Making Shooters Better
Making Shooters Better is where real shooter stories turn into smarter training and preparation for everyone. Each episode dives into the journeys, wins, and lessons of competitors, instructors, and innovators from across the firearms world.
Hosted by Terry Vaughan—former British Royal Marine Commando, Top Shot competitor, and firearms instructor—this show delivers more than talk. You’ll get the mindset, methods, and motivation to train sharper and perform better, on and off the range!
Making Shooters Better
A Knife Attack Changed His Life—and Practical Shooting: Grandmaster Steve Anderson
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In this engaging interview, Terry Vaughan chats with Steve Anderson, USPSA Grandmaster and mental management expert, and shares his journey from rock band to shooting champion. He reveals practical strategies for mastering the mental game, improving performance, and achieving goals in shooting sports and beyond.
Everybody thinks that positive self-talk, they think that you're supposed to lie to yourself. You're not. What you need to do is change who you are and what you do. If I'm afraid of classifiers that have one-handed shooting, I need to practice one-handed shooting. That's what I did. The first matches I went to, Circleville, Ohio, they would have a one-handed stage, and I would hear grown men crying, lamenting, tearing their clothes, and weeping at the early morning sun.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've got to shoot the gun one-handed. This is awful.
SPEAKER_02And I said, I should probably practice that. And those were the first stages that I won't.
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to Making Shooters Better, brought to you by Laser Ammo. Today's guest, Steve Anderson, is a US PSA grandmaster and teaches competition shooting at every level. He's the author of three books about competition pistol shooting. We'll ask him to talk about those in a little while. And hosts his own podcast, The Shooting Show. Steve got an appreciation for the mental game early on in his competition career and now devotes himself to helping others avoid struggle as they learn to shoot and compete. As a mental management certified instructor, Steve has a unique ability to make a direct connection between mental management and all funds, all forms of handgun competition shooting, particularly USPSA, IPSIC, IDPA, and Steel Challenge. Steve, welcome to Making Shooters Better.
SPEAKER_02Hello, thank you so much for having me. Did did did AI craft that intro for you, or did you actually research all those things? I took them straight off your website, mate. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. Right. Okay. So yeah. So all those things are. Yeah, all those things are true. So I I invented the modern dry fire method. You know, 20 years ago, um, I was, I was, oh gosh. Do you want the do you want the three-minute version, the 13-minute version, or the 30-minute version? You can have whichever version you want. I want the one that's the most entertaining. The one that's the most entertaining is I was working in record stores. Okay. I was actually, if you Google Slam Circus and click images, you will see four people with very long hair who had a rock and roll band. And I uh that so then we were playing rock and roll, and Nirvana came out. You remember when when Nirvana came out and leveled the music industry? Okay, so that took out my band. We were gone. We were like the first casualty. We were so close to three record deals. So after that happened, I started working in record stores. And uh you have to Google record stores too if you're younger than, I don't know, 40, right? You've never been to a record store, right?
SPEAKER_00Used to be a place you went to to get your music.
SPEAKER_02Right. And you actually paid money and you could hold it and look at it and read it. It was so awesome. But I was working in record stores, and a guy came in with a K-bar, a K-bar knife and robbed me. And he tried to stab me with a K-bar knife over a stolen compact disc. Okay. So he did 28 days of a six-month sentence for what did they call it? Aggravated menacing. Not armed robbery, not attempted murder, aggravated menacing for trying to stab me with a K-bar. So he gets out of jail, and the prosecutor in Columbus, Ohio calls me on the phone and says, Hey, this guy's getting out of jail. You might want to get a gun. Imagine that. The prosecutor called me and told me to get a gun. So I was raised non-gun, not anti-gun, not non-gun. We didn't. My dad was the high school marching band director and the minister of music at the big church. We didn't need guns. My dad was famous. There was no crime in Ponka City, Oklahoma. There's there's there's no home defense, there's no concealed carry. So I went out and bought a Smith and Western 5906. And I felt a a need to be proficient with this thing. Okay. And in my mind, it was kind of like having a pet rattlesnake and keeping it secure. You know, ooh, this thing is really dangerous. I gotta be good with this. So I went to the indoor range and I started shooting 200 rounds a week at paper. So how old are you when this died? Uh 20, 25, probably. Okay. I was I was fresh out of the rock band. Yeah. Um, I had just gotten married for the first time. Um, and yeah, 25 years old. Still very enthusiastic and still pretty dumb because everybody's an idiot until they turn 25. And then men at 25 start getting a little bit smarter every year. Like we lose some dumbass every year. So I'm 53 and I've lost about half my dumbass, but I've still got a lot, you know? So I'm now shooting 200 rounds a week at the endorph range, getting good with my with my Smith and Wesson. And uh most of it is at a pop can on a string at 25 yards. Because they sold those for 50 cents. And that was so much more fun than paper targets. Okay. And then I said, okay, this is the classic gun owner thing. I'm gonna buy a 22 so I can save money. Well, that's not how it works. You buy a 22 and you just shoot more. So now I'm shooting 700 rounds a week at a pop can on a string at 25 yards. And I've never been to a match. I don't even know what I don't even know, I don't even know what a match is. And then I went there on a Friday night and they had a bowling pen match. And the bowling pins were at 21 feet. So think about a pop can at 25 yards versus a bowling pen at 21 feet. It was like a barn door, Terry. I couldn't miss. I came in second at my very first match. And then I realized, ooh, if I miss my first shot, I come in second. If I make my first shot, I come in first. So I started winning this match. And my very first dry fire drill was a bowling pin on a piece of paper in my basement. And I'd go from low ready to my bowling pen. Low ready bowling pin. And I started winning. And they said, hey, if you like this, you should come try steel challenge. I said, What's steel challenge? He said, just be here at this time. And I was like, eight o'clock in the morning? Because in rock and roll, you don't do anything before noon. Nothing before noon. Like eight o'clock in the morning. Is this real? So I went, and the first time I heard a bullet hitting a steel target, man, I was hooked. I did pretty good. And the guy at the gun store, he said to me, You're pretty good, but your draw is slow.
SPEAKER_03I think you should drive fire. And I said, What's drive fire? And what happened next changed practical shooting.
SPEAKER_02Because I'm getting goose when I'm just thinking about it. You ever heard of that that movie, the the butterfly effect, where something insignificant happens that causes ripples in the pond? Right? This conversation changed the course of practical shooting because he said to me, You need to dry fire. And I said, What's dry fire? He's just take your unloaded gun and patch this joint. But you need a timer, so I bought a timer. And I've I learned how to use part-times, and I I had these 12 drills. Well, something else happened after after Steel Challenge. He said to me, If you like this, you should try Ipsyc. And I said, What's Ipsy? He said, Well, you you know where the range is, just be here at eight. I was like, eight o'clock in the morning again. This is so stupid. So I went and on my very first field course, I shot every target twice, including all of the no-shoots. I shot every no shoot twice. Because I got like a I got like a like an eight-minute news shooter briefing, you know, and they never told me not not to shoot the white ones. So that's so that's how it happened. And then they said a little later on, I got this, I got this card from USPSA. It said A-Class. And I went back to my buddy, his name was Vern Walker, and I said, Vern, what's this? He goes, Oh, you're A-Class. I said, Is that good? That's pretty good. So, is there anything above that? Yeah, master. Anything above that? Grandmaster. Oh, that's what I'm gonna do. And they said, You can't do it. It's it's just not possible. And I said, Well, hang on now. I've been playing guitar for a while, and I can do Eddie Van Halen things, I can do Joe Sachiani things, I can do Ingvan Malmstein things. I'm pretty sure I can do Grandmaster things. And they said, Okay. And then nine months later, I was the first Grandmaster in in Ohio. Because he said to me, you need to drive fire. And so at that time, these were the 99 series classifiers. Most of them were some version of Six Freeload Six. And so I got really, really good at Six Freeload Six. And as a result, I became the first Grandmaster in Ohio.
