From Fundamentals to Performance in Shooting

Rick Crawley, founder of Achilles Heel Tactical, Marine Corps veteran, and former SWAT officer, shares how fundamentals—not outcomes—drive lasting performance in firearms training. From Marine Scout Sniper to globally recognized instructor, he breaks down biomechanics, grip mechanics, and diagnostic drills like the DOPE drill, revealing how science and discipline create consistent, accountable shooters.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's crazy to see that military training does not produce winners in competitions. Instead of focusing on the outcome, let's break down every fundamental process, how we build a curriculum around that fundamental, and then study its process from start to finish.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

This is Beer 30, a podcast that connects badass people and shares their experiences over a cold one. Kick back, relax, and enjoy the show. And if you like it, don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Let's get started with today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Welcome to another episode of Beer 30, brought to you by UF Pro. I'm your host, Tanner Denton, and today we have who I would consider a UF Pro OG, Rick Crawley from Achilles' Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

I'm excited to be on this podcast. It's been since 2019 since I've had a relationship, not just with you, but also UF Pro. So it's a really cool opportunity to jump on this podcast and kind of give some context and backstory to how this relationship all started.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, absolutely. We've had a couple of your other Achilles heel tactical instructors on here. We've had Dave as well as Paul. So we might as well start with the guy who started the company. So we finally have you here. So for those that don't know you, I'm sure a lot of the UF Pro people that watch the show as well as watch anything else that goes on YouTube for UF Pro know a little bit about you. But for those that don't, you want to give a little insight on who you are, what you've done, what you do currently.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Yeah, so I come from the military and law enforcement background in 2017 after I separated out of the military and I was in the police academy. I wanted to start a training company. So as I'm sitting there in class, I'm And I Google how to start a business in the state of Ohio. What you guys see today is just from absolute figuring it out, problem solving along the way, while balancing a career in law enforcement and trying to be a successful trainer. I didn't expect, you know, in a very, very short period of time to be where it is now. I remember having conversations with not just my colleagues, but also other trainers in the industry that were, you know, years ahead of me. had those conversations of saying like, this isn't a sustainable or a full-time gig for the majority of us. And now we've developed a training company that is absolutely a full-time gig, not just providing a life for myself and my family, but also providing a life for a whole team. So including yourself. So it's been really cool to see that journey grow. And as fast as it grew, I would have never expected, but it is very cool to see it's not just a successful model with myself being in front of students both virtually and in person but now having Paul Costa David Acosta we've got Shane Parman now and it's been a really crazy journey and I have a lot to thank to the UF Pro videos that we did in 2019 because that's how I met you that's how you know you and I started working together with not just ORD but now we've got our own training center we've traveled all across the world together executing closed military contracts and doing open enrollment classes from east to west So it's been an absolute wild ride looking back at the last seven years, but it's been also not without challenge. It's been not without a lot of learning and a lot of failures. And as you already know, like with my training company, Achilles Heel Tactical, we focus on exploiting weakness within the system. My background being in military and law enforcement, seeing how those two train, and then also traveling all around the world, both in the military and this training company, seeing how those two train. how guys are training and it's just been it's so obsolete it's all outcome based focused and when I witnessed this in the military get out and enter law enforcement and you just got to go shoot a simple competition or steel challenge or some kind of USPSA match IDPA PCSL now it's crazy to see that military training does not produce winners in competition so after realizing this we kind of went buck wild with developing a curriculum, I developed a curriculum for myself. And this was a very selfish focus towards the profession that I was entering in law enforcement. But it was instead of focusing on the outcome, let's break down every fundamentals process, how we build a curriculum around that fundamental and then study its process from start to finish. Rather than hoping for an outcome, we'll study a process, we'll isolate and we'll build a curriculum just focusing on fundamentals and how we can refine them. As a trainer, it's my job to make the fundamentals fun, interesting, as well as challenging for the students. And both in a virtual setting and a physical setting in person, we've developed a curriculum that within the last seven years has become a very well-established, effective and efficient curriculum that has changed the way three-letter agencies train military service members, special forces groups and civilians. And with my goal just in mind to not be, you know, this is a Achilles heel tactical, it's not stroke your ego tactical. So having, you know, if competition's over here in blue and tactical's over here in red, you can see not just with myself, but also with Paul and Dave, we come from various backgrounds of, and we have tons of experience that we bring into one curriculum. But if competition was blue, tactical's red, we want to be purple. We want to be right down the middle, focusing on all the great benefits that you get and gather within training and understanding of those fundamentals and competition. But also relate the experience and the job of both military and law enforcement for not even just those two categories of students, but also our civilians. It's very eye opening for them to hear about experiences in which these fundamentals will be forced to play out at speed. And like we'd say in our classes, like in the military and in law enforcement, we train this outcome based focus, which keeps us driving the track at like 60 miles an hour. And it's not really a of a critical skill building level in which we're forcing the fundamentals to play out, but yet kind of a very mediocre level. And this is why you're seeing very mediocre results or performances in both of those realms to where we focus on overspeed training, devising metrics that can start measuring the person's skill and what they're able to quantify within what their processing speeds are, their ability to execute mechanics of draw presentations, all that, getting the dot up in front of our face to be effective and efficient, working our rifle presentations and transitions and position work. And it's just been really, really cool to help students redefine what is a good grip around a pistol based off of not just gun behavior, but also what they are implementing on the gun. So we've heard a lot of different things over the years. I grew up on the Magpul Dynamics videos and it's just, it's really cool from the pioneered start to where we're at now as a whole community within the training industry to see what we have built in a curriculum I'm very proud of.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you touched on a lot there. So we'll just start from the beginning. So do you travel or do you have a home range, a little bit of both? I mean, I'm playing dumb here. I know exactly what you do. But for those that don't know, I mean, yeah. Are you traveling all over or do you like to stay in one place?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah. So I've traveled all over the place since 2018 from California and where we're based in Northeast Ohio. I do have a training center. We purchased a training center in 2023 down in Columbus, Ohio. So just outside of Columbus, about 45 minutes from the airport there. And it's a 52-acre training facility that has an assortment of ranges. It's got a gym. It's got kind of everything that we wanted to have access to ourselves. And the main draw and reason I wanted to have something for myself is to start kind of pulling back the reins for myself for as much traveling as I can. I have been doing. I'm a married man with two children, a boy and a girl. And my daughter is really big in the equestrian side of hobby and recreation. She loves to jump horses. And my son is big in baseball and he's on travel teams. So I know that my days of traveling and teaching all around the world are limited. And it's not that I'm trying to get all my licks in now and trying to get as much exposure now so that I can just pull back. I'll continue to travel. But probably my entire journey doing this this profession but we wanted to have a home base there's so many ranges out there east to west coast that we've worked with some good some absolute shit and it's just I'm tired of dealing with the roller coaster of range owners so the wide range of range owners we want we wanted to set a an example for the community and Aero Concepts Training Center is our training center down in central Ohio where we have a closed group of members that are all vetted to be there. And we make sure that within our closed group of members, that we provide a training center that you'll never have to worry about some red shirt, RO, RSO, you know, walking up and down the line, looking at you and saying, hey, you can't draw from holster or shoot more than one round per second. Our place is a very practical training center, which most of our members when they're there, it's just them there. Typically, I'm not even running classes. I've got a class this weekend, two day class that I'll be there. And it's just so nice to, you know, draw down to the training center, knock out the classes, head back home. So it is a place, it's a home base for us to have set up. We've got all of our steel targets there, you know, allotted to our members that they can use. It's got every amenity that I would need to run a rifle or pistol class. So it's a perfect little setup for our trainings and we host other trainers as well. Anyone that I, you know, vet or find viable in the industry, we look to host at that training facility. So it's also an opportunity for me to because we run matches there. We host other trainers to jump into matches as well as jump into other trainings and schools of thought, because I always look looking to evolve the curriculum, give credit where credit's due, but also challenge myself and become a student again. I do this every year where I'll jump into classes there, jump into classes abroad, but also shoot matches. And, you know, we've got Paul, who's a M class carry optic shooter. Dave used to compete and he's just super busy in his life. But it's It's really cool to make sure, and Shane competes as well, it's very important to me to always have guys that are of relevance. They're absolutely not obsolete. They're always training to continue to bring good material to this curriculum that we're teaching.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah. At your home range and when you're traveling, do you focus on a certain group like military, law enforcement, or civilian more than others? Or, I mean, do you prefer one over the other?

