PDN LIVE! October 2016

Hey, everybody. It's "PDN LIVE". You're here with me, Sam, your moderator for the night. Our regular moderator, Shannon, is tied up. So unfortunately, you're stuck with me. For the sake of not being confusing, we have two Robs here with us tonight and we're gonna refer to them by their last names. PDN's own Rob Pincus and the very wonderful special guest, Rob Leatham. Pincus, why don't you tell us what you're up to lately? We got all kinds of stuff happening in PDN land. I've got this live event. We have a training talk going on obviously, with Grant Cunningham every other week. We've got classes, a lot of classes coming up. November and December, we've got classes in Nevada, California, Ohio, Florida, Texas, a couple other places under the I.C.E. banner, and the Combat Focus Shooting team's always super busy. So lots and lots going on and just happy to be here tonight. This is our second round of a full hour talking about skill development with probably the greatest competitive shooter of all time, certainly the greatest competitive shooter of our time, the great one, Rob Leatham, sir. Well, okay, thank you very much, I'll see you guys next time. No, after an intro like that. Things for me, like you said, Rob, we're seein' way too much of each other lately. When I met Sarah up there she was a little concerned how often you and I have been talking. And I said I was gonna call you at three o'clock in the morning and ask what you were wearing, and she said, "No, don't do that." But yeah, so we just did finish that event up in Vegas with the pre-launch for the SAINT. We cut some, can we tell 'em? We cut some new or we're working on some new "Worlds Collide" stuff. We just shot that stuff in St. Augustine right before the hurricane came in and pretty much destroyed St. Augustine. Shot, since the last time we talked, a whole bunch of nationals. Won one national, second in another, stunk in another. Yeah, it's been busy, same old thing. Living the dream. Talk more about your nationals. Talk more about your experience at nationals, 'cause that's what's gonna play into what we're gonna talk about later is your great competition experience and frequent success. Well, in the last month, when I wasn't shooting stuff with you, I was in Florida three separate weeks doing, two separate weeks shooting the IPSC National Championships and the USPSA Limited Division National Championships and limited 10 nationals, which is the end of my big season. That's the end of the nationals. We don't have any other that level. So I've got a local event here. Then the rest, life has basically just been around, working around the SAINT project going on. That's been life. We've been doing a lot with that. Springfield has been making a lot of noise. Obviously just coming up in, it's less than two weeks now. We've got a NASGW next week. We've got a lot of press in and out a couple of different projects and you've been even busier with it than I have. I'm obviously kind of outside some of that, but it's big, it's exciting. So I know a lot of people are curious about what that's all gonna be about, and they'll see it roll out certainly between now and SHOT Show. They'll get to know it very well and then even more news coming out of SHOT Show, I'm sure. Should we just tell 'em right now and just blow the whole thing and we get it on. You and I'll be responsible for releasing the single biggest project we have ever taken on. Yeah, I don't think anyone's gonna really appreciate that. I don't think so either. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. How about we start with some questions. That's why Sam's here, see. Hit it, Sam. I considered letting you talk for the full hour, but I thought we actually have viewers we don't wanna disappoint. Okay, so our first question is coming in live right now from Walter, and I'm gonna throw it your way, Leatham. He's looking for tips on getting better and faster at black powder flintlocks. Wow. Is that a good question? I'm sorry, I didn't- I can tell you in all honesty, Sam, most shooting questions I can handle. I have never fired a black powder flintlock, so- I'm sorry that I gave you that one. That is an awesome question. I like being stumped. I have no idea. I think, unless we know how fast- What's fast- It is now, then we don't have anything to compare it to but I'm gonna assume it has something to do with the paper cartridge and you rip it and then you dump it in there. I think it's- Have you actually done this, Pincus? Yeah. Yeah. I've killed all kinds of deer and stuff with black powder. I've never really had to reload quick because people were charging up the hill or anything. Okay, sorry, Walter. We're gonna put a pin in that one. Hopefully someday we'll be able to answer it. Let's move on. I'm gonna give you a different question, Leatham. This is from Scott. Scott would like to know, do you have any tips for pistol shooters wearing prescription lenses with progressive lenses? So, like bifocals, regarding QuickSight alignment and picture transitions. Okay, so here's the deal with the whole glasses thing correction. I'm 55 and I'm using correction. Just for, his name is Scott, right? Yeah. Okay, first rule, Scott, here's the deal. I can still see distance pretty well. I'm using 1.75 in my right eye and 0.75 in my left eye, and that's a plus. I have no other astigmatism or anything else. So if you know eyes, it's just straight power. It's called old eyes trying to fix that. That being the case, what I found as I age is, I can use correction and get clarity in the sights but I do notice a dramatic slowing down of the time it takes me to focus. So it really comes down to we, I think we've addressed this like before, too, Rob. It all comes down to the level of clarity that is needed. And I think, I think the average shooter thinks that to shoot well or fast, you have to see everything just dead clear. And it's really not like that. Even when I was 20 years old and had, you know, 20/05 vision, I still don't think I ever saw the sights just crystal clear ever, especially when shooting fast, because shooting fast assumes the accuracy is probably a little bit coarser than if you're trying to shoot little groups as a target shooter. But so assuming shooting fast means that you're quick and close, the vision thing we make too big a deal about it. And I think a lot of it's because we've just told people you just have to see an absolutely clear, crisp sight picture. And Pincus, you can jump in on this too, 'cause I know how you feel about it is that for the things we're doing, and if it's in reach distance or, let's call it potential threat distance, which means if I don't shoot you real quick, you're gonna get your hands all over me. At that distance, we're just massively overemphasizing the need for it. Now, back to the level of glasses. I have trouble using progressives. Progressives, meaning where it changes, where the top might be my distance, which I have. And they're 0.50s on the top and go clear down the 2.0s on the bottom, which is the concept is that means everything you know, if you turn your head can see it. The truth is, if you're in the right shooting position, you don't have access to all those pieces of the glasses anyway. You know what I'm saying? If your, if your arm's in this position, you're not gonna be able to sit here and go like this. You're not gonna have time. You're not even gonna wanna do it. So I use straight prescriptions just for shooting if I'm not using an optical site For an optical site, I don't need it. If I'm shooting an Ironside gun, I either accept that everything's fuzzy and then I don't care, or I use a prescription designed specifically for that event. Now that being a competition answer where I can put it, just like the rest of the game, I can step and get my steps out. I can put the right glasses on. And these are the ones that let me see the targets a little better or the sights a little bit better. So either one, it really comes down to getting the right optometrist. As far as drills go for optical, speed, and clarity, I don't think it matters what the drill is. If you wanna do target acquisition drills, do target acquisition drills. If you wanna do accuracy drills, and shoot little groups, it's all the same. I mean, I don't think there's a real, a real drill that will teach acuity visuals. Sorry, my cat just walked by on screen. My dog keeps walking by an poking me too. Ace is probably gonna come up here any second. The