SPEAKER_00That's pretty darn good considering you were only in it for nine months before you arrived there.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Well, so I I had a really unique advantage. So my father died before I knew he had any flaws. Okay. My dad died when he was about twelve. I'm sorry, when I was about twelve. He was the high school marching band director and the minister of music at at the big church. He was the most famous man in town because in in Oklahoma, the marching band was a bigger deal than the football team. So it was a big deal, right? And so he died before I knew he was imperfect. And so that inspired me to be, I suppose you could say, larger than life, you know? And it never occurred to me that I couldn't play guitar at a Eddie Van Halen level, that I couldn't write a book, that I couldn't be a grandmaster, because my dad did all these things. My dad was a grandmaster, right? He he actually did the Queen song, Another One Bites the Dust, with marching band and electric bass with the amplifier on a cart. So you're watching the marching band, right? And here comes boom boom boom boom bum bum boom. And the guy's playing electric bass on the football field with the amplifier on a push cart. Right? That was the kind of guy my dad was. So there's no reason I can't be a grandmaster. There's no reason I can't write books. And of course he had flaws. But he died before I knew he had flaws. He died a perfect man in my eyes. And so it it inspired me to do everything.
SPEAKER_03Wanna back up for a second?
SPEAKER_00I want to go back to the robbery, because how on earth did it end up at a place where this guy's trying to stab you? Did you try to stop him from taking the piece of thing he was trying to?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. So we we did used uh CDs, compact discs. Right? The younger viewers will need to Google a compact disc, how we used to listen to music. And that's what killed the music, the music industry, by the way, because they said, oh, you've got to buy all your Beatles records on vinyl. Oh, you've got to buy them all again on 8-track. Oh, you've got to buy them all again on cassette. And we're like, we're done. We're done. Just put them on my phone. So this guy comes in, and his girlfriend was gonna sell me some CDs because this was the big racket was you would buy your Pink Floyd CD for $9, you'd sell it back for $4, and then you'd come back and buy it again for $9. And that just repeated and repeated. It was so great. Um, we thought it was never going to end, but they came in as a couple, and the girlfriend was gonna sell some stuff, and this guy, should I say his name? Does it matter?
SPEAKER_03I don't think it matters, does it? How long ago is this? Quite a while.
SPEAKER_0220, 25 years. His name was Peter Green. I'll never forget his face. I'll never forget his face. So he goes to leave, his girlfriend does the business, he walks around, and do you remember the old sensormatic shoplifting alarms with the the gates by the door? Yeah. So he goes to leave, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And I said, hey, this was a very so I was just imagine I was 20, 24, 25 years old. I've got hair down past my waist, and I'm working a record store in a black neighborhood. Okay. And we are selling uh Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Easy E, NWA. Like that's the currency of this place. It's it's a rap store. Okay. So this guy, he sets off the alarm, and I said, Hey, check this out. My alarm's going off. What do you know about that? And he goes, Man, I don't know about alarm going off. And I said, Well, it didn't go off when you came in, and it's going off now. So something's changed and my alarm is going off. He goes, Well, I got this knife. And he pulls the K-bar out and he sets the K-bar on the counter. And I said, Wow, that's a nice knife. And I was actually hearing the crocodile dundee in my mind while this was happening. It's not a knife. Right, right. It's not a knife. And I said, Hey, that's a nice knife, but it's not going to set off my alarm. Why is my alarm going off? So this goes back and forth a little bit more, and he decides he's had enough knife talk. He picks up the knife, and I turn into Bugs Bunny. You ever seen Bugs Bunny get really bendy whenever somebody shoots a cannonball at him or something? So I do, I do the Bugs Bunny. He comes at me once, comes at me twice, misses me both times, and then darts out the door. So I go grab my Seinfeld-era uh phone with the clickety antenna, you know, clickity-clicketity-click-ity-clicky. I call the cops, the cops pick him up, they bring him back, and the cops say, What did he take? I said, I don't know. They wanted me to lie about what he stole, because if I can't tell them what he stole, they can't get him for armed robbery. And I'm standing here going, this guy tried to stab me, it's on video, and you want me to lie about what he stole, I refuse to lie about it.
SPEAKER_03Because I have this thing. I don't like to lie. I really don't. Because it if you lie to people, you have to remember what you told them. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember. Yeah. So easy.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, stab with a cable, almost stabbed with a cable.
SPEAKER_00Almost. So I have a probably what will sound like to you, like an odd question. Was he holding the knife ice pick style, or was he holding it like a hammer? I uh ice pick style. Ice pick. Yeah. Probably, and this is just speculation on my part because I haven't seen the video, but most people get the power from an from an ice pick positioning with the hand, but they lose distance. And unless they've practiced the implementation and usage of that blade in that position, it actually is a lot shorter than they think. Which means one of the reasons he was probably not successful was a lack of practice. The knife itself served as the intimidation. No one ever challenged him before. So when he went for it, he completely underestimated how difficult it can actually be to use a knife effectively in an ice pick drill unless you literally are over the top of somebody or close that distance down exponentially. And having taught edge weapons for a number of years, one of the things that try to teach is how to hold the knife correctly to give you additional distance so that that doesn't happen if you have to use a knife defensively. But in your case, it served to help keep you alive because that Muppet didn't understand how much shorter the distance becomes when that knife is held in that position. Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_02I have so many thoughts right now. So, number one, ghetto gangbangers don't practice edge combat techniques. They just carry knives around thinking that they're gonna you're right. And it it did sort of serve its purpose. It did intimidate me and it did create an escape for him. Yep. I don't know that he wanted to stab me, he just wanted to get out of there, you know? So it may have been kind of a half-hearted attempt just to get out of the store, which is fine. But what Peter Green doesn't know and will never know is that him trying to stab Steve Anderson changed the sport of practical shooting. And I'm so glad. I'm so glad he tried to stab me because I'd probably still be working in record stores. Like I'd be, because I'm I'm such a non-quitter, like I don't quit, I don't give up. I would be in the last U CD store in the world going, hey, you really should check out this Brad Paisley record because this guy can play really well.
SPEAKER_00Well, you mentioned ripples on a pond earlier, and I'm now I'm thinking more like waves, because that one incident, as it would for nearly all of us, it changed the trajectory of your life, which means it changed the trajectory of so many others' lives because of what you teach and what you've written. But it's fascinating that you probably only lived, A, because he was only half half committed to the crime, and B, because he had a grip on it that was crap and he couldn't get to you quickly enough to make the uh make the stabbing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I I wouldn't I mean, so I don't know how God's will works, right? Like I don't know if if God sends us suggestions and puts people in our lives, or if he has an endgame that we're gonna get to regardless of the choices that we make. But it it's difficult for me to believe that that was random. Yeah. And so many things had to happen for me to come because if if if there was a if there was a book about dry fire, my buddy would have recommended it and I would have bought it, and we wouldn't be talking right now. But there wasn't a book. And the the Brian Enos forums had just been started, like internet forums had just become a thing. And there were 200 of us on there, and we were all really polite and really curious, and we were looking for the secret, okay? And somebody on there posted about dry fire par times. And I was like, oh, par-times, okay, that makes sense because we can't we can't record the shots, but we'll use the part-time to see if we did the thing as fast as we want to do the thing. So it's all about par times. And the only literally the only thing anybody needs to do, they need to do a couple of things. They need to drive fire to get fast, really, really fast. They need to use live fire to learn to call their shots, because that's important, for speed, accuracy, and the mental game. And they need to get a subconscious stage plan with positive imprints. If they do those three things, they will reach their potential so quickly. And if you don't believe me, look at the trajectory of Joey of Joey Sowerland. Joey Sowerland went from watching John Wick being a national champion in two years. He won his first area match one year after watching a John Wick movie. Because he was like, that looks like fun. And then he came to see me and I said, Hey Joe, drive fire to get fast, learn to call your shots, get a subcontract stage plan.
SPEAKER_03And he's like, Is it that easy? Yeah, it's that easy. So cool. It is if you put in the bloody time in the practice.
SPEAKER_02So I so there's a few words I can't pull off. I can't say chow convincingly, and I don't know if I can pull off bloody. It's kind of like wearing a cowboy hat at the airport, right? But yes, you've got to put in the bloody time. And some of it is literally bloody, like your hands are going to bleed. Yeah, I can I can pull it off that way for sure. Your hands are gonna get bloody. Um, because people want to solve this behind a computer. They want to solve it watching YouTube, they want to solve it listening to podcasts. You've got to put the rig on and do the work. And I learned that from playing guitar. Because the first, man, the first month of playing guitar is really messy. You know, there's there's no good sounds being made. Uh, the the F chord is so challenging because you've got to bar the top two strings and you can't quite get the third finger right. It's tough. But you have to really want it. And I wanted it bad enough to put the time in. And because I didn't get a record deal, when they said Grandmaster was a thing, I said, that's my record deal. Grandmaster was my record deal. And I got it.
SPEAKER_03First one in Ohio. I beat Bob Vogel to Grandmaster.
SPEAKER_00And now, quick word for my sponsor. If you're a firearms instructor teaching beginners all the way through full-blown tactical classes, and you'd like your students to get better faster, and also add an additional revenue stream to your business, consider becoming a laser ammo dealer. Try fire lasers, reactive targets, smokeless range simulators, all these bits of kit help your clients and you, of course, get more trigger time without burning through hundreds of dollars worth of ammo. Shoot me an email, Terry at laser ammo.com, and let's get you and your clients dialed in with the best dry fire laser-based training equipment available. And now back to the episode. So is this a specific match, maybe even a failure, perhaps, where you had to confront your own mental preparation for a match? And then what was the turning point if there was such a thing that happened to you? So I was a major match choker.
SPEAKER_02And I was undefeated in Ohio. But because I'm I was working on Record stores, and my boss was such a jerk that if he found out I was going to a major match, he would send me on the road and make me miss my match. So I wasn't able to go to a lot of large matches because he was so jealous of my success. Um ask me later. There's a there's sort of a not safe for work angle there. And if you want to go there, we will. But he was really, really jealous of me. And but he would let me go to nationals. He wouldn't mess up my my national trip. So I wasn't going to very many major matches, and I would go scared because the hype was, oh, major matches are different. Okay, so I would go and I'd be shoot scared. And I'd shoot my first couple of stages really scared, really slow, slow down to get my hits, and then I would feel and or know that I was slowing down to get my hits. And then I'd step on the gas. And then I'd make the big mistake. And then all of a sudden the pressure's gone. Now there's no pressure. And my remaining stages would be regular Steve. And I couldn't break this cycle. And what I didn't realize is that self-image is who you are and what you do. And who I was and what I did was major match token. That became me. I expected it. And if it didn't happen, I got even more scared. So I had heard about Lanny Basham. And at this time I was writing my second book called Principles of Performance. And I thought, okay, I don't really want to give Lanny any money, but I've got to get some mental game out.
SPEAKER_03So if I interview him for my book, I can ask him my question for free.
SPEAKER_02So I called Lanny and I said, Hey Lanny, let's talk. And I asked him all the normal questions. And then I finally got to my question, which was, why am I choking? And the centerpiece was when I went to my very first nationals, they put me on two super squads. So just imagine going to the nationals for the first time. You're a major match choker, and USPSA puts you on the open super squad and the production super squad.
SPEAKER_03And I said, Lanny, I don't believe I belong here. What do I do? He said, quit. Quit the sport? Yeah, quit the sport. I don't want you to quit the sport. Didn't quit thinking that. And that was the beginning of my relationship with Lanny Basham.
SPEAKER_02And Lanny did not invent the mental game, Lanny discovered it. Lanny was sitting under the tree wondering why the apples kept hitting him on the head, and then he discovered gravity. Fascinating. So that was it. I was a major match choker who got put on the super squad for his first matches. And that's when I discovered the mental game.
SPEAKER_00Like if you shoot well, you start to put the pressure on yourself in different ways. And one of those ways can be I am a competitive shooter who shoots well. And now, if we link our identity to that thought process, anytime we make a mistake, it's literally a crack in the armor of who we think we are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's so brilliant because all right, self-image is the armor of who we think we are. And you can't lie to yourself. You know who you are. Like you said, you're an edge weapons instructor. Okay? So if you pick up a knife, you know what to do. I am not an edge weapons instructor. If I pick up a knife, I don't know what to do. That is who we are and what we do. And if I want to be an edge weapons instructor, I need to change who I am and what I do. But everybody thinks that positive self-talk, they think that you're supposed to lie to yourself. You're not. What you need to do is change who you are and what you do. If I'm afraid of classifiers that have one-handed shooting, I need to practice one-handed shooting. That's what I did. The first matches I went to, Circleville, Ohio, they would have a one-handed stage, and I would hear grown men crying, lamenting, tearing their clothes, and weeping at the early morning sun.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've got to shoot the gun one-handed. This is awful.
SPEAKER_02And I said, I should probably practice. And those were the first stages that I won. And I know that I became a grandmaster so quickly on the strength of my one-handed shoot. Because I was so good at it. After all, it is a handgun, not a hands gun. It was designed to be shot one-handed on the back of a horse for crying out loud. The only reason 1911s have safeties is because they kept shooting horses. Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00Bad news if you're a horse. No, wait, I did not know that.
SPEAKER_02It's the only reason. The 1908 model did not have a safety, but they kept shooting horses, so they put a safety on it for the 1911. We we gotta quit shooting horses. We're out of horses.
SPEAKER_00There's something to be said for indexing your trigger finger. It's so funny though, because I I've taught a number of classes over the years, personal safety being amongst them, and one of the things I teach is how to recognize dangerous individuals based on nonverbal. What body language signals are you giving you? But one of the biggest hurdles is not necessarily teaching people the various ways that you can recognize somebody is either up to no good, has a bad personality, or perhaps has bad intent. It's convincing them that they are attentive. Because so many people show up to the classes and they're like, Yeah, I'm not very good. I don't really pay attention. I'm like, well, that's a reinforced narrative that you've built around yourself that you now identify with. Let's change the bloody narrative. And the same thing I think often happens for competitions of any sort, where you go into it going, well, I'm just not very good, or this is something I'm weak in. And of course, that usually hints back to a lack of practice in that particular area as well. But the narrative that people create around themselves often is, you know, you're building a your confidence on that on a foundation of clay that the minute the tears start, you know, that that foundation begins to erode.
SPEAKER_02You said something so powerful. You know more about mental management than you think you do. Self-image is the internal narrative of who we are and what we do. Okay. For example, everybody listening to this program is either punctual or tardy. And their friends know it, their associates know it. Everybody here is either a morning person or they like to sleep in, and everybody knows it. Okay, those things can be changed. However, for those things to change, human beings will only change for pay value. Okay. Some people call it new girlfriend syndrome. Okay. If you get a new girlfriend, you will drive 90 miles to eat sushi. Okay. I don't like sushi, but under the right circumstances, I will drive 90 miles and order sushi happily. Because pay value. We have to want something new more than what we're currently doing. And I I love how you said that internal narrative because if a guy's interested in self-defense, what you said is let's let's let's be more attentive, you know. Let's look at, and I I do that subconsciously. I'm always looking for people that are up to no good. And the funny thing was, I'm so glad I found competition because I went through this Clint Eastwood phase of wanting to be a gunfighter. You know, so here I am, I've got my 5906, and I'm like, come mess with me, I'll make your day, right? And then I realized I'm probably never going to have another violent encounter. It's probably not going to happen. Number one, I'm going to avoid it at all costs. Number two, number three, it's just the odds are not there for me to get stabbed again. Right. So I said, well, hey, this is what's so cool in competition. I can get in a gunfight every weekend. I can measure my skills every weekend and not risk getting shot. So awesome.