SPEAKER_02 11:15

No, that's a really good question. A lot of guys, I'll be honest, Yeah. But kind of very grateful for the opportunity to actually meet the civilian populace around the Second Amendment. And be very confident within their performance because they've collected data on previous engagement within all the trainings individually with the individual effort as well as in a group effort. But we just, I was really excited when I saw that there is so much civilian draw for training. Like there's so many civilians that enter our open enrollment classes. So the majority of our training is open enrollment. And then we have a lot of closed contracts with both military and law enforcement and government entities. which those are just great opportunities, but they're, to be honest, like not my favorite. Like the military guys or the law enforcement guys, they're very stuck in their ways. They're clouded with pride and ego because of the thing that's on their chest or the unit that they belong to. And with the civilians, it's like, they're not held back by anything. And I always tell my civilians, you know, when you see a law enforcement officer in the class, that is a deposit of community trust that they are putting out there because they're willing to fail and front of you, but they're also willing to be better for the communities that they serve. And for the civilians, like you can impact a law enforcement officers or a military service members outlook on you guys, because when you guys are crushing these drills, because you've done these drills before, you weren't held back and never introduced to hit factor, which is something that's existed since 1970. And you're not afraid to fail because you belong to an elite unit or you, you know, have a lot of cool gear and hardware but very underdeveloped software like you're accepting humility understanding that there's just more to learn is a huge huge thing that you have to have when you come to our classes because the majority of our classes are not in the curriculum that's set forth is not to play on what you're already good at the slow aim fire good groups like that's not what we're focused on because my goal is I can shoot as fast as you or as fast as I can at the same distance at the same size of target that you are and produce a better group at faster speeds because rounds per second matter. When we can measure rounds per second and we actually quantify the importance of the shooter's ability at rounds per second ability, that's when we really get a lot of light bulbs going off and a lot of motivated students to go out and train on their own. Because like I say, every class in the next eight hours, you're not going to be me or any other fast and accurate shooter that you see out there. It's that physical index to the gun, as well as the visual index to target. And the relationship is absolutely in sync and disciplined to be in those two areas based off the curriculum that we set forth with the way we're teaching fundamentals has really, you know, broken a lot of the ways that military and law enforcement guys are taught. I've, I said it back in 2019. I still say it today in the UF pro videos, man, the 60, 40 percentage of pressure is still being taught. And these obsolete methods of how we're going to accomplish what is a good grip is just appalling that it still exists. And, you know, you and I were just over in the Netherlands training DSI and they're still taught the same exact bullshit that I was talking about in 2019 in those UF Pro videos.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned military and law enforcement just like sticking to their ways or being very, I guess, in quotes, happy with their performance just because they know that they're on a team or, hey, I'm SWAT. You're either SWAT or not. Yeah. you know, but it's the, and whatever. Yeah. And, but you bring them in and you show like, okay, you can, sure you can shoot accurate, but can you do it in half the time that you're doing now? And you see them fall apart immediately. Yeah. It's just, it's crazy. So have you seen a trend in better training or greater capability in specific groups, or is it mostly just everybody from military and law enforcement and civilians about the same?