only thing I would add to that is, I think the biggest issue people have from a defensive shooting standpoint, when it comes to the vision, isn't the clarity. It has to do with focal depth. So if you're using lenses and if your head position puts you in a position where you can focus clearly on that bad guy, which obviously is what your body and brain are gonna work together if you're using glasses. Some people have the LASIK surgery, or one eye is better tuned to depth, and the other eyes is better tuned close up. Once you have looked at, everyone talks about eye dominance. I think eye dominance is another thing we make more than we need to out of, except in those cases where people have one lens or one eye that is tuned for distance and the other one up close, because what happens is you're looking at the threat. When you drive that gun out, the gun's gonna end up in front of the eye that's focused on the threat, because that's the eye that's dominant at that moment. If your other eye, the eye that sees clearly close up, you're gonna have to learn to adjust. Because if you want that clear sight picture, you're gonna need to be in front of the eye that can focus it two and three feet. So I think that's really the only time it's a really big deal. And so if you have that issue, then yeah, you've got an issue. So you train with that issue in mind. Okay well, let's move on to our next question. This one's for you, Pincus. Tom asked, "Short of force on force training, what drills do you recommend to best simulate live fire situations?" He gave examples like, cover, concealment, position, angles, reloads, et cetera. People can go to personaldefensenetwork.com and take a look at the standards drill. We have the defensive shooting standards drill, and then also there's several variations of the figure eight drill. You know, those are the types of drills we use to give people a lot of cognitive distraction. So we want people to be thinking about something other than, you know, trigger reset, or even sight alignment, sight picture. In most cases, when they're training for realistic distances on realistic, you know, defensive sized targets. Like really difficult mathematical equations. Incredibly difficult mathematical equations is a great way to distract people. You can check out the "Worlds Collide" series and read the Springfield-armory.com blog for more information on that, 'cause we did run Mr. Leatham through a figure eight drill with some cognitive distraction during the first series and you'll see the effect it had. It really kind of just, it keeps it from being pure performance, because if you're just standing in front of a target doing pure performance, you're really just doing an isolated drill. So what we're looking for is more of a simulation of the chaos, and the information processing that is required in the middle of the performance of the shooting when you're in the real world, when you're in a public space trying to defend yourself or someone else. So once you understand the baseline, once you understand the defensive standards drill or the figure eight drill, then you can add cover. Then when you get called the commands for your training partner, or if you're doing it properly, when you randomize the commands for yourself, you're going to end up shooting at different angles and different positions. You can take the flow drill that we do. You can also find that online anywhere. Look at the flow drill that we do in our advanced physical handling class where people are moving between, you know, maybe lying on their back to a seated position, to a kneeling position, to lying on their stomach to a kneeling position, to a standing position. And the commands can come at any time during that flow drill. You could combine a flow drill and presence of cover, and a figure eight drill. So you can really just gotta keep layering the chaos to create the circumstances that that aren't choreographed. It's not, okay, get into a kneeling position and fire three shots into the chest. That's really what you're trying to avoid. Okay, okay, next one for Leatham. Neil is looking for tips on how to become a better shot with a pistol. He said that he seems to have hit a wall and would love any tips for achieving consistency in his target shooting. Well, if it's accuracy, he's talking about, if fundamentally the real question is he's talking about how does he shoot more accurately. 'Cause you say target shooting, you know, that kind of defines any of the- Yeah, he mentioned kind of missing targets occasionally and he's not sure why he's missing. Oh okay, very good. That's a specific problem. So there's two things. One, when you miss a shot on a target, when you miss a miss a target, two things happen. One, the gun was not pointed at it when it went off. So why did that happen. And two, if it's a surprise to you, why didn't you see it happen? So this is where the traditionalists come in and say, "Oh, you weren't focused on that front side." Well, there's a grain of truth to that, but the reality is, there's so many, there's so much else going on that you can't simplify it quite that much. You have to recognize at the very least, if you use an Ironside type of pistol, there are three elements involved. There's the target, the front side, and the rear side. So that's at the very least. The amount of clarity required of each one varies to the distance and the requirement of accuracy and the penalty for missing. That's the way I explained it to a class, because a shot very close, let's say it's on a simulation of a hostile situation, and you're only three or five yards away from the target. Well missing the target that much might result in not only missing the target causing a bigger problem, right. So when you don't know what the miss went, if you don't know why you miss, that's a bigger problem than why you missed. So right off the bat, I think that the shooter probably didn't see what happened right before. And there's a term that the competition shooters, all the recreational shooters use it like me, and they call it the calling your shots. Now the belief is that you recognize the result of the shot right after you shoot, but the truth is you should know where the shot goes before. So if you know right where the gun was pointed when you decided to fire the shot, and watch that process through the shot until you see the gun fire or feel the gun fire, you should be able to know where the round went without looking later to see where it was, right. If you're able to shoot the gun without moving it. So there's a bunch of layers right there. There's a bunch of pieces all in one. So I can't tell you something as simple as, focus on the front side. I mean, it's just too, it's too broad a question. If he's missing targets because he's moving the gun out of alignment. I just did a thing that they put on one of the other websites and the biggest problem is aiming. I'll be honest with you. It's not aiming. It's when people put sights on the target, and everything looks pretty good, and everything looks fine for them and they do this kind of stuff. So then the guy is gonna tell you, "You didn't look at the sights well enough." The sights had nothing to do with it. The problem is, answer question clearly, and obviously I've gone way down the rabbit hole again, to clearly define the solution would require me to know specifically how the miss occurred. And I can only tell by seeing that happen in a specific example. I can tell you, in general, most people get the gun pointed at the target but don't keep it pointed at the target by the time they get the shot off. Just remain more cognizant of what's happening right before that bullet is fired. Even what's happening before you shoot, and then you'll be aware of what happened when you shot. And that's when you should be looking. Now whether it's competition or in a fight, you really shouldn't be looking back after. You should be looking to what you're doing, and what's about to happen. When I shot, what's that thing we did, Pincus, where the targets fell down, and you didn't know how many shots you had to put on it? The Jedburgh system, Jedburgh Target System. So that's a perfect example, 'cause I put the sight on the target and shoot a shot, shoot a couple shots. And I would've called them, from a competition standpoint, as fine and perfect. What I didn't know is it took more shots, put the target down than my brain was programmed for. So while I saw everything I needed