#129： Competition Gun Shooting and Self-Defense With Mike Seeklander
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss firearms, competition shooting, and self defense in general. In this episode, we talk with Mike Seeklander, a world-class firearms instructor who travels the country teaching not only citizens but also law enforcement agencies how to be better tacticians with weapons and not with weapons.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well today on the
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show we're discussing firearms and in particular we're talking about a world of firearms that i
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didn't know much about and that's competition shooting my guest today his name is mike
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seeklander he's based here in tulsa oklahoma he's actually helped me with content about firearms
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on the site and he's a champion competitive shooter he's actually one of the first contestants on
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history's channel's top shot if you've seen that show so today mike and i discuss about three gun
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competition shooting how you get started what's involved so if you're looking for a new hobby
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new sport and you like guns you'll get a lot out of this podcast and besides being a competitive
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shooter mike is also a firearms and self-defense instructor so he travels the country teaching
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not only citizens but also law enforcement agencies how to be better tacticians with weapons and not
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with weapons so mike and i also get into a little bit about self-defense all right so really interesting
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podcast i think you'll like it so without further ado mike seeklander
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all right mike seeklander welcome to the show thanks ma'am all right mike uh so you are
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a world-class firearms instructor as well as competitor uh can you tell us a little bit about
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your background how did you end up doing what you're doing man it's um the the background is
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pretty diverse i from childhood love to shoot love guns and um you know actually i joined the marine
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corps in 1990 and sometime in that time frame i ran across some videos of these guys shooting
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do what we call practical shooting running and gunning and and you know i shot a handgun as a
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young child i hunted i did all these different things but when i saw what these guys could do
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their ability to shoot you know and the speeds they could accomplish with the handguns i was like man
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i'm in love with this i gotta try this so throughout my marine corps career at the tail end and then
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later on in law enforcement at the same time while i've always been doing you know tactical or defensive
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stuff i've been competing you know as a as a shooter and now i'm a sponsored professional
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shooter so it's uh it's been it's been an interesting road uh you uh you were air marshal
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right is that what you did in law enforcement you know it's funny your listeners won't won't think i
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can hold down a job so basically i went from the marine corps and then moved to knoxville tennessee
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where i was a police officer there for years and then 9-11 happened and because of my shooting
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background and some of my connections i had uh connect with the instructors in the federal air
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marshal academy and uh man i made a made a phone call and they said wow you know so and so and you
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can do that and i'm like yeah and they said come on come on up for an interview so i did and uh the
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next thing i know i am the lead firearms instructor for the federal air marshal what we used to call phase
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two training program which was you know after 9-11 they hired all these fams and then we had to
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train them so i was in charge of the initial firearms program of course there were you know a
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lot of instructors that worked with me and and for me and contractors and special forces guys and it
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was really a great place to learn a lot awesome so uh you you mentioned okay there's a difference
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between like you said there's practical shooting and there's competition shooting you're a sponsored
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competitive shooter can you talk a little bit about competitive shootings i think that's a world that a lot
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of people aren't familiar with um what are the events in competitive shooting i guess there's one
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that's called three gun right right yeah yeah so when we're talking when we talk about practical
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shooting the original sport called ipsic which is the international practical shooting confederation
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was started years and years ago and basically it was a a gun handling and skills test made up by these
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old gun fighters guys that carry 1911s and wanted to find a way to test their skills and that evolved
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into the u.s version of the sport which is the united states practical shooting association and later on
