The Guardian Broadcast

Hello my friends, and fellow Guardians. Last week, we wrapped up a two-part segment on Combat Dynamics – that was the framework for a talk I need to give, and it was nice to hammer it out here. This week, I want to change gears. You see, 2019 is about to become the Year of TACTICS here at the Concealed Carry University. It’ll be the year of GETTING GOOD. We want to get good enough. We want to jam into first gear, throw that clutch and start making tracks – building REAL skill that is reliable and reproducible in every situation we can find ourselves in. I like to think of old Land Rovers or Toyota Land Cruisers, though you could say the same thing about a tough-as-nails Jeep – even new Jeeps are great off-road vehicles. These vehicles had one thing going for them: durability. You could beat the heck out of them, and they kept going. They were made of higher quality materials and had redundant systems. They were effective on pavement as transportation, and when you threw them into mud or onto rocks, they were still effective. Now I never take engineering for granted, and obviously even the crappiest, cheapest car is still a technical marvel. But it’s one thing to make a car that can survive 100,000 miles on paved, smooth roads without needing an overhaul. It’s an entirely different thing, to make a vehicle that can survive 100,000 miles on both pavement and mixed terrain and mud and rocks. Well, that’s how you and I need to be. Driving on paved roads is like being a good shot in an indoor range shooting stall. But we need to develop ourselves into people who can put rounds on target in the middle of a violent, reactive attack. We need to be able to get our guns out and into play fast and reliably. We need to be able to perform skilled shots out of the holster from low retention. We need to be able to score hits while we are running laterally. We need to be able to hurt an attacker with our hands and feet and gain distance so that we can draw. These are skills, and they need to be worked. But, because we are savvy professionals, we want to be able to ‘hack’ these skills. We want to be able to develop them efficiently and effectively. Here’s one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give with regards to skill: Hands on, kinetic skill with our guns in hand is at once the most important and least important things we need to possess as people who carry concealed. I say that because: It’s CRITICAL, skill is how we interact with the world. Without skill, nothing happens. It doesn’t matter if you understand things theoretically if you can’t do them. Survival doesn’t happen without skill. And remember, even delivering a high-energy, explosive response to a reactionary attack (intensity) is a skill. However, I also say that skill is one of the least important elements of concealed carry because: technically, skill should be a given. Skill shouldn’t be the goal. Skill should be the starting point. Why? Because ONLY once you have a fluid, auto-pilot grasp on actual, rubber-meet-road fighting SKILL can you then go bigger picture and develop the kind of AWARENESS that separates the entry-level boot from the Green Beret. What do I mean by that. Well, it’s like this: When you look at the kinds of military men who are the absolute tip of the spear of our armed forces, what you DON’T find are bulky guys ripped to shreds with bulging biceps who carry six guns and spend all day practicing their shooting skills. Instead, you find wiry-tough guys who all completely trust their shooting abilities so much that they are able to move on, and move into training their MINDS. They don’t need to spend all their time training skills because they did that. They checked that box, and now they simply keep them sharp through routine practice. But what really makes them special is not their marksmanship – again – it is their MINDS. They are Resourceful. And not just resourceful, though they are (many special forces go on to find that they are adept at business and career), but they become combat-resourceful. They become very, very good at avoiding dangerous situations and avoiding fair fights. They become very good at only ever putting themselves into situations where they have massive, drastic asymmetrical advantages. Yes, they are loaded with skills – the kinds of skills that can help them react successfully to being taken by surprise, such as in a violent ambush attack like the ones we face. But those reactive skills generally serve one purpose, and that is to help them – as fast as possible – regain the upper hand so they can destroy the attackers who are in their way. If this sounds familiar, that’s because this is the exact tempo and ordering of our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series. We want to give you this big picture self-defense ability. We want to make you the equivalent of a Special Forces Concealed Carry Private Citizen. I want to turn you into someone who is broad and dynamic. Rather than you being someone who can win points in a target shooting competition, I want to turn you into someone who can survive and thrive and dominate and WIN against anyone who enters your RADAR as a threat. Just like a member of the US Special Forces. I want you to have what separates a mere tournament fast draw or pistol shot into a domination-capable survivor and savoir within extremely violent situations. How? It’s simple, even if it’s not exactly easy. But through this journey here at Concealed Carry University, you will have four things: Awareness. Decisiveness. Resourcefulness. And Skill. That’s the difference. Those attributes are what makes someone jaw-droppingly, angelically-dominant and gifted in a violent situation. That combination is what will make you a master in this space. Someone who other practitioners of armed self-defense should listen to. This may sound like a tall order, but it’s not. Because while these attributes will make you incredible, they are also nothing short of ‘exactly what is required to call ourselves truly ready.’ You can do this. You are human. You were built for this. And you will love the way you feel when these attributes are maximized within yourself. Our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series is how we plan on getting you there, through its ACCLIMATION focus on Combat Wisdom Development and the lessons it teaches on Awareness, DECISIONS under fire, INTENSITY in reactive response, and RESOURCEFULNESS inside its ‘1-Second Advantage’ Windows concept. It will get you there. Well, guess what? Volume 4 is ALMOST ready. We are in the final stages of printing. And this volume. Based on KINETIC SKILL…. Is going to help you make automatic every skill that you need and know and even those you aren’t even aware of. It’ll make you automatic and smooth. Volume 4 is going to be epic. And I am so glad you are here. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends, and fellow Guardians. Last week, we wrapped up a two-part segment on Combat Dynamics – that was the framework for a talk I need to give, and it was nice to hammer it out here. This week, I want to change gears. You see, 2019 is about to become the Year of TACTICS here at the Concealed Carry University. It’ll be the year of GETTING GOOD. We want to get good enough. We want to jam into first gear, throw that clutch and start making tracks – building REAL skill that is reliable and reproducible in every situation we can find ourselves in. I like to think of old Land Rovers or Toyota Land Cruisers, though you could say the same thing about a tough-as-nails Jeep – even new Jeeps are great off-road vehicles. These vehicles had one thing going for them: durability. You could beat the heck out of them, and they kept going. They were made of higher quality materials and had redundant systems. They were effective on pavement as transportation, and when you threw them into mud or onto rocks, they were still effective. Now I never take engineering for granted, and obviously even the crappiest, cheapest car is still a technical marvel. But it’s one thing to make a car that can survive 100,000 miles on paved, smooth roads without needing an overhaul. It’s an entirely different thing, to make a vehicle that can survive 100,000 miles on both pavement and mixed terrain and mud and rocks. Well, that’s how you and I need to be. Driving on paved roads is like being a good shot in an indoor range shooting stall. But we need to develop ourselves into people who can put rounds on target in the middle of a violent, reactive attack. We need to be able to get our guns out and into play fast and reliably. We need to be able to perform skilled shots out of the holster from low retention. We need to be able to score hits while we are running laterally. We need to be able to hurt an attacker with our hands and feet and gain distance so that we can draw. These are skills, and they need to be worked. But, because we are savvy professionals, we want to be able to ‘hack’ these skills. We want to be able to develop them efficiently and effectively. Here’s one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give with regards to skill: Hands on, kinetic skill with our guns in hand is at once the most important and least important things we need to possess as people who carry concealed. I say that because: It’s CRITICAL, skill is how we interact with the world. Without skill, nothing happens. It doesn’t matter if you understand things theoretically if you can’t do them. Survival doesn’t happen without skill. And remember, even delivering a high-energy, explosive response to a reactionary attack (intensity) is a skill. However, I also say that skill is one of the least important elements of concealed carry because: technically, skill should be a given. Skill shouldn’t be the goal. Skill should be the starting point. Why? Because ONLY once you have a fluid, auto-pilot grasp on actual, rubber-meet-road fighting SKILL can you then go bigger picture and develop the kind of AWARENESS that separates the entry-level boot from the Green Beret. What do I mean by that. Well, it’s like this: When you look at the kinds of military men who are the absolute tip of the spear of our armed forces, what you DON’T find are bulky guys ripped to shreds with bulging biceps who carry six guns and spend all day practicing their shooting skills. Instead, you find wiry-tough guys who all completely trust their shooting abilities so much that they are able to move on, and move into training their MINDS. They don’t need to spend all their time training skills because they did that. They checked that box, and now they simply keep them sharp through routine practice. But what really makes them special is not their marksmanship – again – it is their MINDS. They are Resourceful. And not just resourceful, though they are (many special forces go on to find that they are adept at business and career), but they become combat-resourceful. They become very, very good at avoiding dangerous situations and avoiding fair fights. They become very good at only ever putting themselves into situations where they have massive, drastic asymmetrical advantages. Yes, they are loaded with skills – the kinds of skills that can help them react successfully to being taken by surprise, such as in a violent ambush attack like the ones we face. But those reactive skills generally serve one purpose, and that is to help them – as fast as possible – regain the upper hand so they can destroy the attackers who are in their way. If this sounds familiar, that’s because this is the exact tempo and ordering of our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series. We want to give you this big picture self-defense ability. We want to make you the equivalent of a Special Forces Concealed Carry Private Citizen. I want to turn you into someone who is broad and dynamic. Rather than you being someone who can win points in a target shooting competition, I want to turn you into someone who can survive and thrive and dominate and WIN against anyone who enters your RADAR as a threat. Just like a member of the US Special Forces. I want you to have what separates a mere tournament fast draw or pistol shot into a domination-capable survivor and savoir within extremely violent situations. How? It’s simple, even if it’s not exactly easy. But through this journey here at Concealed Carry University, you will have four things: Awareness. Decisiveness. Resourcefulness. And Skill. That’s the difference. Those attributes are what makes someone jaw-droppingly, angelically-dominant and gifted in a violent situation. That combination is what will make you a master in this space. Someone who other practitioners of armed self-defense should listen to. This may sound like a tall order, but it’s not. Because while these attributes will make you incredible, they are also nothing short of ‘exactly what is required to call ourselves truly ready.’ You can do this. You are human. You were built for this. And you will love the way you feel when these attributes are maximized within yourself. Our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series is how we plan on getting you there, through its ACCLIMATION focus on Combat Wisdom Development and the lessons it teaches on Awareness, DECISIONS under fire, INTENSITY in reactive response, and RESOURCEFULNESS inside its ‘1-Second Advantage’ Windows concept. It will get you there. Well, guess what? Volume 4 is ALMOST ready. We are in the final stages of printing. And this volume. Based on KINETIC SKILL…. Is going to help you make automatic every skill that you need and know and even those you aren’t even aware of. It’ll make you automatic and smooth. Volume 4 is going to be epic. And I am so glad you are here. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends, and fellow Guardians. Last week, we wrapped up a two-part segment on Combat Dynamics – that was the framework for a talk I need to give, and it was nice to hammer it out here. This week, I want to change gears. You see, 2019 is about to become the Year of TACTICS here at the Concealed Carry University. It’ll be the year of GETTING GOOD. We want to get good enough. We want to jam into first gear, throw that clutch and start making tracks – building REAL skill that is reliable and reproducible in every situation we can find ourselves in. I like to think of old Land Rovers or Toyota Land Cruisers, though you could say the same thing about a tough-as-nails Jeep – even new Jeeps are great off-road vehicles. These vehicles had one thing going for them: durability. You could beat the heck out of them, and they kept going. They were made of higher quality materials and had redundant systems. They were effective on pavement as transportation, and when you threw them into mud or onto rocks, they were still effective. Now I never take engineering for granted, and obviously even the crappiest, cheapest car is still a technical marvel. But it’s one thing to make a car that can survive 100,000 miles on paved, smooth roads without needing an overhaul. It’s an entirely different thing, to make a vehicle that can survive 100,000 miles on both pavement and mixed terrain and mud and rocks. Well, that’s how you and I need to be. Driving on paved roads is like being a good shot in an indoor range shooting stall. But we need to develop ourselves into people who can put rounds on target in the middle of a violent, reactive attack. We need to be able to get our guns out and into play fast and reliably. We need to be able to perform skilled shots out of the holster from low retention. We need to be able to score hits while we are running laterally. We need to be able to hurt an attacker with our hands and feet and gain distance so that we can draw. These are skills, and they need to be worked. But, because we are savvy professionals, we want to be able to ‘hack’ these skills. We want to be able to develop them efficiently and effectively. Here’s one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give with regards to skill: Hands on, kinetic skill with our guns in hand is at once the most important and least important things we need to possess as people who carry concealed. I say that because: It’s CRITICAL, skill is how we interact with the world. Without skill, nothing happens. It doesn’t matter if you understand things theoretically if you can’t do them. Survival doesn’t happen without skill. And remember, even delivering a high-energy, explosive response to a reactionary attack (intensity) is a skill. However, I also say that skill is one of the least important elements of concealed carry because: technically, skill should be a given. Skill shouldn’t be the goal. Skill should be the starting point. Why? Because ONLY once you have a fluid, auto-pilot grasp on actual, rubber-meet-road fighting SKILL can you then go bigger picture and develop the kind of AWARENESS that separates the entry-level boot from the Green Beret. What do I mean by that. Well, it’s like this: When you look at the kinds of military men who are the absolute tip of the spear of our armed forces, what you DON’T find are bulky guys ripped to shreds with bulging biceps who carry six guns and spend all day practicing their shooting skills. Instead, you find wiry-tough guys who all completely trust their shooting abilities so much that they are able to move on, and move into training their MINDS. They don’t need to spend all their time training skills because they did that. They checked that box, and now they simply keep them sharp through routine practice. But what really makes them special is not their marksmanship – again – it is their MINDS. They are Resourceful. And not just resourceful, though they are (many special forces go on to find that they are adept at business and career), but they become combat-resourceful. They become very, very good at avoiding dangerous situations and avoiding fair fights. They become very good at only ever putting themselves into situations where they have massive, drastic asymmetrical advantages. Yes, they are loaded with skills – the kinds of skills that can help them react successfully to being taken by surprise, such as in a violent ambush attack like the ones we face. But those reactive skills generally serve one purpose, and that is to help them – as fast as possible – regain the upper hand so they can destroy the attackers who are in their way. If this sounds familiar, that’s because this is the exact tempo and ordering of our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series. We want to give you this big picture self-defense ability. We want to make you the equivalent of a Special Forces Concealed Carry Private Citizen. I want to turn you into someone who is broad and dynamic. Rather than you being someone who can win points in a target shooting competition, I want to turn you into someone who can survive and thrive and dominate and WIN against anyone who enters your RADAR as a threat. Just like a member of the US Special Forces. I want you to have what separates a mere tournament fast draw or pistol shot into a domination-capable survivor and savoir within extremely violent situations. How? It’s simple, even if it’s not exactly easy. But through this journey here at Concealed Carry University, you will have four things: Awareness. Decisiveness. Resourcefulness. And Skill. That’s the difference. Those attributes are what makes someone jaw-droppingly, angelically-dominant and gifted in a violent situation. That combination is what will make you a master in this space. Someone who other practitioners of armed self-defense should listen to. This may sound like a tall order, but it’s not. Because while these attributes will make you incredible, they are also nothing short of ‘exactly what is required to call ourselves truly ready.’ You can do this. You are human. You were built for this. And you will love the way you feel when these attributes are maximized within yourself. Our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series is how we plan on getting you there, through its ACCLIMATION focus on Combat Wisdom Development and the lessons it teaches on Awareness, DECISIONS under fire, INTENSITY in reactive response, and RESOURCEFULNESS inside its ‘1-Second Advantage’ Windows concept. It will get you there. Well, guess what? Volume 4 is ALMOST ready. We are in the final stages of printing. And this volume. Based on KINETIC SKILL…. Is going to help you make automatic every skill that you need and know and even those you aren’t even aware of. It’ll make you automatic and smooth. Volume 4 is going to be epic. And I am so glad you are here. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends, and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast. I’m your host here, and founder of the Concealed Carry University, Patrick Kilchermann. Last week, I provided a background of what human conflict is, and what I recognize as the four phases of human conflict. The most important part, or the thesis, of that episode was to point out a singular physical reality that the foundation of human conflict is built on: That we humans are all programmed to KNOW when we are beaten before we actually ARE beaten. Now, let’s combine this with what we already know is the big picture view of what self-defense is. Okay, to make ‘what self-defense is’ crystal clear, we ask ourselves: any time someone successfully defends themselves, what is happening? The answer is, one of two things: Either the victim is physically shutting off the aggressor who was just trying to accost, attack, rob, steal from, or kill them…. OR, the victim is… what? The victim is shifting the balance of the ‘cost-benefit’ equation in the mind of the aggressor from “worth it” to “NO LONGER worth it.” That’s it. That’s what self-defense is. One of those two things. Well, we already know that the first scenario is phenomenally rare, even when handguns are involved. Only between 5 and 7% of the time does a self-defense incident end with the aggressor trying to get what he wants up to his last breath. And frankly, it’s a very, very good thing for us that this is the case. If all criminals stuck around and kept attacking until they were physically shut off, self-defense simply wouldn’t work. Both the victim and the attacker would be killed in every confrontation where the victim decided to resist, and succeeding in resisting. But that’s not what happens in real life. And because it’s not what happens, we get all these wonderful statistical realities, that even the most anti-gun and anti-self defense publicist can’t deny: that ANY kind of resisting on behalf of the victim doubles or triples the odds of that victim thwarting that attack and surviving it without injury. Did you hear that? Resisting actually LOWERS your odds of being hurt in an attack. And that’s why, because again, ALL successful self-defense is, is when the victim is shifting the balance of the ‘cost-benefit’ equation in the mind of the aggressor from “worth it” to “NO LONGER worth it.” This is one of the 14 Laws of Self-Defense that we cover in the prelude to our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series as well, where we illustrate this law using an animated set of scales, if you’ll recall. Okay, so what happens when we combine the primary thesis of last week’s broadcast with this one. Where we combine the reality that all healthy and rational humans are programmed to KNOW when we are beaten before we actually ARE beaten… with this law of self-defense, that successful self-defense happens when the victim is shifting the balance of the ‘cost-benefit’ equation in the mind of the aggressor from “worth it” to “NO LONGER worth it.”? The result of this combination gives us the Strategy for effective self-defense: that we stand the best chance of ending an attack without sustaining injury by – as quickly as possible – forcing our attacker’s psychological reaction to disengage. Simple as that. That’s our self-defense strategy, and all GOOD self-defense tactics will pour from this strategy, and align toward this mission: to trip that switch inside the brain and biology of your attacker so that they realize in about eight-tenths of a second that THIS ATTACK IS NO LONGER WORTH IT. It was worth it a moment ago, or else they wouldn’t have decided to attack… but now, in panicky, neck-breaking speed they are realizing that it is NOT worth it. And that is when you get that dream scenario. That before your third shot is even fired – before your first shot is even fired in many situations – that attacker has lost bladder control and is diving head-first out the nearest exit. So that’s where we are at: when we recognize and accept these two truths into our strategic realities, we know we’ve got to shift our tactics. But: From what…? And… to what? Well, the answer lies inside our CCU Founding Principle of COMBAT DYNAMICS. Let’s discuss. In Volume 2 of 3 SECONDS FROM NOW, we explained how we can look at any self-defense situation as a display of ENERGY. Where an attacker is bringing violence into what was a peaceful situation. Violence is energy. Peace and calm, energetically, are cold. Violence, is hot. When we think of peace and calm and stillness, what colors come to mind? White. Light blue. What colors come to mind when you think of violence? RED. Various shades of red. So through this lens of COMBAT DYNAMICS, we know that an attacker is attempting to use his high energy to shatter your peaceful will and get you to freeze and psychologically crumple and comply with his demands. His demands could be to submit so he can rob your, or rape you if you’re a woman. Or, his demands may simply be for you to let him kill you. Your goal, in order to successfully defend yourself and drive that attacker away, is to explode in equally violent resistance. You need to get as hot as he is and FAST. If you can’t match his level of INTENSITY, you stand a low chance of actually being able to break his focus and motivation, and it’s likely that he will have you in the position he wants you within three seconds. Now, if you can only MATCH his intensity, the scenario will hopefully end in your favor, but it will likely take many seconds longer than you’ll want it to. That’s because if you MATCH his energy, or if you match the level of violence he’s doing, you are essentially contesting control of the situation within the realm of a fair fight. And depending on how motivated your attacker is, he may be drawn into that fight and he may duke it out or slash it out or punch it out or shoot it out with you for several seconds before deciding – if he hasn’t yet killed you – that he needs to disengage. However: if you increase your energy beyond his, if you get hotter and more dangerous and more violent, you will almost always cause him to psychologically crumple in an extremely short amount of time. Usually, we see this happen in less than one second. It’s almost as fast as the human brain can process what it is that’s happening to it. BAM: they are out of there. And here’s the kicker of it all. If we neglect this interesting COMBAT DYNAMICS view of what violent scenarios are, we end up with tactics that involve someone doing something like the following: They feel threatened, they realize they’re in mortal danger and that deadly force is the only thing that can save their lives, and so they plant their feet, they draw their guns, they come into a shooting stance, they aim, and they fire. Depending on which school they learned at, they might fire twice. Then, they scan. If the threat is still present, they fire one or two or three more times. Then, they scan. Well, there are a lot of things wrong with this approach. What it all boils down to is this: this is a cold, low-energy approach. It is an approach that is can be very lethal (or as lethal as handgun bullets can be, which is the major problem here), but it’s an approach that is not very intense. Not to mention, this kind of approach is often taught as a ‘one size fits all’ solution to deploying a handgun, and it becomes excessively vulnerable to counter attacks very quickly, such as tackling or grabbing the pistol from the good guy’s hands as all sorts of other shortcomings are highlighted. The problem with learning, adopting, and deploying a low-energy approach like this is that if we do NOT adopt tactics that seek to end fights fast according to the truths outlined in this broadcast, then we’re going to be stuck in a gunfight for many seconds longer than we may survive… even if we do ultimately win. Instead, COMBAT DYNAMICS shows us that our tactics need to shift to tactics that are as high-energy as we can muster. And that when we do so, we stand excellent chances of ending fights extremely quickly. This is what we have always referred to as effective self-defense, and this differentiation is why we always add that word: effective. Because there are LOTS of ways to defend yourself. But there are many fewer ways to effectively defend yourself. What lies within what we call effective self-defense, which is self-defense informed by COMBAT DYNAMICS, is what is contained inside monumental works such as Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. Or Musashi’s Five Rings. Or in Poole’s The Last Hundred Yards. Or, in Rommel’s Infantry Attacks. It is the work of guys like Travis Roesler, Suarez, Larkin, and Mattis. Okay, at this point, let me stop and say: the astute listener or reader here won’t be surprised by any of this. This is what we’ve been talking about from the very beginning. And especially if they’ve been following the 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series, they’re getting it. They’re up to speed. But there are a few very important things critical to the success of the defensive fighter that we have no yet covered even within the 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series. Certainly they cannot be understood or leveraged without an education like the one we’re laying out in 3 SECONDS, but it is these fascinating, important topics that I want to begin exploring next week. I’ll see you then. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my fellow guardians, and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast. I’m your host and founder of the Concealed Carry University, Patrick Kilchermann. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and for those of you that got them, good long weekends and winter breaks. This week, I want to talk about Combat Dynamics. Why? Because what I call Combat Dynamics is the backbone of the bulk of our effort here at Concealed Carry University, and it’s the unique approach that we are bringing to this beautiful space of ours. And it is my hope that Combat Dynamics is your secret weapon. The advantage that YOU have over every other permit holder out there… and especially every criminal out there. Your nuclear option for ending fights fast, for surviving violence without sustaining injury, and for putting violent attackers out of commission very rapidly. And not only that, but I believe Combat Dynamics taps into fundamental truths about human behavior that can help us live better, richer, more enjoyable lives in general. I know I’ve used the principals behind Combat Dynamics to make me better at achieving my fitness goals… to making me a better driver… a better husband… a better leader… certainly better at competitive sports, and a better entrepreneur. Okay, the first question is: do you need to know about Combat Dynamics. The answer is: no. That’s because Combat Dynamics is a philosophy, and at the end of the day, you really only need to be an effective individual who has been taught and who has practiced good Strategy and good Tactics. That’s enough. So, when it comes to being a good fighter, or effective at self-defense with your handgun, you really only need to be educated and trained by someone who understands combat dynamics. And here I have to say: some of the best trainers out there seem to have an excellent grasp on what it is that I call Combat Dynamics. My favorite example is Gabe Suarez. Another stellar example for the hand to hand space is Tim Larkin. These guys live and breathe Combat Dynamics. It’s in their DNA. I talked to Gabe a bit about this when we had him up here to Michigan, and he knew exactly what I was getting at. So, it’s enough to learn from guys like this. That said, most trainers definitely don’t understand Combat Dynamics, and as a result, the Strategies and Tactics they teach fall epically short in the arena of life and death – that is, self-defense on the street. And so, if you understand the philosophy behind Combat Dynamics, and the strategies and tactics that pour out of it – you are set for life, for when it comes to knowing what is and isn’t good training, and for knowing how to teach and train yourself. PLUS, for a very large portion of men and women out there, Combat Dynamics is NOT in our blood and DNA. Many of us are by nature NOT natural and fluid fighters like a Suarez or Larkin, and so when we try to learn directly from people like that, we may find that what feels like an un-bridgeable gap between the student and instructor. But if you know Combat Dynamics, you will be able to maximize the education you get from these inspiring leaders and warriors. Alright. The second question is the big one: what IS Combat Dynamics? Simple. Combat Dynamics is the study of Energy within Human Conflict. That’s it. But there are other ways we can phrase this so that it might click for you, or so that you might know by context exactly what we’re referring to here. You see, human conflict is as much a psychological clash as it is a physical clash. In fact, human conflict is MOSTLY a psychological clash. That is because by the very nature of our humanity (and even more basically, by the very nature of the parts within us that are fully animal), conflict was never intended to be lethal. Lethal conflict almost never serves the species. That’s why animals almost never fight to the death or even to the point of mortal wounds, when competing for mating partners or territory or food sources. We humans however make it lethal, usually for accidental or practical reasons. Reasons such as the consequences of the tools we use. Or out of murderous rage. Or, as a means of leaving no witnesses and escaping the consequences of our crimes. But because of our animal nature, we are programmed in an inescapable way to KNOW when we are defeated before we actually are. (Phase 1) : That’s why most conflicts never happen to begin with, because provided we are sane and not under the influence of drugs, we humans are excellent at sizing up our opponents and knowing when we should just shut up – or, knowing when we are the uncontested Alphas in a scenario. This is why military strategy, posturing, and maneuvering are so important. Having a good enough military that is ready enough can prevent you from ever going to war to begin with. (Phase 2) : For the times when an altercation DOES spark – either because one party failed at sizing up their opponent, or is under the influence, or perceives themselves as the Alpha and wants to prove it or reap its rewards, OR simply because one of us wants something so bad we’re willing to fight about it – most of these altercations are settled by communication. Usually non-verbal communication, such as posturing, but sometimes verbal communication. Most altercations that spark into this realm are settled without physical conflict when one party chooses to back down and disengage from the posturing match. This is the bad guy saying: “Okay, okay, hey, I don’t want any trouble, this was a misunderstanding bro.” Or, the good guy saying “You know what? You’re not worth it. I’ll leave.” Or, the good guy saying, “Don’t shoot – here’s my watch, just go!” Or, because Combat Dynamics is as true for nations or coalitions as it is for individuals, it could be one side conceding land to another and withdrawing troops. (Phase 3) : Sometimes, conflict does become physical. It is rare. Fights are rare. And when they happen, they are almost always settled in a non-lethal way, where one party chooses to disengage. One party realizes they are getting the crap kicked out of them. They want the pain and humiliation to end. They want out. They crumple and cover their head and chest with their hands. Or, they tap out. Or, they surrender. Or, they run away. This is how most fights end. It’s certainly how all wars end – meaning, never in history has every single combatant down to the very last man in an actual war been killed. And smaller-unit engagements end