to see in my traditional standard or standpoint, what I had to realize is that I need to open up my mind to not accept in all circumstances, a pre-programmed you know, like Pincus said, you know. When you do a drill, it's three shots from the knee, and then stand up and three shots standing. Flat range stuff like that is wonderful to get you squared away on your techniques, but they can't teach you how to use that technique. And that's the problem, that's a problem. I know it's a big answer there, Sam. That's a problem with trying to answer that question. It's hard to do. Well, we did our best, Neil. Here's the next question. This one's for you, Pincus. Chris B has asked, he says, "I use a Streamlight TLR-1 GameSpotter on my AR-15 when hog hunting. It's a super bright green light. When it comes to defensive scenarios, are there benefits to be using the green light or should I always use white light when using an AR-15 for defense?" I don't think there's any rule why you would always use white light. The same advantages you have with green light in wilderness is you're gonna have inside of your house. You know, one of the things I see people talk a lot about is the lumens and the brightness and all that. And honestly, I think there's a limited value, especially in a home defense gun. If you have a home defense gun, what you're trying to do with your light is find and identify threats. Now, first of all, primarily we like the light to be a handheld light as glanced over there, but a handheld light 20 feet from me, 15 feet from me, sitting on the kitchen counter. And there's, there's probably another one if I wanted to look in every room in the house there's a handheld light somewhere. And there's also handheld lights with my staged, defensive guns, long guns and hand guns, even if I have a weapon mounted light, because I really like to use, especially in a house where I've got kids, I've got family members, neighbors, obviously the cops are gonna show up eventually. I want to be able to find and identify threats without pointing guns even in the direction of those people, much less at them. So I think that's the first and foremost important thing to remember is is that that light on your rifle, when you have two hands on the gun or when you're carrying a baby and the rifle or whatever your situation is, where you need to use that as your primary light, you wanna think about being able to use sort of the outer edge of that light, not necessarily needing to focus right on that hot spot. And that gets me back to where I started, which is if you have this, you know, 20 million lumen light and you're inside your bedroom, you're gonna blind yourself with the reflection off the wall. You know, that's your biggest potential negative, not whether it's white light, green light, red light, blue light. I'm more concerned with people using light improperly. The way you mount your light on the gun can be an issue. If you mount your light on the left side of your gun so that your support on your right hand and your mounted on the left side, your left side thumb can hold onto it. So you have, there's an index point, but now you're going around a corner to the right. Now that light's gonna have to come out way past where it would if it were mounted above or below the barrel. So if you, again, you know, I always send people to personaldefensenetwork.com if we have relevant information on lighting. And in this case we do. So if you look at videos or articles we put out, we talk a lot about light, how to mount them and how to use it, but no, as far as just the general white versus green, its brightness would be the concern that a lot of people would give you. And I really think that you need to worry about it inside your house. You know, now if you were a patrol officer, yeah, you want that white light, 'cause you may be projecting that over a longer distance. If you have a ranch, if you have a detached garage with an in-law apartment, or your kids have an apartment over the garage somewhere outside of the house, or on your property, and you're thinking about where you're gonna need to cast light outside of a bedroom or a stairwell kind of distance, yeah, the white light is gonna be better for you. What's your thought, Sam, can I jump on that? Yeah, go ahead. Pincus, what's your thoughts on, and you touched it, and I have my own feelings, but not being an expert in the subject. I really don't like gun mounted lights for the standpoint of using them as illumination devices. They're fantastic aiming devices. And this is the thing I've learned, you know, from a personal standpoint. Well, we stick 'em on guns. It makes sights and everything else almost pointless because if it's dark and you put the light on, the good news, yeah, you're probably pointing the gun at whatever you're looking at. The bad news is, you're probably pointing the gun at what you're looking at. You know, so I don't know what your thoughts on that, but I completely agree with the concept of a light on the gun as an aiming device, but the use of a, of a secondary light, not gun mounted is really the way for illumination. I don't know how you feel about that. Primary light should be the handheld light, always, I think, and for concealed carry, a lot of people, you know, nowadays there's a lot of people out there carrying concealed carry guns with lights on them. It's not something I stress. It's not something I'm gonna try to talk somebody out of, you know. If they can carry it comfortably, and it doesn't affect their ability to conceal the gun, so be it, but it's definitely not something that we make a big deal about, you know. Oh, you're a fool if you don't have a light on your gun. The fact is that if the bad guy can see you, you can probably see the bad guy in most defensive situations. It's not like you're hunting or searching for the bad guy. Inside of your house, yeah, you may be moving around the kids, the wife, the dog, whatever. And that's why we don't want you pointing the gun when you're looking to see who it is around the corner as much as that handheld light. And that's why I like using the edges of the light, just like you said too. Just another way of avoiding that. Let's move on to our next question. This is for you again, Leatham, from Chris, and he asks, "Along the lines of consistency, how much fluctuation can you see from target ammo versus match ammo?" Okay, well, you have to define what your target match ammo is. I fundamentally shoot nothing but what I would consider target ammo. For me to gain enough confidence in my piece of equipment, I want to know that it works really, really well. If not, absolutely. So as a standard, like, I will infrequently shoot not my standard competition ammo, but as a rule, the 40,000 rounds I shot this year, probably except for what I shot with you, Rob, it was all probably my normal competition ammo, right. And that's so that I gain a certain level of confidence with equipment and reliability and a feel for its recoil. So that being the case, the competition shooters, because we shoot so much, they're always looking for a way to save a few bucks, and I get it. I'm not paying for any of this stuff, so I'm spoiled, but if you were buying 40,000 rounds of ammunition a year, that would be a daunting expense. I mean, it would set you back. So I'm kind of the wrong guy to ask because I'll shoot, my practice ammo was exactly the same as my competition ammo. The only difference is it was loaded in re-manufactured brass. So I get all this stuff from Atlanta Arms, and my match ammo is all new brass, because I think there's two kinds of brass, fired brass and unfired brass. It doesn't matter if it's once fired or 10 times fired. And I generally don't trust the brass that's been shot, because I know that it's been swollen and it's been sized back down and rims have been bent in. It's just been extracted and things. So from an accuracy standpoint, there's no difference. I'll be honest with you that new brass doesn't really make the gun shoot better, 'cause I've shot the best groups I've ever shot with old crummy used brass, but I don't cheap out on the bullet. I always shoot the best bullets I can, because I want the result in practice to be the same as what I could expect in a match. So I don't want it to shoot worse, because I don't wanna go in with a lack of confidence and the other reliability issue, I have to know what works. Okay, well then let's just move on to our next one. Pincus, this is for