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idpa which is called the international defensive pistol association and the bottom line is it's um it's
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almost all done from the holster different sports require concealment but if you can imagine running and
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gunning where you know speed and accuracy is always balanced so for example you know a lot of
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competitive sports you know you shoot a bullseye very slow with a rifle or a handgun or a bow and
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arrow with practical shooting you know we're constantly shooting on the move i mean like i said it was a
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combative oriented sport now of course these days you know they're really fancy handguns in certain
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divisions it's not um it's not really practical in any aspect unless you shoot idpa but it's running
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and gunning and you mentioned three gun of course there's a sport of three gun which is instead of just
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competing with handguns you're you're shooting the rifles handguns and shotguns and oftentimes you're
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shooting all three guns on one stage in a match wow so you are you like when you say running and gunning
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so you are on the move are you getting behind obstacles or barriers and then shooting from those positions
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all of the above man if you can imagine you know we don't necessarily i wouldn't say on we're on
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obstacles like an obstacle course but similar i mean there are walls there are doors there are positions
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we can shoot while we're moving we're literally shooting targets and then running to the next
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targets and shooting you know the next array of targets and originally what happened was they said
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we're going to set up an array of of threat targets and then you're going to have to run around
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and use cover and do all these different things well that evolved into a more athletic sport which is
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really when i describe it as running and gunning you know if you get on my youtube page or whatever
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page out there and you know look up idp or uspsa or my name you'll find videos of us running and
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gunning and that's literally i mean it's an athletic event but skill with a handgun rifle or shotgun is
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also really really important to do well in these sports and they're they're incredibly fun they're not
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slow and you know some of the sports out there to me are maybe a little bit more boring i mean i enjoy
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them but they're just not as fun this is a there it's a fun sport man yeah does that does the does
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that carry over to like actual self-defense it it does but the people that use it need to be aware
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that they are in a sport and what they're going to get from doing sports like that is they're going
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to get to test their gun handling and their marksmanship skills under stress but they're not
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going to learn good tactics for example so someone that's a serious defensive shooter needs to
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needs to do both they need to have you know the ability to shoot in the sport at the same time
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they need to understand good tactics you know self-defense type tactics we'll talk about tactics
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here in a little bit um but here's a thing you were on top shot history channel top shot uh can you
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tell us a little bit about how that happened can you tell us about the experience there and i wasn't
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on very long i'm i made i'm i'm famous man nobody can ever claim my title because i was the first person
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to ever get kicked off oh no i will and you know it's it is what it is it was a it was a really
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unique show and it was something i'm i'm proud of even though i got my butt kicked and i i gotta you
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know we all lose here and there but the the deal was they started recruiting people from my sport and
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all these other sports and the history channel put this show together and basically it was it was the
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the reality tv show where they put all these different shooters you know some of us professional
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shooters some somebody some people that were just from the military and etc in a house and then we
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had to go to these different competitions and uh if you screwed up and you know we had the red red
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team and the blue team and if you lost and of course you had to vote and two team members had to shoot
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it off and if you lost the shoot off you had to go home um and i went into it pretty much blind i mean
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nobody had any idea what the show was all about how to train for it what it would be like and it was
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unique because you know you had hollywood people setting up a tv show and they didn't know anything
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really about guns or shooting so there were a lot of little things they did that probably could have
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been done better but it was a neat deal you know lots of people watch the show it was a great thing
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for the gun culture yeah they had some weird like wild west type stuff i remember yeah man wild west
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some of the shows they were shooting from these ropes they were hanging off of they did all kinds of
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unique challenges and that's probably my biggest disappointment you know other than getting my
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butt beat was that i didn't get to do all these other fun challenges all the other stuff yeah so
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one thing i love about mike so here some for you who don't know uh mike has actually mike lives here
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near tulsa uh this is in owasso right kind of found that area uh anyways uh mike has helped me out on
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content with about firearms on the website so if you google or search on the site how to fire handgun
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how to fire shotgun how to fire rifle uh you're gonna see mike uh looking all scary with his bald
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head and goatee no but one thing i love about mike is that he makes firearms extremely approachable
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for the average guy um and so with that in mind i mean for the someone so the guys listening who who
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might want to get into firearms right for whatever reason whether it's just for a hobby because let's
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admit it shooting guns is just fun making things go boom is fun yeah or for personal defense uh what's
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the best way to get started do you sign up for a class do you just go through the range what do you
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do yeah you know man and obviously i'll certainly toot my own horn i i have classes that i sell and i
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have online programs we can talk about that later but you know the thing that i tell everybody is you
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know first of all you need to basically get rid of the fear and say you know i'm not going to be
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afraid of this anymore and here's the deal guys you we are the worst because we're afraid of doing
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anything that's unknown especially when we're talking about something in the in the manly gun
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culture it's like wait i don't know how to i don't know how to hold a gun or shoot a gun i don't want
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to admit that to my family or friends or you know other people out there well the reality is you know
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if you go if you go to any range and find any good instructor and uh or any kind of program
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especially competitive programs people are the nicest people you'll ever ever meet so i would
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tell the listeners just jump into it you know go to a local gun range or contact me i'll help you find
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one and uh you know get into it and then from there you know don't rush it you know go to the gun stores
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that you know rent handguns rent a handgun rent a rifle rent a shotgun you know read your articles
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brett i mean all the basics are there and then once you're ready to take it the next level then you
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could consider you know buying some books or videos there's lots of good ones out there taking an
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online course or actually taking you know maybe a four hour or one day course i don't recommend the
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new people take like the two-day course or three-day course because that's very intensive and it's it's
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hard on your body so shoot a little bit first get comfortable you know and then and then jump into it
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and then if you want to try the competitive sports watch out because once you try them you know you're
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going to be hooked they're just they're so much fun well speaking of like firearms instructors like what
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should you look for in a good instructor because there's lots of them out there there's really
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there's no um accreditation right i mean that that has its vices and virtues right there's been a
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frozen cause uh but i mean so with that in mind what what should you look for an instructor well first
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you're right it does have its vices number one because the problem is especially since the the
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global war on terrorism is winding down however you want to put that there are lots and lots and
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lots of guys and gals out there that are now instructors and instructing and so i would tell people a few
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things number one now the nra does certify instructors and there are some certification
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programs in the federal and state local law enforcement entities just because someone has a
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instructor certification doesn't mean a lot to me but here's what i would tell people number one look
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for someone that has a really good base of knowledge meaning you know if you're going to go take a class