this way as well. A platoon withdrawing with four injured and one killed might be the organized combat equivalent of a barroom brawler turning away and heading for the door after a well-landed punch lays his eye open and has him seeing stars. But the bottom line is, most fights end when one of the combative parties decides to disengage. (Phase 4) : In rare instances, conflicts that become physical continue right up to the instant where one party suffers fatal or non-fatal incapacitation. Meaning: they become totally unable to offer any more resistance or offensive action. Alright, so where does Combat Dynamics fit into all this common-sense truth? Well, Combat Dynamics is the explanation of WHY these truths are indeed truths. Remember, Combat Dynamics is the study of Energy, and all these things are true because OF the physical and – mostly – psychological energy that sparks, flares, explodes, and rages within human conflict. I’m going to talk more about this next week. But for now, I’d love for the reader or listener to spend the week pondering this reality: That most people who teach armed, handgun self-defense survival do not understand all of this. They teach self-defense as if it exists completely within the final realm, the realm of lethality. Most are totally unaware that, to leverage your BEST chance to use a handgun to end a fight quickly without getting hurt yourself, you must react in a very specific, energetic way and that you must do so much sooner than most instructors are aware. And those few who do understand this often believe that tactics designed specifically for the final, lethal realm of human conflict are the most important ones and can therefore neglect factoring in the circumstances of the other realms of human conflict. This is however most certainly not the case, as is proven by the thousands of uses of deadly force that have been caught on camera, and as has been proven in the hearts of those who have survived real violence, either by winning or losing. In short: Combat Dynamics teaches us one extremely important lesson: That we stand the best chance of being phenomenally, remarkably, astoundingly successful in combat with our handguns if we shift our strategies and tactics away from the singular goal of trying to shoot our attacker dead, and instead broaden our perspectives and launch our defensive reactions with the primary goal being this: to end that fight as absolutely FAST as possible, however that looks. Leveraging the Strategies and Tactics within Combat Dynamics, it is possible to end a fight in this way much faster than most people who train and practice in traditional ways imagine. It is possible to save more lives in nearly any situation than most of those people would imagine. We will continue this discussion next week, my dear friends. Until then, Patrick Kilchermann Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

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Last week, we discussed a recent situation which took place in an Alabama shopping mall, where a CCW holder, who was moving toward what he believed to be an active shooter, was gunned down by police who mistook him for the active shooter. The message is: friendly fire… and how sometimes the biggest threats we will ever face are the ones that attack us from the rear. As someone who carries concealed, this idea of friendly fire is one of my top three most dominant concerns. The reasons are twofold. First, I feel damn-near as well equipped mentally and physically as possible to handle whatever threat or threats life throws at me. I know that I’m not bulletproof or invincible or even anywhere remotely to “the best” out there, but I have little concern about facing an actual, violent threat. I’m ready – nearly as ready as I’ll ever be, though I always have improvements to make. Everyone does. But at the end of the day, even if emotional fear is something we rarely or never experience, rational fear still exists, and rational fear is nothing more than the understanding and acceptance that we are vulnerable to what is OUT of our control. And that’s exactly what friendly fire is. A lethal threat to our survival that we are very much out of control of. The risk includes both police and civilians. Ideally, police won’t be our primary risk, because by the time they arrive to any scene, the situation will have been dealt with and our guns will – ideally – be sliding into their holsters before the police arrive. But especially in an active shooting situation, or in a situation where the police approach with cover and stealth, you may very quickly find yourself getting shot by individuals who – rationally – have reports of a murderer with a gun, and who – rationally – know that they can’t lose a tenth of a second of advantage against an active shooter: they have to shoot or get shot. But aside from the police, there is the risk of other CPL holders. And the risks of being mistaken for a violent threat by a fellow sheepdog exist from the very second you begin to move for your gun to minutes and minutes after a shooting concludes. And unlike police officers – most of whom will be identifiably wearing uniforms and possibly approaching in noisy cars – the threat of this private citizen friendly fire could come from anywhere. A young woman or an old man- from the person sitting behind you or standing beside you, from a car window, from the window of a nearby building. This week, I wanted to touch on some of the strategies we can use to mitigate these friendly risks to our safety. Now, I want to begin analyzing these strategies the same way we analyze most strategies related to self-defense: from the outside, in. From passive to active. So: let us begin, with only one qualification: I’m not going to recommend the carrying of a CPL badge or a bright yellow vest to use as identification. There may be situation-specifics where these are good ideas, but it’s the carrying of them that is impractical for most people, and I try to only purvey strategies and tactics here that will be usable by many. That said, please do write in and argue me on these points if you disagree, especially if you’re active duty law enforcement privy to training policies and the reactions of yourself and your co-workers under stress. We will begin with the passive strategies. Things we can do starting today, right now, that will help. First, I’ve got to touch on the way we look. In general, we want to try to look as clean and respectable as possible. You want to look like a family leader – a mother or father, or grand-father or grand-mother. If you’re young and fit the profile of an active shooter, you especially want to look clean cut and organized. Next, for passively avoiding friendly fire, we’ve got to focus on being aware of who is around us at all times. The best time to become aware of a potential guardian is long before an issue takes place, and making eye contact with, smiling at, or just a friendly nod or tip of the hat to someone like this can and will go a very long way in providing you with those critical couple seconds of benefit of doubt in the minds of a neighbor who hears a burst of shots and looks up to see you with a gun in your hand. If you’re carrying in a venue with the same people around you regularly, such as at a church, try to coordinate with them. Get to know them, and get enough face time with them so that they will recognize you, even in a high-energy tunnel-vision inducing scenario that might have you sprinting to the front of the crowd during a threatening situation. Next, keep very strong that AVOIDANCE MINDSET. Remember what we discussed in Volume 3 of 3 SECONDS FROM NOW, how a threat must cross TWO lines in our mind before we use force: not just the line where lethal force becomes JUSTIFIED, but the line where lethal force becomes *absolutely essential*. We call this second line, the RED LINE. What I’m getting at is this: our best bet at avoiding friendly fire is to avoid ever drawing our guns in the first place. And as you know from watching the 3 SECONDS series, a not-insignificant number of the instances of the private use of force in this country fall short of this redline test. Now I’m not here to discuss politics, and I believe strongly in the deterrent effect that CPL holders using their guns to stop crimes has in America. But when it comes to being the smart, wise one in the room – the alpha – we at the top tier always want to do the most prudent thing: that which will give us the best shot at walking through our doors in one piece at the end of every day. And that means: not ever drawing our guns unless it’s 100% critically necessary to our imminent and immediate survival. Next, we can do a lot to avoid friendly fire by understanding the risks OF friendly fire as a situation is building, if we have any warning at all. For example, if the threat is extremely loud and belligerent and if everyone in the room is sitting with jaws dropped as a threat walks in shouting and waving his gun around and firing shots at random and threatening to kill a waitress, we can feel reasonably confident than any other guardians in the room will not mistake you for a threat if you engage. But if it’s a more discreet but equally deadly threat, one that you’re only aware of because of your guardian awareness skills, then you should be more on edge for friendly fire should you have to act, because – especially if you are required to act proactively – even the most prudent and aware of your neighbors may have every possibly reason to legitimately believe that you ARE the threat. Okay, then, we move into the more active strategies. These are tactics we can employ once a situation has become active, once it’s too late to enact any of the passive strategies and tactics that we just talked about. The biggest one, and the one that may have saved the armed guardian in Alabama a couple weeks ago, is: if you’re in public or especially a crowd, keep your gun hidden at all times, except for when you’re shooting. If you’re moving toward a situation and need to have your gun drawn, fold it into your chest and keep it covered with your offhand, or offhand and forearm if it’s a big-framed pistol. People will rarely be looking close enough to notice it, and they may even believe you’re holding a wound. It’s hard and isn’t ideal from a speed perspective, but if it helps avoid you getting shot or tackled by a bunch of panicked or courageous private citizens, it’s an important strategy to keep in mind. Next: One technique rooted in psychology is the idea of presenting your offhand up in the air with an open palm in the immediate aftermath of a shooting – those critical seconds when a fellow guardian in the room may be drawing and scanning for threats. If you can keep just as much control on your gun and the downed threat with your offhand raised high into the air, do it. This gesture with an open palm is the fundamentally human signal for trust – a way to say “I’m not a threat” that breaches all languages and cultures. If an officer or fellow guardian is scanning the room, they will hopefully see that no criminal or active shooter intent on continuing violence would ever present such a signal, and you’ll win those few seconds of – again – benefit of doubt. Next, while you’re doing this or even if you can’t, try to keep your gun trained on your threat. Even when you are scanning for additional threats, and even if you are bolting for cover, if you keep your gun on the downed threat this will avoid you from accidently flagging or waving your gun past any guardians who may violently react to that. Next, consider a vocal identification. It’s no guarantee and there are times when this may leave you in greater danger, but to shout “police, help!” or “is everyone okay?,” may – again- help you identify yourself as a friendly to other guardians. Finally: I want to leave you with the idea of this, too, being another area where being more polished in your tactics and training could come back to benefit you. Not always… certainly not always… but many of the times, active shooters are not polished. They often carry inferior weapons and they don’t always know how to handle them. Now trend is actually reversing, in the cases of practiced jihadists or in the cases of a few ex-military men committing mass murder. But most often, skilled guardians and police officers know how to spot someone with training, and this, too, may be a subtle signal to their subconsciousness, which may just tell them: “Hold up a second.” And in the case of friendly fire – as I’ve stressed here several times now – getting through those barriers in those critical seconds is everything. It’s everything. Okay. Once again, we’re out of time for this week – it’s important to keep these broadcasts at a digestible length! Now these were my thoughts, the bullet points I wanted to cover – and outside of situation-specific tactics, this about taps me out on how to avoid friendly fire. Now I’ve seen that we have a lot of submissions of listener ideas for avoiding friendly fire, and this week I’m going to begin synthesizing them and preparing anything new to share with all of you. And that means you have a few more days. If you have any ideas that I haven’t covered here, reply to the guardian broadcast email and send them in, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you! And stay safe. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

This week’s Broadcast will be a short one, but it’s an important message and it relates to Friendly Fire. It’s the concealed carry permit holder’s worst nightmare: You are in public, and from nearby come two explosive gunshots followed by screams and pleas for help. You instinctively crouch low and look around, you don’t see the threat but you believe he’s around the corner. You make eye contact with the couple people immediately around you, you put your finger to your lips, and you draw your gun. They understand and begin backing away. You can see one of the bystanders is mouthing a prayer – for your safety and for the safety of all. You move toward a wall and you approach the corner. Suddenly from the opposite direction: more gunshots. Bullets are tearing into your body. You jerk around to get a look at who is shooting you: it’s two police officers! You drop your gun and fall into a crumpled ball. You try to scream words like “friendly!” “Stop!” “Hold your fire!” But now you’re bleeding on the ground. Two more bullets tear into you and you can’t talk any more. Seconds go by. The police slowly approach, keeping their guns pointed at you. One of them kicks your gun away. For the next two minutes, they stand around you. Talking to each other, talking on their radios. They make no effort to help you or communicate with you in any way. You try to speak to them but your voice and energy are gone. Blackness surrounds your vision and you begin nodding off. You try to stay awake, but you slip away. For the next three days, your family watches in disbelief as your name is plastered around the country as being the latest active shooter. Good thing the police were there to stop you! Your family is at first confused and in disbelief, but after a couple days even they begin wondering. Could it be true? There’s just no way! Right? Only after 4 days and only thanks to the testimony of one witness do the police begin to see the truth. After a while, they realize: you weren’t the shooter. You were an innocent man. An apology is issued to your family. Your family considers filing a lawsuit, but your spouse is of a sound mind and realizes: well…. What the heck were the police expected to do? They heard gunshots… they saw a man with a gun… they knew that if they issued any kind of warning, they would almost certainly have to accept incoming rounds in response, if the gunman was really a threat. So, even your spouse comes to the rotten conclusion that you and I are coming to or have already come to right now, along with every one of the tens of thousands of listeners to this broadcast: Being a plainclothes armed good guy in public and the threat of friendly fire really, really stinks. And this is almost exactly what happened last week, on November 22 of 2018, a man named Emantic Bradford was shot in an Alabama shopping mall as he moved toward a shooting with his handgun drawn. As people who carry concealed, we face the possibility of being shot by other good guys. Either by uniformed police officers, by plainclothes cops, or by other people with concealed carry permits. And this possibility has become much, much higher in these last six years, as the number of people licensed or able to carry concealed has grown from six to fourteen million. The nature of concealed carry means that you never see anyone else carrying. I like to make a game of trying to guess and discover who else in my vicinity is carrying, but even I can’t tell most of the time. And so, the possibility is always there. You draw your gun with your eyes locked onto a threat, and you get shot by someone else. Either before or during or after your attempt to deal with the violent threat in front of you. Now, fortunately the nature of predators and violent people means that most violence doesn’t take place in public. Most of the time, they attack in private. But some of the time, they don’t. And it is in those situations where we have to heavily weigh the possibility – in real time, as we’re beginning to react to a sudden threat – that other armed good guys may be seated around us. Okay. Now at this point I have about six main points about preparing for and avoiding friendly fire as an responsibly-armed citizen. But I want to save this for next week, because on this topic, I actually want to open up the airwaves to the listenership. What do you think about this problem we face? How have you prepared for the possibility of friendly fire, and what are your plans? I’d love to hear from you. Email us, and we’ll be analyzing your responses and we’ll be including them in next week’s broadcast. Thank you, my friends. Be safe and be well. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast, my friends. I’m going to try to be very brief here, as we move into Thanksgiving week. First, I want to offer a moment of disbelief and empathy to all our fellow Guardians who have been affected by natural and manmade disaster this past year. I cannot believe the hurricanes, storms, rains and flooding, and now the wildfires that so many people in this country have had to endure. I’m truly sorry for that, and please know that you’re in my prayers. Second, I want to say that this year, I am thankful for YOU, my fellow Guardians. This Guardian Broadcast is not my preferred way to communicate with you. I’ve always imagined Heaven as being a place that’s almost like a big, non-stop dinner party. A place where we all know that an incredible dinner is coming, a wonderful speaker, and the best dessert. But where, there is absolutely no rush, because we’ve all got all the coffee and wine and hors d’oeuvres we could ever want, and we’ve got about a million years to just glide around the crowd, mingling with every fascinating and beautiful person who has ever lived. So, I’d prefer a two-sided conversation. Now, a couple years ago, we actually spent something like $35,000 having a website built that would allow for some of this, but it’s just never seemed like the right time to launch that thing. Eventually, we will: but not right now. Still: I am more grateful than you can possibly know for your time and attention, and *especially* your willingness to stick with me in this mission and try our curriculum as it’s released. I really, truly can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. So, for as long as I have you: thank you. Okay, this week I want to talk more about the tactical side of fitness and exercise. I’ll try to be brief. First, I strongly recommend that you reject any idea or notion that “routines” or “programs” or “regimens” exist. Because I don’t think they do. I think people give fun sounding names to fitness and structure it in ways that simply makes it easier or more fun to do, or less intimidating to approach. But I have learned that there’s no magic. There’s no excuse, either. If we want to lose weight, we must eat fewer calories than we burn. Simple as that. If we want to gain or grow ability or muscle, we have to recognize one simple reality: that muscle is *nothing* more than the body’s reluctant response to challenge. If we expose ourselves to more challenge than our bodies are presently equipped for: they grow. They respond. If we don’t: we won’t! It’s as simple as that. So: if you want to lose or gain, you’ve got to make yourself uncomfortable and you’ve got to do it often. Second, you don’t have to do it that often. The human body is the most incredible piece of creation in the entire universe, and I am floored by how forgiving it is. We can literally erase twenty years of neglect and abuse in about six months. It’s astonishing. And in my experience, fitness is the same way. If we spend even 5 minutes per day of exposing ourselves to challenge, our bodies will adapt. To me, that speaks to the infinite, unfair generosity of our creator, because if I were God, I probably would have jerkishly set the bar higher than that. But: that’s not the way it is. 5 minutes of challenge per day, and your body responds. 20 minutes, and it responds a lot more and a lot faster. Third, remember the “spread out” thing from the last broadcast. Don’t feel like you need to do it all at once. More on that in just a second. Fourth, to encourage you: there have been *so many* studies about how beneficial exercise is to the body. One study demonstrated how the skin cells of an 80-year-old de-aged to match the health of a 50-year-old, after just a few weeks of even mild strength training. Not only that, but strength training corrects and re-balances hormones in both men and women. We feel better. Our heart rates decrease. Our blood pressure and all sorts of things balance out and moderate. So: hit it! Get some. Okay, now I promised you some tactical stuff. So first, I would challenge you to keep it simple and just do a little bit every day. A little physical activity every single day. Now, what kind and how much? Well, that will totally depend on you and where you’re at, but just remember and keep in mind that cardinal rule: CHALLENGE YOURSELF. It should be hard. To go further, I must speak about the three kinds of strength. At one end, we have Endurance strength. At the far end, we have RAW strength. And in the middle, we have EXPLOSIVE strength. It’s important to recognize that these are three different functions. It’s like our muscles know these are three different needs our bodies can have, and so they have different fibers and chemicals associated with each one. And you can grow your RAW strength without growing your endurance strength, and vica versa. For example, for a year I did nothing but focus on endurance strength. I got to where I could do 100 push-ups in a set. I got to where I could do, and I’m not joking, 42 pull-ups in a set. And when I got there, I was surprised to find that while I had a lot of endurance, that amount of resistance was pretty much my limit. For example, when I added a 20lb weight vest, I struggled to bust out 30 push-ups. Put my feet up 12 inches while wearing the weight vest, and I struggled to hit 20. With the vest on, my pull-ups went from 40 down to 18. And that was only 20lbs! So, I realized I needed to be more balanced. I said: “It doesn’t make much sense to be able to do 40 pull-ups. I think I’d like to be able to do 20 really heavy pull-ups.” And so on. So, I sacrificed some numbers for strength. And, realistically, probably being able to do 5 or 8 REALLY heavy reps is an even better balance, but I think we need to each find our own balances. The bottom line is: we need to train all three kinds of strength. If you want RAW strength, the formula seems to be to do 8 to 12 repetitions of weight or resistance heavy enough so that you can’t really do more than 12. And, it seems like you don’t really want to do them to failure: it seems like you want to stop 1 or 2 reps before you would have failed. If you want endurance strength, it seems to me that you DO want to do these reps to failure for the final 1/3 of your sets – but otherwise that you keep raising the bar. So this week, I’m going to do 8 sets of 5 pull-ups per day for 3 straight days. Then next week, after resting for 4 days, I’m going to do 9 sets of 5. The week after that, I’ll go back to 8 sets, but I’ll do sets of 6 reps instead of 5. And on, and on. For explosive strength, it seems like even fewer reps than that. Explosive strength is the clapping push-ups, or the pull-ups where you rocket upward so that your hands hop off the bar. Gymnast stuff. When I practice this, I don’t even let myself get tired. If I COULD do 8 explosive reps, I will only do 3, maybe 4. Next, I have to harp on rest again. I think of it like this: exercise is when you tear your body apart at the microscopic level. But REST is when it rebuilds. REST is when you grow, NOT when you exercise. And in my experience, you grow for 5 or 6 days after a bout of STRONG activity, such as 3 straight days of working out. Or, one really, really taxing day. But as a rule, I let 3 days of rest pass per muscle group before I do more exercise. So, I might do 3 days of upper body, then 3 days of lower body while I let my upper rest. Or, I might just take a week off! Who cares? I’m the master of my body, right? And so are you. Either way: rest is very important, and I love how it forces balance and moderation in an area where it’s easy to go overboard. Because you do NOT want to be the ‘all or nothing’ kind of person. Life is a long game, and the winners are people who are steady and consistent. Next: another nod toward keeping it simple. And that is: you do not have to get fancy. In my experience, you can literally get in great shape by doing nothing but push-ups. Seriously. Add in pull-ups, and you’ll get in very, very good shape. Add in attention to legs, and it’s that much better. NOW: I am not an expert. And there’s a whole school of thought on why only doing a couple things like this is a bad idea, and these people speak of the benefits of cross training. They are probably correct. But my advice? Master the push-up for about three years, and if you find yourself plateauing and craving more results: THEN move into other stuff. The push-up is a great way to build good habits, really impressive results, and most importantly: a love of fitness. Lastly, a few tactical points: First, it seems that your muscles need to experience challenge in bouts of 40 to 60 seconds in order to respond. So, you can spread your exercise throughout an entire day or three, but make sure each set takes 40 seconds or more, without exhausting you. Go slow if you need to. Next, challenge yourself on both sides of a rep. Pull up hard or push down hard, yes: but also go slow when you are moving with gravity. Resistant against gravity and you gain twice as fast and you gain more balance. And lastly: squeeze fitness in every chance you get. Okay, my friends. Remember what I said about balance and about challenge. There are no secrets, no gimmicks, no shortcuts. In life, the prize goes to the one who works hard and doesn’t shy away from challenge. We live in the land of the blind. All you need is to develop one ‘eye’, and you will be king. Make it so, my friends! Peace be with you, and have a happy thanksgiving. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Okay, now two weeks ago I kicked off another small discussion – I called it: joining the resistance. It was the idea that we can – because of the fact that only 6% of Americans practice any kind of resistance training – very rapidly accelerate to the upper echelons of ability and prestige in this regard. In other words: we can get strong! We can get fit. And that, when we do get strong and fit, we reap a massive amount of ‘fruit’ from having done so: namely, mental strength, resilience, peace, confidence, and discipline. And the most important note of all here is: this actually applies to *everyone*, no matter how old you are or what state you’re in. In fact, I’ll say that the further you are away from your prime, the more important this stuff becomes. I’ll explain more in a minute, but just please: bear with me as I deliver this, because it’ll all make sense in the end. Plus, I think it’s a very important message. I want to talk a little bit more about that this week and next. This week, I want to share some of the more important lessons I’ve learned, which will hopefully help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made if you do indeed travel down this path. Next week, I’m going to share with you some sample routines and challenges I’d like to give you, to help you get started if you don’t know where to begin. Okay. Big lessons. The biggest lesson by far that I’ve learned with regards to physical fitness and physical challenge is this: In life, we can use it, or lose it, and the enemy of living in the kind of body we are capable of living in is – if you ask me – perfectionism. I used to think physical fitness belonged to the kinds of people who had 2 hours or even 20 minutes to devote to being in a gym. Because that is just simply not me. I haven’t been in a gym in years, and even if I had the time, a gym is honestly about the last place in the world I’d choose to be. Not because there’s anything wrong with gyms: it’s just not how I prefer to exercise. I don’t want to exercise in public, and I don’t want to spend 20 straight minutes, let alone an hour, exercising. But we have to destroy the idea of perfectionism, because that is public enemy #1 to fitness. Because perfectionism whispers in our ears: you can never be the best, or even in the top 20%, so don’t even bother. Or, perfectionism might whisper all sorts of other things: you can’t be strong or in good shape. That’s not who you are. Pride can give us all the excuses and alternative paths we need to avoid it. But here’s what I say: Inside of us, at any given time, lies ‘the best person we can be.’ And I mean that physically as much as I mean it emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, if you’re like me. We could be better than we are right now. And if tonight we get mangled in a car accident and the doctors tell us we’ll never walk again – even in that state, there’s a ‘best version’ of ourselves buried within. Well, I think we should challenge ourselves to find that best version. I’m not talking about becoming a triathlete, even though you’re probably capable of a whole lot more than you imagine. I’m just talking about getting a little bit better every day. Let me continue with other lessons I’ve learned. Spread it out, and stay ultra-local. Okay, first: the biggest lesson by far that I’ve learned with regards to physical fitness is: spread it out and stay ultra-local. So, if the idea of going to a gym sounds like a deal breaker for you, for whatever reason, I have good news for you. Because not only is going to a gym, as I mentioned, something I absolutely would not be interested in, but even finding 20 straight minutes to exercise is something that would single-handedly prevent me from ever taking on any physical challenges. So, what do you do? You spread it out and stay ultra-local. What do I mean? Well, this isn’t going to be practical for everyone, but I’m blessed to be both “the boss,” and in complete control of my work environment. So, what I do, is I fill my work space with exercise opportunities that I can do in one-minute bursts, and I make sure to do 12 or 15 or 20 different “sets” throughout the day. You might get a 20-minute workout in, but it doesn’t feel it if all you’re doing is 10 or 15 or 40 push-ups every half hour. When I started exercising this way, some of my more committed friends who do their work outs in intense bursts of 20 or 40 minutes wondered if you can get results by spreading fitness out like this. Well, I’m here to tell you, you absolutely do. Plus, I prefer exercising in this tempo, because you get a nice burst of energy from it throughout the day. Rather than getting exhausted at the gym, you keep a slow and steady stream of energy all day. Plus, if you have a sit-down job, exercising this way keeps you up and mobile and prevents you from developing bad posture or repetitive stress injuries. And if you work in a professional environment or can’t do this during your work day, no sweat. Just adopt this style in the evenings when you’re in the privacy of your own home. We’ll talk more about what kinds of exercises to do during these 60 second bursts, but I’m talking about very simple things. If you have enough room to do push-ups, you have enough room to do the stuff I do. And by no means does it have to be push-ups. I think there’s something especially gratifying about strengthening the upper body, but let’s say you work in dress clothes and absolutely don’t want to break a sweat during your work day. Well, just do sets of 10 body squats next to your desk, or even in the privacy of the bathroom. Second, warming up and flexibility. For some reason that I can’t comprehend now, I never used to like to warm up before I exercised. It felt like a waste of time – I wasn’t going to get results by rolling my shoulders, and I only had a few minutes to exercise – right? Well, that silly attitude cost me a few injuries over the past couple years. Right alongside it is cooling down. Once your muscles are worked, you’ve both got a great opportunity to increase circulation and flexibility, but you also can prevent unnecessary soreness, knots, cramps, and strain on your tendons by keeping your body loose with a good cool down. Nowadays I like to think of my body almost like a sportscar. Never in a million years would I start pushing or shifting at the redline before both my water and oil temp are up to where they should be. And never would I go from pushing the redline to shutting the car down and walking away. You give it that cool down time. Our bodies are that much more important than a car, so we’ve got to give them the same treatment. The next lesson I’ve learned is that fitness or weight loss are all about playing the long game. It’s not about ‘getting something done’ as much as it is about: incorporating small lifestyle changes where you expose yourself to more challenge over time than you currently do. What I believe now is this: don’t even think about looking for or hoping for results for the first six months of whatever lifestyle change you make. It could be a daily walk. It could be a new exercise or strength regimen. But just stick with it for six months, and only then should you start looking for results. The way I see it, the first six months is all about building habits. And even one instance of the number on the scale or one measurement of your chest being disheartening can make sticking with it that much harder. But I also say this for a different reason, and it comes from my own experience: when I got serious about strength training, my weight and my physical size didn’t change at all for six months. My actual ability grew pretty rapidly by comparison, but nothing else did. After that six months, the muscle seems to start packing on out of nowhere, and it became very rewarding. But sticking with the regimen was a challenge because, like most people, I wanted to see quick results. So: play the long game. Outsmart your body. Make your victory conditions be actually doing it rather than getting the results you’re ultimately after. Next is an important concept that I found to be true for me, and it’s what I’ve referred to as “acclimation.” Basically, it really felt to me like, after a couple decades of NOT exercising extremely regularly, my body almost treated my new fitness lifestyle as a fad. Sort of a move for efficiency, where the body ‘says’: “look, I’m not gunna waste precious energy and calories building muscle for something you’ve only been doing for two days… or weeks… or months.” But after a while, after being CONSISTENT with my activity, it seemed like my body kicked into high gear with accepting that this new lifestyle was here to stay, so it had better adapt. Next was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn: that our tendons and ligaments and connective points and tissues all adapt and grow in flexibility and strength MUCH more slowly than muscles do. I really can’t stress this enough, and I think it’s a big reason why warming up and cooling down is so important. Muscle seems to adapt to new challenges in a matter of about three weeks if you’re consistent with the challenges. But tendons and attachment points seem to take five to ten times as long. Now I’m not a doctor and this isn’t the gospel truth – it’s just my observation. But I caused a few injuries simply by using my muscles to the max a few times, early on. So, this is another reason to play the long game and move slowly and steadily. I set myself back a few months by moving to do one-handed pull-ups as soon as my muscles had reached that point. I tore myself up! Now, I’m slowly working back to that point, letting my tendons catch up to the rest of my body. Finally, I want to leave you with the notion of being positive, having fun, encouraging yourself, and racing yourself. By that I mean: you’re not racing or competing against anyone else. We all have very different bodies and very different strengths and weaknesses. You’re not out to be the best, you’re only out to be the best version of who you are right now. Don’t forget that. If you’re 40, you’re not trying to become better than or as good as you were when you were 20. Or if you’re 70, you’re not trying to get where you were when you’re 50. You just want to be the best 40-year-old you that you can be, or the best 70-year-old. And I promise you: wherever you are now, you could probably really surprise yourself with what is possible for you. You’ll feel better, more assertive, you’ll be happier, and you’ll be healthier. And as a guardian, you’ll be that much more effective. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends and fellow guardians, This week, we wrap up our discussion on PRE-POSITIONING. Over the last few Guardian Broadcasts, we’ve covered this topic with specific examples of how you can use Pre-Positioning to make your deployment of deadly force faster and more effective, and how truly effective pre-positioning can help you avoid ever needing to use deadly force in the first place. In the first part of the series, we covered passive pre-positioning life-habits that, if we focus on developing them, will radically boost our effectiveness in most aspects of life, but especially where giving you an “unfair advantage” in self-defense is concerned. In the second part, we discussed Active Pre-positioning tactics we can employ, once we begin feeling threatened. Those are the most important categories, but I want to briefly inject a couple examples of the categories that remain, to help drive home exactly what pre-positioning is and what it means for all of us. And so: The third category of pre-positioning represents the things we can do within the span of a violent engagement, and here we really drill down in the micro. Pre-Positioning within an active engagement– literally as you’re moving or as you’re shooting – encompasses most of what we know of or think of, with regards to actual tactics. The shooting, the moving, the awareness: the survivor of violence and the effective fighter is always acting with the demands of the next half second or the next second or two or three in mind. Does that make sense? Now, a lot of this pre-positioning concept is common-sense simple. It’s nothing more elaborate than just re-categorizing things that we already know about; things that we already do. But it’s so helpful to pull all that within these categories of Pre-Positioning, because it really helps us to see the full brilliance of what good strategy and good tactics mean. Good strategy, remember, is the effective pre-positioning of all available resources to – ideally – defeat your enemies and solve your problems without tactile, or tactical, intervention ever being necessary. But should it become necessary, having effective strategy in place allows and ensures that your actual, physical response is as fast, advantageous, effortless, and effective as possible. That’s what good strategy does. Good tactics do two things: not only do they work toward physically solving the problem at hand, but every tactic – if it’s a GOOD tactic – will make sure that the very NEXT tactic and the very next SET of tactics that you have to or may have to execute after that one are – similarly – as fast, advantageous, effortless, and effective as possible. In other words, throwing a punch and hoping it solves all your problems is not good tactics. The good tactician won’t throw a punch that leaves him vulnerable. And he won’t ever expect one punch to solve any problem; instead, this next punch seeks to tire or weaken or stun his opponent, so that the next punch, or the throw three punches from now, can actually end the fight. It goes on and on, and it gets deep fast. But this is precisely why the study of tactics is so extremely important and valuable. This is why the massive pool of people, young and old, congregating on gun ranges, on YouTube, or on internet forums to knit-pick tactics and to ingrain and focus on good tactics is so universally important to all of us. It matters, because every tactic – every single action – contains the power and potential for effective pre-positioning. And to ignore or disregard that is, then, a big mistake. People who win fights and survive violence know this. They know that they don’t need to be tactical masters; you don’t even have to know WHY you’re doing what you do. Provided you learn from someone who knows why it was important, and who therefore developed good tactics, you’re creating for yourself massive advantage. I remember being a young man, engaged in a paintball combat scenario against some combat veteran US Army Officers. I was an unwashed civilian, teamed up with some high school friends. We fought blindly against these officers, executing tactics as if they were poorly rehearsed dance numbers. At the same time, the Army Officers executed tactics that squeezed every ounce of potential pre-positioning out of all their resourced: each of their six men, each bit of terrain and obstacle, each of the strengths and weaknesses of their paintball guns. For the first few seconds, their tactics seemed a little comical. We seemed to have the upper hand in gusto and volume of fire. But after about three seconds – and I kid you not – sheer terror set in, even amid this fun game, as I realized the trap that we were already in. By the time I began realizing it, we had already lost. The game was over. None of us had even been hit yet; all my friends probably still thought we were winning. But, I knew it was done. It was a terrifying masterpiece display of tactics, as these two fireteams moved against us. I lowered my gun, stunned by the beauty of the situation. And within another ten seconds, we were all marked – all “dead” – and not one of them had been touched. It was superb. SO. Within an engagement, maneuvering is the clearest example of how pre-positioning can be used, while you’re actively being attacked. You move to avoid being shot; you move to position yourself to be more effective once you’re there. When you fire. You fire to try to hit the guy, but you also fire to put him in a state of reaction, a state of fear, a state of suppression. The way you draw, the timing of your draw. The list goes on and on and on, and it can go on further and further. Eventually, every tactical motion or action holds two powerful components: the immediate result, and the options that this action then opens to you and closes you off from. You want to choose potent, open-ended tactics. Even through the end of an engagement, after the smoke stops. Calling 911 isn’t just a response or an action. It’s effective pre-positioning. Every word you say. Your vocal tonality – these things WILL have real consequences later on, so the bright tactician uses these resources to make sure his or her life is easier, rather than harder, later on. Consider all these things, everything, as you work toward changing your perspective of a violent situation and your responses within it from closed-ended tactics that either do or don’t solve a problem, to open-ended efforts toward effective pre-positioning. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends and fellow Guardians, Pat Kilchermann here, founder of the Concealed Carry University. I want to reach out and welcome all the listeners who are not part of our CCU Alumni. When I started doing these broadcasts four years ago now, it was simply a means for me to talk to and get email replies from our existing CCU alumni, our students who had come to me through some of our education or training material. But now, it seems that quite a large pool of listeners has come straight to this broadcast! That’s wonderful, and I welcome you here. I also want to say that my prayers have been with those of you who are down in the south east, whose lives have been turned upside down from Hurricane Florence and all the flooding that storm has caused and is continuing to cause. Alright. This week, I actually want to take a short break from our conversation on pre-positioning, because I have what may be an important message. And that is: if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing…. poorly. And if it’s REALLY important, then it’s worth doing REALLY poorly. You may not need this broadcast or this message at all. But let me ask you: Do you ever feel afraid of failure? Do you ever feel paralyzed into inaction by this kind of fear? Or do you ever feel robbed of peace or robbed of contentment? Do you find that you are your own worst critic in life, rather than your biggest cheerleader? Is the idea of being a cheerleader for yourself completely laughable? Do you feel that you can’t begin with something or take action on something or that you can’t be happy or can’t feel adequate until everything is just so? Until you hit your goals and are the person you plan to be, or believe you can be? Do you feel that your life, or certain areas of your life, are just big series of disappointments, one after the other? If any of these are true, then it’s possible that you’re a perfectionist. I don’t mean in the cute job interview way, where we believe our biggest “flaws” are that we work too hard or care too much. I mean, really: you may have a serious problem that’s holding you back in big ways in life – or just as bad (if not worse), one that’s really hurting the people around you. Perfectionism! This problem came to mind recently when I encountered someone who was discontent with their carry gun. They wanted a “Cadillac,” but they couldn’t afford one. So, they were going to go with a brand new Kel-Tec, but I steered them, for a little less money, toward a used, retired police GLOCK. I explained that it was more than enough, as far as tools go. It’s going to go “bang” when you press the trigger, which is 95% of the job description of a defensive carry gun. I explained that the rest is “on them, and inside them, there for them to develop and pull out of themselves.” But, I could tell he was seeing that pistol through some kind of negative lens, and I could tell he would never be proud of it; could never trust it; could never love it enough to bond and grow to that point of effectiveness. It reminded me of another attitude I’ve encountered, with people’s training. Rather than reaching that point of responsible and safe competency and beginning to carry with confidence and develop themselves where and when they can, some people who carry concealed never feel that they’re ready until they’ve received all the training they want. Do you see what I mean? Rather than hitting the ground running, with pride and confidence but with a healthy awareness that they will be a lot better in five years provided they stick to a good regimen of self-investment and development, people who suffer from perfectionism in this way will feel laced with doubt and discontent and feelings of unpreparedness and inadequacy. This problem is dangerous to the mind, and it’s a bummer to be around, because everyone around certainly feels it. They feel the stress, the anxiety, and ultimately the depression it causes. But, it’s a hard problem to help someone sort out! And yet, it can be bad. Perfectionists often push themselves too hard, or give up completely if they find that their ideal is unobtainable or out of reach. In the same way, they can push their friends, their spouse, or their children too hard, when the perfectionist’s own unrealistic, unfair, selfish, and destructive expectations are expanded and applied to those around them. For the people in the lives of the perfectionist, it’s hard to argue against these high standards and expectations, because the standards of the perfectionist are indeed usually GOOD ones in and of themselves. But here’s the thing: Ultimately, perfectionism is a losing mindset because this kind of attitude destroys everything that it sets out to achieve. So, it’s not just that it’s out of balance or inefficient, but the reality is that it’s ultimately quite destructive. It destroys any hopes of true excellence. And like setting your goal on the horizon rather than an actual point, a perfectionist attitude has no end, offers no relief. So, the perfectionist ultimately becomes discouraged, despairs, and suffers from anxiety or depression, or both. In concealed carry, obsessions of this kind, this perfectionist attitude, either discourages the user or it can get them killed. People who obsess over guns and gear or who obsess over shaving another tenth of a second from their already extremely fast draw stroke or reload time, rarely devote time and attention to mindset or skill development in other areas – to the point where, ultimately, they have massive, glaring short-comings in areas that are – really – much more important. We’ve talked about this a lot – this concept of balance, and the reality that if we grow one of our three pillars of self-defense out of proportion to the others, we’re not actually increasing our effectiveness or our abilities to survive a situation. For example, we’re not doing ourselves any favors if we keep working that draw stroke that is already fast, but if we haven’t studied body language. I think you know what I mean, and you’re probably far ahead of me on this. Okay, now it’s easy for attacking perfectionism to creep into the realm of attacking excellence, and I don’t want to do that. I like to encourage people to pursue excellence. But there’s a simple test you can do, and it really just involves asking yourself some questions. If you’re pursuing excellence, you’re an inspiration to people. You know you’re good enough, but you keep going because you believe it makes you a better person and because it’s inspiring and encouraging to those around you. So, are you encouraging others? Are you inspiring others? Are you happy? Are you able to identify when you’re good enough, and can you say that out loud when it’s true? Examine all areas of your life. If you can say all that, you’re probably not a perfectionist and you’re in good shape. I also like to use these strategies to seek and destroy any hints at perfectionism within myself. Here’s what I say: First, nobody is perfect. We all have glaring blind spots. We’ve all let people down. We’ve all let ourselves down. That’s fine! But we must be able to admit it and make peace with it. Second, perfection isn’t possible, not here on earth. The laws of nature and physics guarantee that nothing, short of ideas, can ever be perfect. Hopefully RARELY, but no matter what: our guns will let us down. Our training will let us down. Our spouses and family will let us down. Our cars and trucks and houses and investments and jobs and bosses and employees will let us down. It’s guaranteed. And, we will let others down. That’s life as a human being on planet earth. Third, I like to say: ready, fire, aim. I like this philosophy of not only being okay with failure or mediocrity, but planning and preparing for it, and even working it into my plans. If I were a perfectionist, I’d never have developed any material here at CCU. Especially my earlier work, when I look back at my set design, my video angles, my lighting, my abilities as a speaker and presenter, and even the clothes I wear. A lot of that stuff makes me cringe in retrospect, but you know what? Good enough is good enough. When you have an important message, you just have to get it out there. And the more important it is, the faster you must act. And that ties into the title of this broadcast: that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly. Hands down, speed of execution is the sole reason why I’m still in business and still educating. A pre-requisite of that is an acceptance of and comfort with failure. Because when you move fast, that’s what happens. Just like with moving and shooting practice: you keep moving and shooting until you find that point where you’re too sloppy, and then you back off and work on focus. That’s life, and I hope this broadcast has been helpful. Stay safe! Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends and fellow Guardians – Pat Kilchermann here, founder of the Concealed Carry University. As I talked about last week, this week I want to continue our conversation where we’re making PRE-POSITIONING a real, concrete thing in our minds. To provide you with plenty of tangible examples of PRE-POSITIONING in use, so that you’re well aware of just how much of an easily-understood, tangible, trainable, and practicable skill PRE-POSITIONING IS. Before we continue, a quick reminder: Why are we discussing pre-positioning? Because along with the idea of learning to identify and CREATE windows within an actively violent self-defense situation, pre-positioning is the primary focus of Volume 3 of 3 SECONDS FROM NOWat-home training program. And before we move on to Volume 4, which will be released within the next 60 days, I want to make sure we’re all pre-positioning masters: at least in our heads. Because if we understand it, we can work on these skills physically in our visualization, in our training, and in our practice at the range or in our living rooms. Second and finally, I want to call to mind that reality that we are dividing the idea of PRE-POSITIONING up into four categories, based on the chronology of a violent attack. Category #1 are all those things we can and should be doing in our day to day lives, even when we don’t feel threatened. Having these habits in place will do three things. First, it’ll MASSIVELY cut down our reaction times to violence. Second, it’ll MASSIVELY boost our effectiveness to shut down violence with and without our handguns. And thirdly, it’ll MASSIVELY decrease our chances of sustaining injury during an attack. Categories #2 and #3 also come with all those benefits, but Category #2 are the things we can do AFTER we begin feeling threatened, but BEFORE an actual attack begins. Category #3 are the things we can actually do WITHIN a violent attack, as our attackers are trying to kill us or other innocent people. And Category #4 represents all the things we can do immediately following a violent attack, so that our experiences going through the criminal justice system will be as favorable as possible. Nothing illegal by any stretch – these are just things every responsible citizen should be aware of, but things that many of us have never had to think about. Okay. Last week, we finished our discussion on Category #1. This week, we’re diving into Category #2: things we can do AFTER we begin feeling threatened, but BEFORE an actual attack begins. I’m just going to dive right in, bulleted list style. Here goes, and I’ll limit my examples here to whatever we can cover in one broadcast. Okay, first is the idea of being able to draw your handgun DISCREETELY. This is a big one. Obviously, you’re not going to draw your handgun every time you feel threatened, just in case you end up needing it. But to have that ability is something that could one day be critical for your success. Imagine you’re in a situation where someone enters your vicinity who is acting sporadic, belligerent, and they’re even armed with a weapon. They haven’t USED that weapon yet, but it really, really seems like they might. Now, you know 911 has been called or is being called, and you also know that if they start using that weapon, you’re going to have to act. BUT: you know that it’s possible that he’ll turn against you first of all before anyone else, and that if he does, it’ll probably be too late to get your gun out. Well, what if you have the skill to draw your handgun so that absolutely nobody else was aware, and to keep that handgun hidden beneath your shirt or behind your offhand or offhand arm. All so that you’re effectively standing there with your gun in your strong hand, even possibly bladed toward your threat, but with your gun completely hidden, so that you really just look like a bored spectator crossing his arms? That would be an excellent skill to have, right? It is. We call it the ability to discretely draw your pistol. The keys are to do so with minimal movement, minimal contrast, and with zero telegraphing. This requires a lot of secondary or pre-requisite skills, such as an ability to maintain excellent situational awareness and avoid tunnel vision when you’re stressed. If your heart has ever started pounding before speaking up in a meeting or group of people, just wait until you try to discretely draw your handgun on a living, breathing human being. That’s why we’ve got to practice this ahead of time. Next, combat breathing. Beginning intentional and focused combat breathing at the first sign of a threat is going to help with every other skill you need to execute within that sphere of pre-positioning, and within the entire engagement as a whole. But if you don’t practice combat breathing every time you’re threatened, it won’t be habit, and you probably won’t think to do it when it really counts. Next is to begin working toward cover and concealment at the first moment you’re able to once you sense a threat in your presence. This will not only help to pull off a concealed draw stroke, but it’ll help save your life if you begin receiving fire during that engagement. Just remember: as with ALL these things we’re talking about: if you botch any of these, you could make your situation much worse. You could make a situation where you weren’t going to have to use your gun in self-defense, but suddenly you DO have to. In other words, your attempt at pre-positioning could actually INSTIGATE a situation that otherwise would have never exited the realm of mere Threat, into the realm of actual violence. If you can’t do these things without instigating or without remaining off the radar, stay in place and do what you can from there, unless you’re dead on certain that it’s going to become violent and that staying put will threaten your survival. Another pre-positioning item may be to get the attention of and coordinate with other good guys or innocent parties. This is a deep subject. If you’re seated at the beginning of a threatening situation, you may want to stand. Or, you may want to shrink down. Or, you may want to draw beneath the table. When we get into this realm things become extremely situationally dependent, but you’re getting the idea. An example of how situationally dependent these pre-positioning items become once you begin feeling threatened, is that if you’re facing multiple attackers, you can discretely maneuver against them, to keep the two of them (or two OF them, if there are multiple) lined up with each other. This can make it so that you’re only fighting one at a time, and it can make it so that the rearward threat can’t fire at you without jeopardizing the life of his companion. If there are other helpful assets nearby, like a fire alarm, a door or window to exit out of, or something to throw if that would help, you can maneuver toward them during this space of time. Now these is a lot of situationally dependent items that may be totally irrelevant to us. The idea is to educate your mind with enough specific, tactical ideas like these, so that when you need it, you’ve got a mind between your shoulders that’s capable of acting quickly and effectively with these sorts of pre-positioning ideas, so that – a few seconds later – if deadly force becomes absolutely justified and absolutely required, you can deploy faster, more effectively, and in a way that is SAFE for you and very dangerous for your violent threat or threats. But overall, my friends, and this is the last item we’ll cover today, and yet it’s the most important: After you begin feeling threatened but before that threat has become violent, the most important things we can do are these: We need to become aware of all the threats. The number of threats. Look for accomplices. Don’t let yourself be blindsided by additional help. We need to accurately evaluate the objectives and the intentions of the threats. Why are they there? What are they after? What will they have to do, to get it? Do they seem smart, tight, and focused? Or do they seem loose and sloppy? Are they acting singularly, with sound minds that they are in control of? Or do they seem sporadic, wild, easily agitated, extremely stressed? Are they wearing masks? Are they trying to disguise themselves? What are they armed with? What kind of condition are their weapons in, and what advantages can you gain over them based on the weapons you see? These are all keys, perhaps the most important keys, to be aware of during a threatening encounter, and I’m sure there are more. Perhaps you’ve already come up with a great many more ideas, and that is excellent. The bottom line is, we will need to decide what we’ll do, and when we’ll do it, based on their behavior, their own pre-positions, and their actions. We need to draw our RED LINES for these situations, based on those actions, and we need to keep adjusting them in real time as those actions change. We need to decide what will give us the greatest chance of surviving, and we need to focus on survival and the survival of all the other innocents nearby as our primary goal. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends, and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast. I’m your host, and founder of the Concealed Carry University, Patrick Kilchermann. Okay, last week, we got started with specifics on what kinds of pre-positioning habits we all should work to ingrain every single day. A ‘new normal’ or ‘new reality’ for each of us. And I want to continue that this week. But first, let me put all this back in perspective. Remember that key takeaway from Volume 3 of 3 SECONDS FROM NOW. That idea that we can separate all violent encounters into two groups: 1. Those where, the moment you decide deadly force is or may very soon be 100% justified and required to save your life, the attention and focus of the attacker are primarily on you, and, 2. Those situations where, the moment you decide deadly force is or may very soon be 100% justified and required to save your life, the attention and focus of the attacker are NOT primarily on you. So, an example of situation #1 is the ‘by the books’ ambush attack. You are walking along, and suddenly you are being attacked. An example of #2 is where you are in an area, you hear a series of gunshots, you spin, and you see that someone is shooting and people are falling. Or, where you are at a stop light, and someone rushes to the car in front of you. They start trying the door handle, banging on the window, then they turn in your direction. Or, the guy mumbling to himself and twitching in the restaurant who you think just has a mental disorder, but who start to think might be on some serious drugs. Or ANY situation, literally any situation where, again: where, the moment you decide deadly force is or may very soon be 100% justified and required to save your life, the attention and focus of the attacker are NOT primarily on you. All it says is “may very soon be”. ANY time our eyebrows raise – this stuff we’re talking about, this process of pre-positioning, needs to kick into gear. It could be as mundane as a car driving slowly by your house late at night. Or a guy crossing the street 50 yards in front of you. Maybe he had a good reason to do so and it’s absolutely nothing – or maybe he wants to get in your path. Maybe he’s still sizing you up, or maybe he’s already made his decision. So the idea behind pre-positioning is this: Sometimes, attacks begin as blind-side ambushes. In order to win and survive, you’ve got to be able to draw from a combination of three factors. Remember what we discussed? LUCK. Right? SKILL. Right? And PRE-POSITIONING. You can’t control luck, or chance. But you can control skill and pre-positioning. Skill describes your ability to use the resources available to you at that moment. But pre-positioning describes everything else. How much you’ve trained and practiced. Where your gun is on your person, and how quickly it’s possible to get it into play from there. What kind of gun it is. Whether you’re strong enough to keep that attacker at arm’s length while you draw with one hand. How flexible you are. How many half-seconds of warning you had before the attacker made contact with you. ALL that ties into how effectively pre-positioned you are. So, when you are attacked in a blitz ambush, your passive pre-positioning and skill are what will save you, and how passively pre-positioned you were before that attack is probably going to be a lot more important for your survival than your actual skill level. And remember – about 55% of concealed carry defensive uses of force happen in situations where the first warning of an attack is the attack itself. For all the rest, the victim – you and I – did have some warning. And in those situations, that is when active pre-positioning comes into play. That is where Timing and the Windows concept also comes into play. Alright, I think we’re all on the same page. So, let me continue giving practical examples of passive pre-positioning habits we need to work to form, and if I get through all these, next week we’ll begin talking about specifics related to ACTIVE pre-positioning. Alright. First, the idea of ‘keeping tabs.’ Make it a habit to stretch your mental awareness radius and strength for staying tuned and keeping track of who is around you and what they’re doing, without turning your head, or without letting the other person or people in your party know you’re doing it. Practice it. You will get better and better. Things like this can stress you out and wear on your mind if you try to do too much at once, but if you practice stretching that radius slowly, over the course of months, it’ll make your brain and mind much healthier and stronger. It’ll keep you younger. Next, remembering that the police are YOUR resource. Having them on the way to a scene before it kicks off is infinitely better than calling them afterward. Just last Sunday after church, I called the police to report an intense domestic argument between two young people at a playground where I stopped to let my kids run around. I mean, this was a *screaming* match, hands waving frantically, nearly to blows. Two people with no kids, who never should have been there in the first place. We packed up and left, and I called and reported them. And because I saw the old van they arrived in, I gave the police their plate number. Calling 911 isn’t a big deal. The police need us as their eyes and ears, and they can always choose to not go check it out. Next in line is just that: leaving when you sense the slightest discomfort in that regard. Naturally, I had some curiosity to see how the situation would resolve. Sometimes, pride can keep us planted. “I have a right to be here: they should leave.” Or, we may feel an urge to referee or guard the weaker half of an altercation like that. Or, we may deny our intuition and say: “nobody else seems disturbed by the tweaked guy sitting alone in the restaurant, so I’m sure he won’t get violent.” But we need to listen to that intuition, and err on the side of avoidance. If other people in our party are giving vibes that their intuition alarm bells are going off, we should listen to that, too. Another item related to gear is: travel and mobility. Most Americans think nothing of hopping in their cars are making long drives with, really, little to no supplies on them. We carry plastic instead of cash. We have no water on us. No food. No blanket. 20% battery on our phones, and no charger. Or while wearing shoes that would kill us to walk 20 miles in. For every minute you drive, you could be adding 15 minutes to your walk back to help and safety. Make sure your vehicle is well stocked. Put it in there, and never think about it again until you’re glad you have it. Carry cash, some cash, always. At least $100 worth, preferably in bills no larger than $20s. Carrying a first aid kit. If you only carry a pair of surgical gloves, you could save yourself a lot of heartache or disease. A few years ago, a young man overdosed on heroin and died in the bathroom of a coffee shop I was in. Now, this guy’s death sentence was probably given a few minutes before we unlocked the door and drug him out, or tried doing chest compressions, but this guy was in bad shape, and his hygiene was terrible. There’s a reason the professionals put gloves on before touching the people they help. But beyond that, what if I’d had a $20 Narcan kit? Could I have saved his life? Or a few aspirin tablets, to give to someone who thinks they’re having a heart attack. Or a firemask to give you a fighting chance to escape your burning workplace building. All of this pre-positions you for effectiveness and success. The way you dress pre-positions you. It can dissuade or invite and attack. It can smooth your interactions with everyone, especially law enforcement. We should dress professionally. Being aware at all times of other resources around you that may be useful during an attack. Cover. Concealment. Things that can be used as weapons or barriers. Fire alarms. Other people who may come to your aid, or who you may want to distinguish yourself to as a good guy, should you ever have to act. I think of that often: “that guy is likely to be carrying: I would want to make contact with him very quickly before or right after I had to use my gun, because if he doesn’t see the threat and only me shooting, he may take me out.” Keeping a spare $20 bill in your pocket to toss away toward or past a threat – to give you a window; to either escape or fight through. Seating yourself strategically in any and every establishment and room: even your living room and bedroom. You want to be able to escape quickly. You want to be able to fight without knowing anyone is behind you. You don’t want to be immediately visible to anyone entering the room. Keeping tabs on the local news for what kinds of violence and threats are active and current in your particular area, and pre-positioning yourself more effectively for those things. How you have your phone set up, so that calls for help or emergency are easy and fast, regardless of how crippled you are or how much stress you’re under. Awareness of redlines, as we talk about in Volume 3, both universally and conceptually, and in every situation you’re in. The ability to blend into the crowd you’re with – that’s effective pre-positioning. Keeping safe principals for your daily activities. We all know to not walk around bad neighborhoods at night, but also be mindful of realities such as when tempers are the hottest during high traffic commutes. It’s amazing how a road can go from tense and edgy to peaceful, if you just kill 30 extra minutes during rush hour, before leaving. And as we talked about last time: always making sure you’re carrying and seating yourself in such a way that makes quick action more likely, whether that means mobility for your physical person, or drawing and shooting your gun. If you ever find that it would take you more than 2 seconds from wherever you are to be actively shooting at someone with accurate fire, that’s too long. I can’t think of too many times in my life during the last ten years when that would have been true. It certainly happens. We all have to let our guard down now and then. But if we master the idea of habits and systems, we can make that level of preparedness and action the default for us. It doesn’t have to be stressful. It doesn’t have to feel like work. Okay, next week, we’ll discuss ACTIVE pre-positioning: the things you can do AFTER you begin getting the feeling of being threatened, or of feeling the presence of a threat, in any given situation. Stay safe, and have a good week!