SPEAKER_00But it's so bloody important to test yourself in a situation that can replicate to at least a degree the stress you are potentially and probably going to feel in a life and death encounter. Because if you if you can't handle the stress of going into a competition and perhaps screwing it up and doing badly, how in the hell are you going to handle a life-threatening assault where you're trying to get to a concealed firearm in a hurry, perhaps you weren't paying attention, and now your the space in which you have to maneuver is minimal? You are not going to handle the stress of that very well if you cannot handle the stress of competition or similar experiences.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I've had numerous people. I don't know what the current phrase is. Is seeing the elephant still the term of choice in defensive scenarios or a gunfight? So seeing the elephant. It's not one I've used, but yeah, it could be. It used to be seeing the elephant. So I've had numerous people who have seen the elephant. Man, it makes it sound kind of dirty when you say it that way. But I've had numerous people tell me um that the pressure of competition is equal to or greater than the defensive scenario. Uh SWAT guys, contractors, people that have been in gunfights. Um and the interesting thing is, I had one guy tell me that competition is actually more stressful because he doesn't know what's going to happen. In the gunfight scenario, he's already decided to prevail or die. Okay. Like he's made that decision before he put the badge on. I'm going to prevail or I'm going to die. And I'm okay either way. So he knows what's going to happen. In competition, he knows he's not going to die, but he also doesn't know he's going to prevail. Very, very fascinating stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we frequently go to conferences, and a lot of the conferences I go to now, they're for Ellie. And we'll set up the smokeless range. And it is a training tool that should supplement and complement your range time. It's a dry fire, but in a specific type or a specific uh set of circumstances. And we will get officers to step up and shoot. And invariably the ones that seem most relaxed or self-deprecating or have a sense of humor about it will step in, they'll shoot. Whether they shoot well, whether they shoot badly, it doesn't seem to matter to them. They're willing to try, they'll step into that experience. One of the things I noticed at a conference I was just at, this was in Reno, Nevada, a week or so ago, there were SWAT teams walking around. They had all the gear, like all the Gucci gear. They had they were kitted up, right? They looked like the epitome of SWAT. And we had a SWAT team walk past us six times. And we offered, shoot, come have a go, shoot. And they absolutely refused every single time. And I'm like, why? I caught one of them later. I'm like, what's up? You got you guys are supposed to be the SWAT team. You should handle the pressure. And he immediately said, I don't want to shoot badly in front of the guys.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, are those not the people on your team? They should know how you shoot and how you shoot in a variety of things. They were not willing to do it. It was crazy to me.
SPEAKER_02Well, you talk about the internal narrative that creates self-image. And the fast anything that happens in military and law enforcement, there's this negative reinforcement culture where they are self-deprecating, they do talk smack to each other. However, because there's a team to save, they will find a reserve of strength or skill or determination or whatever you want to call it to save the team. The reason they didn't want to shoot is there's no team to save. So they don't know what to do when there's no team to save. And so when you put an individual like that and you move them from a team environment to a solo environment, they tend to just give up as opposed to finding reserves of strength, skill determination, grit, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_00That is a really interesting perspective, and not one I had considered at all.
SPEAKER_02Well, think about, so think about, so I was not, I was never, I was never military, but what I think I know about the military is they're gonna break you down so they can build you up. And then they're gonna call you a maggot and a worthless fill in your own dirty words. But if you get pinned down, you're gonna do anything to save your brother on your team. But if you're a competition shooter and you think you're a worthless maggot and there's no team to save, you are just going to give up. Because you're not worth it. And that's all about self-image. Self-image is not ego. Okay. I am the best mental coach on the planet for practical shooting, but I'm not the most important person on this call. You are the most important person on this call. Okay? Your questions, your perspective, it's far more important than me. If it was ego, I would say, I'm too big a deal to be on this podcast. But self-image says I believe in my ability to help with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, now that does change everything because for a number of years I taught personal safety and reading people from the perspective of see the threat coming so you can avoid it, in most cases. And I was teaching self-defense at the time, but I believe that most people were not prepared to put in the kind of training, certainly to the level needed, to be proficient in a life and death situation, but everybody can learn to be attentive. And for years I heard, you're a little paranoid, it's the military in you coming out. I don't need that. And then of course, crime started to increase, active shooters, you know, you you name it, it all started to kind of pile up, and people always started coming back, going, Oh, actually, that that might be something I I do need. But for years I persevered with trying to teach the topics I taught simply because I knew if there was one person show up, and sometimes that was the case. I'm like, maybe that one person doesn't end up on the receiving end of somebody with a K-bar or something similar in a robbery because they see it coming from far enough away. But it wasn't because of ego, and I'm like, I am so important, I must go out there and talk to people. Because honestly, I dislike it intently. As an introvert, I'll sh I will stay away. But as someone with a passion to teach what I was teaching, I'm like, I don't care. If one person shows up and I help one person, that's all I'm gonna do. Like that, that's that is my calling, it's what I'm gonna do. And there were lots of people that say, Why in the hell are you still doing this when nobody's showing up? And I'm like, because eventually they will.
SPEAKER_02So you you were me as the last hairband. Like, I'm I hey, look at me. I don't don't listen to Nirvana. Are you aware that I am putting Stevie Ray Vaughn in Van Halen? Do you not hear how great this is? Like, I literally put Stevie Ray Vaughn in Van Halen. How much better can you get than that? But what I really like about what you said is you were teaching avoidance, right? Yeah. So I I have a really good friend who was a contractor, and I think I know what that means. He he he he described it as doing things that the military doesn't want their fingerprints on. Is that what that means? Pretty much, yeah. Okay. He called it also executive protection, which I would assume is bodyguards for important people that the military can't protect. Thinking man's bodyguard. Okay. And he said what gets people killed is their refusal to believe that what is happening is happening. Meaning, if you're if you're driving your Toyota through Bad Dad and you see somebody coming at you, your brain's gonna go, oh, he's not carjacking me. Whereas my buddy says he is absolutely trying to carjack. And it's that split second of denial that gets people killed. You know? And the reason the guy with the K-bar didn't stab me was I turned into Bugs Bunny. I literally turned turned into a cartoon character. And I I just remember, okay, there's a knife on the counter, and because I was a white guy selling records in a black neighborhood, I was a big fan of mutual respect. Right? There's all this constant tension, there's this racial tension, right? But it's it's fine, right? They're they're they're getting their rap CDs, I'm selling records, everybody's getting along just fine. But when he grabbed that knife off the counter, I knew that the excrement had hit the oscillator. Like I knew this is real now. And I just turned into a cartoon character. But I don't think he wanted to stab me. And and and you know, you make an excellent point. It was pretty half-hearted, his his attempt.
SPEAKER_03I think he just wanted out of there. Fascinating.
SPEAKER_00Which is good for you, that's the way it went. So let's say you've encountered a shooter who's pretty good and they want to move up to where you are, or at least that's their ambition. Where do you start? What do you do? What's the what are those first steps for you? Oh my goodness. And I know that's a massive question.
SPEAKER_02The shooting world is so full of tired, useless dogma. So what I try to do is I try to drive my new karma over old dogma. Okay, they always say accuracy first, speed will come. I want to switch that around. I'm gonna say speed first, accuracy will come. Because in the beginning, speed, sorry, in the beginning, accuracy is a skill. Okay, I have to learn to fire this gun without disturbing the side picture. That's a skill I need to learn. Takes about a week, right? It's it's not that difficult to do. I mean, our targets in competition shooting, it's it's it's such a disgrace. Our average target distance is 24 feet, and the A zone is the size of a piece of paper. Like the A zone is this big at 24 feet, and we can't hit that.
SPEAKER_03It's not a skill thing. Okay. So once we're capable of shooting alphas, we got to get faster.