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from someone the first thing you should be able to do is you know go meet them and watch them shoot
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and or see videos of them shooting and or know of their shooting background because to really be a
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good instructor you have have to have a body of knowledge because i would want students to go to
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someone that has a very deep body of knowledge versus just a certification and then of course the
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second thing is the certification helps because if someone is a certified instructor at least they
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understand the format of instruction you know and i wrote a book last year called the art of
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instruction and that's what it teaches people it doesn't teach people specific text techniques that
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i want them to teach it embodies you know the energy and the structure of instruction because
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you know as you know right if someone is a good instructor and they have the ability to teach
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something that the student's job is simply to enjoy the process and learn if the instructor is a bad
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instructor or god forbid teaches bad techniques then it'll it's very hard to erase that memory or that bad
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experience for the student you know so but that's my recommendation i'll give you one last thing
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if you ever go to an instructor that won't shoot in front of you or that won't do things whatever
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they're instructing if they're a piano instructor they better play the piano in front of you if they
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don't do it in front of you then they're not very good to find someone else all right what about guys
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who are about who want to buy their first firearm uh any advice on that is it something to just rent
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stuff and like find what you like and what should we be looking for i will tell you this dude if you
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and if you haven't seen this you might like this too there i just did a youtube video on a trip to the
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gun store where literally i paid uh paid up my videographer to go to the gun store with me and i
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videoed the whole thing and i talk about how you would select a handgun and selecting a family of guns
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because and here's the deal i i go to so many classes where people show up and they have the wrong
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gear and the wrong gun for them it just doesn't work for them so one of the biggest tips i give
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on that video which is on my youtube page is rent them exactly you're you're you hit a spot on because
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once you rent a gun you know what it feels like to fire the second thing is once you've rented it
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get some instruction before you buy that handgun because just because it feels good to you doesn't
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mean it is good you know what i'm saying yeah as a new new shooter you don't know what you don't
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know i mean you're you know you innocently lack the knowledge to really select the proper handgun
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and gear initially so go rent a few guns get some instruction shoot the instructor's guns most
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instructors have a dozen different handguns that they've you know they've bought over the years
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um you know but like i said the video that i did is is kind of the because everybody told me mike
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your books and your videos are great but you don't have anything that's very basic like i'm brand new
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to this what do i do the second i walk in the gun store and i teach that in the video yeah i mean
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the thing i found um is that you can get really you can spend a lot of money oh man like wasted money
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too uh trying to figure out if you had just taken the time to try stuff before you actually buy
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yeah and the thing about that is once you've bought it's it's uh you know all guns retain their value
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but they're not going to retain the same value so it just it i've like i said i did the video because
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i've had so many students that show up that that are that have been so misinformed in their gun
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purchase or their gear purchase trip to the store i mean it's it's really pitiful so yeah so all right
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so you you buy your gun um you know you want to own that but you want to be responsible gun owner so
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what should a a typical firearms regimen look like if you want to be really serious and really adept
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at using your firearm okay well for man before i answer it let's separate in the into the two
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different arenas number one if you're going to be if you're training for defensive reasons or self
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defense that's a completely different context than training for competition so if i were to say and
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more likely most of your listeners they're probably going to want to be they're going to they're going
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to want to use a firearm for self-defense maybe home defense vehicle defense whatever so you know