SPEAKER_02 15:55

It definitely ranges. I mean, there's individuals within all of those groups that you mentioned, civilian law enforcement, as well as military that are going to be guys who have taken the extra initiative to be better, to hold themselves more accountable. Like accountability is something that we focus on and we're not talking about combat marksmanship. Like I want those two rounds, the requirement of skill for those two rounds at the distance and the difficult to size of target. Like I want those two rounds as close together as possible. Like grouping is still, main focus, but I want to do it in a fraction of the time that most people can do it. If 1% of the world's population can keep up with me on my worst day, that's a good day going into a self-defense shoot, whether Walmart, Costco, or anywhere else that I could find myself. So that's kind of the focus that we try to pour out to our students here is the fact that they need to be training, holding themselves to a much, much higher standard, some standard that a government entity law enforcement group or agency, as well as even civilians or military service members are not being held to, you know, for for law enforcement, it's qualified immunity. They got to meet the lowest common denominator standard. Their calls are a complete freaking joke. And the military hasn't changed their calls in decades. So that should tell you all you need to know about the evolution of developing skill or what their main focus is with in their general population. It's just a numbers game it's a let's push it there's no attrition we just need to push it get the bare minimum met and then we need to send them overseas to fight our battles in war and then we need to send them out into the communities to police and keep the peace and it's just like well when push comes to shove and those those skill sets are put to the test it's like there's a lot of liability at stake in both the military side as well as the law enforcement side you got green on green you got blue on blue you also have blue on civilian or non-combatant It's like, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. That's at an individual effort. These organizations aren't going to force them to do that. So I see the same thing within the civilian side. It's like, guys, you don't have qualified immunity. You don't have a whole legal team to back you up. There's options out there to have self-defense insurance or some kind of legal team to be backing your self-defense engagement. But if you don't have any of those, it's like, what are you doing? You better hope to God That you are just the perfect right place, right time with the right circumstances that your skill set is meeting the bare minimum to qualify for you to live. And constantly getting the adequate training hours that I need every week. And it's such a blessing to have that that right to bear arms. And we have that gun culture that is, you know, taking for granted here. But every time that I leave the United States to go over and train, like we were talking about in the Netherlands, like they don't have a gun culture here, period. Like we talked to the guys at DSI and two of them, only two of them out of all the guys we trained over there for the for that week, only two of them have ever competed in IDPA. That's kind of appalling when we look at that. Now, those guys are true arm professionals. We saw that, you know, they were up at 5 a.m. They're in the gym. They're working out. They're running. Their cardio is phenomenal. Their diet's phenomenal. Their, you know, physical fitness and competency with firearms is all it's all there. But it's like when we look at the arm professional side of house, it's like we got to put more hours than just two hours every two weeks, like two hours every month. It's got to be more. It's got to be more relevant. and consistent to build these disciplines that we're looking to build. The issue with civilians, law enforcement, and military evolving to the red dot on a pistol platform, the reason your index is messed up isn't because you have some missing link of a technique that you need to learn, establish, or scour the internet for. The toilet paper roll thing with your hand is not a thing. It should have never been put out, especially by the people it is being put out by. But at the same time we've got instructors teaching weird techniques to deliver a red dot which all that is is a physical connection to a gun which is going to through proprioception index with wherever my visual connection is connected to target whether that target be someone that you know plans to harm me or my family or it's just a paper or steel target the index is built exactly the same way as the way I grip my mouse I never have to think about the grip that I go into that gripping the mouse with and then I make sure I look and lock my vision to an icon and I swipe and click. And because I have over 30 years of experience doing that, I don't think twice about how to do it. So the only thing standing in the way of the mechanical skill being built with a physical index of your hands around a gun to delivery of information to where your eyes are presenting and locked in on a target focus, refined reference on a spot, an area on that target, and then a consistent, efficient delivery of that dot presenting without your eyes trying to be in two places at once, sight sprint to check the dots placement and then back to target is all because, I mean, the only thing that's standing in between them is ours, right? Reps and exposure are practical speeds. That's what I have that they don't. And it just takes time. It takes a lot of work to build those things. But they are held back by the way that we were always taught how to align iron sights. And this is where I come back from or I come back to with how we develop this curriculum. With Achilles Heel Tactical, we have exploited the weakness within the system of how things were trained, how they were taught. And then we've developed and devised a curriculum that will now push focusing on a lot better ways to teach these methods, defining terms so that there's no misinterpretation of anything that we're trying to go in with teaching on how to build leverage and friction on a grip, how we're going to collapse on all of the real estate of the gun, and then also use biomechanics so that when we are delivering or we're absorbing and mitigating recoil, we're delivering sights to our eyes and then recoil ensues in an engagement. We are able to actually absorb and redirect that energy, which is just Force. It's law. It's not a theory. Force is law. And if we have force, we look at the equation of force and then we start devising what is a good grip based off of gun behavior now, which is where we start to explore with the students how we can make them better educated, more self-aware with the gun of what is good gun behavior, what is bad gun behavior. They're going to modulate and make change on the little areas in which we cannot be their hands to teach them. Right. And you've seen it in the classes like I will, Shane, You know, Paul and Dave, we will all grip the student's pistol. We'll shake their hands to deliver the pressures and the engagement of that leverage and friction when we're trying to build backstops behind guns. All of these things are thoroughly taught and delivered to the students. And yet still, it's still a very difficult thing to just put into practice. But once they've felt it, once they've seen it, they can't unfeel it or unsee it. That's the goal is we give them that understanding once they've seen the change. And yes, that is pretty important. immediate, then they go seeking to find that change every single time. And it really just comes down to consistency and discipline in a multitude of areas. Those areas are the fundamentals.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah. Yeah. You talked about the military and law enforcement guys that they're like, oh yeah, I can, I can shoot my qual. It's like, you can shoot. This is exactly what they say. And I'm sure listeners have heard this before. I'm accurate, but I'm not fast. It's like, no, you're, you're dead, dude. You're opposition whoever your opposition is they usually don't care about being accurate they just care about being fast because like you said rounds per second if you're putting 30 rounds down range out of your mag and at least two of them hit you're good and if you're doing that in six seconds as opposed to 12 then you've got a much higher chance of getting those two hits as opposed to the other guy oh no doubt yeah especially with rounds coming by your face

