PDN 2012 National Training Tour Update: Week 2

Alright, week two is done on the Personal Defense Network Training Tour. I've been to West Virginia, I've been to North Carolina. In North Carolina, I was doing some Combat Focused Carbines, so we're going to see a little of that action. We're also going to hear from Troy Mynes who has recently opened up the Thunder Mountain Training Center in West Virginia. Now one of the cool things about the tour and the fact that we are driving across country, the fact that we have support from Laser Light, Crossbreed Holsters, Smith and Wesson Tactical Clothing and Daniel Defense, means that we can stop at some new ranges, we can go to some places we wouldn't otherwise go.

We can run classes that are a little smaller than we'd normally like to run. And the whole idea is to build relationships with new ranges like Troy's, and to establish training communities where there may not be any active actual training going on. Maybe people get their permits. Maybe people are active in competition or just target shooting, but to develop a real training community to be able to bring in instructors like our Personal Defense Network contributors regularly to help people develop their personal defense shooting skills, that's something that doesn't exist everywhere. And the tour with our drive across country gives us the opportunity to make some special stops along the way to establish those communities and some new relationships.

So we're gonna get to hear from Troy, what his plans are with Thunder Mountain, what it's like to start up a new range and what some of his ideas are. We're also gonna hear from one of Alessandro Padovani's students. He just ran a combat focus shooting course as part of the Personal Defense Network tour out there in Nevada. In this area there's not a lot of trainers coming into. They- and the problem is the ranges, there are none that are private.

I wanted to make that available to people that want that training and have a place for those trainers to come to. The Thunder Mountain Training Center is currently under development. Stay status right now, we have a 40 by 70 flat scenario range. Basically a training range 'cause that was our first need. To get the trainers a place to work, to give me a place to work on my stuff and keep up my own skills.

In the future we plan to have on a lot more smaller pistol heads, we're taking out rifle. We will have five separate rifles zones in the works right now out to 500 yards is what we can get. The biggest hurdles we've faced and overcome has been really EPA, Noise Ordinances, LED, DEP locally, things like that. And we've had to work through those features to find out for drainages and mining procedures, things like that. Liability issues that were involved and we've gotten all those recently taken care of and now we're on the move.

I highly recommend any range or training facility hosting or having Personal Defense Network tour event at their facility. All the students that attended, this one we're extremely pleased, happy and we've even got some insight on their returning because I heard we were gonna have the Personal Defense Network the next year. That's a great asset to me Train for who you are, not who you think you are and that's kind of what I get out of here when I come. You know what, I'm just shooting by myself. And, you know, I think back and I was an All-State athlete in high school and I said, "Well, yeah, I can do that, I can do that." But then when I get here, as you see I can't jump up on a wall.

I mean, you kind of see who you are. And I tend to get more mentally fatigued and physically fatigued. So that's kind of why I come and it's a great class. I really got more out of it than I thought I was gonna get. And more people need to take it.

I just know all kinds of people that carry guns and don't take any training and it's pretty scariest. Stop. I think it is a great class. I heard it's very informative and I love it greatly. 'Cause for one thing you're very down to earth and you know, I felt that other classes I've taken I felt like the instructor was up here And I was kind of down here being talked at Mhhh.

instead of you know communicate with and you know talked to. Well yeah, I like that quite a bit Coming up next week. We've got Dr. Robert Smith teaching a medical course out in California. We're going to see from that.

We're also going to hear from some of the other instructors and other students who've been participating in training all around the country. Personal Defense Network Tour is off to a great start. One of the things we heard last week after the update was what about this LCP? Now we know that we actually targeted from a student who was training with the LCP out at a combat focus shooting course that I ran down in Georgia. And one of the things I got was from a lot of people that carry the LCP in deep concealment they carry in a pocket.

They carry inside of a belly band and maybe they carry in a way that they can't train with regularly at their local wifi or range Well, one of the things they can do is get one of the cartridges the actual laser cartridges designed by Laser Light. One of our tour sponsors and use it in their training. So that in a safe area, once they've declared the gun safe they've cleared all the ammunition out, they can actually put the laser training cartridge into the pistol, put it into their deep concealment and then practice their presentation realistically with good feedback about where that first shot would have gone. So that's a very important aspect of any training for presentation from the holster that you actually know where that shot's gonna go. And the laser light laser training cartridge lets you accomplish that.

Coming up in personal Defense Network, video collection we're actually going to have a video where I demonstrate exactly how to do that. So keep an eye on personaldefensenetwork.com as always. Hope to see you on the tour. We're still just getting started.