A Krav Maga Instructor's Thoughts on Handgun Training

Let me start off by saying that I am not an expert on handgun training. I train often, have been through some good courses and even have certification as a basic handgun instructor…but I teach Krav Maga. The mindset, philosophy and thoughts on training that we teach for real world violence and unarmed self defense, in my opinion, matches up perfectly for handgun training.

If you are training handgun because you like target shooting, do it for fun or just think firing guns is cool, train anyway you like. If you are practicing with your handgun for self defense, there are some things that you should consider. First and foremost, study violence. Study what stress, exhaustion, the adrenaline dump, fear and pain do to you. As Rory Miller says in his great book on the subject MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE “You do not fight like you train unless you train clumsy, blind, deaf and stupid”. These things that our bodies do under stress can be a major game changer.

Again, I am not an expert on handgun training. I do know Krav Maga, I do study the heck out of real world violence. For example; When we practice knife defenses we do not practice against a partner who thrusts at us once with a half assed stab and then keeps his/her arm straight and still for two seconds. We practice after already being stabbed once by a blitzing attacker who is on us fast and furious. The attacker will keep us off balance, hit us hard, use their off hand to keep us from blocking or getting to the knife, will “hockey punch” with the knife over and under our block and pump that knife like a sewing machine needle. To practice against that first attacker will get us killed on the street because the attack on the street is much more likely to be like the second attacker. The other thing we do is slather KY jelly on both of our arms to mimic the slippery blood that is most likely going to be there. Now, when it happens on the street we have been there and done that.

Let’s start with stance while firing. I dislike the Weaver stance for self defense simply because if something startles me I am going to square up to it and hunch down. This is a natural body reaction. To think during the stress, fear and adrenaline dump of an attack I will do anything else is a mistake.

Practicing on a range standing still and getting accurate is what we start with of course. We have to get basics down. In our Krav classe one big rule is that, once we have the form down, we always go balls to the wall. We always go all out and hit things our hardest. In handgun training once we have these basics down we won’t train like that anymore. In the real world if someone is firing at me I had better be moving and looking for cover. At the range we had better be practicing this way. We had better fire on targets while egressing, retreating and moving sideways to cover. We had better practice firing from cover.

Again, we need to practice for what we’ll see. Personally, I don’t like shooting steel plates that fall after one hit. In the real world people take multiple hits mid chest and keep coming. I don’t want to train that one hit takes care of the problem.
We had better change our distances as well. Back to that knife attack, I had better be practicing fighting that off, accessing my weapon and shooting close range from the hip with my front arm keeping the target at distance. If this is what I am likely to see, this is what I had better have practiced.

In a gunfight I had better keep my eye on the person trying to kill me. On the range do you practice reloads and clearing jams while keeping your eye on the target and not looking at your handgun? What you practice is what’s going to come out of you during stress.

Part of the reaction to the fear, exhaustion and adrenaline (actually a cocktail of chemicals) is that your arms will feel heavy, your hands numb and your fine motor skills will degrade. We had better be ready for this, had better practice this way! As a shooter I need to try to replicate this in my training. Instead of standing at a table and firing at a target down range all comfortable I need to practice like this; Run several sprints, push ups, pull ups, have some partners push me around, knock me down and then, and only then, fire on my targets. Get tired, get the pulse rate up, get shook up a bit then see where the holes are in my shooting. Did I keep dropping mag’s? Did I have a hard time getting the mag from out of where I keep it? Did I have things snapped or buttoned that I couldn’t maneuver? Our brain will scramble, we will not come up with plans but our training will come out of you automatically.

The point is, if we are practicing shooting for self defense we need to educate ourselves on what realistic attacks are, what our bodies will do under this stress and train for what we’ll actually see. We had better train real and not think that blasting holes in paper is all that we’ll need. Be safe, my friend.