TACTICAL TUESDAY: Mike Seeklander of Shooting Performance.com

You're listening. Caread you will pay us back just to be y sure. Mike siek Lander, Shooting Performance dot Com, the American Warrior Society, thanks for coming on tonight, sir. How are you? I'm great, man, Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem, no problem. Right off the top, I thought an interesting question to ask a guy like you would be, Uh, what do you think that that I guess you could call the community on a large large preppers. What do you think preppers are getting wrong about shooting in firearms? Man? That's a great question, and I would have to admit that it depends on what preppers we're talking about. So I had I had some exposure to a buddy of mine who did some training for a prepper group a long time ago, and he showed me some of the stuff that he was encountering with this particular prepper group, and it was very it was very gun centric, meaning they were they seemed to be very much geeking out on the gear and flashlights mounted everywhere and things and squibbles and stuff like that, and they were very low on skill. Now, that was that particular group, but I've met some people that that self proclaimed that they're preppers that are pretty well trained and highly capable. Like I'll give you a great example of a short story. I had a kids show up to class one time, and this kid and his father were what I would call preppers. There was a serious self defense enthusiasts. I'm pretty certain they had some property somewhere in Oklahoma. I guarantee they prepped and had food and had all kinds of, you know, different things. And this kid he came to class with like this war out block nineteen and he was a fenom with it, like his manipulation skills, his shooting skills, everything about him. And I'm like, man, who are you? What are you at? What level do you shoot at? Have you ever? He's like, I've never shot a match in my life. I just trained. And I'm like, man, well, wherever and however you've been training, you got it right. So it really I guess it just depends. Man. I don't want to label the community in the least, but if I had to pick something, it would be being two gear centric instead of being skills centric. Yeah, that's a good one. I bet I think that most people would agree with that, particularly in our community. We are a mixed bunch because we do have a lot of people who come from backgrounds, whether it be military or le eos, stuff like that, who already have training under the belt, and then there's a big chunk of people, you know, who just slide into it, you know. And I guess to your point, yeah, big, big, big difference in that in that those group dynamics. But you know, the funny thing on the on the other side of that is, I could say to your community that the firearms maybe the at large firearms community is to firearm centric, like they think that the gun and the firearms are going to solve all of their problems, and they probably haven't addressed you know, food or shelter and fitness and medical supplies and being able to use their medical kits and stuff like that. So I think there's two sides of that coin, you know. Yeah, that is the weird battle, Mike Man, that I face. And I know a lot of our listeners and a lot of probably people in your shooting communities too, who have won some modicum of preparedness. Is like, like, how do you manage time? And I'm not looking for an answer from it, but you might be a good guy. That based on what I know about you thus far, it's like, how do you manage time to build out all these kinds of skills? You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know, Man's it's got to be some sort of system of prioritization and and then then managing your time as good as you possibly can. It's that's the question of the day. Man. If that's that's like the golden nugget there. If someone could tell me really truly how to manage my time effectively and what I should be focusing on in a preparedness kind of world, then that's that's the that's the ticket right there. Yeah, that's the tough part. It's it's almost like a video game, you know what I mean. We have certain amount of points to spend on certain skills and things like that, and the only difference, of course, is that we have lives too, right on top of that. That's right, and you and I are probably I don't know completely what you do for a living, but I know you said you spend a lot of time at the range. So I feel like people like you and I are a little bit blessed because we have we don't have an eight hour day that we've devoted to another person streams, you know what I mean, at least our at least our work life can be built around this stuff too. But for the average guy, it's like, yeah, I got to get through. In the prep In the prepping podcast community, we're always trying to figure out, like what the barrier is that keeps people from making the jump, because we know now that there's just so much information about why. You know, for a long time, we used to think maybe they're just haven't seen anything, you know what I mean, like haven't seen anything crazy or something crazy hasn't happened to them. But like we've crossed all those bridges now, you know. So we're always trying to figure out what is what pushes people to get from you know, watching news to you know, reacting and then preparing and you know all that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of it does come down to that mic. It's a grind out there for the average person, you know. And I guess the day on the range is well, you know, even speaking personally, a day on the range is not something I do as often as I should