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the bottom line there to approach that in a serious nature is to learn how to build the skills
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with drills and the drills have to be built properly so for example most of my skill brett and most of
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the professional shooters i know spend a large amount of time dry firing and manipulating their
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firearms at home in a safe you know there's some safety rules you have to follow but basically
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handling the firearm learning how to draw it learning how to reload it learning how to clear malfunctions
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and those those skills can all be practiced and taught in dry fire you don't have to go to the
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range at all you can you matter of fact in my online course all of the first drills are dry fire
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drills like like the first 15 of them you never have to leave your house and you can do it in a safe
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area in your home and and develop a tremendous amount of skill without you know firing a live round
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of course the next step is to find a good range and go to the range and whether you're getting
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instruction from videos or a person is to start to put those aspects into use when you're actually
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firing that you know the rifle hanging or shotgun yourself okay so it's dry fire every day something
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you should probably be doing man almost every single day you know it's like fitness you know
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if you don't stick to it and do it you know routinely four or five times a week you're not
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going to get anything out of it but you know three days a week dry fire for 10 to 15 minutes
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will develop skills that are really unbelievable to most people you know yeah and then try to get
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to the range what once a week once a week man yeah if you get the range once a week once a week
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you're golden i know people that once they develop the initial skill will maintain their skill
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every other week maybe once a month for like half a day you know for a longer range session
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you know but once a week is really good if you're dry firing three or four days and going to the live
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fire range once a week i mean you're going to develop some serious skills and what about competition
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is that something you have to get a little more serious about and spend more time with well you do but
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here's the thing i'll tell everybody out there don't wait until you think you're at a certain level
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to shoot your first match it's much better just to show up and get into it now i'm not saying they
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have to go to a match and shoot the first one they ever see go and watch one initially if you're new
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to this stuff but don't be that person that waits for one or two or three years until you think you have
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a certain level of skill to go to the match because what you're going to realize is once you get to the
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match itself you missed all of that fun and all of all of that experience along the way and and
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secondly um you probably don't have the skills necessary to be able to participate in the sport
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so and i know it sounds weird my recommendation is to get a basic level of skill go watch a match
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and if it's like man this looks really fun jump into it and you're going to have a half a dozen
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people there that will help you out and give you gear alone your gear you know because people
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generally in our sports are very friendly so we've talked a lot about like sort of beginner
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um firearm you know for people who want to get started but what about uh people who are seasoned
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firearm practitioners are there are there mistakes that you commonly see that they make or
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things that they're overlooking in their own self-defense training or competition training
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yeah man they um here's the deal i don't and i don't say this to insult anybody but most most of us
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are taught if we if we're a shooter we were taught to shoot probably by a parent probably by our father
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okay and uh some of us are taught really well some of us were not taught that well and you know one of
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the comments and emails i get all of the time is that when people get on some of the free stuff that
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i give out the articles on my blog or the videos or whatever and they try some of the you know the
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techniques let's talk you know for example handgun shooting how to properly grip a handgun and how to
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manage the trigger better so you can shoot it faster and more accurately because i think there's
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always a balance that that needs to be met people just this light bulb goes off and they realize how