SPEAKER_02But we've already proven we can shoot alphas. So we don't need to do that while we're getting faster. Okay. So what what we're gonna do is I believe in three modes of practice accuracy, speed, and match. Okay. Accuracy just means do I have the technical skill to make the shots my sport requires? It's pretty simple. Okay. But speed is a is a whole different thing. Speed means everybody has a speed at which they do things. I call it I call it the the the limit of human function. Okay. Um it's gonna take you some amount of time to get a concealed handgun out of wherever you've got it concealed and point out of target. Okay. In drive fire, we're gonna challenge that. We're gonna say, okay, your current limit of human function is 1.5. What would a 1.4 feel like? What would a 1.3 feel like? What about a 1.2? Okay. And then we got to find a new limit of human function. And that needs to be repeated until it becomes normal. Once it's normal, we go back to putting the sign on the target. And so the speed mode of practice means yes, I can shoot an alpha at 24 feet. That's cool. I don't need to do that over and over and over. What I need to do is do that quicker. And going back to self-image, the first time, so let's say you're you shoot an alpha eight yards, 1.5. Well, the first time you do a 0.9, it's not going to be an alpha. But the internal narrative, and I I love that that description because it's so true. One person would say, Ooh, 0.9, I'm doing great. The other person would say, that's not an alpha, I suck. And then they go back to the 1.5, and they never get to 1.4, 1.3, 1.2. So I say, speed first, and then choose to shoot accurately. It's just a much faster way of doing them. God, but but the shooting world is full of so much tired old dogma. They told me it takes 10 years and a million rounds to make master, and don't even try it for grandmaster because you can't do it. And I said, hold my beer. It was actually hold my zema at that time.
SPEAKER_03You remember Zima?
SPEAKER_00It's funny. And it's funny to have people tell you what you can't do. Like to me, one of the things I've probably made my own life much more difficult than it needs to be is constantly, if somebody says you're not going to be able to do a thing, like, guess what? I'm doing the thing. Get out of my way. It's happening. Right. But it's funny because that bloodied mindedness is one of those traits that a lot of people don't have. They hear that they somebody says it's going to take you 10 years, and don't even try for this because you're never going to get there. And they go, okay. And that breaks my heart.
SPEAKER_02Again, for me, and I don't know what it was for you, and maybe you don't even know, but for me, my dad dying before I knew he was imperfect. Was what gave me the strength to write books. I recorded my first album when I was 15 years old. My mom drove me to the studio, and we recorded four songs in six hours with no overdubs. And if you've ever been in a band or been to the recording studio, that is a miraculous achievement. Four songs in six hours with no second tapes? That doesn't happen. Doesn't happen. Right. So I I never believed anything was impossible. And obviously, I know my dad had flaws, but if I had known that before he died, I would not have. And pay value is the juice that's worth a squeeze. Like, if somebody listening to this program wants to be a grandmaster, they may not be able to articulate why they want it. Okay. But you have to really want it. And if you want it bad enough, there's no limit. And my favorite thing about the US PSA classifier system, the weekend warrior can go to the Super Bowl. And it is not a perfect system by any means, but I cannot think of another sport in which the weekend warrior can go to the Super Bowl. It's so awesome.
SPEAKER_03No, and you're absolutely right. And that's something else I hadn't thought of before either. You're right.
SPEAKER_00Put in the training, put in the time, that that opportunity could be open to you. So going back to flipping the speed versus accuracy and speed first, and then go back to the accuracy, perhaps in stages, reminds me of something I read on your website about more points per second and how that has influenced so many shooters when it comes to their performance. Can you elaborate on that?
SPEAKER_02Sure. So USPSA is scored on hit factor, and it's points per second. Okay. And again, going back to decades of old dogma, people think that accurate shooting has to be slow and fast shooting has to be sloppy.
SPEAKER_03And they've just made that decision. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um more points per second means I've got shooting time and I've got downtime. Well, if I shoot really quickly and then I run 30 feet without shooting, my points per second is zero while I'm not shooting. Okay. So what I learned to do was to keep shooting the gun, reduce the amount of time spent not shooting, as opposed to shooting fast or shooting slow, running fast, running slow. The only thing, and people are so tied up about stage planning. This is my new crusade. Everybody is so worried about stage planning. The only universal truth in stage planning is reduce the amount of time spent not shooting. That's it. There's no other, people say rush the port, hang back, avoid sweet spots, find the sweet spot. None of that is going to be universally true. But reducing the amount of time spent not shooting is universally true. And if you can't decide, congratulations. It means it doesn't matter. Because a well-designed stage will have numerous viable options. A ported design stage will only have one option, and it'll be obvious. So if you can't decide, two things. Number one, it doesn't matter. That's great. Number two, go to confidence. Because, as you said, self-image, the internal narrative, okay, will have more confidence doing one thing versus doing another thing. And the mistake people make is choosing between speed and accuracy. That's like if they say, okay, would you rather have love or money? Well, can't I have both?
SPEAKER_03I'd like to have both.
SPEAKER_00If that's on the table, I'll take them both. Thank you very much. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Why do I have to choose? Because when you choose, you by definition, you give up the other one. And it doesn't be the case. I love, love, love working in IDPA. Okay. Here's my IDPA qualifications. Okay. Steve Anderson is now doing IDPA training. His qualifications, uh, I shot one indoor match that had two stages. That's my IDPA qualifications. Okay. Freely will admit that. However, these guys think that zeros have to be slow, and they don't. I was working in Washington State. This range, the craziest range I've ever been to. Just imagine a shooting range where the subdivision, you can see the second story windows at 270 degrees of the subdivision. And one errant bullet gets that range to get shut down forever. And everybody in the world wants this range to be shut down, right? And I'm teaching this IDPA class. I took a guy from 22 seconds to 11 seconds with the exact same points down. It was two points down, both runs, by teaching him that zeros don't have to be slow.
SPEAKER_03Good shooting doesn't have to be slow. Fast shooting doesn't have to be sloppy. And the industry wants you to worry about your grip. They want you to include your dot.
SPEAKER_02They want you to do to do doubles drills. And they the holy grail is two shots on one side picture.
SPEAKER_00And if you can let go of that.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. Okay. The easiest thing to do is to document. So I'm writing a book about the mental game called What Were You Thinking? Okay, so my Steve Anderson's next book is going to be called What What Were You Thinking?
SPEAKER_03All they need to do is take their best stages and write down what they were thinking before, during, and after. And we're going to find some commonalities pretty quick. What we're going to find is they knew the stage inside and out. Okay. They had a subconscious stage plan. They weren't thinking very much when they shot. And they weren't worried about the results. So if we can replicate those three things, we can do that much more consistently.
SPEAKER_02So the subconscious stage plan is pretty simple. People spend so much time on stage, it's it drives me insane how obsessed they are with stage planning. It's it's just it's it's it's an epidemic of massive proportion. Okay? Oh, should I go left or should I go right? So I go left or should I go right? And these fragments of indecision cause the brain parts that mess up the execution, right? Brain parts are fragments of indecision. And it doesn't does it doesn't need to be that way. If you can't decide quickly, congratulations, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_03That's great. Okay? So we need to get a subconscious stage plan.
SPEAKER_02Thinking as little as possible is pretty easy if we choose something to do. And I like to tell people to put the dot in the middle of the target. And they say it can't be that simple. And I say, would you try it? Would you just put the dot in the middle of the target and see what happens? Because 99% of the problems people have in competition shooting is firing the gun on a poor sight picture. Like, what are we even doing here? What do we think is going to happen? Okay. But if we if we fire the gun with an acceptable sight picture and make that our singular focus, that's real easy. Because when my conscious mind is focused on putting the dot in the middle of the target, where's my performance coming from?
SPEAKER_03Where's it coming from? Subconscious skill. Okay. Now, not worrying about the results, that's the tricky part.
