Training Discipline

Wanna talk about the concept of training discipline. This is the idea that can be summed up as when you're in the training environment, you wanna have enough discipline to not do what behooves you, only in the training environment. Now that may seem obvious if we're in the training environment we're supposed to be getting ready for the real world not just trying to perform very well in front of a piece of paper, a piece of steel with our firearms training or against the heavy bag if we're doing our unarmed striking training. But it seems like a lot of people really miss that point when they're actually getting their reps, and when they're trying to seek the highest level of skill performance. What we really wanna seek is the highest possible level of practical skill application in the real world.

And what that means is, sometimes you're gonna find yourself falling into the trap of trying to do really really well, things that have nothing to do with the real world but only apply to the training environment. If things go really wrong you can even compromise your techniques or compromise your gear selection, just so that you can maybe shoot a 10th of a second faster in a training drill, or shoot a little bit tighter group, or throw just a little bit harder punch up against that heavy bag. Now, while that may seem like a valid goal, if you're developing skills that you can't apply you're really just wasting your time. And most dangerously you may be building a false confidence. Training discipline isn't always easy.

We think about our ego involvement, we think about the way we can be competitive in a training environment. We think about the way we see other people perform. And of course, we wanna try to compare our scores or be as good as we possibly can. And in an ego or competitive driven environment that makes a lot of sense. But when it comes to life and death skill development, developing skills that you're going to need in a chaotic and surprising event.

Defending yourself or others that you care about, you don't wanna get sucked into that trap of wasting a bunch of time making yourself feel good about isolated skill performance, that really doesn't have any real world correlation. So use some training discipline when you pick your gear, when you pick your techniques, when you pick your tactics. And most importantly, when you're on the range, you're in the gym or wherever you're getting your training to make sure that your real-world application is what you're focusing on.