SPEAKER_02 24:59

so yeah and we hit that at every class that we teach like The best diagnostic that I've been able to come up with is the DOPE drill, my data on previous engagement drill, where at five yard lines, you shoot five rounds and it doesn't have to be secluded to just the five rounds. You could shoot six, but you can shoot as many rounds as you want. It doesn't matter. But at five yard lines that are relatable to the operational environment that I was going into back in 2019, which is law enforcement, I needed to know based off of my understanding of execution of this process, what five rounds at five yard lines fired as fast as i can is going to look like and it's not just over speed training without metric because in 2023 paul costa was like rick we need to start pulling hit factor on this the way we'll run it is you know this way and this is the only change that we'll make but we'll actually build a number we'll build an unbiased metric of what our skill is because hit factor is the unbiased measurement of the shooter's ability to shoot a round per second right it's going to take the the speed of the engagement and the accuracy of the engagement. And it's going to build a solution that you're going to take points divide by time on. And you're going to actually have a number, which is not my opinion of your shooting ability. It's not anyone else's opinion of your shooting ability. It's actually what you did here today and now. And that hit factor number is something that we should always have a goal of climbing up with. And that's where we, you know, through the years of doing this, have pulled our goal for pistol is 10. Our goal hit factor for rifle is 20. And when we're doing rifle to transition, so we do one rifle transition, pistol five, the goal is still 10. And as you already know, you've seen countless people do this drill. It is very challenging. Few and far between are hitting those 10s, those 20s, or those 10s with the transition dope drill. And it's a great diagnostic for my trainers as well as myself to get an idea of where the students are at today. Because if we have a bunch of 10s on the line shooting a pistol class, it's like, dude, we can gallop. Like we can just gallop right out, right out. the gate, man. And I'm so excited. The sad reality is we've never had that. It's, you know, whether it's a class of eight or it's a class of 20, we've never had all eight or all 20 even be close on a 20 hit factor in a carbine class or a 10 hit factor on a pistol class or a 10 hit factor on a rifle and pistol class, which the dope drill is a phenomenal diagnosis of like where you're at today and then where you could be and tracking that progression over the years. of how you're progressing or how you're not progressing, because the drill is going to tell you both. Right. And if you're constantly seeing, you know, hey, I've got I started at a four two years ago. Now I'm consistently hitting eights on my pistol dope drill. Dude, that's a phenomenal difference. Like the difference within the shooter that's shooting a four hit factor and the shooter that's shooting an eight hit factor. You don't there's not a single qual. There's not a single metric in both military and law enforcement that could even come close to giving me an idea of what the shooter's ability and skill is. Yeah. they should definitely receive a performance evaluation or review because these guys clearly do not give a shit to be better. And like we were talking with the DSI team, if they would do this, they would be able to find and weed out the weak links. And there's, I'm sure there's other ways to be pulling kind of the same testings or, cause we always use quals as like, let's see where the default of the team's at. Well, the default of the team is so mediocre. It's, it can be met with ease. Just, through reps and drill training, which drill training is at really getting you to explore new heights or new levels, which the dope drill forces because I'm telling you to shoot it as fast as you can. And there's punishment where there's a consequence if you miss. That negative 10 is something you can't afford to have happen. It crushes your hit factor at the end of it. So it demands accountability at speed.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah. So with just for the listeners, if they don't know, the dope drill is five rounds at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards or meters where wherever you are, and then you score it for hit factor. So alphas, this is on an IPSC target or what they call it a metric target in the Netherlands. Yeah, or USPSA here in the States. Yeah, USPSA. So you have alpha Charlie and delta zones as well as anything outside of that is going to be a miss, but alphas are five, Charlies are three, and then deltas are one point and then misses are minus 10. Now with your target, you have your own target and it has a humanoid figure over it. So with arms, head, and then below average male chest size and like waist. So if you're outside of any of those areas, like the space in between your arms and your waist, that's a miss because on an IPSC target, that's a hit. But it's like, no, you're shooting at people in real life. So, I mean, if you're a professional carrying a gun, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Same thing over the right shoulder, left shoulder, you know, those would be D zone hits on a USPSA target, but they're misses on the HT dope drill paper target that we did with Acton. target just because it's like i'm holding myself to a higher standard here i'm also going to force the ability to aim small miss small at speed as well as refine these disciplines in those two areas of visual connection to that target where i want those rounds to be as well as the physical connection on the guns that i'm running and testing my abilities with

