Basics

When it comes to defensive and tactical stuff I think it is so important to focus on the basic stuff. If you really look at the difference between successful individuals and organizations and unsuccessful individuals and organizations it is the basics. For example people don’t generally lose gunfights because they are unable to do some cool move you saw on an action or instructional video. They lose then (at least in a CCW scenario) by being unable to fluidly and rapidly get their weapon into play and accurately engage targets. Reloads and rapidly clearing malfunctions are sure handy too. When it comes to rifle stuff it would be moving tactically in a variety of situations, engaging targets, reloading and clearing malfunctions. These aren’t particularly complicated things to do and it is probably more important to be able to do them with minimal flashiness and a lot of muscle memory than anything else. For example I could show 4 guys how to clear a room properly in a few minutes. The only difference between them and the best entry team out there are a few SOP’s (standard operating procedures: just a fancy way of saying little things they do in a standard fashion.) and hundreds or thousands of repetitions of practice. The kind of practice that lets them work out all the kinks and develop muscle memory. The kind of muscle memory that will let them fluidly and properly clear a room when they are mentally and physically tired and under the worst possible conditions.

The same thing could be said about combatives, navigation, physical fitness or just about anything else. People always want to do the cool high speed stuff, especially when it comes to anything defensive or tactical. What they fail to realize is that not only do you need to master the basics before you can do the sexy stuff but that doing the basics very well magically turns into a pretty darn sexy package.