SPEAKER_02So the internal narrative, the self-image, your SWAT guys would not do the dry fire thing because they're worried about the results. Okay. So what we have to do is pre-accept the results. And very quickly, you've got four options.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Um option number one, if you went to a match tomorrow, I'd say, okay, here's your choices, Terry. I don't care. Could you get there? You could? Oh. Yeah, the I don't care part. Yeah, I got it. Okay. What about it is what it is? Is that easier to get to? Also, yes. I'll do well if I follow my process. Could you get there? Yep. I'm a contender to win. Could you get there? Yep. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So you have to choose one of those. Or some or or or some variation. Because when you're worried about the results, you're going to overthink. You're going to overtry. Okay. Think about being in high school and talking to the super ultra mega hottie. Okay. She's got the joy-ash jeans. She's got the white reebox, right? She's got the fuzzy sweater. I mean, this is the girl, right? You're so worried about the results, you can't talk. You have just lost control of the English language because you're so worried about the results. Right? And I remember, I remember walking down the hall next to the girl I just described, George Jans, acid wash. Remember, remember acid wash jeans, white rebox, the fuzzy white sweater, the the cheap drugstore c uh uh perfume. And I was like, hey Jenny, how you doing? And she turned to me and she said, I have been waiting all year for you to talk to me. And because I got to I don't care or It Is What It Is, I was able to say that sentence to the girl that had been waiting for me to talk to her all year. I had no idea.
SPEAKER_03Right? So I just shot my shot, you know. That didn't end well, but you know, you know how it goes.
SPEAKER_00But at least you were able to formulate a sentence.
SPEAKER_02Right. Because I wasn't worried about the results. But you can't lie to yourself. I don't think you could go to a maybe you could because you have kind of a defensive background. Maybe you could go to a match and truly not care. I couldn't do that. I can't get to I don't care. For me, it's I'll do well if I follow my process. And anytime there's a result that you want, you have got to put it into a process within your control. So if you're gonna go to a SEAL challenge match tomorrow and you want to do well, I'll say, Terry, that's great. What can you do within your control to shoot as well as possible? And what we'll come to is put the dot in the middle of the target. And you might say, what if I embarrass myself or my sponsor? And I'll say, Terry, you gotta put the dot in the middle of the target. And you might say, What if I get beat? Terry, you can you gotta put the dot in the middle of the target. Because that's something you can do. And most of the problem with the mental game is vague ideas that don't have executable tasks.
SPEAKER_03Have you heard some of those? Yeah. Let it go. Don't worry about it. Uh shoot your game. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02Right? If you're going to Nashville's for the first time and you call me and you say, Steve, I am freaking out. I gotta shoot tomorrow, and I'm I know I'm gonna be first, what do I do? And I say, Let it go. You're gonna say, that's not helpful. But but if I say, Terry, can you get a subconscious stage plan? And you'll say, Yeah, I can do that. And then I'll say, Hey, can you put the dot in the middle of the target? Yeah, I can do that too. Now we have executable tasks.
SPEAKER_03And so one of the things I'm at war with is vague ideas that don't have executable tasks.
SPEAKER_00I wish we could have had this conversation before I went on to Topshot on the History Channel. I will tell you. You did that! When did you do that? Season four. And how long ago was that? 350 years ago. No, like 12 or 13 years ago. Here's the interesting thing, right? First of all, it wasn't my idea. Wife is in marketing and she's like, this would be great for your speaking and teaching personal safety. That's it. I'm in. And what I expected to happen was for them, when they introduced me, to say something along the lines of personal safety speaker or body language, you know, expert or whatever the case might be. What I didn't expect them to do, and probably I should have seen it coming, was to constantly introduce me as the former British Royal Marine Commando. And why was that a problem? Well, first of all, it was 20 years ago. But yes, I did it. But however, that wasn't my identity at the time. And there was a, in my head at least, there was the separation between my military career and what I was doing now with the speaking, etc. But every time they said former British Royal Marine Commando, I felt an exorbitant amount of responsibility to represent that group as well as possible. And it took me out of my head game of I kind of don't care because I'm just a speaker here to try and last as long as possible so people will hire me to come in and teach them how to stay safe. To I'm now representing all former British commandos. And the weight of that completely screwed my head up. And it wasn't until after the show was done, it was all, you know, it's all said and done. And my performance was my performance was was was okay. Would do I wish it had been better? Yes. But it it was in hindsight that I realized the amount of pressure I was putting on myself to do well when I had originally gone into this going, I really don't care. I'll I'll just last as long as possible. I've got some skills, I'll put my sites dead center of the target and I'll send it. Right. There was there was little pressure from that standpoint comparative to I gotta go in here and represent all former commandos and I gotta shoot brilliantly. And the weight of that honestly felt like it nearly crushed me. And now, especially after hearing you today, I wish I had to put a bloody call in and gone, help me.
SPEAKER_02So there's gosh, there's so much to unpack there. This this might need to be like like a part two. Number one, that show was always won by the good old boy and never the specialist. The US PSA shooters, I don't think, I don't think a US PSA shooter ever won because we don't deal with muskets and buoy knives. Like that's that's not what we do, right? We shoot race guns at paper targets, right? So give me a musket. I don't know. Give it to Jerry Michelak. He knows about muskets. He was there when they were invented for crying out loud. All right, so the reason you had the conflict is because the former British Marine is not who you are and what you do. It was who you are and what you do, but it's not currently. That has changed, right? You went from whatever a British Marine does to whatever you're doing now, and so you're trying to be somebody you're not doing something that you don't do. You don't know how to do that. Your conscious mind has changed the channel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And pressure can only amplify what we're thinking and feeling. So what happened to you is you're thinking and feeling, I'm not that guy. This is not who I am. So you had to relearn British Marine things on the clock. It's just like when you when you have a stage and there's a close target as the first target, and you think, ooh, I've got a shot. Well, your conscious mind doesn't know how to do that. It trained your subconscious to get a really good draw. And then it moved on to something more interesting. Okay? So if you attempt to get a really good first shot on the clock, your conscious mind is like, how do we do this? How do we do this? And you're gonna miss your grip. You're gonna fumble it because your conscious mind doesn't know how to do it. But if you look at the letter A or the letter or the or the zero or some small spot on the target, your subconscious knows how to do it. It's just like tying your shoes. If you try to tie your shoes quickly, you're gonna screw it up because you don't know how to do it. Your subconscious knows how to do it, but your conscious mind does not know how to tie your shoes. It taught some combination of fingers 40 years ago and moved on to something else.
SPEAKER_03Fascinating. I love this stuff. I can talk about it all day.
SPEAKER_02But top shot, you didn't you you started out pre-accepting the results and you were in pretty good shape, and then you worried about the results. Yeah. And worrying about the results will always cause you to overtry. It's just like talking to pretty girls. If you're worried about the results, you're gonna overtry and you're gonna lose command of the English language. Or the British language. I mean, English, American, British, you know, these aren't the same languages.
SPEAKER_00Jam, jelly, gas, petrol. But you no, you're absolutely right. And there was also a lot of pressure to do well for the team. I didn't necessarily perhaps anticipate the close connections I made to my team. So then letting them down became an additional factor. But but but all of that, you know, with the identity, etc., absolutely rings true. Like I think that's a fascinating insight. And I think that for anyone listening here who's struggling with their mental game, wants to up it, improve it, you absolutely have to be the person that they reach out to. Now, you have three books, and I want to give you a chance to talk about them because I I was fascinated by the titles. So give us the the 30-second elevator thing on all of your books.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So when I became the first grandmaster in Ohio, you have to remember it was thought to be impossible. Okay. So don't even think about being a grandmaster because the the internet was in its infancy. There was no YouTube, there was no, you couldn't watch Rob Latham shoot a stage unless you were at Nashville's. And the tricky thing about Robbie is you can't learn anything from Robbie Latham because always shooting, always moving, never missing. Pretty good, pretty good strategies. But there's nothing to, there's nothing to see, right? It isn't like watching Todd Jarrett, where it's like a caricature of a cartoon character. There's leaning and there's there's things you can learn. Okay. So I just decided to uh put part-times on things, and you can tell I was chubby when this book was written because my my face isn't on it. But you can always tell. But I this was during the Bill Clinton magazine ban of the 90s. Remember that? When when you couldn't you couldn't buy magazines that held more than 10 rounds? So I have now acquired an open gun. So I have a red dot and I have hi-cat magazines. And I felt like a criminal. I was like, ooh, bazooka in my basement that Bill Clinton doesn't know about. And I was addicted to it, right? And I learned about part-times, and then once I made Grandmaster, everybody kept saying, How'd you do it? Well, I said, I'll have these 12 drills, and I'd write them down, and here's the 12 drills. And then I said, Well, maybe I should quit giving these away. Maybe I should write a book. Yeah. Okay. So I wrote this book.