SPEAKER_01 30:52

yeah and then for those that you don't or for those of you that don't know what hit factor is it is Total points divided by your total time. Like Rick said, it is completely unbiased. I mean, if you make your hits, cool. If you do it slow, I mean, you can't blame anyone but yourself. If you do it fast, but you miss your hits, you know exactly. I mean, if you actually do it correctly, you'll know where you screwed up and why you screwed up. Hey, I lost connection here. I lost visual connection, my grip change, whatever. So shooting stuff for hit factor, a lot of people have been doing this for any drills now. bill drills because bill drills are just usually it's like okay for pistol seven yards six rounds under under two seconds it's like okay now people are starting to shoot bill drills for hit factor right so it's like okay I can I can throw a Charlie or two if I'm really blazing and it would be a great hit factor for a bill drill so you're you're seeing hit factor go everywhere and I really hope that we start to see it more in military and law enforcement unfortunately they do see that as a competition thing like you mentioned the In the beginning, there is tactical, let's say is red, and then competition is blue. But Achilles heel tactical likes to stay purple. Can you explain sort of what that means and why you'd like to be the purple?

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Yeah, I mean, I think it came the analogy came from like my political standpoint, like I, these politicians, you know, you got your Democrats, you got your Republicans, and it's like, I'm not, I'm, it's not that I'm neither. And we don't I don't even need to include this if it's not pertinent to the podcast, but that's where the analogy came from. It's like, there's so much corruption on both sides of the fence. It's like, if I align to one side, I just align to the whatever corruption that side lines with. And I'm like, just looking for the best or the greatest of both sides, right? The greater of two evils in politics, but also the greater or the best of both areas when it comes to my experience in both military and law enforcement, as well as what I've taken away from competing what Paul or Dave has taken away from competing and bringing them into a curriculum that's going to make a well-rounded shooter, someone that's able to self-diagnose, someone that's able to give self-critique and performance review, but also not be afraid to fail. I've never met a person that's been at a shooting match or level one or major match or whatever that was afraid to put it all on the line while all eyes are watching and give their best performance and sometimes that best performance that day be shit it just happens right and you know with practice score and everything kind of making everything so public yeah there's there's plenty of practice score results for every shooter out there that they're happy and proud of and then they're not so much so I think that it's it's a great way and getting back to like the hit factor it makes life so much easier when you're starting to develop a qual for your agency or a drill or a standard. If you just put hit factor as the metric, it makes life so much easier. Guys will constantly tell me, they're like, hey, Rick, I'm trying to come up with a new call for our agency. What do you think the standard in time and round count should be for seven yards, three rounds from holster? It's like, who cares about the overall time? Just pull hit factor. And then as you pull hit factor, take the highest hit factors for that agency or send it to another peer and say, hey, what do you think about this hit factor at this yard line for this this drill right three rounds seven yards what is your hit factor because honestly the only way we get these guys to improve is by them selfishly wanting to see them on their leaderboard not be at the bottom right and then also every time that you got these females at these law enforcement agencies that are somewhat timid but or they're intimidated by the the standard of time but if you said hey there's no time requirement we're just pulling hit factor and there is a passing hit factor at the end of this there's a failing hit factor at at the end of this you get them to understand things better sure you still have to use a part timer it's the only way you're going to measure what the person accomplished within time but you're you're now saying instead of you have three seconds to do this which now they're going to take all freaking day because you said they have three seconds to shoot those three rounds now you have them okay I want the best hit factor so I have to give the best performance on demand right now which it just makes life so much easier man and that's why you know I keep saying and referencing that we are just purple right down the Yeah. When you were in the Netherlands, were

SPEAKER_01 35:54

you able to tell a difference? in the training of the DSI guys compared to the American teams you've trained like could you tell where they train differently from each other or where they exceed in other areas or the opposite

