On July 27, 2024, Tom Givens & Rangemaster put on a Professional Trainer’s Symposium at the Royal Range in Nashville, TN. It was an invitation-only event. This was the second iteration of this event, with a different group of trainers attending and different trainers presenting. The presenters at PTS II were:
- Wayne Dobbs – Red Dot Pistol
- John Hearne – Motor Learning
- Dan Brady – Adult Learning
- Chuck Haggard – OC for Private Citizens
- Karl Rehn – Building Your Training Business
The event also included an 80 round shooting session, where participants had the opportunity to earn the Rangemaster “Pistol Master” award. Zo’s estimate of the difficulty of the shooting tests, using the formulas from our Strategies and Standards book, seems low to me. Based on observation and shooting the drill for score in two different Rangemaster events, my opinion is that it requires USPSA B class/IDPA Expert or higher skill to pass at the 95% or higher level. The target’s center zone is smaller (fewer square inches) than the USPSA A-Zone or IDPA 8″ center circle. The other x-factor is pressure – pressure performing in front of others, which is the only way the rating can be earned. Dave Reichek and I attended, representing KR Training. I had previously earned my Pistol Master rating being the top shooter at the Professional Pistolcraft Instructor course in May, and Dave earned his Pistol Master during the Nashville event.
Here’s a bit of slow motion video recorded during the Pistol Master shooting test.
The shooting part of the event was not the main attraction. The primary purpose of the event was instructor continuing education for those of us teaching at a professional level. There were 38 trainers from 20 states present for the event. I didn’t get pictures of all the presenters (and don’t have any pictures of me presenting), but here are some highlights and observations.
Tom’s Presentation
In recent years part of every Rangemaster event has been dedicated to passing down the history of handgun training, particularly the 1960-1980 period when the biggest changes occurred. Tom was part of the founding of both IPSC and IDPA.
Wayne Dobbs’ Presentation
Wayne shared his thoughts on pistol mounted optics (aka “red dot sights”) as someone currently working for Aimpoint as their sales manager for the western US, and also as a top level shooter who was an active competitor and trainer through the 1990-present day period where dot sights went from ‘gamer gear’ to duty-grade on rifles and pistols.
A few of the items he lists as “pros” are only an advantage if/when the user has the “robust and consistent grip, draw and presentation” necessary to find the dot quickly. Dot-hunting (wiggling the gun around trying to find the dot after indexing the gun to the target) is still the biggest challenge for most users.
One unfortunately by product of the youTube-ization of learning is the over emphasis on speed, driven by clickbait videos showing an individual’s fastest run of a practice session. What isn’t shown in the videos is all the slower speed reps that person likely put in to perfect their technique. Do you need a 2 day “red dot” class? If the user is motivated to practice focused on correct technique initially, and speed after technique is over-learned to the point of automaticity, the answer is probably no. But particularly for institutional learners (mil/LEO students) who are unlikely to put in the work on their own, a 2 day course can be a solid start to skill development – particularly if student/teacher ratio is low enough that those struggling can get sufficient individual attention.
Wayne recommends direct mill (no plates), which is what I and many others also prefer. In our classes (and with my own guns) I start with a 10 yard zero and then shoot 25 yard groups from benchrest (not two handed standing) making any final adjustments. After that I shoot at 3, 7, 15 and 50 yards to understand the relationship between dot and bullet impact. Maintenance is a big issue. In recent private lessons I’ve seen multiple guns with loose sights, and one sight that didn’t sit flush with the slide that couldn’t be zeroed. Proper use of loctite, correct torquing of mounting screws, and scheduled battery replacement are all important concerns that optic users need to take seriously.
John Hearne’s Presentation
John dived deep into academic theory related to learning any motor skill. Most of his material is part of his full day lecture course “Who Wins, Who Loses and Why”. It’s an excellent course that should be essential for any instructor or serious student of defensive pistolcraft. Contact him for info on upcoming courses or hosting him.
Gun people are great at approaching skill development with a “one and done” mindset. They will take a class once and go looking for something else that’s new and different, rather than consider re-taking a class again, a year or two after the initial exposure to the curriculum. Worse, there is a tendency to treat taking a class as “checking the box” for a given year, without putting in work to maintain or automate a skill. How much skill is retained a week? a month? after a 2 day intensive live fire class?
Automaticity doesn’t happen with 1000 rounds over a weekend, followed by zero practice (dry or live) in the month after.
John presented some data from a study where a skill was learned by some and over-learned by others. There were 3 groups: adequate learning (passed at end of initial training), refresher (re tested/re trained 4 weeks later), and the overlearned group. For the overlearned group, the standard was that it if took them 30 reps to get the skill right, they did 30 more reps *after* the skill was mastered.
The old saying I learned was that amateurs train until they can do it right once. Professionals train until they can’t do it wrong. In the study John referenced the over-learned students had fewer errors and were faster than the other two groups…even 8 weeks after the overlearned skill wasn’t used or practiced.
John’s references slide for those that want to explore this topic further:
Dan Brady’s Presentation
Dan works part time for Apache Solutions. The details about his resume listed here are only a fraction of his experience and expertise.