SPEAKER_00And for those who are listening and not watching, it's called Refinement and Repetition.
SPEAKER_02Refinement and Repetition. And do you remember Kinko's? Yeah, I do. I would go to Kinko's once a week, about 10 o'clock at night, and I would literally make the books on the copy machine and spiral bind them myself. And the first, the first couple of hundred shipped like this with just a clear, a clear piece of plastic over the top. And then sales picked up, and I said, okay, well, we need to get a cover. So we've so we did that. So refinement repetition is how to make grandmaster in the 90s. Okay. And then I ran into the to the mental game problem. Okay. So principles of performance is hey, I'm a grandmaster. Now what do I do? It's sort of a journal of experience. And then get to work is, hey, I've got this pretty well figured out. And my thing now is saving people years of struggle. Because I remember about five years ago, I went to a class and I was like, hmm, why am I working with mostly 50? 50 and 60 years old. And I looked in the mirror and I went, oh. Oh. Because well, people that are 50 and 60, they don't have 10 years to screw around. They gotta get this figured out now. So I'm I'm I'm 50 or 60, I have time and I have money. Okay. So I can do pretty much whatever I want in this in this hobby. Okay. But what I don't have is 10 years to screw around. So my specialty is saving people years of struggle.
SPEAKER_03Right? And so shoot the the the the shooting sports, they're at least 75% mental.
SPEAKER_02At least. And the the better you get, the more mental it is. And people think that shooting is different than other things that they're good at. Okay. So if somebody's good at their job, they have strategy, they know what to do. They have skill, they've done it before, they have confidence, they know it'll be okay. So pressure makes them better. I have strategy, skill, and confidence. In shooting, they don't. And because these sports have a duality of scoring, there's always a reason to be upset. I can have a fast run that's sloppy, I can have an accurate run that's slow, and I'm never happy. And because I'm never happy, I have nothing to duplicate. So those are the three books. Um Refinement Repetition has made hundreds of grandmasters. Hundreds.
SPEAKER_03Um because the skills are pretty simple.
SPEAKER_02You know, and and you you gotta remember this this whole thing started because I wanted to sound like Eddie Van Halen. And and I believed I could. You see, I've got a Van Halen tattoo right here. I actually have two Van Halen tattoos. There's one one there and one there. Okay. I wanted to make Van Halen noises. And I never I remember my dad died before I knew he was imperfect. So there was no reason I couldn't make Van Halen noises. And then when I heard about Grandmaster, there was no reason I couldn't do it, all because my dad died at Perkins.
SPEAKER_00I think that learning from you in person would be an absolute blast. So where do people go to do just that? Where do you want them to connect with you, follow, et cetera?
SPEAKER_02All right. So we do we do online mental management at least once a month. So mental management is a six-hour class held over three typically weekdays. We'll do them like on Wednesday evenings typically. Um it's just a Zoom call. It's super easy. And you get basically this, except you get to ask questions. Okay. So we we present mental management. We learned about the conscious, subconscious, and self-image. So that's the first step is the online mental management. Okay. And that applies to any sport, by the way. We just we just did our first event for junior athletes, and uh we had these two adorable girls. Uh, they have such new, new wave names. It was uh Bland and the most catchy, uh like Manchester or something like that. I don't know. But at any rate, one's one's a soccer player and one's a track uh person. And and the track one hates track and doesn't want to do it, but she's good at it, so her parents are making her do it. So we we got to work on the mental game for a track star who doesn't want to be a track star. It was so awesome, so great. But so we do we do mental management every month, uh typically on weekdays. That is the single best investment you can make in your shooting career. Most people will spend five to ten thousand dollars a year on their shooting sports if they're if they're serious about it. Yeah. And they'll tell you that the mental game is 90%. And I say, okay, will you pay me $9,000, 90% of your budget to solve 90% of your problems? And they go, No, I won't. Okay. But that's the first step. And then if you want to do a class on the range, that is the easiest thing in the world to do. If you have a match that you go to and you have access to that match director, say, hey, I want to bring Steve Anderson out for a class. And he'll go, Oh, I've heard of Steve Anderson. Here's how we do it. And then you'll send me an email and say, hey, come to my range, do a class. You get the class for free. Literally, all you have to do is connect me to the range and you get the class for free. And I put the and then I put the class on my website, and we have literally the best time ever.
SPEAKER_03And what is the website address?
SPEAKER_02AndersonShooting.com. Perfect. On Facebook, Anderson Shooting, YouTube, Anderson Shoot In. Um, I just unlocked 1,200, probably, probably 1,000 over 1,200 podcasts. You could literally go back and listen to my very first podcast. Can I tell you about that briefly? I know I know we're almost on the back. Absolutely. Okay. So one of my hobbies is getting divorced, okay? And I had been, I was going through my second divorce. As you might imagine, I'm a difficult guy to be married to because I do a really weird thing. I meet women's needs and expect them to meet mine.
SPEAKER_03Like, what's the problem? So I was writing these these these articles about my divorce to be like this cathartic healing process.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Because at my core, I'm probably a writer. I love to write songs, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm writing these articles for Facebook. Facebook was was new, and I'm tying them into shooting at the end so people just don't lose their mind. Okay. But I'm getting this cult following of people that are like, ooh, Steve, you got to write more articles. We love this. And this guy, he sent me a message, he said, you should do a podcast. And I said, What's a podcast? And he said, Well, it's talk radio for the internet. And I went, ooh, I love Rush Limbaugh. I love Mark Levin. I'm going to do a podcast. So I wrote the article and I I recorded it and into the microphone. And it was like, every life will have a fork in the road. And the choice you make will determine. And I sent it to this guy, and he goes, It's terrible. Don't ever do that again. And I said, Hey, this was your idea. What are we doing here? And he goes, No, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. Just turn the microphone on and start talking. So I did that. And I sent it to him, and he goes, That's perfect. Keep doing that. And that's how the podcast got started. Because I was, I was driving all over the world, running record stores and trying not to get stabbed, listening to talk radio. But one thing, I think we discussed this off the air, Rush Limbaugh never listened to other talk radio because he didn't want to be influenced by it. And that's kind of the kind of the rule I live by. I don't want to listen to other podcasts and be influenced by them because I don't want to be artificially steered. I don't want to be sent down the wrong fork of the road. But yeah, let's so so do the online mental management. Um, we're gonna keep doing the ones for for junior athletes, because if if you have a child in your home playing sports, you are that child's mental coach. Because their technical coach doesn't know anything about the mental pain. And they're gonna make a lot of really well-intentioned mistakes. So the parent has to be sort of the filter between the coach and the child. Because if if if somebody's struggling, they either don't know what to do, they haven't done it enough, or they don't believe they're gonna be successful.
SPEAKER_03It's it's as simple as that. And those things can be fixed. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having taken the time to jump on here for this podcast. They were wealth of information, mate. It really was.
SPEAKER_02Dude, I I'm just telling you, I can save people so many years of struggle. I have studied this thing for 25 years, I've got it figured out. Okay. Fantastic. One one thing I do want to ask you. Go ahead. I'm I'm I'm so sorry to to drag this out. I feel like I've I've met my my British twin here, and I want to get to know my my British twin. He's far away, mate. When when you're teaching self-defense, okay, you are preparing people for a situation in which nobody knows what's going to happen next. How can you be sure you're giving them the right advice?