SPEAKER_02 36:11

yeah no I you know military side of house like our special forces they are physical specimens they constantly are constantly in the gym in the in the pool in the ocean like developing physical skill that pertains to their job I still saw the exact same thing over with DSI the special forces over there those guys were absolute physical specimens developing their physical skill when it came to the shooting I didn't I saw some guys that were doing very obsolete range theatric stuff which I've obviously seen over in the military from you know special forces groups down to general population within the infantry but when we look at the tactics that is very different the tactics that we're developing And I'm not going to get into like any specifics on it, but the tactics we're developing over here are typically lessons learned in blood, which we have quite a few of those lessons learned in blood to where a lot of countries, you know, when I was over in Switzerland and France and over in the Netherlands, it's like not so many of those individuals that we trained have learned those same lessons or were taught from the same degree or requirement of skill. within tactics because they just don't have as many reps for all the marbles right the lessons learned in blood which we have quite a few of quite quite a lot and fairly relevant you know outside of GWAT and and such like we're we learned what tactics work what tactics don't to where I feel like a lot of European nations that didn't go into theater or special forces groups that haven't been downrange they're still going to have to learn those painful lessons because some of the things that we were seeing in the tactics side of house, both in the law enforcement as well as the military side, is not, I would say, not well tested when we go to the consideration of what the construction is over in Europe. When we look at the construction here in the States, a lot of our law enforcement have a misconstrued conception that these rounds are just going to stop when they hit sheetrock construction, drywall, and two-by-fours. As we know, that's not going to happen. And it If we do this slow, methodical, deliberate movement through the house and we're just sitting ducks for a formidable and capable adversary. These guys that, you know, the Netherlands SWAT team, when these guys were telling us like they never respond to a armed, barricaded subject inside of an apartment building, a warehouse, whatever, they never respond. Their SWAT teams never respond with a rifle. I was mind blown. Now, you and i we had a beer in the pub downtown amsterdam and when we were sitting there we're like damn all these buildings are super tight together they're super small and like the little winding stairwell just to get down to the basement to use the bathroom i mean that's very tight so i can see why their 300 black you know mcxs wouldn't necessarily be the best but a shield and a pistol and a dog would be a better option but for them to not even have their guns out and drawn their doing from a definitive grip inside the holster just relying on a shield dude out with his pistol or not even with his pistol just a shield up front to give verbal commands identify for the team what information he's processing down a very thin stairwell or hallway or small condensed room because the construction over there let's just be honest it's so old that it is very small and to open these you know places up would just take a lot of construction which they don't have the room for to go on. So it's just really interesting to see how the law enforcement's training here in States versus the SWAT teams over in the Netherlands advice, you know, same thing within the guys that I trained in Germany and the guys that came from Italy and guys that came from Spain, Romania, Bosnia, like all these different places, France, Switzerland, you name it. It's crazy to see where their skill sets are, what hardware they're using. So like the, the Italian guy is still running a double action double action there is no double to single action he was running a Beretta M9 that was all double every trigger press was pulling through an absolute you know freaking like thick wall of double action and it was he was hurting for it like and those iron sights were so small and just rounded off because of the years of service that that pistol has seen that he was basically just point shooting yeah like looking down the barrel the sights were almost non-existent and it's just crazy to see where we're at because we you and i saw over there they just got red dots for dsi a year and a half ago it's like bro you what like you're that far behind in evolutionary of hardware, like, and you guys went through how many hoops just to get red dots. It's crazy to see all of the stuff yet because they don't have a gun culture. They don't have nearly the amount of push to innovate or evolve within the hardware, the tactics and the software development of skill to where I think we have because of our gun culture, recreationally hobby, you know, as a profession, we are seeing a lot of evolution here in the States on the military Right. Yeah. Yeah. You

SPEAKER_01 42:14

mentioned evolution. And at the top of the show, I referred to you as an OG with UF Pro. And for the listeners that don't know, Rick did one of the very first few pros guides that we had on the UF Pro YouTube channel back in 2019, I think. It was essentially Pistol and Carbine basics. And it introduced the UF Pro audience to HT and how you teach. And that being said, evolution wise, it's been a lot of fun. How has your teaching changed and how has it if it has?

SPEAKER_02 42:43

Yeah, it's changed a ton. My understanding of shooting with rifle and pistol, because I did those pro series with the carbine as well as the pistol platforms, just focusing on the fundamentals, how I teach the fundamentals. And it was an excellent breakdown for the time, for my ability, and for the first time of ever trying to do anything for a virtual audience. For an online audience, me staring at the camera, you behind the camera, that was very difficult for me. I would say I'm much better now than I was then, no different than shooting ability, teaching ability and everything else. But still, it's not natural for me to look at a camera lens and go right. I thrive on a student audience or a in-person audience in which I can feel the feel the room out. I can pull what is human behavior and the engagement from the audience. I thrive on that. So, you know, to have a conversation, even within this podcast, because you can see me, I can see you, it helps, right? And those are things that I was just not very comfortable with. It was a very frustrating few days to try to record those with you because it was just like, man, this is really tough. And we tried the cue cards. We tried everything, man. And it was very, very difficult for me to totally stay in sync and focus of how I would teach these things. And you and I talked about it. I was super happy with the way they came out. their copy and post edits. And they really made HT look like a well-established training organization here in the States. And I'm not saying that we weren't in 2019, but where we are now is like night and freaking day. And I'm very excited. I would love an opportunity to redo those just to show how much evolution has happened within the curriculum, within my ability to convey a message and clearly convey that message at a third grade level versus trying to decipher through technical speech and terms like we found out in the Netherlands it's Dutch is not something with those technical terms that we were using maybe in those UF Pro videos those UF Pro videos that would even translate over and luckily we had hosts that knew exactly the way and what I was going to teach that way he could translate so I think that the videos as a whole could be redone they would be extremely well done and I know the difference would be seen very transparently when it comes to Yeah. Are