you. Edward has asked, he says, "I see too much on the proper two handhold. How do you feel about the importance of shooting with one hand, both left and right from standing, sitting and kneeling positions?" Oh, okay. So first, there aren't a lot of empirical evidence examples of people needing to shoot weak hand only. I think it's something we make way bigger a deal about than we need to. Some people even go as far as to say you should be equally skilled with your strong hand and your weak hand. That's ludicrous. You know, I mean, you'd have to practice more with your weak hand to match the capabilities of your strong hand. That just, it doesn't even make, it's not, it's kind of nonsensical, and a lot of people obsess over it. There's guys out there have been doing drills where, you know, it's the same number of rounds, strong hand, weak hand. And they're, you know, the kind of choreographed scored drills that people get excited about getting high scores on, but it's a game. And honestly, I've shot, you know, I don't know if I've shot 2%, but it probably isn't 2% of in my entire life weak hand only. There was a time when we were teaching people to shoot weak hand supported to go around cover the wrong side. And I was guilty of that at one time, which makes even less sense. So let's get to what is important. Shooting one hand strong hand, for a couple of different reasons, is important. If I've got two hands on it, I happen to have a gun here. It's clear America and the world. So there is no magazine in there. So if I think about how I'm gonna drive out and take you, have to kill you, okay. So if I think about how I'm gonna drive out and hold this gun two-handed, and then change, what I'm gonna change to one-handed, is this just gonna go away. I'm really not changing anything. So every time I shoot two-handed, I'm essentially practicing my one-handed grip. Let's say I'm just pushing somebody out of the way, and I drove out to shoot or whatever, holding, I'm hanging onto a helicopter skid and we land. Whatever it is that this hand was busy. If you get this hand on the gun, I wanna do that, right. So this hand is gonna stay the same. I've got this thumb really high This creates a gap over here. That gap is filled by the base of the palm, or that kinda, the drum stick, if you will. The thumb coming down, that's what's gonna fill that gap. The thumbs are layered and not crossed. So the difference between one-handed and two-handed grip for me is really just the fact that the second hand isn't there. Now, here's where it gets tricky. How often and how much should you practice one-handed? Well, a lot of studies have been done. A lot of observations have been made. A lot of people don't know that I spent a lot of time studying real Imperial weapons, what's actually happened in fights. We haven't seen a lot of people need to shoot with their weak hand. People will tell you, "Well, people shoot the gun on a paper target. People shoot the gun when people are doing sims force on force training, true, but when- Well, if you're holding onto a helicopter, wouldn't you be holding onto the helicopter skid with your main strong hand? Yeah, right. I just want it to be clear. So here's the, now if I had Leatham hanging from- Helicopter skid, where did that come from? Now if I Leatham hanging onto my feet, I would have to hold on with this hand and shoot weak handed, but that's such a rare occurrence that he's holding onto my feet. So if we go back and rewind, we study the videos. Now here's what happens. People say, "Well, that people shoot the paper target in the gun." Sure, because a lot of drills in the past have revolved around like two targets, a shoot, no shoot target. They both turn around and one has a banana in his hand and the other one has a gun. Well, if I'm staring at the target's hands to figure out what to shoot, obviously that's where I'm looking when I drive my gun out, and that could be one thing that might shift the impact towards the gun. Here's the thing with force on force training. If your force on force training isn't run well, and a lot historically, hasn't been run well, if it kind of is like a paintball game. If you've got students on students or half of a SWAT team going against another half of a SWAT team, you end up seeing a lot of this, like shooting around corners and holding guns up over top of cover and things like that. So really the only thing to shoot becomes the hands. So I think that becomes a little bit of where we get this data that says, well, if targets get shot in the hands or force on force, we get shot in the hands a lot, but in the real world, we just don't see it happen. So I think it's overemphasized. And what we do see a lot of in the real world is people shooting one-handed only, and they should, quote unquote, be shooting with two hands, because that other hand would be available to them, but they're extending the gun out just with one hand and this hand's floating or just kind of doing nothing. One of the things that I believe is at fault there is our training model. So some people have taken that data and said, "Well if we look at all these dash camera videos or surveillance camera videos and we see so many, 30% people shooting one-handed and they should be shooting two-handed then we need to shoot one-handed a lot more in practice," but I wanna know why. Why aren't we shooting two-handed? Well, in the olden days, when we used to teach people to drive the gun down, and then come up into a shooting position, and in the current days where a lot of people teach everyone to go to the center, get your two-handed grip and then push out. You essentially give the brain two options to get the gun out here to make bang, bang noises. Option one is the one-handed presentation where we just drive the gun out and it gets out there very quickly. Option two has this built in delay and then the gun gets driven out. And if the brain knows the gun needs to make bang, bang noises to make a bad man stop, I think the brain honestly is blowing off that extra step and that gun is just driving out there. So full circle, back to my one-handed grip versus my two-handed grip. One of the reasons I stress keeping that thumb really high even though there isn't a frame mounted safety on this gun or, you know, most modern defensive guns is that that allows me to get my two-handed grip as the gun is driving out. So I don't have to stop to get my two-handed grip. And that efficiency difference in the training model is what I think will lead to more people using two-handed grips when they should be inside of a fight, because they're not telling their brain you've gotta stop to get a two-handed grip. You're actually training from day one to get that two-handed grip on the way out. And that's how we teach people to get into a shooting position from the very first day. You know what an interesting study would be Rob, for you to go back and look at how many times, in shooting statistics, missing occurs, or even hits, and how often people shot one-handed that they didn't have to. If there wasn't a logical reason to do it, 'cause I agree with you completely, is a panic mode sets in and the person immediately drops steps. It happens. We see it in the competition all the time where a guy will just start shooting and not even aim. So they'll drop what is a fundamental step that they've spent hours and hours and hours training on flat range. So you'd think they have it down at that point. It'd be interesting to go back and look at that data and see how many times somebody shot poorly. And they shot one-handed but didn't have to. They didn't have the excuse, because I agree with you completely. I'm ambidextrous. I shoot the same left-handed and right-handed, but I would never choose to shoot one-handed over two-handed if there was not a reason to require me to do that. Okay, let's move on to the next question. And in the future, avoid pointing your gun at the screen 'cause it makes me super nervous, even though it's clear. Sammie, it's pixels. Yeah. Sammie, it's pixels. It's very big on my screen, it- Take a deep breath. He can't shoot you. He cannot shoot- No one enjoys having a gun, virtual or otherwise, pointed in their face. Thank you, Rob. Okay, Leatham, this one's for you. Jason asked, "In a high pressure situation, how can I acquire my target faster from a draw?" Okay, I have to try to clarify what he means. So the draw has nothing to do with acquiring the target. So let's assume what he means is, how