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wrong they've been taught along the way most most people that come to my classes uh don't know how to
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grip a handgun properly uh they fail to understand how to manage the trigger properly and what i'm you
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know brett what i'm talking about is to shoot it fast and accurately and understand fast and
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accurately that's applicable in both the self-defense arena and the competitive arena it's
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the same skill sets we don't need to separate those um you know and then from the self-defense
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defense you know perspective there's boy there's a lot of information out there especially if you
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start to get on and and follow some of these videos that that are wrong or you're just watching some
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crackerjack do whatever i mean you know unfortunately people learn wrong and that's most of my classes i spend
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a large majority of the time fixing problems that were ingrained you know habits bad habits all right
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so let's talk about you to mention tactics right is an important part of self-defense so i was gonna
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the thing that was i got where was i going with this well i'm gonna have the guy my editor edit this
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out um okay so yeah listen just the as far as tactics go a lot of you see a lot of in the tactical
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world everyone's like obsessed with the gun right it's like my gun you know if i got a problem
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well i'll just shoot the guy i mean it's sort of like a joke um on our site amongst me and my my
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fellow writers is that whenever you publish like a uh an article on hand-to-hand combatives like
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croft mcgaard or something like that there's always going to be some guys going to say well i'll just
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shoot him with my gun i know dude all the time um so i mean let's talk about tactics so what role does
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the firearm play in self-defense well here's the deal first of all you what you just said was so
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incredibly true and uh the problem with that is the problem with people saying well i'll just shoot
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them is number one you may not be able to because you might not be able to get your gun out and what
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we do is i do what's called um we do a lot of mma type combative stuff here but i do it with some
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guys that are also armed with blue guns and training knives so we're using safe plastic firearms or a
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little you know what's called cert firearms and training knives and what we do is we just arm
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ourselves like we'd normally be armed and everything is in play strikes kicks knees wrestling and then we
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work on how we would get to the gun or get to the knife or you know draw the handgun etc and i'll tell
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you man i'm pretty good at drawing a handgun i've been doing it professionally for about 20 years now
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and i cannot get a handgun out more often than not against a motivated attacker that's punching me
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in the face so when you say that you're exactly right people need to have a self-defense uh continuum
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for lack of a better word they need to understand uh distance they need to understand how to use their
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hands and their feet uh for both striking as well as movement offline or maybe sprint movement where
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they're literally sprinting and putting a vehicle or something between them and the attacker
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and when we're talking about you know self-defense it's not just one part it's not like okay i've got
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a handgun i've got a care permit now i'm able to defend myself no no no it goes way beyond that you
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understand and that's the first thing i try to get across in most of my classes and yeah i mean that
00:23:00.460
that whole distance thing is because i've done that some i've done a similar drill like that where
00:23:04.580
you had a guy with a knife um you had i had my fire you know a blue gun you know in my in holstered
00:23:11.280
not even hole it was like where i can you know conceal carry and he attacked me and i could never
00:23:15.060
get a a shot off and i got stabbed multiple times and died multiple times it was really humbling um
00:23:21.900
so yeah i mean i guess so an important part of of tactics in self-defense is being situationally
00:23:28.100
aware and you talk a lot about this and you you taught you taught me this really kind of cool game
00:23:32.840
to improve your situational awareness uh can you talk about that a little bit well i'm thinking we
00:23:38.380
were talking about the uh the where we were doing the identification and later on you kind of test
00:23:43.560
your buddy or test whoever you're with to see what they saw yeah yeah yeah well you know and
00:23:48.020
basically i turn it into a game and i'll actually i play this with my nine-year-old son believe it
00:23:52.320
or not so we'll be in a weird area and um i will spot someone that maybe looks like they're out of
00:23:58.100
place or whatever and then later on i'll just whoever i'm with hey what'd you see in the store
00:24:03.660
who'd you see in the store that was out of place or that you know and the bottom line is what i try
00:24:08.120
to do is get them to recall information so to really develop uh aware what we call awareness because
