of CQB that everyone who does CQB professionally agrees with. I minimize, I don't play games in the most dangerous places. Yeah, I minimize the time I'm in the the doorway, and I minimize the time I'm in hallways, right? That's a rule that never gets violated. So when you do that, when now you're standing in the doorways, you're like, well, see, he got the drop on us. It's like, well, you are hanging out, and the only way to come into the room. And if a guy is defending a room, where does he direct all his attention at typically? So the door. Doorway, never the windows. That's why the port teams are so effective. Yeah, right. And I could show you videos of guys coming up through windows where a dude is shooting at the main breach of the house, and he never even looks at the you know, four-ounce explosion that just went off on the window by it, right? Because he's so keyed into defending it from from that from that aspect. But until you can get guys to understand that, and for a lot of dudes, the only way for him to is you have to go to an entry that's opposed. Yeah, right. And you're going to learn this the hard way. You could choose to believe and like learn it the easier way, the way that I did, or you can go pay for this and pay the price the way you don't want to, and then realize we we may have to change how we're doing business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:31

Well, I think I think too, and that's that's where it goes back to this conversation of dynamic. Like, there's there's dudes that obviously just have never done it. So there's there's the there's that crowd. So they don't understand all the nuances to it. So they look back at some NARC team, you know, that has their blue jeans on, and they just did some, they just all flow through the house and they look like, hey, Bubba has this jeans on, this one has that. But truly professional dynamics pace CQB, all things being equal, you're gonna be a dual entry. There's gonna be port covers, there's gonna be multiple flashbangs, there's gonna be potentially explosive breaches going on. So I don't even know that they understand fully what all that entails of how we're messing up what's going on inside that house to gain that advantage back to us continually doing all that.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:25

Well, it's nothing new. Sun Tzu said a long time ago, Mars quickly places they don't expect it to be. Yeah. I mean that's been going on for a long time. It hasn't changed. In my 21 years there, those those core principles have not changed. How we do it has not changed. Have we brought on new equipment? Have we integrated new things? Sure. But the way we're doing it, handling and processing rooms, same thing. It hasn't changed. And everybody's always looking for that new, new. They chase this, you know, every CQB style comes around where it's the new, new again. It's like there's nothing new about it, but somebody put a little twist on it or changed something, they go, This is the new thing, this is the best thing.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:02

I'll tell you though, the CQB that I originally learned in 1994 when I was, you know, with force recon units, was points of domination with a little bit different hallway procedure than what I did in the end of my career. So going in from did that, you know, all the way up until 2004, you know, came to to the unit, and then it was wow, this is the exact same CQB. It's round corners are rounded off in some things in terms of like how efficient we can be in the in the hallways and things like that, but inside the room it's the same thing. And the it begs the question why why do the guys who face the most serious threats and they face the most opposition, why do they all do the same thing? Right? It's because it's effective, right? If and I believe, you know, for certain units, they're so it's so ingrained to be the best and do the best thing and have the best things that if something else was presented to them that, like, hey, this is more effective than what we do, we would immediately abandon everything that we do and switch to that. Right? And for guys that don't see that, and they they'll they'll make then the excuses start, well, it's it's because of this, it's because of this, it's because of this, it's because of this. Total days of CQB training in the unit is nine days. That's the amount of training that you get. Nine days. It's 18 one half days. That's it. And now you're you have all of the information, now practice. Right? That's very attainable for anyone, right? Nine days of training, right? It's not you don't do months and months and months and months and months. It's just it's nine days, but it goes back to like. They've they've selected dudes that are highly trainable, that can understand what they're doing, are more than willing to fight, right? So when all of that lines up, you get to the you get to a very high level of instinct very, very quickly.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:16

But goes back to earlier talking about the kind of people that you want.

unknown 1:28:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:19

When you're doing selection, selection is a never ending process. You want to look for those kind of guys that, to your point, you know, you go through your 18 half days and they're taking it upon themselves, like, I gotta do this, I gotta be better at this. And that's how you do that. Otherwise, I mean, true motivation comes from the end. I can't make you do it.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:34

And there was there was a there's a standard of development, right? You meet wickets along the ways. At any point you don't meet a wicket, that standard gets enforced and you no longer have a job. Right? It's a very effective tool.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:45

Yes, cutthroat.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:46

Yeah. Yeah.