SPEAKER_00You absolutely can't. Because there's so many variables involved with it. And I don't teach uh self-defense anymore. For the last 10-15 years, I've taught people how to avoid it. Occasionally I'll teach edge weapons class, I teach a lot of pistols and stuff. But a lot of it comes down to the avoidance rather than trying to get somebody up to a standard that they can weather the storm of an assault. Because for for most people, they've never experienced the kind of pain that comes with an assault. So trying to prepare them, at least when I was teaching, a lot of instances for me was inflicting a reasonable slash moderate amount of pain so that they could figure out how to deal with it, to get through it, to push through even when their body went, you know what? Hell, that really hurts. I don't like this. Like, yes, no, you may not like it, but you're already engaged, and turning and running at this junction's probably going to be pretty tough to do. You're gonna have to finish, you've got to fight through. So there's that mental aspect of sucking up the pain and also then realizing they're tougher than they expect. But as far as sort of a blanket, you know, how do we make everybody? You can't, because there are so many variables. Again, right? And you know, that sort of led me to teaching defensive pistol and teaching firearms from the standpoint of this is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter if you're outweighed, somebody's you know, necessarily faster than you, or whatever. You have the capacity to end this if you feel like your life is in danger. Here's the tool to do it. So you know, it's sort of a it progressed, you know, along this scale until I arrived at a point where I'm like, okay, yeah, for most people, this is probably gonna be not the answer, but it's certainly an answer, and it's pretty close to the answer.
SPEAKER_02That's cool. Yeah, because you know, teaching tactics, I I don't know anything about tactics. I don't know anything about tactical except what's usually green or brown. However, shooting faster and more accurately is something I can absolutely help people. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and that's the simplest thing to do when you think about it. If if I was to stand up in front of someone and say, Okay, I'm gonna teach you how to, you know, jab cross left hook, right kick, elbow, headbutt, you know, throat strike, whatever, how many reps are you gonna have to perform to get that? And then how many variables? What happens if that person is you know a foot taller than you? Okay, well, jab cross to a face on someone that's considerably taller than you is actually very hard to do. So now you're changing a target location. Okay, that is exhausting, and I'm gonna have to spend six months, nine months, twelve months truly working the physical elements there to become proficient. Well, you want to draw your gun real quick, you know, and uh shoot in close proximity to the threat.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, uh, we can learn that, you know, probably in a weekend and in a couple of weeks of practice. If you can get that thing in the into the fight, well, you've got the answer. And it didn't take you necessarily months. So I completely agree with you. You know, the simplest answer is often the most um important, and certainly the one in that particular case that will work most of the time, as long as you know you've taken into account how to shoot in close proximity to a threat.
SPEAKER_02That's cool. Yeah, then that that makes so much sense because you know, in the tactical world, they they talk about you won't rise to the occasion, you'll meet your level of training.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And you're 100% correct. Drawing from appendix to an attacker at bad breath distance is never going to change, no matter how tall he is or whether it's light or dark. That's a that's a really good that's a really good um perspective. I just I would I would be so uncomfortable telling people to do something that I wasn't absolutely sure would work. And that's what's always made me sort of not skeptical, but nervous about self-defense training is I I can't be sure that what I'm trying to do is is going to save their lives. But what you just said is pretty cool because drawing from concealment to a target at close proximity is probably going to be a pretty good idea once that once that green light goes off, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's just learning to, you know, to fight with that firearm index as close to you as probably humanly possible and know you can still be accurate. And that does take just a little bit of finessing, a little bit of practice.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00It just takes getting used to having that firearm going off in close proximity to you and potentially your face. And of course, there are steps you can take to minimize that, but that is a significantly easier than say, because what I used to teach was a combination of Muay Thai and boxing. And I just left out the bits that I felt were superfluous or or sort of Hollywood crap that would just get your ass kicked. I'm like, okay, where's the realism start? Where is the where's the practical elements? And what do we need to really work here to be proficient? And even in that, there were people that were not prepared to put in you know the training necessary to become months, if not years. I would say a good six to nine months can get you a fairly long way. But the caveat to that is are you you can get there physically, but just like you, I imagine a lot of ways, mentally are you there? Are you are you prepared to fight injured? Because you're gonna get injured. It's an attack, it's not pretty. You know, can you push through that pain? And there were a lot of people that didn't. I had guys all the time rolling. I want to learn Muay Thai, it's gonna be great. And I'm like, we'll find out how great you think it is after our first sparring session, yes. And then you'd see the shock on their face, they're like, that really hurts, and this sucks. And I'm like, yes, that's the point. You have to be my okay, I'll just detour for a minute. My instructor, the very first lesson I had with him, he had me stand in front of him and he did a nice round house Muay Thai kick to the outside of my leg, and I had no idea what was coming. He just said, stand there, and he then he kicked. And I remember falling to the ground, he went into the house to have a cup of tea, and I was rolling around in the grass for the next two minutes, wondering how my life had come to this to this place, because it hurt so bad. Questioning every life choice ever. Yeah. Question them all. But what ultimately happened? I got up limping, and he said, When I teach you how to do this kick, and when I teach you how to do this elbow, and when I teach you how to do this, you need to have the confidence that it's gonna work. You have to fully commit to the to the implementation of that technique, that elbow, that strike, whatever. And you can only do that if you know how badly it hurts on the other side. Otherwise, you'll second guess yourself. So it was a fantastic lesson. And although I didn't go to that degree with my students back when I was teaching, I did do a version of that in a number of different ways to say you have to have the confidence to know if you throw this shit and it hits, it's gonna hurt them. And even if they don't go down, you've kind of, you know, it's like a video game. You've taken 20% of their power, energy, or even commitment at very worst. In most cases, you'll take a lot more than that. But you have to be confident in what you're doing. And that helped. But there are a lot of people that said, Well, I don't want you to punch and kick me or, you know, whatever in the face. This is really horrible. And I'm like, that's the bloody point.
SPEAKER_02Strategy, skill, confidence.
SPEAKER_03Perfect.
SPEAKER_02That's those are the three pillars of the mental game for everything in life. Do I know what to do? Have I done it a bunch? Do I believe it'll work? And what what you discovered was people aren't willing to do it a bunch, right? You you're gonna show them what to do, but they have to do it a bunch before it becomes subconscious. And then the the confidence pillar is do I believe it's going to work? And what's really interesting is people, people will will take mental management um fr from me and they'll say, Wow, this has helped my shooting, but it's also helped my job and my marriage and my relationship with my kids. And I say, Yeah, because this is how the human mind works under pressure. And then they'll say to me, ooh, check out this thing that's just like mental management. And that to me is like saying, Oh, you're Catholic. Have you heard about Buddhism? And I'm like, I've got mental management. Don't send me things that are similar. I've already got all the answers. If I know if I can create strategy, if I can create skill, and I can create confidence, I can be successful in anything. Okay, strategy, skill, confidence, conscious, subconscious, self-image, I can teach you all of that. We do the mental management classes at least once a month. Uh go to AndersonShooting.com, click on training. And again, if you want to do a range class and learn how to save years of struggle in competition shooting, IDPA, USPSA, IPSC, Steel Challenge, doesn't matter. Oh, and I can work miracles in PRS. PRS rifle shooting. Miracles. Because PRS rifle shooting, most of it is subconscious, but the wind calls are not. Okay. And if they can, and I don't I don't know how to do it because I don't think there's a simulator, although people are working on them. If you can get subconscious wind calls, you can destroy PRS, because that's the key to everything. So I can make magic there too. It's all happens at AndersonShooting.com.
SPEAKER_00Man, I've had so much fun talking to you, Terry. Thank you, mate. Again, I really appreciate you jumping on here. We've shared a wealth of information. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02Great.
SPEAKER_00As always, don't forget to subscribe, like, and share. If you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and hit that bell icon so you never miss one of our episodes. It's a free and easy way to support the show and help us bring you the guests that you want to hear from. For now, I hope all of you have a splendid day, and we'll see you in the next episode. Cheers so much.