does he get on the target, get the gun on the target quickly, but let's assume that's where he's going with that. Well, from personal experience and experience of others, you always go as fast as you can before you lose consistency and you lose accuracy. So if the concept is, how do you get the gun out quicker, you know, I think you could sit there and beat it to death about trying to be too fast. And fast is always better than slow, as long as you don't lose anything in the process. Now, the question is, how do you get faster? Isn't that what he said, how do you get faster at it? Yes. Okay, so what slows most people down, I'll be honest with you, is that they look for way, way, way, way too much precision in what they're doing. And the guy that struggles with being fast is almost always the guy that actually struggles with accuracy, right. So the guy that struggles with accuracy is always saying, "How do I do this thing quicker, because when I go fast, I miss." So what he's really saying is I can't hit the targets fast. So he always complicates the question when he asks you, "How do I gain speed in it?" First off, you'd say, "Can you shoot all the targets and never miss?" Because if you can do that right off the bat, then you have to get fast enough to, in a defensive situation, to be fast enough for it to matter and in competition, be fast enough to win. Okay, let's cut it to those two pieces. The process of driving the gun to the target, and Rob pretty much gave you, with the gun there, he pretty much showed you the details of how you should present the gun, how your hand comes on. I hold the gun exactly the same way he does. My arms aren't quite as extended as his are. I'm a lot fatter, and I don't really get my arms in a locked out position as much as you do, because I have a lot more bulk in this portion of my body. That being the case, he showed you exactly where I hold the gun. Most people, when they have the gun in their hand from the draw, seldom have it well enough to do the job. So the mistake usually happens right from initial contact with the gun on, hand onto the gun. And if they're fiddling around with it, they're thinking about things other than the shot. So first thing you do is perfect the draw and perfect the presentation of the gun. Once you're on the target, the process that slows everybody down from a competition standpoint. Now let's define this as a recreational tool here. You really don't need to see a whole lot of what you did after you did it in a competition environment, if you wanna be fast. Now I know Rob will have a complete different viewpoint of that because, you know, he'll see it from a different side, but if that guy is a competition shooter and wants to know how to go fast, the advice I would give you to see everything you need to see well enough, but not more than, before you fire the shot and for God sakes, don't reaffirm everything you see. There's nothing more frustrating to me when I see a guy put the gun out, the gun's on the target, and he doesn't shoot. They want me to teach them how to go faster. So I say, "Well, you know the guns pointed at the target. Why aren't you shooting?" He says, "Well, I haven't seen everything I need." And I say, "Well, then you're not looking, because if I can tell externally that the gun's pointed at the damn target. It's pointed at the right part of the target, and you're not shooting then what is it you're looking for?" So people have created these stupid ass checklists that they go through in their head. Draw gun, put gun on target, sights on target, to start feeling trigger, start squeezing trigger, check to make sure sight hasn't moved. So I'm not encumbered with that process. Draw, put the sights on the target, pull the trigger without moving the gun. See the result of the shot. If you need to, I don't need to anymore, shoot it again if you want to. Shoot five more times again. I don't really care, and move to the next target. So it becomes partially a vision game, and partially a confidence game. When the guy knows that, where the gun is pointed, he's going to hit. He doesn't then go recheck it. Now reaffirmation phase before you shoot is the most frustrating thing I've ever seen. And I don't get it. It's a lack of confidence that they're actually gonna hit the target, which usually, we go back to the fact that he usually doesn't. So then it's a shooting skill thing. When it all comes around, it's a shooting skill thing. All right, this next one's for you, Pincus. It's from R. Scott. "After being lulled into a false sense of proficiency with indoor and outdoor range shooting for the last 20 years, I joined IDPA and GSSF earlier this year, very humbling. Lots of new concealed carry folks making very scary mistakes. Do you support any competency testing, maybe a few minutes at the range with the CCP instructor, prior to getting your CCP training certificate?" Oh, that's a touchy question. Luckily it's election season. So here's my position on this. And it surprises some people I think because I am in the instruction industry. Obviously, Personal Defense Network is an educational thing, but I don't support any government mandated testing for concealed carry. If we're gonna strictly go by the Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. If you can legally own a gun, you should be able to legally have that gun for the purposes of defense. And that includes places that you're carrying it outside of the home. So right away, the whole concealed carry permit thing and the quest for what is the appropriate training prior to issuing concealed carry permit, you know, take that right off the table. Once we have it, we do have concealed carry permits obviously, in most states, not in Arizona and some other states allow you to carry constitutionally. The very first state that I could carry legally in was Vermont. It was what now is known as constitutional carry. We didn't have permits back then. So I'm in support of that option because what I think that option would do, if it were more prevalent, is force the shooting community itself to sort of police our own and create a higher level of training expectation for the average person that does choose to carry a gun in public. Because I think right now, a lot of people get that piece of paper, or a piece of plastic from the government and it says you're okay to carry. And a lot of people inside of our community are hard pressed to tell someone that they have to go out and train or they have to do more. You know, unfortunately we hear a lot of people, "Well, I was in the military for a few years so I don't need to train." Or "I grew up around guns, so I don't need to train." You know, these are all mistakes. Everybody needs to train. And it's, you know, if you can went through the military training, great. If you survived multiple combat tours, great, but carrying a Glock with your family at the mall is something different. You know, if you're career cop, great, but carry a gun off duty with your family is something different. If you're a competition shooter, same thing. I know plenty of competition shooters that either don't carry frequently or haven't trained defensively, haven't trained in the context with either great shooters, haven't trained in the context of the use of lethal force in a public space. I'm right here. Pincus, I'm right here. I can hear you. We're changing that. "Worlds Collide" but I think that the truth is that there are far too many people and R. Scott, the questioner, you know, he's seen it. He's gone out to the the competition field and seen even there, you know, in a relative what I would consider compared to some of the training scenarios we get into, a relatively controlled and choreographed predictable environment, the mistakes that happen. And this is why, you know, people will say, "Well, isn't competition better than nothing?" Well, of course it is. You know, I've never said if your options are nothing or competition, don't do competition. You'll get you killed. Here's someone who's had their eyes open to this reality very quickly by going to a couple of local matches, probably. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily the best way to spend your time. If you have, you know, a thousand rounds and a weekend, going in and practicing a lot and doing an IDPA match, I don't think that's as good as taking a specific, you know, defensive oriented, defensive shooting class, but that's nuance, right, because what's important is that we're doing more than just getting the permit. We're doing more than just, you know, qualifying because we had military service in some states, qualifying 'cause you did an online, you know, written test only in some states. Qualifying in some states without any permit requirement whatsoever and going into the gun shop and saying, "Hey, should I go take a class?" And you know, if somebody tells you, "No, don't worry about it. It's your right." I think that the fact that you asked the question, you probably knew that it seemed like you might wanna get some training if you're gonna carry this gun around in a public space. Unfortunately, there are people inside of our community who would confuse the right with the responsibility. They're not the same thing, but they do go hand in hand. So you have the right to carry the gun, but you have a responsibility to be properly trained and prepared. I agree completely. And you know Sam, I'm seeing this thing from the other side. Having come from the competition side, there's nothing more frustrating to me than to see someone go to a match, and I don't care which one it is. I don't care if it's IPSC, USPSA. I mean, they're all games, it's all recreation. Yeah, is one maybe more realistic than the other. That's fine, but they're all simulations anyway. The truth is none of those prepare you and I can, I have this experience just from the limited amount of time I spent with Pincus, that being a very good shot. I'll use that term. Being a very good shot. Those aren't the elements that cause me trouble. When we ran through some of the various things we've done, Rob, and the guy goes out to a match. You realize that, you know, the guy that wins the match, a competition, that just means he's the best shooter out there. It doesn't mean he's a gun fire and it doesn't mean that. So walking away from that saying, "I'm perfectly ready to defend my life, and I'm awesome." It's just, you know, it's just really irrelevant to a large degree. It just means he's very skilled, so he probably doesn't need to spend a lot of time. I probably don't need to spend a lot of time developing shooting skill, to be able to venture into your world further, but I am gonna have to do a lot of learning. All right, our next question is from Robert, and this one is for you, Leatham, I think, yes. Sorry. "I'm left eye dominant, and right-handed. How do I train myself to shoot with both eyes open?" Well, I don't care if you keep both eyes open, to be honest with you. Both eyes open basically gives you a little bit, it gives you a bigger field of view, and increases your depth perception. Now taking it from a competition standpoint, let's start there. And I definitely want Rob to voice in on this too, because I know he has thoughts on it. I close an eye constantly while I'm shooting. Whether your left eye is your dominant eye or your right eye is your dominate eye, that simply becomes a positioning problem. I mean, I know lots of really good shots. You know, Larry Vickers is cross-eyed dominant. Bryan Enos is cross-eyed dominant. Chip McCormick is cross-eyed dominant and lots of really, really good shooters are. It's not a debilitating factor. I think a bigger problem is when someone can't see well enough with both eyes open, and they try to force themselves to shoot two eyes open. I close an eye when I need to see clarity of whatever I'm looking at, and it's almost always the sights. I've come back to the sights because the shot is difficult. So I don't care about keeping both eyes open, and the closer the eyes are to being equal and not one massively more dominant, the more that second picture becomes a problem. What I never want is some dude sitting there and playing this game back and forth. I mean, I see that all the time. If I close an eye, I'm gonna shoot with my right eye I want one eye to be your dominant eye, and I don't care which one it is. And if you have to close or squint an eye, at the instant you shoot, because it's not like, and if he can see my eyes, the way it fundamentally works is you come out on the target. And once you're on the target, if I'm aiming at the target, I'm aiming right at the middle of Pincus' forehead right there. I put it on. I put my sights on that position and if I need to come back and see more clarity than whatever that sight picture is, if I need more than that, I will tend to squint just to get rid of the confusion the other eye has, but that's for what, a 10th of a second while I fire the shots and begin firing the shots. So from a competition standpoint, I really don't think it's a problem, other than the shooter has got, I mean, has to, solidly see just a couple things. And if you're switching, playing this back and forth, and I have students all the time who come out there and one time they're shooting with the right eye, and one day they're shooting with their left eye. And when then they try to shoot two eye, then they shoot horribly. They shoot dramatically to the left or right. And from a competition standpoint, my solution to that is always the same. Once the gun's on the target, and you're ready to shoot, squint, whichever eye is not the one behind the gun, and train yourself to have a dominant eye. Which one it ends, Sam, it just doesn't matter. I mean, I can't make an excuse why it would matter until you get to a rifle or shotgun. Pistol doesn't matter. But Rob, I want your view on that, 'cause I know you see it from different sides. So it's the same, exactly the same people go to my YouTube channel. Go to the Rob Pincus or the I.C.E. training YouTube channel. You're gonna see a long, it's like two 20 something minute lecture blocks from an instructor course, five, six years ago on intuitive sighted fire. And here's what it comes down to. Physics says regardless of your eye dominance, regardless of your eye clarity, your acuity, the physics of light, you cannot get perfect sight alignment sight picture. That picture you see in the magazine, the picture you see in the book, the picture you see on the website of a crisp front sight, blurry, slightly blurry rear sight, and a pretty blurry target. You can't get that, that way with both eyes open, because your eyes are offset. It just doesn't work. It doesn't close and eye to replicate that. So what I teach people to do is on unsighted fire, kinesthetic alignment, where you don't feel like you need that sight picture to be able to get the hit, which you learn from practice. You learn from training. There's no magic distance or size. You go out and you practice. You figure it out. When you are confident you can just drive that gun out kinesthetically and get your hit, both eyes are open anyway because you're focused on the target. You start out with both eyes opened, especially, and this is where it changes from the game field to the training environment for defensive shooting. When that guy is really trying to kill you, and that guy's really trying to kill somebody you care about, now you're intellectually and behaviorally, psychologically focused also, not just physically focused on the target. So that idea of just, you know, coming back and squinting a little to see the front sight, knowing the target is gonna not move, not change, not do anything in the target range environment is one thing. It's something else to train yourself to do that without having to make a lot of cognitive decisions. So I like to take that gray area out. There is no two eyes open sighted fire for me. I'll teach you to do unsighted fire, both eyes open. If you're competent, you can make the hit without your sights. Keep both eyes open. If you're gonna put any cognitive focus on the sights at all, squint that eye, close an eye. Go down to one eye. Take all the variables out. If you're doing sighted fire, it's one eye. I'm not worried if I'm shooting that guy, and it's such a difficult shot that I need my sights, then I'm not getting any value from my peripheral vision. I don't care about my wider field. I'm not paying any attention what's going on over here, when I close my eye to get that sighted fire shot. So it doesn't matter whether the eyes open for, again, that quarter of a second, tenth of a second, half a second, whatever it's gonna be. So sighted, fire close an eye. Unsighted, fire both eyes open. Agree completely. Thanks. Our next one is from Rick. He has a bit of a story here. He says, "Even though I've been shooting", and this is for you, Pincus. "Even though I've been shooting for five years and my groups