either, you know. Yeah, I tell you, man, my hat is off to the folks out there that do work those you know, eight nine, ten, twelve hour workdays and still find time to train and prepare and whatever else. I mean. I mean, I'm blessed if I'm not traveling and teaching. I mean, I can jump on the range anytime I want, Like tomorrow morning, that sunrise are right after I'll be on the range training for you know, a period of time until I have an early afternoon meeting, and I'll be I'll work hard at it. I mean, I'm getting ready for a world championship, and I'll work hard at I'll be tired after I'm done. But I can only imagine trying to accomplish the same things that I'm doing after eight full hours of work, whether that's physical you know, some sort of blue collar labor or in an office setting. And I just, man, am I I respect that more than anything, and I did it, I did in the past. But it's grind. Yeah, it's hard to fault them, you know what I mean. And you see things happening around the world and you wonder why people aren't prepared, And that's what we've come to the conclusion. We've come to us for most people it's like I can't even go there right now, Like I got problems. I get to deal with the kids and the you know, dinner and all that kind of stuff, and before you know, today's over. It is wild. I don't know many people in our community that get into the competitive shooting aspect of things. And there was a time when I was looking at three gun kind of like as a well, what I see competitive shooting being being really good for for our people is it adds a level of you got to go do it, you know what I mean? And I think that's really I think that's really what a lot of people need in our community. Is not like, you know, go shoot the gun once every three months when you have nothing else to do when you go to the local gun range, But if you're training for something, preparing for something like you do like in the competitive shooting world, then I do feel like that could be uh, that could be really helpful. But I know nothing about it, Like what what kind of what does it take to get started in something like that then? And that's actually a great question and it's a great point. So I would I would say to you and your audience, man, the first thing is if you can get into it. It's it's like gamifying anything. It makes it more interesting. Uh, it makes it if you if you if you can get some sort of passion and interest in it. It's like a snowball man. And one the great news is once that snowball starts rolling. You know, if you want to be better prepared with a firearm, you know, shooting competitively, assuming you're doing it from some sort of logical standpoint and you understand it's a game and it's not exactly like some of your defensive training, and you're gonna be You're gonna be so much more skilled. And here's the interesting thing. You know, both of the primary sports us p s A and i d p A. Now i d p A the International Defensiveistal Association. It's made for self defense type training, but both the USPSA and IDPA allow shooters now to wear appendix type style rigs inside the waistband carry gear. I mean, IDPA was designed for carry a very simple carry type system, so it would probably be the direction I would point most newer shooters. It's simpler, it requires less gear. It tends to rely more on the use of cover and different props. You know, but it is amy. But man, but both of them. Here's the interesting those of you know, your folks out there that are carrying on a regular basis, more than likely they could probably go to a match and with not much altercation or alternating their gear, they could shoot a match. They could literally shoot it from their actual carry gun system. And they guess what they get to experience not just you know, some fun and some you know, some collaboration with like minded shooters, but they get to see if they're able to do what they think they could do. Yeah, with their handgun under stress. Man, that's a key question. Can can you really do it with just a timer going deep and some people watching it? Yeah? Well, I mean and at the end of the day, like from our community standpoint, it really is a life or death kind of thing. And not even from this perspective of like doing something heroic, but I think of like making it critical error. That's right, you. Know what I mean. That's what I always think about is people, Sure, you carry your gun every day because you know you've committed to that aspect of it, but once you pull that thing and start firing, like in chaos, are you going to see people behind you? Know the target and what's beyond it and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and you would at least you would have some modicum of pressure from competitive shooting. Well, you know, and the thing about it is, in competitive shooting, people may look at a stage, you know, like maybe a stage where they have us seated and there's multiple threats and non threats, and it's like maybe a restaurant type scenario, and they may watch something like that that looks so complex and those shots are so hard, But think about the reality of what you may have to do in real life. You may be literally in a restaurant and the targets are not going to be stationary. They're going to be moving and panicking, and you're scared to death. So you know, if you can start to learn and apply some of those skills in the competitive environment, uh, it's it's simply going to translate over to your real world defensive use of a firearm if you ever need to. It's gonna make you a better shooter, it's gonna make you a better gun handler. It's going to show you where you break down under stress when the timer goes off, you just lose it. Literally, Well, guess what folks, we you know, we have some work to do. We gotta get we got to get the gun in our hand more often, right, Yeah. Yeah. So so if you were to show up to an event, like I guess a beginner's esque event with four hand gun exclusively, what kind of a load doubt would you need as far as like an extra magazine's rounds of ammunition? That Yeah, So with id PA, you literally would need your your primary firearm and probably three magazines total. So typically you're gonna have a holster on and then two mag pouches or a dual magpouch, so the gun magazines will get you through any stage you're gonna shoot, depending on the division you're gonna actually shoot. And granted, if you showed up with an extra Magna TUO, that'd be great because you could have them pre loaded and be ready to rock and roll. But you could literally assuming the holster's safe, it covers the trigger guard, you can draw and reholster safely and stuff like that. That's that's really all you need. Us PSA tends to be a little bit more complex and than get required. You're probably gonna need four or five mag pouches. You're gonna see most USPSA shooters, you know, shooting from some sort of a race rig. But that's not that's not across the board. There's some high level competitors now believe it or not, shooting us PSA from appendix position and and they're guys shooting I d P A from appendix position off with more carry type polsters. But sport of IDPA requires, you know, very simple gear man like something you could buy. You could get an XDM out of the box or the wholest magpotches they give you. And I'm not promoting that gun because I don't shoot for them, but that's a good example of you could pull that gun out of the box and go to an IDP match and be fine. Is there a you say, three magazines, but there's is there like a standard of rounds that you know, like I everybody had, Well I don't know if everybody, but you know, guns vary magazine size and rounds per magazine, that stuff varies. Yeah, So the different divisions will require a different round account like for for example, in IDPA, they have the Bug division, they have a CDP Custom Defensive Pistol Division, they have the ESP Enhanced Service pistol division, and each of those divisions have a different magazine limit, but most of most of what you'll find is between eight rounds and fifteen rounds in IDPA. So the highest division is going to be a fifteen round magazine. Most of the divisions are going to be a ten round magazine. And if you if you have high cap magazines, you would just download them to ten. You could start with eleven in the gun, but you would download the rest of your magazines to ten rounds. So everybody's across the board on the same plane field. Now USBSA, you may show up and see guys with a Karry Optics Division Rake, which is one of the matches all shoot this year, and they may have twenty two rounds in the magazine, like three or four major magazines. You know they'll shoot thirty two round field courses where I think IDPA is limited to eighteen rounds on any given course of fire. So what you've been at it a while, what does a day look like for you in one of these events in terms of like the weapons that you will use and bring, and it's sort of the courses you'll face that kind of stuff. Yeah, man, so I will tend to compete with whatever gun is suited to the match on prepping for so prepping there, I use your word right, So, like right now I'm shooting exclusively my Wilson Combat ar style PCC's pistol caliber carving because we have an ECC World shoot coming up in two weeks. So I have literally been shooting a nine milimeter carving for six months now in a very high volume. And then after that I'll switch directly over to you know, some sort of what we call carry optics setup, which might be a six three twenty Wilson Combat variant or Glock forty seven or thirty four variant with an optic on it, and get ready for the carry optics division in both IDPA and USPSA. And then the past I would have shot primarily what would call ESP which is with nineteen eleven single stack nine milimeter. Of course, I shoot for Wilson Combat. I've been sponsored for them for I don't know how many years now, twelve years, and I just love the classic nineteen eleven. I carried a cop back nineteen eleven and competed with a nineteen eleven on a regular basis. So what I'm shooting will depend on the major match coming up, and probably the national championship. I shoot a lot of mid level matches, but most of what I prepare for is a national level or world level event right now. But I shoot a lot of club matches too, So a club match would be you know, you show up at your local club and you shoot a three to six stage match. It's going to be probably twenty or thirty shooters, maybe upwards to seventy or eighty shooters, all the way up to a world championship where we're going to see probably six hundred and fifty to seven hundred and fifty competitors. So how do they What is the like the mechanism for points in judging? Is it hit and not hit or is it yeah great, like some targets are like so you can't tell where a bullet hits it. Yeah, there are two. There are two primary scoring methods. One it's called hit factor and that's with USBSA hit factors. It's not terribly complex, but basically it's it's your the points you shoot on a target, divided by time, right, so every every basically imagine a silhouette shaped target. It if you look up uspsor IDPA target, you'll see them. The USBSA target has an A zone, a C zone, and a D zone. IDPA target has a zero zone, a one zone, and a three zone. And with USBSA, the center of the target center mass. You know, because it was originally a defensive score, it is the highest point value, you know, so you're typically going to shoot two rounds on each target. Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's more. So the more points I shoot on the target in less time, the better my hit factor score becomes. Right In IDPA, they use what they call time plus scoring, so it's much simpler. So it's basically, if you shoot a course of fire and you shoot it in ten seconds, and you shoot all of the zero down scoring zone, which means you're not adding any time to your run, well, then you would have a ten second score. If I shoot a ten second run, but I shoot several down ones and several outside on the outer edge, like the down three zone. For every one of those, I add a second to my time. So if I dropped five ones and two threes, you know, then I would have had eleven points or eleven seconds added to my score, where you would have shot a ten second run. I would have shot a twenty one second run and you would have firmly beat me. So they're you know, center mass is best. They have head shots, you know, which is pretty much anatomically correct for a defensive type you know, situation. But that's how the scoring of the two major sports are. Man, sounds like a lot of fun. It is, Man, it's addictive. But I'll tell you many years ago I used to I was trying to promote my defensive handgun book, and I was out selling my defensive handgun book by a long shot by my competition hanging and book. And the funny thing about that was I finally figured out later, is because the hobbyists will tend to spend money on the thing they love their hobby. Right, those that are carrying guns, you know, they tend not to realize they probably need more training than the competitive shooters. But anyway, one of my little tricks to get people into competition was to give away one of my books, this is many years ago, for free, just to get people to go to their first match, because I knew and remember I was trying to hook them into a match, but I was really trying to make them better defenders. This was actually right after one of the big mass shootings that I don't remember where it happened, but it happened somewhere, and I was trying to promote more gun carriers, more skill or whatever else. But I knew if I could get them hooked on competitive shooting, they would dramatically improve in skill. It would be their thing, it would be their golf game. They would do it more. Man, And I think it was successful for you know, several years, but that was kind of my hook. I think that if you haven't competed, try it, and you know, there's no downside, show up, watch a match first, if you want to the people there ninety nine percent of the time, they're going to be super friendly. Yeah, you know, they'll loan new gear, they'll help you whatever else. Yeah, it definitely sounds like something that needs to go on my own short list for sure. Yeah, man, do it. It's there's no downside. Yeah. I've got two boys too, and especially my oldest. I could definitely see him getting into it. Yeah, they'll they'll probably excel faster than you because they got the hand, eye coordination and all the different things. The young kids out. So oh yeah, definitely. So I guess out of that the writing of the Defensive Handgun Book or Defensive Rifle. Was that around the same time that you started kicking off the American Warrior podcast. Was it all kind of like culminating from that event or was that already in the works. Yeah, that was a that's a great question. So I actually the first book I wrote was my competition hanging on a book, and then later on I decided because I was in law enforcement and the military, teaching a lot of tactical stuff, always doing you know, defensive BJJ, full contact karate, all these things. At the same time I was competing and I'm like, well, man, you know there are literally hundreds of thousands of carry permits out there and hundreds of thousands of people carrying guns, So let me write the Defensive Hanging Book. And then later on, of course, the Air of fifteen was popular eyed because everybody thought they were going to be out a lot, and everybody went and bought one, and I'm like, man, you know, people need to know how to use this thing. So I wrote the Defensive Rifle Book, and it was probably two or three years later after I had produced the book and then I did the videos that show the drills. I'm like, let me do an all inclusive thing where I could put all of this defensive information into one area, and that was the American Warriors Society, which spawned the American Warrior Show podcasts, which is like, hey, we should do a podcast. This was before there were you know, as you know, nine million podcasts. Oh yeah, so yeah, so that's what that happened. Yeah, it's a good idea, man, it's a good idea. I looked through some of the archives. I see you even had some some like knife fighting guys on and all that kind of stuff. I thought it was a great idea to have a show like that for people to listen to, you know a lot of times, or at least nowadays that the realm of self defense seems to be becoming dominated by uh well it's really kind of like UFC and Special Forces guys, you know what I mean, or boxers to some degree. And you know what, I liked the concept of getting information outside of those realms, you know, in particular, just because you know, because people learn things different ways, go through different things, and you know that you can always glean something new from somebody and you've got four hundred episodes over there, three hundred and ninety nine I think episodes, right. I don't know what it is now, man, to be honestly, I have to look it up. But you're you're exactly right. Though. One of the things that we challenge ourselves to do was to have all kinds of different skill sets, like you know, I mean, I knew I had the firearm stuff covered, although we've had top level world champion handgun shooters, top level world champion shotgun and rifle shooters, you know, because you know, as you go on, you just realize that there's probably something to learn from each of these individuals. But we I made myself hit the medical. I've got multiple shows on Medical. Like you said, We've got a bunch of edge weapon you know, defensive knife kind of shows with Michael Vantitch and a couple of other guys, all kinds of fighters, man, you know, Hoys Gracy one of the first YFC was on the show. Was really I didn't see that one. Yeah, Howays Gracey was on our show Strength Coaches. You know, So anybody kind of in that area has been on the show at some point in time or at least as much as we could reach and try to, you know, pull them in our audience. So have you ever contemplated like a some kind of annual routine or something for people to stick to. I feel like I didn't know you trained martial arts too, so you probably have a pretty good feel for kind of what people should spend their time doing in regards to self defense overall. You know, yeah, you know. Yes. One of the great things about the American orig Study Vault we call it the Vault, it's our online content area, is there's there's there's all these training tracks, right. That's also one of the downsides. There's there's so much stuff and so many training tracks. I think a lot of people get in there and like they're like, well, Michael, what do I do? And if if people don't know what to do, then they do nothing? Right, they don't they don't know at all. So we actually have a pretty neat tool in there. It's a survey. Basically, it's like an Excel spreadsheet survey that my partner from rich Brown did and it allows you to go through and answer all these questions and then it kind of rates you on your skill level in different areas. And it tells you where you're weak. But we and we back in the day, we don't have it active right now. We used to have an email automation that was kind of like that as well. It was like, Hey, here's your weekly reminder to focus on this or that or whatever else. Definitely, yeah, I think we're going to do something along line sometime soon. Like basically it would like a yearly a psyched, like, Hey, the next two weeks or four weeks, we're focusing on this specific skill set. Here's a reminder of this podcast or this article, or here's some drills to try, and you. Know, yeah, yeah, I think it helps. I think, well, I think there are certain people in the community that things like that really really help, you know, Like we do monthly routine stuff, we do some annual Crazy Prepper challenge stuff, and they're the people who take advantage of it, really take advantage of it. You know. I can't say that it's like a massive swath of people who do those things, but I think the people who really hook into it gain a lot of benefit from it. I mean, I started doing those routines on our side just because I needed a routine on my side to keep myself accountable. You know, like one of the things that I was not doing hardly enough of was dry fire. So we started putting that into those monthly routines to make sure so that I could make sure, you know what I mean that I was doing that because you know, like we talked about earlier, it's damn near and possible to get it all done, so that well, yeah, I. Was gonna say, you're you're, you are exactly right, because if everything is a priority, then nothing is. So sometimes I think we are at a point in society where there's so much information. Oh yeah, you're exactly right. I think that the truly interested person that wants to learn and improve themselves, they kind of need to be led. And and we actually had that conversation today about putting something in place that was a little bit more routine. You don't have to think about it, just just follow it or follow portions of it as we go through the cycle. I like that a lot. So yeah, I think just having that out there, even if you don't hold yourself one hundred percent accountable, I think having those sort of hangers on or you know, a list or something along those lines, it allows you to say, I've got a little bit of extra time. Should I waste it on Instagram? Or should I? You know what I mean, because it's I mean, that's the reality of it, you know, I mean, just the news itself. I always say to the audience, Mike, I always say, I think people are basically informationally maxed out by about ten am and the rest the rest is just you're running on fumes, you know what I mean, as far as what else you can put inside here, You're just forcing it in from about ten am on because I wake up. You know, the moment you look at this, the moment you get on this, and then you know everything else. Talk even talking to people now, you know, it didn't used to be that you would have a conversation with like your kid on the ride to school and be talking politics, geo politics, what's putin doing? You know what I mean, all this kind of stuff I find myself talking to my thirteen year old about because he's plugged into you know. So it's just like, Wow, We're solving the world's problems at seven thirty in the morning, and I still got to get to work. Yeah, you got me thinking now, tick, because I'm thinking, you know, I get up the morning, I I you know, make it some tear coffee or whatever, and then start to consume some things. And I have I myself have I have wanted, like and I wish I had something fresh in the morning that I can look at that would give me some guidance or guide me through. I'm not even sure what I want to be guided through, but yeah, you open it up and it's like something it's it's positive, it's gives me something to think about. So yeah, some sort of morning you know thing. I like that. Man, I have to go around that. Like, you know, the one that I find always works really well, particularly from like a entrepreneurial side of things, is no noise, no silence, you know what I mean. Like I do find like the cacophony starts to get to me at a certain point and then I just turn everything off and I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot. I can sit here quietly and go through my actual problems and things that need to get done without a podcast going on in the back or a song going on in the back. I totally agree, Man, I shut my radio off all the time in my try I'm just like I just want to I just want to try. Yeah, man, I just want to look and hear and think and just shut it off, shut the noise off. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one to pull off these days. It is really tough. Yeah, finding your way in the silence is hard for a lot of people to do. But it's essential. Man. It's especially if you're gonna get into this kind of stuff. You know, where you're gonna put the outside of life. You're gonna put time aside to truly train with firearms or like you said, edge weapons, any of that kind of stuff. It's uh, you know, just you gotta carve out that piece. You gotta carve out that piece of time. How much time do you think you spend? You gotta be on that range just ungodly amounts of hours a week. Man, you wouldn't even want to know, like life, So this is uh So in a normal year, I mean I shoot a lot, I train a lot. Uh you know, so in a normal Ye're I'm always focusing in cycling through in a given a week, you know, fitness, some sort of combatives, right, so I'm doing I'm always doing all those. Right now, I'm hyper focused on shooting because I have this this year happens to be two world championships, which is a rare for ipsick. It only happens every three years. And I'm on and it's an alternate on the Senior Division team on one and I'm actually one of the primaries. I'm the senior Division team on another one. So man, I am, I am shooting and on the range a ton Like the amount of AMMO I would shoot in a week would just it would embarrass your audience probably. You know, we're talking like, you know, eight or nine hundred rounds, you know, several days per week, probably four or five days a week. What do you feel like at the end of a week like that in terms of outcomes? Because I've never had a week in my life where i came anywhere close to shooting a thousand rounds, you know what I mean. I have to see alone data. Yeah, I'm hyper focused on the end results. So every day has a specific purpose. I got you, and you know I'm I'm not. I wouldn't promote that for anyone else, you know, But like I said, in a normal week, I would be focusing my energies and rotating through you know, maybe a couple of days of defensive handing gun and maybe one day of defensive hanging on a one day of defensive rifle, or maybe one day of you know, competitious stuff and one day of defensive carry stuff, and then the other you know, several days, probably before the range, I would have hit the gym and worked on some element of fitness, whether it's strength or you know, you know, conditioning or whatever else, and then you know, several days and I have my brain likes for whatever reason, I like, I like even this, So I like to say, for example, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays or range days, and Monday, Wednesday and Fridays are BJJ and fitness days, and then Saturday and Sunday or recovery with some long slow cardo or whatever. So that that would be my normal lifestyle. And it allows me to stay very sharp and very fit, and it's you know, at the same time mentally energized because the training, Like I have enough AMMO and I have enough time where I could literally shoot five, six, seven, eight hours a day. Yeah, there's there's a I can't. I can't physically hold up to it because my hands and my arms get get tired of the point where I just I start to degrade and mentally I couldn't stay focused that. Oh yeah, it's just focusing on shooting for six hours. My practice sessions are intense too, you know, I'm not standing there and doing slow fire. I'm you know, like right now, in the back of my truck, I have a little Ammo can with seventeen big stick block magazines, thirty one round magazines are already pre prep They're already preloaded for tomorrow's practice session. And when I get home then I'll shoot those and then I'll reload them and shoot them again and what I'm working on tomorrow, and then when I get home tomorrow in the afternoon, I'll reload them probably between my workout sets as I'm in the in the gym. So it's it's a it's it's a grueling deal man. It's like if you don't, if you're not really really into it like I am, and driven for that kind of thing, Yeah, it would be. It wouldn't be fun. It's not. It loses its glamour the ninety eight time you're all by yourself early morning. On the range and oh I'm sure. Yeah, that's kind of what like to a guy like me who if you have you know, you work on things like aim, things like site pitch, basic stuff, you know what I mean. And after time at the range, I always come away with, Okay, I improved here, and I need to improve their type of thing. And I always think about guys who shoot as much as you shoot, like how do you see where are the differences? You know what I mean? Like like you come in a beast obviously from doing what you do, and then at the end of the week there's got to be some takeaways where you're like, but but they must be so minuscule or you know, I don't know. I always ye about that. Well, they're tiny details, and you know, for me, you know, it's it's part of it's part of a multi phase system, right. So I'm following kind of a system, not that in a literal sense like tomorrow I have a piece of paper that tells me what to do. But I know that I know that this phase of training for this match, I'm in the execution phase, which means I need to be able to step up and load the PCC and do a drill and execute it repeatably every single time. I'm not exploring anymore. I'm not trying to gain a lot of speed and a lot of accuracy, although i may be testing guns and tweaking them to the literally the last several days, but I'm in the execution phase where you know, three months ago, I was in the exploration phase. I was trying to figure out how to speed up my mound and how to speed up the splits on different distances of targets and split up, you know, speed up my transitioning from one target in the next target. But like you said, you know, you think about the fundamentals, you know, of aim, trigger, what that feels like to fire a good shot. Where like today, for example, you know, I was working on mounting and shooting a couple shots on a target that was literally the size of about half of my face at thirty three yards, and then then moving and stabilizing the gun as I moved to shoot two alphas in a target that was you know, sixteen yards aware, so give or take my right to my left. So if those little details over and over and over again, that just helps develop that level of skill where I can at least attempt to compete at that level. So sure, how much of that when you so how much of what you train is going to show up at the competition, Like, are those pretty standard in terms of the challenges and the scene and setting that you're going to face, Like there'll be a target at thirty three yards, there will be these two targets at sixteen or that's. A great question, man. Yeah, so it's a really weird deal I have. I mean, I've been doing this for so many years. I have a good idea it's going to be there, but you never know for sure. So my job is to make sure there's no I have no shooting weaknesses, or at least I've done as much as I possibly can to eliminate any shooting weaknesses that I have. And also I'm trying to train to the point where I'm doing things that are so hard that I hope when I get the match it's easy. Now. I know, you know they won't exceed one hundred yards in this particular division. I know that ninety percent of the targets, based on the rules, will be within a certain distance, probably less than fifty yards fifty yards and end. But I may deal with ten percent of the targets that are between fifty and one hundred yards, right, and they may be you know, chess size, like my chess size all the way down to literally a little smaller than my head, you know what they call micro targets. So so my job is to try to eliminate those variables. Shoot the PCC on my right shoulder, shoot the PCC on my left shoulder. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be jumping down into the prone position because I may have to go alone get my old self, which is not fun. So that's that's kind of why I'm focusing on. Yeah, that's cool, man, that's a that's a whole nother world of preparation. But like you said, it's it takes. It would take a person who doesn't shoot a particularly I mean prone is a perfect example, right, somebody who probably has taken how many shots? How how many the average shooters taken? How many shots in the prone position? That matters? Right, good point, and then all of a sudden, it's if you're put in a life or death situation. You think you're gonna drop down there and it's gonna be call of duty, like right, you know what I mean? Probably not, yeah, but yeah, I guess the competitive shooting puts you in in those strange positions that you're never in, sort of like hitting a punching bag compared to training Muay Thai. You know what I mean, that's exactly right. I always lay in my punches until the targets moving. You can never miss, right, Yeah, that's exactly right. But the interesting thing is, you know, you know, your listeners could probably apply the concept that I'm talking about in their defensive handing on. You know, they have certain skill sets, and they have certain skill sets that in the defensive encounter they're probably going to need. They're probably going to need to access their firearm, they're going to need to build probably a good two handed grip, and they're probably going to need to shoot, you know, accurately from three to seven yards, right, And then you start to add different variables like should they you know, should they work on their I give you a great example, should they work on their reloads and their malfunctioning clearance as well? If you look at civilian gunfights, statistically, that's almost never ever happened. But guess what, every time you practice, you got to do a reload, So you might as well practice doing an efficient reload anyways, and you need to know how to clear a malfunction just in case, So why not work on it a little bit? But you know, prioritize those fundamental basic skills and then hey, if you if you're confident in what you're doing there, then add something else. Okay, let's take a hand off the gun and work on one head of shooting. Let's get a flashlight out and go to a range that allows low light shooting or at least mimic a low light position, you know. So yeah, that's a good one in the still of the night, right, yeah, so uh outside at shooting. Dash Performance dot com is kind of where your your world is in terms of the information that you share with people, right, and like in terms of how to go to where exactly if with people want? Well you travel though too, right, Yep, it's not even about location. Yes, so I don't. I don't have a range. I do have a range here. I can do some things, but I travel and I do classes like a host will sponsor man, I'll come to the range and teach. I do some online coaching. I do some one on one coaching. But of course, as you know, I have a bunch of digital programs that are follow a self paced follow Along, Shooting Dash Performance. You know. Literally, it's as you know, it's kind of laid out in a pretty simple format where you can see the two membership areas and go check those out. Then you can go down to the different digital programs, and then you know, scroll down to the articles, because there's a ton I always tell people before you buy anything I sell, check out the free stuff first, check out, read some articles, sign up for the pro tips membership area, you know, and then typically what they do is say, Wow, the free stuff is pretty good, and I think I'm going to try the premium stuff as well and make sure it works for me. So let's bring her up real quick so the audience could get their eyes on it. Yeah, and there's the the very top of the thing is joined free first. I call that pro Tips, and there's there's a bunch of content in there. Man. Of course you have to sign in and log into access, but it's good. And then down below there's the two membership areas, the defensive on the left and the competitive on the right. And then below that maybe you just want to look at a specific program that interests you and you can look down there and you know, I have both my hard copy books you could get or you could click on the digital versions and you can access all of those programs digitally on a computer, iPad or whatever else you want. And then all the way on the bottom you'll see just a ton of articles that'll keep feeding if you keep on scroll. And then you know classes are listed there, stuff like that. You have some merch too, I do have some on support our man Mike here. That's right. Yeah, we're about to add a bunch more shirts. My buddy's printing up some stuff that we call him the Man on the Mountain in Wyoming. Right now, he's behind on printing. I gotta get some more stuff printed up. It sounds like the guy who started this network. Yeah, he was a man on the mountain as well. Wow, you guys do have a ton I didn't scroll this far down. Yeah, yeah, I haven't written, I haven't updated my articles. I haven't published one for a while. I had a short one recently, but I just there's you know, I'm actually going to start emailing out some of my older articles. Oh yeah, and then yeah, reinvigorate that content. Really yeah, man, I mean I'm not trying to pat me on the back, but you can spend a lot of time learning and I think enjoying just reading the articles on my blog and then go from there. And then when you're serious, you know, if you want to get a dedicated program, jump into something and and go from there. I love it. Man, anything else you want to leave the audience with before we go on our separate paths. Man, No, just you know, hey, if you know every we're all preppers. We just focus on different things. And if if you're not really taking your stuff that I teach serious the firearm stuff and if you have to use that skill set, you've got some issues. You know. I would suggest that there are a lot of things you can make a mistake on in your preparedness lifestyle that probably won't cost you your life or your family's life. But if you're not, if you're not prepared, and like you said earlier, you made a great point, you know, a mistake or a mistake of fact shooting or or pulling the gun out and hitting the wrong person. Yeah, you know, you know, sometimes our training not just allows us maybe to defend ourselves against the person we're trying to shoot, what prevents us from not shooting the person that we're trying not to shoot, so maybe think about it like that and just just train, you know, you know, if you have questions, reach out to me. I'm always doing a lot of free stuff online as well, so love for people to check out my podcast and if I can help you, let me know. Beautiful. So we've got the links to Shooting Dash Performance dot Com down below, but it's I mean, it's pretty simple. Shooting Dash Performance dot Com also a link down to the podcast where you can listen to I'm pretty sure. I just I was checking the podcast out right before I got back gone, just to make sure I had, you know, all the details in mind, and I'm pretty sure you're about about three hundred and ninety nine episodes, so tons of stuff. Our audience is so just absolutely the more life by podcast content because we put out so many shows every week. But hey, sometimes you need a break, right, Sometimes we don't hit this self defense stuff hard, but yeah, I do appreciate it. Mike. It's been a blast, and good luck with everything, man, and don't be a stranger. You release a new book or you want to celebrate winning the national championship. Yeah, we'd love to have you back on for sure, thank. You man, and if I can do anything for you guys as well in your audience, stay safe out there, keep training, stay prepared, keep doing what you're doing. We'll do Thanks. Talk to you soon, Bud, see it. Great work man, cool hey,