00:24:14.000
of awareness is the first step in avoidance everybody always says i'm gonna avoid the fight
00:24:19.160
i'm gonna i'm gonna avoid of what well you can't avoid unless you're aware first and that's the first
00:24:24.240
thing is turning your your senses back on because we're so dumbed down in in the world you know our
00:24:29.340
heads are stuck in our cell phones you know we're thinking about other things we don't we're just not
00:24:34.440
aware of our surroundings where if i dropped you know all of your listeners off right now
00:24:38.320
in kodiak alaska on a river and the salmon are probably running sometime soon and they knew there
00:24:44.520
were kodiak grizzly bears around the first thing they would do would be turn up their awareness level
00:24:49.200
you know what i'm saying yeah but we're not we don't do that in society so the awareness game is
00:24:53.340
very simple you just play with your you know spouse or friend or children or whoever else say
00:24:57.500
what'd you see inside walmart there were two guys that were weird did you see them if they if you
00:25:02.600
if you did what were they wearing what were they doing and and whoever catches those little details
00:25:08.120
of information wins the game you know so you start keeping track of points and for kids it becomes a
00:25:12.940
game and then the neat thing is you can ask them well do you think that person was a bad guy or a bad
00:25:17.780
woman you know bad and they'll say well yeah i think so and then you can ask them well who who was in
00:25:22.980
the store that could help you and they'll be like well there was a mother with two children because
00:25:26.760
a mother with two children is probably pretty safe or there was a police officer or security guard
00:25:30.560
in a gray uniform and that's you know that's how i make it into a game so yeah that i guess that whole
00:25:35.520
point of situation you talked about avoiding the fight and that's something i think a mentality
00:25:39.340
when things when you bring out your gun right like that's that's not a good day right that's a horrible
00:25:46.320
day it's a horrible day um and uh i mean i guess what i've noticed in firearms training
00:25:52.040
that i've taken is that as far as tactics go a lot of emphasis placed on how to not get in that
00:25:57.740
position in the first place and i guess situational awareness plays a big role in that well yeah man i
00:26:03.880
mean if you think about this all of these millions of concealed carry holders are doing the right thing
00:26:08.220
there i'm hoping they're getting some training they're carrying their firearms etc etc but even on the
00:26:13.240
best day if they had to defend their lives and they they had to shoot somebody they are gonna
00:26:18.960
they're gonna spend almost everything they have in their bank accounts unless they're super rich to
00:26:23.200
defend the right decision and i applaud them for that but if they could have just avoided that problem
00:26:28.540
if they could have avoided that fight altogether they're gonna be so much better off you know and
00:26:33.480
like you said you know a lot of people like i'll just shoot them it's not that easy it doesn't work
00:26:37.420
that way and more importantly if you do it's gonna be a miserable miserable experience it's one that i
00:26:42.680
recommend that you avoid entirely you know what i'm saying it's just a bad situation so you know
00:26:48.180
turn on that awareness and uh you know be a humble polite individual you know have the ability to
00:26:53.800
defend your life if you need to but man stay away from it if you can avoid it yeah all right so another
00:26:58.720
thing i love about uh your content mike and the way your approach towards self-defense is the role
00:27:04.720
physical fitness plays in that what role does physical fitness play in your philosophy and training
00:27:11.640
man physical fitness is everything and understand it ties in both my competitive shooting and what
00:27:18.160
i do in my sport as well as self-defense because as you know and you i know you're into some of the
00:27:22.760
lifting i've been watching some of your videos and everything else man a self-defense situation is
00:27:28.500
more than likely oftentimes going to start out in a fight where your fitness is going to have to be
00:27:33.980
really really high or the higher it is let's say that's the great equalizer the higher your fitness
00:27:39.000
level the better off you are um and you know then the bottom line is the more it increases your
00:27:44.880
skill set so it's you know having good fitness is like a force multiplier you're going to be able to
00:27:49.340
defend yourself better and i wrote about this not long ago i said you know what as a side if you never
00:27:54.140
get in a fight if you focus on your fitness what i call fighting fitness guess what you're going to
00:27:59.020
be in better shape you're you're going to be happier you're going to feel better and you're
00:28:02.020
going to live longer because you're more likely to die from heart disease than you are probably from a
00:28:06.240
gunfight yeah and one thing i think it's what's great about what's good about physical fitness for
00:28:10.480
self-defense not only is it useful in a fight but it's great for avoiding fights in the first place
00:28:16.040
because it acts as a deterrent right if you look strong and in shape you know here's the thing most
00:28:21.680
criminals they're criminals of opportunity they're only going to go after people they think they can
00:28:26.760
beat because they look out of shape they're fat they're small and skinny or whatever that's why most
00:28:31.520
people most attackers attack women that's right so if you look big and strong you're probably not
00:28:37.080
going to get messed with all that often yeah you know and another thing about that man when i started
00:28:41.460
training doing combatives and i've been doing martial arts for years i find that the more in shape i am
00:28:46.280
and the better trained i am my confidence level goes up to the point where people can read and they can
00:28:51.020
feel that and and more importantly that internal confidence level you know it's like i don't if a guy tries
00:28:56.980
to pick a fight with me i am completely comfortable walking away he can call me a coward he can call me
00:29:02.100
a scary cat that's fine i have no interest in fighting now if i do have to fight i know what my
00:29:06.840
abilities are but it gives you a confidence that allows you just to relax and walk away from things
00:29:11.560