AARs That Build Culture And Accountability

SPEAKER_04 1:28:49

We have a question. All right.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:50

Oh boy. Zach. What's up, guys? How you doing? Can you hear me?

SPEAKER_07 1:28:56

Yeah, just right a little closer, man. A little closer. Put it closer to your mouth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:59

I just see we uh we really emphasize the importance of AARs and everything we do, particularly in our training runs. Like we're running a class, they go in and do a center fed room with four guys, and there's one one threat target. We come back and we AAR one through four men, what they do right, what they do wrong, individually and collectively. And and we build that into going on to our multi-team, multi-breach scenario stuff where they're doing planning and all that stuff. Just wanted to get your take on how important you think AARs are and can they help drive a cultural shift within the law enforcement training community if they're done properly and consistently.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:39

Yeah, 100% they can. And you know, like for me, having been in a lot of ARs that turn into they get very emotional, and you know, you you've got to keep it, keep it professional. There's there's gonna be a certain level of aggression with it that people don't like because you're you're highlighting mistakes that happen, right? You're you don't highlight the successes. Like for me, it's like an AR shouldn't be come in as like, well, I saw this and then I did this, and guys want to just celebrate what they did. Like, I don't give, okay, you did everything right, cool. This was the one time you were technically perfect, amazing. Now, what did you do wrong? How could it be better? Because we don't learn anything off of our wins, we only learn anything off of our you know, failures and mistakes. But you've got to have guys that are able to have very frank, open conversations, you know, that can be aggressive and still understand that, hey, as soon as we slap the table and that AR is over and we leave this room, we're a fucking team again, and now we're working to get better. And we had that hard conversation for the sake of us developing and getting better and understanding, you know, because it it might not be the two guys that are debating the the execution of something or or what went wrong or what went right, but it'll be another guy that hears it that was in there, and now it reinforces like, okay, I'm not doing, not gonna make that mistake, I'm gonna make a new mistake on this next one. So I think the AAR is, you know, it's gotta be, it has to happen, you know, even on larger scale ones, you maybe everyone's there, but you boil that AAR down to where it's just the people that entered the house, and you talk about, you know, not the story that we put forward after the fact, but actually it's only the guys that were there, it's only the dudes on the team, the bros, like what actually happened and why it was fucked up. Because there's a lot of times you make major, major mistakes, you just get away with it, right? Because the threat wasn't there at that time or the engagement window was too small, but it was still a major mistake that we don't want to make where we're gonna pay for it in a different way. So I think it's it's an it's an invalid, invaluable tool. In terms of training, too. I know you you know this. Like you're you get really good at like, hey, let's go through it. I don't want to relive the whole thing, just talk about the mistakes. Let's apply the cues, let's all agree how the mistake happened, how it didn't, how we can be better, recock, reset, do another run, right? It doesn't need to be turned into a long, protracted debate. And sometimes AARs need to be very directed and pointed, right? Where especially for teams that are are entering and and no one, nobody can actually assess where they were at. Like, how many times have you done training where you go back into a room, like, hey, this room, go to where you're at in your points of domination. And guys, they don't know. Yeah, right. So, what did you see in this room? Okay, you don't you don't understand what happened here. So now I'm just gonna feed it to you. Like, this is what happened, these are the mistakes. It's not open for debate because I was watching it, I wasn't involved in it, and these are the mistakes that made. Let's recog, let's run this room again and correct these mistakes. Because a lot of times there's, you know, guys in terms of like awareness and processing, especially when they're learning a new technique or they don't have a lot of reps on whatever tactic you're doing, they get overcome by the situation or the scenario or the event, and they're they have a hard time recalling like what actually happened. Right. You see it a lot in like you're talking with Chris Ballmer, the the shooting videos that he has to go back and and go through and guys say, Oh, I was here, I was here, and then you look at the video like you were not there, you weren't here. Right? You think you shot this many rounds, just how many you actually shot? Because everybody's everyone's perception initially, you know, is is at a very low level, right? In terms they perceive it the way they want to perceive it, regardless of what actually happened. As you get more and more inoculated to, in my opinion, running at a very fast and hard pace, the vision piece starts to open up to where you do this for five years, six years, hit that decade mark, and now it's like not only do I know where I was in every room, I can tell you where you were at in this room at this time. Because the vision has opened up so much, because I'm just not overcome by the pace of the events and going from task to task so quickly, you know. And then a lot, a lot of that starts to Zach's question, like the AAR piece, right? You this is what the mistake I saw made, and someone's like, nope, that wasn't a mistake. You can go back and look at helmet cam footage, maybe someone, somebody else's helmet cam caught it. Like helmet cans, in my opinion, are invaluable for training. Don't recommend them for like operations, but for training, they're a hundred percent, you know, invaluable because it shows like what actually point of view of what happened, right? You know, so yeah, AARs are invaluable.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:44