are good, I still struggle with muzzle flip. I shoot a Glock 19 I'm right-handed and in good shape. I grasp firmly with my right hand high on the grip and my left hand, if in contact with the grip, and my left hand fingers are on my right hand fingers. I think I must be holding wrong with my left hand. Do you have any tips or advice?" The one thing that was left out, this is kinda like, and Leatham got a question like this earlier. You know, why am I missing kind of a thing. Overwhelmingly what I see is, and so what Latham said earlier was talking about, at the moment of trigger press is when that gun changes, right. So I change things with the trigger press. One of the things that contributes to something changing with the trigger press is how you're supporting the frame, how you're supporting the gun, so that you can isolate the trigger press, and everything I heard that person list. What I didn't hear them talk about was their overall upper body posture, the relationship of their head and their arms. So I can hold the gun like here, and probably be doing everything that that guy said he was doing. I have good contact between my hands. I have good contact with the gun. My thumbs are layered. My finger's good on the trigger, but I'm not in a good position to manage recoil here because my elbows are bent, and the gun's down, and my posture is back. So if I lean forward and drive my arms out, get my head down a little bit lower behind the gun, now I'm in a much better position to manage recoil with the rest of my body. So you can have all the grip strength you want. If you're leaning backwards and your elbows are bent, you grip the heck out of the gun here so much that it's shaking, that muzzle may still flip a lot more than if you relax your grip at the hands, drive out, get your head behind the gun, and get your shoulders and your body weight behind the gun by getting your shoulders in front of your hips. So when we talk about kinesthetic alignment, we're not just talking about getting the gun into your line of sight, but really getting the gun out to full extension. And full extension, does it matter. It doesn't mean arms straight, necessarily. Some people aren't gonna get their arms completely straight. Whether it's your build, your muscle mass, your body armor that you're wearing. That guy, big guy, bulky guy, you're not gonna get your arms as straight as a scrawny guy is. I'm gonna be able to get my elbows practically touching if I want to, right. So driving out full extension, getting your head behind the gun and getting your body weight behind the gun, can do a lot to help people control recoil. And just off the top of my head, you know, it's the same thing Rob said earlier. Without seeing a video or at least a picture of you shooting, it's hard to know, but that would be where I would start is your posture. And again, you can pick up those tips on stance at personaldefensenetwork.com. I'm actually gonna give you a second one, 'cause you kind of started answering this question already, but I just wanna see if you have anything else to say, Pincus. David was asking, "How do you train yourself to not anticipate the recoil when shooting?" Do you have anything else to say? I would say this. There's this idea of the surprise break. And I think it applies much more to like rifle shooting and things like that. I don't think the gun should, and the terminology, I don't like this that it should surprise you when the gun goes off. You should know full well that the gun's gonna go off. But what I will say is this, it shouldn't matter to you if you're taking what I would consider like a higher level precision shot, that when you drive that gun out, and if you're shooting one shot a second, one shot every second and a half on a higher level precision shot. If you know that the shot is gonna go off in some specific microsecond, if you're like, okay, everything's perfect, ready, go, now, you're probably gonna cause a problem. If on the other hand, you're getting your sight alignment picture and say, okay, the gun can go off anytime now. And pressing that trigger until the gun goes off, you're probably not gonna mess it up. So to me, the anticipation issue isn't how do I stop anticipating. It's really stop worrying about the microsecond the gun's gonna go off and just learn to press the trigger smoothly, sometimes really fast and sometimes a little bit slower. The gun's gonna go off at some point. You don't need to know exactly when. If you need, if you feel like you need to know exactly when, that's probably what you're anticipating, and that's causing the problem, but I think Leatham may have some more insight on that, 'cause he uses different terminology than I do on trigger presses as well. No, you're pretty right on there. I mean, the way I explained it to somebody is that normally you see that, and someone's having a jerk flange, whatever you wanna call it. A push that pushes the gun out of alignment. As a rule, that's somebody that's trying to control recoil more than it probably needs to be controlled. As a rule, until you start shooting over the tops of the targets, you're not shooting faster than you're controlling the gun or returning the gun. Let's say, let's put it that way. If shots are going low, that has nothing to do with fast. You know, that means that you're actually pulling the gun down out of alignment, so people will say slow down, slow down, slow down to add accuracy to that. And then they shoot low and they shoot slow, which isn't any better than shooting low and shooting fast, but you hit everything pretty much on the muzzle. The thing I would add is to try to get somebody to be able to pull the trigger pretty quick, as fast as they can without moving the gun, and not worry about little small tremors like this, because in our position here, if you're, this is the worst thing. When I'm teaching somebody and you see this motion, that's bad. This motion here, which is, if you see my whole head's even moving to do that, that's my whole torso anticipating the gun's gonna kick. Of course it's gonna kick. I'm pulling the trigger. I'm trying to fire the gun. My subconscious knows the gun is gonna kick, so I'm gonna combat that with a forward motion. That's fine. That doesn't matter. If you shoot pulling shots low, it's because you're putting a recoil control movement into the gun before you shoot it. That's almost always comes from somebody that's not comfortable with the gun firing, or they're thinking. Aiming causes so many problems here, that the person sitting there and it's so frustrating they can't get the sights to sit exactly where he wants. I mean, there's so many, I can go down a lot of rabbit holes here. So there's a bunch of different pieces, but ultimately guys out there, if you're watching this thing, firm the gun up. Get your position as solid as you can. Be aggressive. Make your posture so that it'll resist the guns moving you and make everything as motionless as possible. You're never gonna make it motionless, and then pull the damn trigger. I mean, quit worrying about this kind of stuff. And if the gun flips up when it goes off, and then ejects around out the right side, that's okay. Until you're shooting so quickly that your shots start climbing out the top of the target, you've got enough recoil control. Don't worry about it. Keep the gun on target. That's that part that matters. All right, we've got about seven minutes left, so I'm gonna give each of you one more question, and then it'll be about time to wrap up. Leatham, Jason asked, "Would you agree that shooting behind a bench is fun but hardly realistic in initial self-defense situations?" Absolutely, the games that I play are not in any way, shape or form realistic. I don't care where it is. If you put yourself in a flat range, and the term flat range means it's an organized flat facility with targets down range. You know where everything's at, and the instructor's gonna tell you what he wants you to do before. That's the environment I live and work in. And that is an environment that allows you to train, master, and perfect the innate skills you'll need to shoot well, but that in no way, from Rob's sight, that doesn't teach you to fight or think, and it doesn't even teach you to respond. Because when I go play a game, one of my competitions, I go through the dance steps before I get there. I walk through the course of fire. All the bad guys are sitting there waiting for me all the way through it, and they are