Dan wore a suit and tie for the event, out-dressing most of us who were in various forms of Tactical Hobo/grey man/5.11 catalog wear. He had written handouts that he shared with all the participants, which were mostly duplicated on his slides. When I worked for TEEX, my boss was a huge advocate of “facilitation”, as opposed to being tied to Powerpoint slides. Dan gave a master class in facilitation, keeping everyone engaged in discussion on his topic of personality types, generational learning styles, and retaining student attention. He did this by being a great example of how it was done. In other words, I was too busy paying attention to his talk and participating in the discussion that I didn’t take any pictures.
Chuck Haggard’s presentation
Chuck’s presentation was a condensed version of the material he presents in his “Between a Harsh Word and a Gun” and OC instructor curriculum. The highlight was the video he showed of one of his on-duty pepper spray uses, with analysis and discussion.
If you want a sample of what he presented, here’s a video excerpt from similar material he taught at the Active Self Protection conference in 2019.
Following the conference, I scheduled Chuck to return to KR Training Feb 1, 2025 to teach his one day OC instructor class and teach a one day “pocket rocket” small gun live fire class on Feb 2. Registration links will be posted soon. Subscribe to the KR Training monthly e-news to get those registration links delivered to your inbox.
My Presentation
Tom always seems to find a way to challenge me to come up with new material every year or two for my session at Tac-Con, and for this event he requested that I try to explain to others how KR Training grew from a one-class-a-quarter hobby into a 150+ days a year on our private range, multi-instructor, local/regional/occasionally national enterprise over the past 33 years. I talked about things we did that worked, and things I have seen others do (that we didn’t do) that worked.
The short version:
Be ahead of the curve. I was teaching gun classes in 1991, four years before concealed carry passed in Texas. I was teaching NRA instructor certification courses in 1994, one year before concealed carry passed and demand for NRA instructor training exploded. I had a webpage back in 1994, when Mosaic was the only browser, living in a high tech town (Austin) where nerds with money that had interest in guns had limited gun related content online to look at. When demand for in person carry permit courses was highest, I had print and email marketing in place, an agreement with a range, and two rooms we sub-leased from another business for weekend and evening use teaching the classroom course.
By the time the next wave happened (youTube), we were too busy working day jobs and teaching classes every weekend to put in the time to be ahead of the curve in online gun videos. Similarly, we didn’t put in the work to set up an online carry permit class immediately after the state allowed that as an option for the classroom portion.
We were ahead of the curve hosting traveling trainers and leveraging their marketing to bring students in from longer distances (2-3 hours from our facility). We were ahead of the curve committing to buy land and build a permanent training location, before Austin’s meteoric growth caused ranges “closer to town” to sell the land or be shut down due to neighbor lawsuits. What was “too far from town” in 2002 is now “30 minutes from the exurbs”.
And we took a different philosophy than traveling trainers whose business model is typically: teach the biggest 2 day class possible, with only 1-2 instructors and split for the next town Monday morning. We built a deep curriculum spanning all related subjects: pistol, rifle, shotgun but also unarmed, knife, low light, tactics, preparedness, land navigation, medical, and legal – with our own staff, alliances with other local/regional schools and guest trainers. The goal was to develop a long term relationship with students who would come for training a few times a year: either new topics or half price repeats of classes already taken to keep skills sharp. And we cut class length, class cost and round count to make classes more accessible to those that could not devote an entire weekend for training.
Customer relations are one of the keys. Treating customers like friends, being flexible on refunds/reschedules, having loaner gear (holsters, guns, belts, etc.) on hand when students discover their own gear is poorly suited for them (happens a lot more than you might expect). Encourage students (and potential customers) to ask for advice before spending money on gear (or training). Co-opetition with other trainers that we could refer students to, who could refer others to us.
Frequent but not too frequent communication: the KR Training “Spam for Life” email list that sends 10-12 emails a year with updates and reminders and gentle nudges to come back and knock the rust off.
As Dr. David Yamane says, guns are normal and normal people own guns – and more and more normal people that didn’t grow up around guns are buying guns. and need proper guidance and training. As Kathy Jackson once said: beginners benefit most from having the most experienced, most expert instructors.
The line I used to close my talk was “Be the trainer you wish you had found when you first got started.”
The folks that Tom invited to the symposium are some of the best in the country doing that very thing and I was honored to be invited to speak to them.
It Wasn’t All Work
I had been to Nashville the previous week. to attend a concert and a masterclass with Australia rock organist Lachy Doley on his first US tour.
And as a result I had also gotten most of my Nashville tourist activities out of my system, so Dave got to pick what we did on our off time. He picked the “Dukes of Hazzard” museum near Opryland, which turned out to be much more fun that it should have been.
Saturday night we got a great deal on a spur-of-the-moment floor seats for the Collective Soul / Hootie and the Blowfish arena show. I hadn’t kept up with either band and was surprised to find that H&BF were still filling arenas. Their show had a very Jimmy Buffett vibe to it – a mix of rock, country, acoustic bluegrass, electric (they covered Stone Temple Pilots and Led Zeppelin). I enjoyed it more than I expected. This fan shot 7th row video from a California show is basically the same show we saw.
As I told Tom Givens as we were leaving Royal Range: you throw a fine party.