SPEAKER_01 45:13

there any other topics you think you'd want to, I don't know, expand upon for a future pros guide? Since we did pistol and rifle basics, is there anything like that may come to your mind that you think would be good to get out there or something you think would be fun to get on the camera and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_02 45:38

very scripted to a mediocre standard, which is, you know, let's organize a range day and construct an assortment of drills, but not actually deliver any conveyance of the importance of fundamentals, how to execute, how to accomplish. It's just a drill. It's an organization, or I'm sorry, it's an orchestrator of drills, right? Yeah, drill facilitator. Yes, it's a drill facilitator for the day. And that's kind of what a firearms instructor has become because of the mediocre standard. And I set forth that mediocre standard to be military instructors, law enforcement firearms instructors, as well as the NRA, USCCA, and everyone that is deeming you a ominous, dominus of firearms instructor these days is a fucking joke. Like my experience in law enforcement, when I went down to London, Ohio, and I was put through the big three, which is becoming a firearms instructor in three different disciplines, it was a basic operators class, you You know, what was forced of us to teach to our peer audience was a drill. And I'm like, well, this is the only rep that I'm going to get for the three months that I've been down here to learn how to teach people how to be a better teacher and a trainer, all these things. I clearly am understanding very clearly that this isn't going to be hand-delivered, spoon-fed to me. This is something that I'm going to have to put a ton of work into and for if I really find a purpose and passion behind it. So I think a great... new series that we could do is how to be a great trainer. I think that the way that we've developed curriculum, the way that I've taught myself and then taught others is a great, we have a great framework within our firearms instructor development program that we have taught from three-letter agencies to the civilians. And these guys are benefiting because they're forcing, we're forcing them to teach. There's tons of instructors that use instructor at the end of their class as a sales tactic. And it's just a fucking joke because you got 30 students. There's no way that all 30 students could ever possibly teach within just two days or become good teachers within two days. So an instructor development class that I set out to develop, trying to streamline this effort and give like a level one understanding of what the standard is you're going to be held to when you come to the Achilles heel tactical instructor development classes. Yes, you are going to be forced to write your own curriculum, develop it with the guidance of our instructors, but also you're going to be forced to teach it. There's no hiding behind the crowd. There's no hiding in the numbers. Like every single person has to teach something. And every single day, I'm going to give you whether you taught me something or you didn't teach me anything, as well as your peers are going to do that as well. And when you devise and how to devise a curriculum, it's not tough. It's not rocket science. It's just me being self-aware to figure out where I came from, then finding a common hook of relation of where I come from, where the audience also comes from as a common hook, then delivering a message of, hey, How has that worked out for you? And then through a who, what, when, where, why framework go into developing a curriculum that is actually viable to getting the results we're looking to get out of the students. But it's through devising and developing a curriculum and constructing drills and courses of fire that are forcing the students to be very deep and absolved with studying of a process. And this process happens sometimes slow. This process happens sometimes fast. When we're talking about shooting and the rate of rounds we're going to be shooting but regardless the way we're teaching these things needs to change because the only way we can expect a better result is to have better teachers put in place held to higher standards and as a teacher as a firearms instructor as a trainer whatever coach whatever you want to call it you are absolutely irrelevant obsolete whatever name you want to put to it or synonym you want to attach to that you are you are irrelevant you are obsolete if you are not continuously taking training courses or putting yourself out there in unfamiliar realms or zones where you're going to learn, explore new things about yourself. So you're constantly a perpetual student that, you know, that's saying always a student. It's very true to my cadre, but not for all. And that's an unfortunate fact of just where people come from, because when the USCCA, NRA, the military or law enforcement, you know, hands you that stamp of approval and that certificate, You're certified, yes, but you're not qualified. And you're not qualified up until the point you've put in the reps and the time and have the experience of lots of failures and lots of learning to be had where you can clearly identify how to build these things. So it's a very challenging curriculum. It's a very, I know even if we just recorded it and I taught people how to build curriculum, how to build meaningful courses of fire, how to publicly speak and convey a message at the lowest common denominator level of your audience and studying of your audience, how to be a trained observer, like all these things that are very, very, very key in understanding how to not just run a safe range. Like, I think that the majority of these schoolhouses are just trying to get you to not kill one of your students, which they fail at even there. It's an unfortunate fact. So I think that that would be a really cool series for UF Pro because it's never been done. You know, it'd be cool to see how far we've come from the 2019 days to through present day in which we're now making trainers versus just becoming trainers.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah, absolutely. I think that'd be really cool. We'll run it by them. Yeah. Lastly, this is sort of off topic, but also on current eventing topic. I'd like to talk about the recent news of the SIG P320s. Okay. If you're on any form of social media to the listeners out there, or if you're in law enforcement or military, I'm sure you guys have heard what's going on with the three 20. If not, essentially, it's been going off in holsters and not safe when it needs to be safe. This actually happened in one of your classes, Rick. I was there as well as one of your other instructors, and we had what, 18 or 20 other students in there as well. And unfortunately, a recent U.S. airman lost his life due to the malfunctioning safety systems of one, and now it's essentially been banned from every reputable range and reputable trainer. Rick, you used to run one. I used to run one all the time. That's all I ran for six years. You ran it for a few years as well from a Parker Mountain machine tardigrade. It's a great build. Do you want to touch on what happened in your class and then what you've been seeing around social media and all the security cam footage and all the reports that have come out now from the FBI to third parties and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