kind enough to not move when it's my turn. So it doesn't really create a realistic environment from that standpoint. However, what it does do is allows me to build the fundamental skills to give me the confidence that I can make a shot, but in no way is that even replicating a circumstance other than what it is, which is a game. And while I love doing it, you know, if the guy's asking from the standpoint, is that gonna make him a better fighter? No, it's gonna make him a better shot. The guys that win the match is the best shot, not the best, not the best thinker, not the best move and not the best fighter. Okay, Pinkus do you have anything regarding that? No, Pincus thinks the competition is the very best way to train for fighting. You should join as many matches as possible. What people will see coming up in the next series of "Worlds Collide" is, I jumped into some competition stuff and it was amazingly humbling from a marksmanship and shooter standpoint, and it was amazing how much changed. So Leatham runs through, and people will see this in a few months, Leatham runs through, sets that great, you know, kind of part-time, and then I go through and completely just tank it and get X number of points. Then he shows me, you know, okay, well here. Think about it this way. If you put your foot here, if you shot here, if you did it this way, if you shot these in this order, and sorta changed the way I shot that stage of fire, it doubled my points in just one run. So it really becomes, it becomes really obvious, just how much the way you shoot and the way you approach these things when you have the opportunity to see what's coming, how much it can help. And that's kind of the, that was just a, you know, in a 10 minute personal experience of what I, I mean, I've done competition in the past and study competition and talk to competitors, and see what goes on. And that really just proves the point that we try to make all the time, which is, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you're gonna get dramatically better. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And my fear is always that that builds a false confidence in one's ability to fight because you got really good at that choreographed drill that you did over and over again. Okay, okay. This is gonna be our last question. You're likely both gonna have something to say about it, but I'm gonna start with you, Pincus. Ben asked, "How can an old guy like me, 69 year old ex deputy sheriff with LEO survival training, then now has a ruptured disc in my back and a bad hip. So he sometimes uses a cane. What can I do to make sure I'm prepared in case anything happens? What more should I focus on learning or developing to survive on the streets if something did happen?" I will say this, so here's a person that now there's justification for training with one hand shooting more often, right, because he's got the cane or he may need to push against the wall or push against his car for support in the middle of a fight, but I'll say this. This would be the one big tip I would throw out. And it's counter-intuitive, and it definitely doesn't reflect the demographic that we normally see in these types of classes, but the person that needs to take the grappling class, the person that needs to take the hands-on class, the person needs to take the extreme close quarters shooting class is the person that doesn't move well. And that's never, you know, we always see the guys that do MMA and the guys that are really athletic and fit. And they're the ones that wanna go to that next level, next level, next level. And they know those classes are physically demanding, and for some people, they're a lot of fun. And they can get good at a lot of those skills pretty quick, but the person that I most enjoy seeing go to those classes really is the person that's, you know, in the wheelchair, or with the cane, the person that doesn't move fast. They're the ones that are most likely to get caught. So how about learning how to fight while in contact would be the next best thing that you could probably do. And it's not gonna be easy. It's not gonna be a fun day, and you might need some ibuprofen for the next couple days, but that's probably the most valuable thing you can do. Yeah, the guy that can't run away is the guy that's gonna end up being in somebody's hands. Again Pincus, you've lucked out but you're right. I was practicing this stuff. All right, you guys. So we have two minutes left. Would you like to talk about kind of what you're doing in the next few weeks? I know you've kind of touched on it in the beginning. If there's anything else you'd like to say about this "Worlds Collide" project. Here's what we're gonna do. Leatham and I are gonna do a team-up class. Am I allowed to say that? Yeah, I think so. It's time to tell everybody. We were working on dates. We're trying to figure it out. It's gonna be probably one set of days. It's one, two-day class that I'm in Arizona, and one, two-day class in Florida. So one at his range, one at my range in Florida and we're just, we're looking forward to it. So we really take the stuff we've been doing with "Worlds Collide", the stuff that you're hearing tonight and give you those two different perspectives. Sometimes those two perspectives really are just different ways of saying the same thing. And sometimes we are more further apart, especially as we get further into the actual skill development side. You know, the way I train for application becomes very, very different from the way that Rob really trains people to get to their maximum potential in isolation. And I know that people would benefit from both of those things coming together in the context of a defensive class, for sure, but with Rob teaching what he teaches all the time. So I'm looking forward to that. People can look for an announcement. It'll probably be before starts. Maybe but it'll be just before the Personal Defense Network training tour. And that's really the big thing I'm working on. I'm heading out to an industry trade show that is probably one of the smallest industry trade shows that I guess is considered a big one. The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers in Kansas City next week. So see a lot of good friends from the industry. And it's when PDN really sets a lot of things in place for the upcoming tour. So we'll be talking about our sponsors, and talking about the routes, and talking about the venues, as we get closer to the end of the year. And meanwhile, you can go to ICEtraining.us. Click on the course calendar and find those last few opportunities to train with me and the team around the country. Leatham, what do you got going on in the next couple months? Well, I'm just finishing up, you know, we're all coming up to this November One date for the SAINT thing, but so that's been everybody's focus. I've got a couple classes coming up in the next week, traveling into Texas and finishing up that portion of it. I have one major championship, not a national, but a local match here that happens in a couple, three weeks, but I'm also looking forward to, I would have never thought when we first did that, met that first time for that "Worlds Collide" thing, I would've never thought that I'd be saying, "Hey I really wanna put a thing together with you." Because as a rule, you know, you come from just such a different world, but the more time we spent together, and more time we talk, I'm thinking like, "Hey, you know what, my guys can learn a lot from seeing a different viewpoint, simply because you do look at everything from such a different angle that I always do." But I think that that's gonna be an event that, it's not to be missed. I'm sure we'll sell them out, no problem, but I bet those are gonna be talked about by a lot of people. I think all your, I think all your self defenders are gonna call you a sell out for cheating with the competition guys. And all my competition guys are gonna say, "Why are you over there trying to learn how to fight?" It's gonna be awesome. Social media will love it, but the students are gonna love it more. They're gonna love it more. That's fantastic. So this is, we're nearing the end of "PDN LIVE". We were talking about skill development. Next month, towards the end of the month, Rob's gonna be coming back, that is Rob Pincus, for an ask Rob anything. So if you want, you can go to personaldefensenetwork.com and you can sign up for the newsletter to be notified when our next live event.