Yeah, I think what I've learned over the years just on the team side is when the guys don't fess up to their mistake, and now you start seeing that it becomes a habit. That's a that's a big problem that you that you're like, hey, there's a problem, as opposed to the guy who makes the mistakes, like, yep, hey, when it's my it's my turn, I'm the fourth guy. Yeah, I when I came in, I didn't do this. That's a huge thing for me. I was like, okay, at least he knows what he's doing, so as opposed to not even knowing when he did something, or denying it. Yeah, denying it. Or also on the other side too, is is it's interesting when you go train other teams when they start giving excuses of why they did something, and you're like, dude, I don't really care why you did it. Just know that you didn't you did this wrong. And yeah, that's where I see guys with the egos, and then the other dudes are like, Oh, yeah, yeah, hey, yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, y'all deal with that a lot with when y'all teach y'all's HR classes and stuff. It's like, I don't really care what you do back home. You came to this class to learn this, we're gonna teach you this. Do whatever you want to do back home, but we're here to to learn something, you know. This is why'd you come to this class if you don't want to hear what we're saying? You know, so and

Final Thoughts And Closing

SPEAKER_02 1:35:55

stuff.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:55

So I think for guys that you gotta get going, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:58

Go ahead. Yeah. Uh I think I'm about out of out of questions here.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:02

For guys that aren't, you know, aren't owning their mistakes, right? You get you get one time for that. Yeah. Making excuses or whatever, guys denying it, like that's one time. You do it a second time. Now we're talking about, is this the right place for you? Yeah. Right? Because that's that's a fatal character flaw. Like guys are not owning up to decisions they make, you know, actions that they take, right? And you're you're making excuses or well, it was this that caused me to do that. You still did it. You have to own that. Yeah. Right. And that goes plays back into like, is it the right guy? Like, everybody wants to do it. Not everyone can do.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:43

Yeah. And I think as a as a like a leadership position, as a team leader, you better own it as well. Like, hey, whatever if the plan is. Well, it starts with you. I mean, you you have to, man. There's been things that I've owned on like really not a big deal, but it it I don't think it was, you know, cost any deal, but it was just something bothered me. I was like, hey, I should have done this, or I wish I'd hit that window instead of this window when I planned it. But I think that's important for the guys to hear that and stuff. So, man, I think we're pretty much out of questions, and looks like guys out there are got a lot of beer in their hands. So Adrian, you got a question, man? Got any questions? Bring them up. Let's go, man. Let's see it. He can't hold the mic, he's gotta have two beers. He's got double fisting.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:24

It's been a long day on the range for yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:28

So all right. Well, y'all have anything else? Enjoyed it. Matt, you got anything?

SPEAKER_08 1:37:34

Oh man, this is great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:35

Yeah, appreciate it. Well, good luck on your uh big speech tomorrow night.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:40

That's gonna be the real redneck live. Yeah, that's yeah, it's the one-way redneck live.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:44

I'm gonna helk heckle you. Are you gonna wear underwear or no underwear?

SPEAKER_08 1:37:48

I'm gonna wear my underwear on the outside.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:50

Yes, I like that. I like that. So, all right. Well, uh, that that's all I have. What do y'all have? Anything else? All right, Matt's gonna go. The other Matt's gonna go do some talk tech talk or something like that, and we got another interview. So, Matt's not gonna be the next one. So, all right, that's all I got, boys and girls. Y'all train hard. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:10

You got the Texas talking, bear cat rolling, warrant serving, trigger pressing, door slamming, bad guy catching, son of a gun podcast, woo!