So to give

SPEAKER_02 52:33

context, in 2019, those UF Pro videos, I was shooting a P320 Next five Legion, it had the Parker Mountain barrel and comp on it. And that was about the only aftermarket piece that was on it. I then in 2021, Parker Mountain sent me the tardigrade and I ran that until 2023. So like I have from 2019 to 2023, tons of rounds, tons of fricking rounds through the platform. And I really, the unfortunate side of it is I really liked the platform as did you. So the context and like guys are always saying, well, didn't you run a 320? He's like, yeah, I did. And I've never had an issue with the two that I own. That's not what we're addressing here. And that's not the problem. The problem is there are in current market and current hands and current holsters facing down towards your pelvic region or on your side, guns and holsters that have the ability to go off. Now, I'm not a gun armorer that will testify on the reason of why. That's Sig's job. and that's the armorer's job. My experience on April 11th in Knoxville, Tennessee, when I'm teaching a class, I reference a demo in which I just demonstrated a drill for which we're about to release the students to and then bang. As soon as it happens, I look to my right. I have a very intimate relationship with every student on my line, as well as the gun that they're running. And I look at the only student that's looking straight down with his hands on his side, basically his elbow resting on the back plate of the 320 and I'm, he's like hands off now. And I look at him and I was like, was that that fucking 320? And as soon as I heard the yep, I was like, we have a gun going off in the holster because his gun was holstered. His hands were nowhere near the actual gun itself. His arm was resting on the back plate or the back strap of the gun, which mine has rested there for, oh yeah, thousands and thousands and thousands of reps. So when I see this, I'm like, okay, the current threat right now on this range is that 320. And when I walk over to that student and then he starts pulling that 320 out of the holster, I'm like, whoa, I can't have a gun being pulled on me right now. So I grab it. I unload it. I make sure it's clear. And I tell him to get that fucking gun off my range. And that is verbatim exactly what I said. That is verbatim or that is accurate to my firsthand account. And for everyone who wanted to back in April, May, June, July, say that that was staged, that was fake, that It's blah, blah, blah. Like it's all just noise to me because of the witness to count that I had firsthand with that experience. Now, guys always want to blame something other than just the gun, right? Because up until 2025 in April, my opinion and my understanding was that guns do not go off without mechanical operation of a trigger, someone firing the actual pistol itself. And now the SIG P320 is doing it on its own in the holster just from some little touching of the backstrap a little like fidgeting with the slide like there's just there's things happening that can't be explained to my understanding I just made the statement that that same weekend that P320s will no longer be allowed in our classes at events like Ohio Range Day as well as my training center Aero Concepts Training Center we will not allow any P320s for any P320s or any variants to enter these classes, these ranges or these events any longer. And the reason we did that and we did that back then was because when I talked to Paul and I talked to Dave and I talked to Shane and I talked to you, I'm like, dude, we are now going to be found negligent knowing that this is a possibility. If somebody was in one of our vehicle classes, they're shooting with a rifle and they're laying in a prone position or a side prone position and then their 320 and their holster just decides to go off And then the guy on the front end of the car or the rear end of the car, downrange of that muzzle in the holster, now takes one to the head. We knew that this was possible. And based off of us just literally hearing ourselves say that, we said we can no longer allow this. So we made the statement way back in April that we will not allow this, period. Then all the internet lost their fucking minds about where and how. And the GBRS video came out with DJ Shipley talking about me being a knowledge transfer specialist but then saying I'm out of my fucking mind for denying or not allowing the P320 to be on my ranges well this is a private business I own private land which is a training center and ORD is a private event that I can say who comes who goes and what is allowed to be there and what's not so again you can't tell me what I can or can't allow in my own classes my own range or my own events and for that, I just stand by this statement. Now, here we are in 2025, where a poor Air Force and airman lost his life to one of these going off in the holster, and he lost his life. Like, it didn't have to come to this. It should have been no different than what GM has to do or Ford manufacturing has to do. It should have been a recall, a massive recall. You got 3 million pistols in service, Sig. Recall them. Identify the root issue. Identify the cause. Now you've got the FBI study out. ICE, has eliminated them from any agent carrying them. The Air Force has put a cease ceasefire out for making sure that none of the no airmen is carrying that pistol anymore. And this is one with a safety. So it's like even with a safety, if this is an issue, we have to come to a an absolute concrete answer for the reason of why. And because SIG has not owned this and they have, you know, you know, made statements of saying there's no way this can happen, blah, blah, blah. It is happening. You can't deny that an airman lost his life. And because this is happening, there has to be something done about it. But it's absolutely disgusting to me that this community, that this... Right. Yeah. It's, it's,

SPEAKER_01 59:18

I mean extremely unfortunate and like I mentioned I shot it for six years that was the only gun I shot and I love the platform and then that happens and I'm like okay like even though I don't think that mine will go off I it's still a 99% chance that I don't think it'll go off that's not a hundred that's not 100% and if I'm carrying it pointed at my my parts or running around and having it if I am prone position crouch position whatever and it's pointing in a direction that a person could be it's like Can I 100% guarantee that that will never, ever in the history of ever go off? Not anymore. I can't. So yeah, unfortunately, bad things have happened and it has caused a lot of uproar in the community now. But I guess the fortunate thing is, is that everyone is taking it a lot more seriously than they were before. So at least some good has come from a horrible, horrible thing that has happened to the airmen. But like I said, yeah, at least a lot of people now are are starting to investigate even more so than before. So at least something good came from that. So unfortunately, ending on a bad note, but Rick, once again, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Viewers, be on the lookout for anything in the future from UF Pro regarding AHT. Maybe there will be some more pros guides, who knows, after this episode. As always, stay tuned for the next episode of Beer 30.