Tac Con 2026

I just returned from TacCon 2026, my 2nd time there and my first time presenting. It was great to see and talk with Tom and Lynn and everyone else who showed up. I won’t mention anyone else by name for fear of leaving someone out, but I had a great time and some great conversations with a lot of trainers and attendees. Made some new friends and decompressed with some old friends. Overall, it was a complete success (more on that later), and if you are interested in being around like minded people and seeing how some trainers approach training, I highly recommend signing up for the 2027 conference.

I taught two classes (same material, two days in a row) about cold performance and on demand performance. 30 shooters in each class! Of course, I don’t subscribe to the idea of having large classes, and will not accept more than about 12 shooters in my usual ODP classes. In this case, I had two great RSO’s helping me out and we ran two relays, so the safety factor was 5:1 on the line. Tom told me it was a highly demanded class, so we tried to fit as many in as the range and staffing would allow. The issue with large classes is that you cannot give each shooter as much individual attention, and that is incredibly important to me. Given the format of Tac Con, individual attention is not the main thing, so I felt ok just teaching and not focusing on each student as much as I do in normal classes.

Some really excellent shooters showed up for the class, and we had one guy who produced 4 hits on Cold Heat. Very impressive! I on the other hand, only produced 2 hits under time, with my third hit landing just .1 over time. Frustrating, but it happens. The class on day one was pretty chilly, and all of our hands were feeling the cold. My demo on the FAST test was literally the worst I have ever shot. Over 5 seconds and with multiple misses. You can see that target up top.

As disappointing and embarrassing as it is to shoot badly in front of others, it is impossible to not have a worst run at some point. I can only hope this is the worst run for me, but it probably is not. I took a picture to remind myself to train hard and shrug the bad shots off. Thankfully, on day two I shot a clean FAST, though just slightly over 5 seconds. Better to be clean than faster but with misses. Talking to Jeff Gonzalez about it, he reminded me that when we teach, it is easy to get distracted by things that are going on, and not give our shooting the due it deserves. As I’ve talked about before, the mental game is really THE game, and all of us need to remember that and work on it. Very easy to let it slip from time to time.

Speaking of Jeff Gonzalez, he and I filmed a short video about our upcoming class in Arizona in August. We will post that shortly. I know AZ is hot in the summer, but if you want to come out for two days of shooting and fun, we would love to see you there. I promise you won’t melt or dessicate.

Finally, a shout out to SCC. He knows who he is, and I appreciate his humor and friendship, along with all the other guys who know what I’m talking about. It really was fantastic to hang out with so many great people.