and like you said you're right that that appearance is is a very very big deterrent to criminals you know
00:29:16.860
they prey on the weak so what does your fitness regimen look like is it lifting and cardio high intense
00:29:22.120
cardio man almost everything i'm doing now it has some sort of function so for example my cardio is
00:29:28.500
not cardio it's a circuit where i'm doing some sort of intervals and i'm doing a set of strikes on my
00:29:35.000
bag elbows hands knees legs whatever and then i'll work into weapon strikes believe it or not where i'm
00:29:41.260
working some of my close range techniques where i these are hard to describe on audio but video is
00:29:46.640
better and then i'll go right into something like kettlebell swings or some sort of functional
00:29:51.680
fitness type exercise that's my cardio routine i normally do you know one minute up one minute
00:29:57.740
down sometimes i vary that i really push the intensity on the up interval and then i try to
00:30:02.140
bring my heart rate back down and sometimes i'll go longer you know two two to three minutes because
00:30:07.160
that that's what you're going to do in a fight you're going to expend a whole bunch of energy and
00:30:10.820
then you're going to try to rest and that and that's what i want to try to mimic my lifting stuff and
00:30:15.220
i don't know if you know this or not brett but i i had both hips replaced yeah you mentioned that in
00:30:19.700
email so now my lifting has changed i mean i'm doing all of the stuff the strength i'm watching
00:30:24.700
your videos dude i'm doing deadlifts i'm starting to squat again and what i want to do is i want to
00:30:29.200
build as much strength as i possibly can with perfect form you know and i want to be able to
00:30:34.720
push someone off me i want to be able to pull my body weight up i want to be able to pick something
00:30:38.560
off the ground i want to i really focus a lot of my grip strength because grip strength is everything
00:30:45.000
in a fight so i focus you know really all of my fitness time is spent doing something i could
00:30:50.400
functionally use on the shooting circuit or in a fight do you ever do like uh exercise and then
00:30:56.700
like use like a assert pistol or airsoft pistol yeah in that routine i actually do man so for example
00:31:02.560
on my down set when i'm letting my heart rate go back down i'll use assert you know assert is made
00:31:07.540
by an lta so i'll sit there and i'll dry fire and work on maybe a trigger control drill with
00:31:11.680
two hands or trigger control with my strong hand or trigger control with my weak hand
00:31:16.180
or maybe my reloads and i'm doing that during the down because you know i'm using my trigger finger
00:31:21.700
i'm not i'm not using the big muscles and then when i go back into the next set i'm doing the next
00:31:26.520
cardio set whatever i'm trying to do you know what i'm saying so yeah i do i integrate that stuff all
00:31:31.000
of the time and it also allows me to integrate my firearm stuff when my heart rate is up so i get to
00:31:36.180
experiment what it's experience what it's like when i'm when my heart rate's gonna up because your
00:31:40.460
heart rate's gonna scream in a fight you know what i'm saying yeah yeah and that affects your
00:31:44.320
physical performance absolutely man and so for those of you who don't aren't familiar a assert
00:31:48.500
pistol is basically it's a laser pistol that looks like a glock exactly like a glock it's a it's a
00:31:54.180
really cool it's an awesome training tool it's a phenomenal training tool man and i use mine all
00:31:59.280
the time in my combative stuff i mean i'm i and the the founder mike hughes that developed he's
00:32:04.360
probably doesn't want to hear this but i i'm striking my bag with my pistol you know i mean i'm
00:32:08.660
literally doing weapon strikes with it i haven't been able to break it yet so yeah i got one and
00:32:13.240
uh i keep it by on my desk and i i've killed every single light switch in my house with it there you
00:32:18.080
go i literally if you listen to this yeah i got one in my hand right now pew pew pew literally man
00:32:24.360
you got to make the pew pew noise pew pew that's right no you don't don't do that don't do that
00:32:29.000
don't we got to delete that you got to delete that now don't delete it all right well mike where can
00:32:33.960
people find out more about your work and your online training programs that you have to offer
00:32:37.700
man the best link to me is probably just to go on my website because my website has all of the
00:32:42.680
training courses both the physical courses the location the training calendar the online training
00:32:47.340
links to the vimeo videos if you want to download the videos as well as my web store and that's
00:32:52.280
shooting-performance.com and of course the dash is a hyphen you know so shooting-performance.com
00:33:00.320
my blog is blog.shooting-performance.com but there's a link to my facebook my blog and all
00:33:07.240
of the training stuff on the website that's the best place to go awesome you got training on
00:33:10.920
programs on vimeo and udemy correct yeah man udemy is an actual online course where i interact with
00:33:17.900
the students and uh and on vimeo is is just the videos for example a lot of people want to download
00:33:23.060
the videos and take them to the range and that's why i did the vimeo videos but udemy is a little more
00:33:27.960
interactive it's something where if you're a new person to shooting you know i'd recommend you do
00:33:32.300
the online because you can do it at your own pace you can do it from your home you can share it with
00:33:35.620
your husband or your wife or your boyfriend you know so that that's the one i'd recommend very
00:33:39.960
cool well mike sieklander thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks a bunch man take
00:33:44.260
care our guest today was mike sieklander you can find out more about his work at shooting-performance.com
00:33:50.640
also check out the american war society and if you're looking at some of mike's books on competitive
00:33:55.760
and defensive handgun training just search for mike sieklander on amazon.com
00:34:00.100
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:34:07.780
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:34:11.680
this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a review on itunes stitcher whatever it is
00:34:16.540
you use to listen to the podcast help to get the word out about the podcast and give us feedback that
00:34:21.140
we can use to improve the podcast said podcast a lot there uh anyways until next time this is brett