Zero to Hero in 3 Simple Lessons?

Tonight at the range I saw an all-too-common incident: new student being taught by someone who was basically a new student himself. The “instructor” is someone I’ve seen at the range taking basic lessons and learning fundamentals over the past few months. Now he’s a self-appointed instructor and was explaining to his student about the “tactical reality” of a gunfight, yadda yadda yadda.

We’ve said it before, simply owning a gun doesn’t make you qualified to teach others. Neither does a certificate that says you’ve received 8 hours of basic pistol training. Just like you wouldn’t take driving lessons from a 16-year old kid who just got his permit, you shouldn’t expect an “instructor” with minimal training and experience to be qualified as a teacher.

There is much more to teaching than just being able to hit a target. First, you have to know how to teach. This really is a completely separate skill, which is why getting certified as an instructor usually involves less about shooting and more about adult education principles. You need to understand how to watch a student to be sure that safety violations are corrected before accidents happen.

Second, you need to know & understand why you do the things you do when you shoot. It’s one thing to know what a proper grip is … it’s another thing to understand why that grip is proper and what variations are acceptable as opposed to ones which won’t work. Otherwise, all you can do is repeat what you’ve been told to a new shooter. If all he needed was to hear the words, he could learn everything he needed from a book (or a cool website like this one 🙂 ).

Third, you have to be able to diagnose what the shooter is doing wrong. It’s not as simple as looking at a target and saying, “low left … you’re jerking the trigger.” You need to understand what you’re seeing in terms of the shooter’s body position, eyes, hand movement, gun movement, etc.

Finally, you must know what will fix the problem. How can the shooter fix a trigger jerk problem? What is a good drill to get over anticipation? You have to be able to fix more problems than just the one or two you had while learning. And you need to have more than one solution for each problem, because not everyone is going to have the same success with any given drill.

You can’t get there in three simple lessons.

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG