The Prepper Broadcasting Network - TACTICAL TUESDAY: Mike Seeklander of Shooting Performance.com

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

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You're listening to PABN. You're going to have back the stability here. Mike Seeklander, Shooting Performance.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,

guess you could call the community at large preppers. What do you think preppers are getting wrong about shooting and firearms? Man, that's a great question. And I would have to admit that it depends on what preppers were talking about. So it's a great answer. I had, I had some exposure to a buddy of mine who did some, 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 to everywhere and things and squiggles and stuff like that.

And they were very low on skill. Now, that was that particular group. Sure. But I've met some people that self-proclaimed that they're preppers that are pretty well trained and highly, highly capable. Like, I'll give you a great example of a short story. I had a kid show up to class one time. And this kid and his father were what I would call preppers.

They were just 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 Glock 19. And he was a phenom with it. Like his manipulation skills, his shooting skills. everything about him. And I'm like, man, who are you? What level do you shoot at? Have you ever? He's like, I've never shot a match in my life. I just train. And I'm like, man, well, wherever and however

you've been training, you got it right. So 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 too gear-centric instead of being skill-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 LEO, 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 large firearms community, is too firearm-centric. Like, they think that the gun and the firearms are going to solve all of their problems, and they probably have an interest, you know, food or shelter, 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? I'm not looking for an answer from you, but you might be a good guy 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.

It's got to be some sort of system of prioritization and then managing your time as good as you possibly can. That's the question of the day, man. 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 the ticket right there. Yeah, that's the tough part.

It's almost like a video game, you know what I mean? We have a 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? Like 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 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 having 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. Mike, it's a grind out there for the average person, you know. And I guess a 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 work days and still find time to train and prepare and whatever else. 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 or at sunrise or 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 it. 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 or labor or in an office setting. I just, man, I respect that more than anything. And I did it. I did in the past. It's a 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, the conclusion we've come to us from most people, it's like, I can't even go there right now. Like I got problems I got 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, what I see competitive shooting being being really good 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. and 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 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. 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 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. You're going to be you're going to be so much more And here's the interesting thing. You know, both of the primary sports, USPSA and IDPA. Now IDPA, the International Defense of Pistol 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. simpler it requires less gear um it tends to rely more on the use of cover and different props you know but it it is gamey but um man but both of them here's the interesting those of you know your folks out there that are carrying on a regular basis yeah more than likely they could probably go to a match and with not much altercation or all 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 can do with their handgun under stress, man. That's a key question. Can you really do it with just a timer going beep and some people watching you? Yeah. Well, I mean, and it, 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 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 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 a 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.

Like 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, it's simply going to translate over to your real world defensive use of a firearm if you ever need to. It's going to make you a better shooter.

It's going to 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, you know, we have some work to do. We got to get the gun on our hand more often, right? Yeah, yeah. 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 loadout would you need?

As far as like extra magazines, rounds of ammunition, that kind of. Yeah, so with IDPA, you literally would need your primary firearm and probably three magazines total. So typically you're going to have a holster on and then two mag pouches or a dual magpouches. So the gun and three magazines will get you through any stage you're going to shoot, depending on the division, you're going to actually shoot. Granted, if you showed up with an extra mag or two, that'd be great because you could have them preloaded and be ready to rock and roll. But you could literally, assuming the holster safe, it covers the trigger guard, you can

draw and re-holster safely and stuff like that. That's really all you need. USPSA tends to be a little bit more complex than gear required. you're probably going to need four or five mag pouches. You're going to see most USPSA shooters, you know, shooting from some sort of a race rig. But that's not across the board. There's some high level competitors now,

believe it or not, shooting USBSA from appendix position. And their guys shooting IDPA from appendix position with more carry type holsters. But the IDPA, sport of IDPA requires, you know, very simple gear, man. Like something you could buy, you could get an XDM out of the box with a holster mag pouches. 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 is is there like a standard of rounds that you know like I everybody had well I don't know everybody but you know guns vary magazine size rounds per magazine that stuff varies. Yeah so the different divisions will require a different round.

Like for example, in IDPA, they have the bug division. They have 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 what you'll find is between eight rounds and 15 rounds in IDPA. So the highest division is going to be a 15 round magazine. Most of the divisions are going to be a 10 round magazine. And if you have high cap magazines, you would just download them to,

10 you could start with 11 in the gun but you would download the rest of your magazines to 10 rounds so everybody's across the board on the same playing field now us PSSA you may show up and see guys with a carry optics division rig which is one of the matches all shoot this year and they may have 22 rounds in the magazine like three or four major magazines you know they'll shoot 32 round field courses where i think idPA is limited to 18 rounds on any given course of fire So what are you've been at it a while? What, what does a day look like for you in one of these events in terms of like the,

the weapons that you will use and bring and 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 I'm prepping for. So prepping there, I use your work, right? So like right now, I'm shooting exclusively my Wilson Combat, AR stuff. PCC's pistol caliber carbine because we have an ECC world shoot coming up in two weeks. So I have literally been shooting a 9mm carbine 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 SIG-320 Wilson combat variant or Glock 47 or 34 variant with an optic on it and get ready for the carry optics division in both IDPA and USPS. say. And then in the past, I would have shot primarily what we would call ESP, which is with 1911 single stack, 9mm. Of course, I shoot for Wilson Combat. I've been sponsored for them for, I don't know how many years now, 12 years. And I just love the classic 1911. I carried a contact 1911 and competed with the 1911 on a regular basis. So what I'm shooting will really 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-sixth stage match. It's going to be probably 20 or 30 shooters, maybe upwards to 70 or 80 shooters, all the way up to a world championship where we're going to see probably 650 to 750 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 question. So you can't tell where a bullet hits it.

Yeah, there are two primary scoring methods. One is called hit factor, and that's with USBSA. Hit factor is, it's not terribly complex, but basically it's your, the points you shoot on a target divided by time, right? So every, basically imagine a silhouette-shaped target. If you look up USBSA, 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 sport 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 10 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 10 second score. If I shoot a 10 second run, but I shoot several down ones and several outside in the outer edge, like the down three zone,

For every one of those, I add a second to my time. So if I drop five ones and two threes, you know, then I would have had 11 points or 11 seconds added to my score where you would have shot a 10 second run. I would have shot a 21 second run and you would have firmly beat me. So, 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 two major sports are. Man. Sounds like a lot of fun. It is, man. It's addictive. 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 gun 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? Sure. Those that are carrying guns, you know, they tend not to realize they, they probably, need more training than the competitive shooters. But anyways, 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. You know, there's no downside. Show up. Watch a match first if you want to.

the people there, 99% of the time, they're going to be super friendly. Yeah. You know, they'll loan you gear. They'll help you out and whatever else. Yeah, it definitely sounds like something that needs to go on my own short list for sure. Yeah, man, do it. 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 probably excel faster than you because they've got the hand-eye coordination and all the different things the young kids have. 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's a great question.

So I actually, the first book I wrote was my competition handgunn 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, if, 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 gun book. And then later on, of course, the AR-15 was popularized because everybody thought they were going to be outlawed

and everybody went and bought one. And I'm like, man, you know, people need to know how to use this thing. 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 Warrior Society, which spawned the American Warrior Show podcasts,

which was 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've seen 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, the realm of self-defense seems to be becoming dominated by, 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 like 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 400 episodes over there, 399, I think, episodes, right? I don't know what it is now, man. To be honest, I have to look it up. But you're exactly right, though. one of the things that we challenged 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 things. edge weapon, you know, defensive knife kind of shows with Michael Gannich and a couple of other guys. All kinds of fighters, man.

You know, Hoyst Gracie, one of the first UFC was on the show. Oh, was he really? I didn't see that one. Yeah, Grace Grace was on our show, Strength Coaches, you know. So anybody kind of in that area has been on the show at some point of time, or at least as much as we could reach and try to, you know, pull them in our audience. 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. Yeah. You know, yes, one of the great things about the American War Society of Vault, we call it the vault. It's our online content area is there's there's all these training track, right? That's also one of the downsizes. There's so much stuff and so many training tracks, I think a lot of people get in there and they're like, what, Mike, what do I do? And if people don't know what to do, then they do nothing, right? They don't, they don't know it 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 in from Rich Brown did and 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 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. It's a good call, definitely. Yeah, I think we're going to do something along that line sometime soon. Like basically it would like a yearly cycle, 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, stuff. 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 prep or challenge stuff. And 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 impossible to get it all done. So that. I was going to say, you're, you are exactly right because if everything is a priority, than nothing is. So sometimes, I think we are at a point in society where there's so much

information that 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 we actually had that conversation the other day about putting something in a place. It was a little bit more routine. You don't have to think about it. Just follow it or follow portions of it as we go through the cycle. I like that a lot. Yeah, I think just having that out there, even if you don't hold yourself, 100% accountable. I think having those sort of hangers on or a list or something

along those lines that 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 10 a.m. And the rest, the rest is just you're running on fumes. As far as what else you can put inside here, you're just forcing it in from about 10 a.m. 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, 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, geopolitics, what's Putin doing? You know what I mean? All this kind of stuff I find myself talking to my 13-year-old. old about. That's right. He's plugged in too, you know? Yeah. So it's just like, wow, we're solving the world's problems at 7.30 in the morning and I still got to get to work. That's right, man. Yeah, you got me thinking now too, because I'm thinking, you know, I get up in the morning, I, you know, make it some tea or coffee or whatever and then start to consume some things. And I have, I myself have,

I have wanted like, I wish I had something fresh in the morning that I could 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 it's positive it's it gives me oh sure yeah some sort of morning you know thing i like that man they have to wrap my head around that so like you know what the one that i find always works really well particularly from like uh entrepreneurial side of things is um no noise no silence you know what i mean yeah 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 truck. I'm just like, I just want to drive. Yeah. Man, I just want to look and hear and think and just shut it off. Shut the noise off. 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. Especially if you're going to get into this kind of stuff, you know, where you're going to put outside of life, you're going to put time aside to truly train with firearms or, like you said, edge weapons, any of that kind of stuff. It's, you know, it's just, you got to carve out that piece. You've got to carve out that piece of time. How much time do you think you spend? You've got to be on that range, just ungodly amounts of hours a week.

Man, you wouldn't even want to know. Like, like, so this is a, so in a normal year, I mean, I shoot a lot. I train a lot, you know, so in a normal year, I'm always focusing and cycling through in a given week, you know, fitness, some sort of combatants. That's good. 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 rarity. for Ipsic it only happens every three years and I'm on as an alternate on the senior division team on one and I'm actually one of the primaries on 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 the week which is 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 you feel

be 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 let alone daily. Yeah, I'm hyper focused on the end result. So every day has a specific purpose. Oh, okay. I got you. And, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't promote that for anyone else.

But like I said, in a normal week, I would be focusing my. my energies and rotating through, you know, maybe a couple days of defensive handgun, maybe one day of defensive handgun and one day of defensive rifle, or maybe one day of, you know, competition 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, conditioning or whatever else. And then, you know, several days. And I have, my brain likes, for whatever reason, I like, I like evenness. So I like to say, for example, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays, arranged days, and Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays are

BJJ and fitness days, and then Saturday and Sunday are recovery with some long, slow cardio, whatever. So 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 a, 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. Focusing on shooting for six hours. It does. Yeah. My practice sessions are intense too. You know, I'm not staying in 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 17, a big

stick block magazines, 31 round magazines. They're already pre-prepped. 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 gym. So it's a, 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 wouldn't be fun. It's not. It's not. It loses its glamour. The 98th time you're all by yourself early morning on the range.

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 aims, things like site pitch, basic stuff. You know what I mean? That's right. And after time at the range, I always come away with, okay. I improved here and I need to improve there 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 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 they must be so minuscule or, you know, I don't know. I always wonder about that. Well, there are tiny details. And for me, you know, 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 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 repeatedly 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 mile and how to speed up the splits on different distances of targets and split up, you know, speed up my transitioning from one target or the next target. But like you said, you know, you think about the fundamentals, you know, grip, 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 33 yards.

And then moving and stabilizing the gun as I moved to shoot two alphas in a target that was, you know, 16 yards away or so give or take to my right, it's my left. So it's those little details over and over and over again that just helps develop that level of. of skill where I can at least attempt to compete at that level. 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 will be a target at 33 yards. There will be these two targets at 16. That's a great question, man. Yeah. So it's a really weird deal. I mean, I've been doing this for so many years.

I have a good idea what's going to be there. but you never know for sure. So my job is to make sure 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 to the match, it's easy.

Now, I know, you know, they won't exceed 100 yards in this particular division. I know that 90% of the targets based on the rules will be within a certain distance, probably less than 50 yards, 50 yards and in. But I may deal with 10% of the targets that are between 50 and 100 yards, right? And they may be chest size, like my chest size, all the way down to literally a little smaller than my head, you know, what they call a micro target. 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 low and get prone for my my old self which is not fun so that's that's kind of what I'm focusing on yeah that's cool man that's a that's a whole other world of preparation but like you said it's it takes it would take a person um who doesn't shoot particularly I mean prone is a perfect example right somebody who probably has taken how many shots how many the average shooters taking

how many shots in the prone position that mattered right Good point. And then all of a sudden, if you're put in a life or death situation, you think you're going to drop down there and it's going to be call of duty. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Probably not.

Yeah. But yeah, I guess the competitive shooting puts you 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 land my punches until the target starts moving. You can never miss, right? Yeah. That's exactly right.

But the interesting thing is, you know, your listeners could probably apply the concept that I'm talking about in their defensive handgun. 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 malfunction clearance as well. If you look at civilian gunfight 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. Yeah. 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'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? Yeah, that's a good one in the still of the night. Right. Yeah. So at shooting dash performance. 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. Yeah. It's not even about location per se. Yeah. So I don't have a range. I do have a range here. I can do some things at.

But I travel and I do classes like a host will sponsor me and 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-al-al-alone, self-paced follow-along. Shooting Dash Performance, you know, literally, 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 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 can get their eyes on it yeah and there there's the the very top of the thing it says join free first i call that pro tips and there's there's a bunch of content in there man um of course you have to sign in and log in to access it but it's 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 or 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 scrolling and then you know um classes are listed there and stuff like that you got some merch too i do have some of them things on support our man mike here that's right yeah we're about to add a bunch more shirts my buddies printing up some stuff that we call him the man on the mountain in wyoming right now he's behind on printing i got to get some more

stuff prints about sounds like the guy who started this network yeah he was a man on the mountain as well Wow, you guys do have a tonne. 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. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then. Yeah, yeah. 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 blog and 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 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, we're all preparers. We just focus on different things. And 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 and your preparedness lifestyle that probably won't cost you your life or your family's life. But 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 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, but prevents us from not shooting the person that we're trying not to shoot it. So maybe think about it like that and just, just train. And if, 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.com down below, but it's, I mean, it's pretty simple shooting dash performance.com. Also a link down to the podcast where you can listen to. I'm pretty sure I just, I was checking the podcasts out right before I got back on just to make sure I had, you know, all the details in mind. And I'm pretty sure you're about, about 399 episodes. So tons of stuff. Our audiences. So just absolutely demoralized 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 the 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 but see it great work man cool thank you