Thank you so much for joining me. I love to have you here. Okay, my friends. Before I move into this week’s broadcast, where we’re going to make all this discussion of pre-positioning actionable and practical, I have two points of clarification to make from the previous two broadcasts. First, I generated a little confusion when I brought ‘pre-positioning’ into the realm of sports, particularly with my racing analogy. In case you were confused: by pre-positioning, I wasn’t referring to the actual starting position of cars on the track, which is sorted out in qualification before most races begin. I was referring to the sort of pre-positioning that would begin to take place years and years, months, days, and hours before the race ever began. That said. Starting position definitely is a factor in pre-positioning, however, not so much in those long duration stock car races. For example, if that starting column is 200 yards long, and the race is a 350-mile oval track race, then starting at the back of the pack represents something like a ten thousandth of a percent disadvantage. Not much at all, and not relevant to our conversation on pre-positioning, because if you’re facing off against an armed threat, and both your guns are coming up at the same time, and you have a ten thousandth of a percent advantage over him, what’s going to happen? Well, if you both have any shred of skill and full magazines, you’re both probably going to be killed. So, when we refer to pre-positioning, we’re referring to a much grander scale. One that gives you not just a 10% advantage, but a 20, 40, 50, 500, 50,000% advantage. For example, if that threat pulls his gun, but you’re not even there. Or if you’re behind him. Or if you step out the door the moment he walks in, because you just have a feeling. More on all that in a moment. The next point of clarification I wanted to touch on is, where does The Fighting Principal of INTENSITY fit into this model, presented last week, where nearly all human conflict is settled by a combination of pre-positioning, skill, and luck – (usually mostly pre-positioning)? The answer is: skill. In this model, the fighting principal of INTENSITY is a skill, because as we look back on our definition of skill from last week’s broadcast, skill is “the extent to which we can control all the actions that we are in control of.” And given that INTENSITY describes the way you deploy yourself and your gear, the way you fight, this tells us, what? That we need to practice being INTENSE, so that we can defend ourselves more energetically than our attacker is attacking us. This is can be confusing, because when we think ‘skill’, we often think deliberate, intentional actions – even slow ones. But again, any action that we’re in control of, any action that can be practiced ahead of time, is a skill. And trust me as an instructor – to break people out of that naturally reserved state that us good guys tend to be in, and to empower them to be fierce and intense when they shoot and move…. and to break people out of the stage fright involved with shooting guns and moving this way around other people: this is not an easy task! Yes: INTENSITY is a skill and like any skill, it first requires training, and then requires practice. Alright, now let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this broadcast. Within the realm of Volume 3 of 3 SECONDS FROM NOW itself, time was limited and we could only cover so much. Not to mention, only half of that education related specifically to pre-positioning; the other half focused on the critical WINDOWS CONCEPT of Effective Self-Defense, which attempts to teach the student exactly when to launch their defensive counter-attack in those situations that are not violent blitz attacks, but where their lives are still in grave danger. So! That’s exactly what the Guardian Broadcast is for – to supplement our official education. And so, including other little tidbits that I’ll be mixing in, I want to spend the next few weeks giving you a ton of specific examples of what it looks like to effectively pre-position yourself for success in violent combat. Now, we divide pre-position into four primary areas. #1 – PASSIVE Pre-Positioning. All the things each and every one of us can and should make habits that we automatically do every waking minute, and even every sleeping minute, of every day. #2 – ACTIVE Pre-Positioning. All the things we may be able to do within the scope of a threatening incident. These are the things you can do once you realize you’re being threatened and that an attack seems imminent, but in those moments BEFORE the actual violence begins. #3 – KENETIC Pre-Positioning. These are the things we can do within the violent fight itself – things we can do to use our surplus energy in each and every split second, to better position ourselves for the very next second or two to help ensure our survival. And lastly: #4 – Post-Incident Pre-Positioning. These are the things we can do in the immediate aftermath of a violent attack to make sure that the resulting legal response and investigation go as favorably for us as possible. This is a lot to talk about, so we’re going to divide it up over the next few weeks. Let’s begin by discussing things from the very first group this week, passive pre-positioning. Habits that we should practice and engrain into our daily, hourly, by-the-minute actions and lifestyle so that we’re more prepared. I’ll try to be quick, because I have a lot to get through, though to be sure, an entire curriculum piece could be developed on nearly every topic I’ll be buzzing over when we discuss these. First: Be equipped. Yes, the equipment you have on your is ALL part of pre-positioning. The man or woman with the gun is phenomenally better pre-positioned than the man or woman without it. If you’ve ever felt that your life was in danger but DIDN’T have a gun on you, you know exactly what I mean. And yet, the topic of equipment is much broader, and much DEEPER than simply being armed or not. For an obvious example, we can talk about spare magazines, a compact first aid kit, a flashlight. A can of pepper spray. A cell phone. Cash, and a MasterCard or Visa, and an American Express. A lighter. But it’s all much deeper than that. For example, the person whose gun can be accessed from all body positions is better pre-positioned than the person whose gun can only be accessed when standing. Or, shallowly-concealed guns that can be fired within a second and a half from the decision to draw. It goes on and on, but this topic is very deep, and every ounce more prepositioned you are from a gear standpoint, the higher your odds become of surviving and thriving within violence. Next, your fitness level. Obviously, how physically fit you are drives a lot in this life. You’ll live 20 or 30 more years. You’ll have 30 or 40 more quality years. You’ll be less likely to be attacked in the first place. You’ll feel better about yourself and you’ll see more success in your career. You’ll be more likely to survive car accidents and gunshot wounds, and you’ll recover more fully from them. But even on a micro level: in your day to day life, your level of rest, mental clarity, the recency of your last practice session, your hydration level, your energy level. All these things are important, and we should take good care of ourselves. Next, your body position. Wherever you are. At home, work, driving, in your garden. You want to sit or stand or walk or sleep in such a way that will allow you to launch into dynamic action with as little telegraphing or repositioning as possible. This means sitting with your legs flat beneath you, rather than crossed. It means standing with weight evenly distributed beneath your legs. It means walking with good body motion and broad, even steps. Next is probably the most important passive pre-positioning habit, and that is awareness. Not just situational awareness, but awareness in general. Being in tune with your five senses, and all the data that enters them. Avoiding tuning things or people out – because that’s a bad habit to get into. But – yes, absolutely – building your rational situational awareness and your intuitive situational awareness. That means, learning what violent people look and act like, what violent situations looked like before kickoff. Learning to be in tune with the attention and emotions of other people, bystanders, around you. Of course, being aware of entrances and exits around you at all times. And on and on. Situational awareness probably will eventually be a full fledged CCU Curriculum piece. Next, and sadly this will have to be the last one for this week, but strong hand freedom. Call it your strong hand or your primary hand, but you don’t want to keep this hand occupied with non-essential objects or activities when you might need it, or when you’re out and about. We don’t have to go overboard with anything like this – remember, it’s all about habits. But I have young children. They just know that if they want to hold my hand, they move to my left side – I’m right handed. I carry children on my left side. I carry drinks in my left hand. In mass, I hold the hymnal or the Bible with my left hand. If I sense the slightest bit of discomfort within a tactical situation, my right hand is casually down by my waistline. My right thumb might even be tucked into my waistband. On and on. Okay, this was a long one. Next week, we’ll be able to cover a lot more. And again, my goal here with all these is to make sure to bring this concept of pre-positioning down to reality, into the nuts and bolts of daily life. So! I look forward to next week. Please submit any questions you have, and even if I can’t respond directly, I’ll try to filter them into these upcoming broadcasts. Okay, my friend. Thank you so much for being here. It’s absolutely fantastic to have you along for this journey. Until next week, my fellow guardians. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends and fellow Guardians, and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast, brought to you by the Concealed Carry University. Alright. Last week, my broadcast had one goal, and that was to draw a line between the sorts of pre-positioning we Guardians do in our lives, at the strategic and tactical levels, and the kind of grand-scale maneuvering that generals and master chess players do to win battles and wars and tournaments. So: once the fight has started: fighting to save your life with your handgun comes down mainly to three things; usually a combination of all three: – Starting Position, Skill, and Luck-. Okay? Let that sink in. Starting Position. Skill. And Luck. Let’s talk about – Luck – first. Sometimes, people just get lucky. But when we say Luck, we aren’t referring to an unseen force: we’re referring to chance. Coincidence. Any outcome that can’t be attributed to Starting Position or Skill, or a combination of the two. Sheep trying to turn away from a charging attacker can trip him, making him fall into a wall and go unconscious. Murderers with .22LR revolvers with only 3 live rounds in the cylinder score throat shots that kill you in a minute. We can’t control luck, or chance, so we don’t really need to talk about it more. The only note I have is that sometimes we attribute skill to luck when those skills are unconscious. If someone changes their mind and drives by a gas station inside which a robbery was in progress that resulted in the employee and three patrons being shot in the back of the head – there’s a good chance that wasn’t luck. There’s a better chance that unconscious intuition, or a sixth-sense, warned that individual that something was amiss. And intuition isn’t luck; building an educated intuition takes years and years, and so, it’s a skill. Second, let’s talk about – Skill-. And I don’t really need to explain skill, it’s one of the few aspects of self-defense that people from all schools of thought can all agree about. Skill is, what? It’s extent to which we can control all the actions that we are in control of. [read twice]. And I like to add: “in a repeatable fashion.” Because I have had plenty of lucky shots. I’ve gotten credit for some shots at the range and victories with force on force equipment that I know had very little to do with my skill. And that calls to mind an important point: we can never remove luck, or chance, from the equation. It’s always going to be there. But we can isolate and test for skill and luck as much as possible. That’s why tournaments require a lot of shots. We don’t just ask people to come and shoot one bullet, even though that would be a valid test for snipers. But luck would play such a large role in a tournament like that, it’s likely that the best sniper wouldn’t always win. Luck will always be a factor. For that reason, real tournaments require the competitors to win many rounds. To fire many shots. We want to not only see how good they are, but how often they can be good. Because as Tom Petty said: baby even the losers… get lucky some times. But what we can do, is eliminate – starting position-. Right? Because again, all competition (including self defense gunfighting) is going to come down to a combination of Starting Position, Skill, and Luck. And I know I’m being repetitive – if you already truly and fully understand what I’m getting at here, just consider yourself a star pupil in the realm of Combat Dynamics. So, what we can do, is eliminate starting position. For example, a classic cowboy shootout is a perfect example of a gunfight only luck and skill are at play. Can you think of any other examples of human competition where we work to eliminate Starting Position? Any guesses? The answer is: ALL of them. All of them. Boxers start in their corners, and are required to weigh almost exactly the same amount. Football teams have specific numbers and starting positions for each round (or whatever you call it – I am not a sports guy). Nascar teams are required to build cars with nearly identical aerodynamics, engine displacement, even carburetor airflow. Or to use Chess again, both players begin with an identical array and placement of game pieces. And on and on and on. Why? Why do virtually all competitive sports work as hard as possible to eliminate Starting Position? Because…. In most realms… Starting Position is literally 5 to 10 times MORE IMPORTANT than skill. Imagine the NASCAR race where teams were allowed to race any car they could afford? It would become a contest of which teams had the most money, right? You’d have the same 3 people winning every race, in their $6 million-dollar custom cars. What if boxers didn’t have to weigh in? If there were no weight classes at all? What if the items that people could hold in their hands during a Spelling Bee were not regulated? These would no longer be contests of skill, but instead, contests of Starting Position. Because I don’t care how good of a boxer you are. If you’re going against a guy with six inches more reach and 40lbs on you… you might get lucky sometimes… but overall, you’re going to lose. And I don’t care how good of a driver you are. If you bring a Mustang to any track with long straight-ways and lots of twisty turns, the guy with an Audi R8 is probably going to win 19 times out of 20. I have one very simple point here. Everything leading up to this point in this broadcast was to establish two things: First, that winning in nearly all aspects of human competition comes down to a mixture of Starting Position, Skill, and Luck. And Second, that Starting Position is 5 to 10 times more important…. 5 to 10 times more of a factor… in whether you win or lose, than Skill is. What else can I say about Starting Position? That it is EASIER than skill. To learn to outdraw someone with a pistol takes an enormous amount of practice. But to choose to sit or stand where that person won’t see you should they walk in the room… so that you can line up a shot and take them out if you have to…. That takes very little skill by comparison. Only a little bit of knowledge…. and a little bit of forethought. Now. Let me ask you this. What are the four primary realms of human competition where Starting Position is NOT eliminated? Maybe you’re already ahead of me. Here they are: Romance. Politics. Business. And COMBAT. They say: all is fair in love and war. This is exactly what they’re referring to. When people say “you never want to find yourself in a FAIR fight.” This is exactly what they’re referring to. Because the bottom line is: In Romance, Politics, Business, and COMBAT: Starting Position – MOST OF THE TIME – is going to be the biggest factor in determining who wins…. Or who loses. And Starting Position… which is largely determined by your ability to PRE position… is a big part of what Volume 3 is all about. But even within the 3 hours of Volume 3, there is only so much time… and that is why I love to have you here, with me in this Guardian Broadcast. Now: I’d love to talk about how good looks and boldness and natural charisma gets the girl, and how you can’t really change that, no matter how hard you try. I’d love to talk about how family name and wealth and personal connections wins elections and markets and tends to crush competition, no matter how good those competitors might be. But we are here to talk about COMBAT. And until next week, I’d ask that you reflect on this concept of Starting Position, and all the ways it causes people to win and lose gunfights. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Greetings my friends and fellow guardians. This week and for the next few weeks, I want to touch and build on one of the primary concepts of focus in Volume 3 of our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series, and that is: pre-positioning. But today, I want to introduce a new analogy to help newer students understand this concept of pre-positioning, and this analogy draws from the game of chess: it is, the idea of keeping everyone around you in a constant state of check. And I mean this very literally: the goal of pre-positioning is to position your resources, aka your body and gun and mind and awareness, in the most favorable way possible so that you can respond most immediately and most effectively to a sudden, violent attack. You keep people in check. Again: With effective pre-positioning strategies and habits, you can keep the people around you in check. You make it so that, should you need to, you can act against them very quickly and with minimal risk to yourself. Remember that quote from General Mad Dog Mattis: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” It sounds extreme on the surface, but, this really is a clear way to define this concept of “keeping them in check” through the use of pre-positioning. And while the politician within us should not make a habit of talking like this in public or on public forums, what General Mattis says is the truth, and every effective fighter, or every wise person who values personal protection, already does this, whether they are aware of it or not. Well, how do we follow General Mattis’s advice and “have a plan to kill everyone we meet?” Well, the good news is that this isn’t an active process. Meaning, Mattis doesn’t actually spend the first two minutes of any conversation distracted, as he decides the most effective way to kill the person he’s talking to: the reality is that keeping the people around us in a state of check is an automatic, habitual process that the effective individuals do, without even realizing it. Let me explain. So, we can’t properly use chess as any kind of analogy unless we understand exactly what chess is. You see, chess isn’t a game of slaughter. It’s certainly not a brawl. Brawlers charge into a fight and try to do as much damage as they can without much thought to strategy or tactics. They attack until they are spent, hoping that the other guy goes down first. Chess is not a brawl. It’s not a game of destruction or of attrition. At least, it’s not meant to be, and if you play this way, you will lose against any opponent who has any sort of grasp on the game. In fact, Chess isn’t even meant to be a game of tactics. Does that make sense? If chess were played at the tactical level, the outcome of a contest, a clash between two pieces, would be uncertain. It would depend on how well-trained or equipped the individual pieces were. A knight swooping in wouldn’t always take a pawn, because tactically, sometimes Knights’ horses step in holes, or sometimes pawns get lucky with their spears. But the game designer tried hard to protect us from having to consider tactics, because he knew that we got enough of that in every other element of life. He created Chess the way he did because he wanted to drive home a much more important lesson. You see: chess, like war itself, is best viewed as a game of strategic maneuvering. We’ll just call it maneuvering. We can define maneuvering within this context as the strategic positioning and movement of available resources for the purpose of potential, imminent, or immediate offensive or defensive action for maximum advantage. And the most skillful chess players – and the most skillful generals in war – the ones who win, are the ones who maneuver the best. Well, maneuvering is another word for, what? Pre-positioning. It’s another word for Pre-positioning. And the grand thesis in our discussions over these next few weeks, as you faithful students progress through and mull over the concepts laid out within Volume 3 of our 3 SECONDS FROM NOW series, is that if you learn to understand what pre-positioning is well enough, and if you learn to apply its principles to your own life and day to day, and if you build body language, awareness, and habits that leave you effectively pre-positioned most of the time in your life…. Then using your gun to save your life against a violent threat will be vastly easier than you can imagine. You will be able to 5 or even 10x your chances of surviving violence – if only you can begin the engagement from a strategically wise and tactically advantageous pre-position. But that’s all for this week. Next week, we will continue. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Be diamond hard… Greeting my fellow armed Americans and guardians – my fellow warriors. I’ve got a short but hard message for you this week. That is: be hard. Get tough. Be as hard as possible. My friend, when we look to nature, what conditions do we see that are necessary for growth, or to put it better: transformation? Heat. Pressure. Time. Sound familiar? We’ve talked about this before. A knife cannot become sharp without the friction of the whetstone. We cannot straighten and smooth the fabric of clothing without the heat and weight of the iron. Charcoal cannot be turned into a diamond without exposure to heat and pressure over thousands of years. So too it goes with humans. We respond to our environments. We adapt. Don’t think of your diet or exercise or education or training or productivity or work habits as things you do. Instead: think of these things as the environments you put yourself in. You’re not doing push-ups. You’re putting yourself in the environment that requires that you do push-ups. You’re not going for a run. You’re accepting a lifestyle in which running is necessary. You’re not getting up at the crack of dawn and hitting your job or business as hard as you can. You’re putting yourself in that environment. When you put yourself in these environments… your mind and body WILL adapt. You’ll get stronger. You’ll become diamond hard. Conversely. You’re not parking at the Golden Corral for two hours as you shovel in 4500 calories. You’re putting yourself in the environment where a certain type of outcome is then very hard to avoid. Amen I say to you: very few humans are willing to expose themselves to discomfort in the form of heat and pressure and time, when it is unnecessary that they do so. Most people move to the soft. They move to the relaxed. The comfortable. They move to those environments, and the results speak for themselves. Comfort is not a bad thing. But we have to balance it. The human body and the human mind respond exceptionally well to challenge. To putting strain on these things. 5 minutes of exercise. 5 minutes of education. This adds up, and it can mean all the difference in the world. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello and welcome to another Guardian Broadcast. I’m your host and founder of the Concealed Carry University, Patrick Kilchermann. This week, I want to spend a few minutes focusing on firearms safety. Get a load of this news story. This happened a week ago in my home state of Michigan: FOWLERVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Authorities say an off-duty Michigan police officer’s gun accidentally discharged at a high school wrestling meet. Police officials say in a release the officer was watching his son compete Saturday in the multi-school event at Fowlerville High School. The bullet from what was described as an “off-duty sidearm” struck and lodged in the gym floor, and one person trying to flee twisted an ankle. The meet was interrupted for about 50 minutes. Police declined to provide additional details but say a report of what happened will be sent to the Livingston County prosecutor for review after the investigation is complete. So, there are two things I want to focus on here. One is the outcome of a mistake of this caliber (no pun intended) with our handguns, like this one. The other is how and why the incident happened at all, and how we can make sure something like this never happens to us. To begin: it’s important for us private citizens to note that the outcome of an incident like this actually has very little to do with Justice. That’s because a crime WAS committed. A gun was discharged in a building, endangering lives. This is illegal. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the officer’s career is over, or that he will face jail time or even any sanctions, although both are certainly possible. See, we have to remember that most laws are enforced subjectively. And so rather than receiving a mandatory felony sentence or even any kind of criminal charge at all, the outcome of an incident like this is going to depend on a lot of factors: Primarily, what will happen to this officer depends on how adamant any member of the public is that he should be made an example of. It depends on the officer’s social standing: how important he is to his department, how well-connected he is within his community, how developed is his character, how well most of the people at the wrestling meet know him and trust him and will vouch for him. If we as private citizens ever experience a negligent discharge, all the same will be true for us, except that we will begin with a lot less of what I call ‘benefit of doubt.’ For example, when the police are called and they hear that a fellow officer’s gun went off, they’re going to be approaching the situation differently than if some random concealed carry permit holder’s gun went off. They’ll know the situation is largely under control already, and while they’ll be seeking to uphold the credibility of their department, they’re going to try to keep things as low-key as possible. This sort of benefit of doubt is often highlighted by another incident which recently happened near my home town, where an assistant prosecutor who had been drinking and was legally impaired was involved in a car accident. Had it been you or I, we would have been arrested. This prosecutor, on the other hand, was driven home and wasn’t issued a citation. This is an extreme example and can reek of injustice and corruption to some, but it’s the world we live in. Such is the incredible power of social standing and benefit of doubt. If, on the other hand, you’re a private citizen and if you cause this kind of negligent discharge, even if nobody is hurt, you can expect a lot more scrutiny. If you’re not extremely well-connected to the families at the wrestling meet and held in very high regard, you can probably at very least kiss your concealed carry permit goodbye – probably forever. You may face a misdemeanor. You may face a felony. You may suffer fines; you may be treated as a dangerous incompetent who must be hauled off to jail and booked right then and there. You will probably suffer a degree of ostracization by your community: the sheep who see you as a threat, and the sheepdogs who see you as an embarrassment. In this particular case, my guess is that the prosecution, will lay low. They’ll keep the case “open for investigation”, and they’ll wait to see if the incident blows over in the public eye. If it does, the officer will probably be fined and he may have to sit through a media-friendly class on handgun safety, so that if anyone asks questions later, his supervisors can demonstrate that the incident was dealt with in a responsible way. So, that’s what will happen – now let’s discuss why this happened. My wager is that this offer was carrying his handgun in an old, worn-out, thin-sided holster – either leather or nylon. My guess is that when he crouched down, the force of his weight caused his pants to buckle and the stiff fabric of his jeans or something in his pocket pressed the holster fabric into the trigger-guard, and as he crouched lower and lower…. Boom. I’ve heard of this happening a number times, and it’s one reason why I tend to only recommend stiff kydex holsters for concealed carry. And even then, it’s why I always recommend a periodically thorough inspection of your holster, as you look for cracks. Now, I have a feeling most of us are on the same page here, but rather than blaming faulty holsters, the real cause here is of course: negligence. In fact, I’d like to suggest that we as guardians remove the word ‘accident’ from our vocabulary altogether. Instead, we can look at most accidents in the world as either being acts of negligence, or simply unintended outcomes. For example: it could be that there are no such things as hunting accidents. You either behave negligently, and fire into brush where another hunter is standing, or perhaps there’s an unintended outcome, where a one-in-a-million ricochet bounces off a rock and strikes a hunting partner. You are not always accountable for the outcomes of your actions. But you are always responsible for the outcomes of your actions. In this example, clearly the other hunter would not have ever been injured, if you had just stayed home. Now: You are usually only deemed ‘at fault’ for negligent behavior; in contrast, you are usually given mercy or even treated as a victim of chance due to unintended consequences. Similarly to our hunting example, it could be that there are no such things as construction accidents. Boating accidents. Flying accidents. One could argue that there are no such things as accidents because nature is governed by consistent and repeatable and predictable laws – laws of physics and gravity and friction and mathematics. A rational person not emotionally connected to the situation knows that if a man enters a turn on a slippery road and loses control of his car and collides with a young family and a woman dies, that this was not truly an accident. One could argue that his car did exactly what it was designed to do. That its tires lost traction at the exact point where science would have predicted they would. There is no question that the driver is responsible for causing the woman’s death. The only question is: should the driver be held accountable for his actions? Legally, if it is determined that our behavior was that of a reasonable person, we are usually not responsible for the consequences of our actions. For example, if our man was driving at speeds deemed safe for the conditions, but that black ice made him lose control anyway, he would not be deemed legally accountable. In fact, he may even be treated as a victim of the situation, just as the deceased woman’s family is. People like the word accident because it removes from them the heavy burden of guilt resulting in tragic consequences from their own behavior. But here’s the thing: When it comes to firearms safety, there are no such things as accidents. We will almost never be given passes. Nobody will ever see even a mechanical failure of our handgun or holster resulting in detonation as an accident, because, they’ll ask: did he really need to be carrying a gun in the first place? We need to understand that in the public eye, carrying a gun is an extreme act. Even when you carry legally, it is not the vehicular equivalent of driving at a speed safe for the conditions. Even when we’re used to it, the public is not. Carrying a gun, even safely, and even a boring old j-frame revolver, is the vehicular equivalent of driving around a racetrack. And if you are injured, people will say: of course, racing is dangerous, what did he expect? And if you injure a spectator, people will – in general – be out for blood. In other words: we as armed citizens will never be able to hide behind the docile word accident. We will never be given a pass, just because we didn’t mean for our guns to go off. We are on the hook. We are responsible for anything that happens to or because of our guns or holsters or accessories. Again, I think most people listening to this broadcast are perfectly at ease and in command of the responsibility on their shoulders, when it comes to carrying concealed. But the fact is, not all armed citizens are. I was recently called to speak to a private group of individuals who a religious clergyman was giving permission to, to carry their guns into church. This was an urban church and therefore was not necessarily a gun-friendly one, and so this meeting took place quietly. As I spoke and looked around the room, I realized that the majority of the armed citizens in that room were not of the caliber that I expect the listeners of this broadcast to be. These were not warriors, but hobbyists. And I could tell that many of them had not considered what violence inside their church would actually look like, much less what sort of responsibility they had over their weapons. And I’d like to end this broadcast by sharing with you some words I wrote for that religious clergyman – words that he could pass out to help make sure his congregation understood the gravity of what it means to go armed. Here is what I wrote: Greetings, You are welcome to carry your handgun concealed into my church, but under the following conditions and circumstances: That you have received adequate training to the extent that you believe you could make positive snap decisions and take positive actions which would yield benefit to the congregation as a whole in the worst of situations. That your weapon is kept securely on your person at all times, and not stored in any kind of bag or purse. That you understand exactly the magnitude of responsibility you’re choosing to bear by carrying in as dense and diverse a crowd as a Catholic congregation. FOR EXAMPLE: Please keep in mind that, statistically, half of our congregation will vehemently disagree with the notion that you have any sort of right to carry a handgun into public, much less within a Sunday congregation of church-goers. If you are ever discovered to be carrying or if it is made known that I have given you permission to carry in our church, that mistake may lead directly to the exodus of some of our most important families. Additionally, we can rest assured that even should the ‘best worst-case’ scenario happen, if you use your weapon within the congregation to save a multitude of lives but injure someone innocent in the process, I cannot guarantee you any protection from criminal or civil suits filed by the state or the injured party. You have my permission and I will therefore testify to the fact so that you aren’t accused of criminal trespass, but these laws are murky and those above me in the hierarchy may have the ability to overthrow this permission at any time, with or without my knowledge. Do not expect any help from anyone affiliated with our church: you are not acting as an agent of our church, but only as a private citizen on private property. Please understand that when you are carrying in church, you are representing Catholicism to the world at large and you’re representing armed citizenship to the Catholic Church at large. In your ‘concealed carry career’, you (and others) will most likely carry without incident for hundreds of weeks; tens of thousands of hours. And yet you know that a perfectly flawless safety record with deadly weapons isn’t praised whatsoever: it’s expected. Its demanded – and rightly so. But an accident…. should the presence of your gun even become visible to another congregant; much less should you (and more importantly, your pew neighbors) suffer a negligent discharge of your weapon – there is a very, very good chance that you will *ruin* concealed carry in churches for millions of more responsible people across the country, as bishops and pastors turn away from their support of concealed carry in church or as their congregations demand clear prohibition. Therefore: I again emphatically ask that you weigh heavily the responsibility, the potential for gain, and the potential for loss before ever bringing a loaded firearm into our church. If you’re up for this challenge and have already considered these factors dozens of times, you – again – have my permission and gratitude. If any of these cautions are new to you, then you may wish to reconsider. Finally, I would politely ask that if you carry in my church, you do so without a round loaded into the firing chamber of your handgun. I understand that tactical demands ‘on the street’ make this an unwise practice, but in such a densely populated crowd as a church congregation, it is extremely unlikely that – should you need to ever use your handgun – you would find disadvantageous the second or two (and spare hand) required to charge and ready your pistol. Carrying unchambered will eliminate virtually any risk at all of a negligent discharge within my congregation, while retaining nearly all of the advantage of having you present and armed. Please consider abiding by this rule as a professional courtesy to me for the degree to which I’m shouldering risk on your behalf by offering you this permission. Godspeed, thank you, and: you’re welcome. Okay my friends, that’s it for this week’s guardian broadcast. Stay safe. Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.

Hello my friends, fellow guardians. This week, I want to mull something over with you, because after the last two broadcasts, I received some emails posing a simple question – or rather, leveling a simple accusation, if you will: That “The Concealed Carry University is too hard core.” Too hard core, that is, for the average person who carries concealed. Well, I’m going to begin with my counter assertion: Am I hard core? Absolutely not. The back story here is this: The last two broadcasts dealt with the observable and measurable reality that guns with heavier slides have less energy retained at the apex of their cycle range than guns with slides that weigh less. I discussed our in-combat and in-training observations that guns with heavier slides are, therefore, more prone to failure to extract or failure to feed malfunctions when either common concealed carry related obstructions like lint or grime are introduced into that weapon, or if the shooter is unable to obtain a solid enough grip on that handgun – two conditions that are unfortunate quite common in dynamic, adrenaline-addled self-defense combat. This is a hard teaching, because my hypothesis, which we’ll soon test and obtain data for, is that several very popular guns are near what I call the ‘unacceptable imbalance’ threshold for what sort of reliability a combat piece should be capable of. Now I’m nowhere near the point yet of suggesting that anyone go out and change pistols. As I’ve said, my conclusions thus far are that we need only to make sure we’re using heavy self-defense loads, that we keep our guns clean and lubed, and that we practice our draw strokes dry to the point of muscle-memory, from all body positions, including while moving. But nevertheless: this talk that not all “tier 1” guns are created equal: that there may be some that are better suited for dynamic combat than others… naturally caused a bit of ruffled feathers and push-back. Nobody likes to have the confidence they’ve placed in their weapons come into question. Okay, now I’d like to talk about Trust. First, when it comes to being ‘hard core’ or not, I’ll remind you that a lot of trainers in this space don’t like some of my teaching. They don’t like some of them, because they either seem boring or counter-intuitive. Spending four hours inside a concealed carry course talking about Avoidance, De-Escalation, and Escape is boring. Talking about making prudent decisions on whether or not to use force is boring. Sitting in a classroom is boring. And practice? Practice is boring. Doing the same thing again and again and again is boring. But we also teach a lot of things that are counter-intuitive, and educators who don’t do a lot of independent thinking, but who instead buy a 3-ring binder filled with someone else’s incongruent assembly of many far-ranging topics – they have a hard time with counter-intuitive concepts, strategies, and tactics. The idea that 95% of fights are settled when your opponent’s psychologically will to continue attacking you is defeated is a counter-intuitive teaching. The idea that only 5% of fights are settled when your opponent’s physical ability to continue attacking you is defeated is a counter-intuitive teaching. And when you do the only rational thing at that point, and adapt all of your philosophy, strategy, tactics, and gear choices to this truth – this results in counter-intuitive teachings. Some gear choices, some tactical analysis, some strategies may ruffle feathers. They may deviate from what is popular. I’m also not politically correct. I’ll leave that to the politicians. I am not afraid to tell you that the purpose of a gun is to destroy and kill. I don’t wince when I tell you that if you shoot someone in the chest with a combat-caliber handgun, and if they don’t get medical attention promptly, there is a very good chance they will die from that wound. Politicians are afraid to acknowledge facts like these, and therefore, their attempts at education will never hit the mark. I don’t blame them for shying away from these difficult topics that are not court-room friendly, but I also do not believe they should attempt to educate if they cannot discuss the full truth. Some of our teaching is counter-intuitive. Some of it is not politically correct. But I believe that it is all Truth. And when life and death are at stake – your life; your death – I do not believe we can mince words. Politicians can’t afford to. That’s why the Concealed Carry University exists. I am independent. I am self-sustaining. I answer to nobody except my continually expanding understanding of what the truth is. Now here’s the thing: truth may be universal, but the nuance of balance within that truth: that is what separates the fanatical from the practical. Balance and moderation, which come about through discipline and wisdom and understanding, are what makes for a good education. And that is what I believe we specialize in here at the Concealed Carry University. I do not believe in forsaking the ‘good’ for the sake of the ‘perfect.’ I believe in the 80/20 principal. I do not believe we must abuse ourselves in training. I do not believe we must all carry full size pistols with two spare mags in order to consider ourselves effectively prepared guardians. I do not believe we all need to be in top physical condition in order to survive 95% of what life may throw at us. I do not believe we need to spend twenty hours at the range a year, or even to reach defensive combat proficiency. I believe that ‘good enough is good enough.’ But in order to know what or when it’s good enough, we must first understand reality. Only once we know what reality is… what will actually be demanded of us if we’re ever forced to defend ourselves… only then can we call ourselves ready, or good enough. Describing reality in this way… taking you into the middle of gunfights and synthesizing alongside you lessons from reality… painting that picture more vividly and showing you what does and doesn’t work under fire… and then showing you how to learn strategies and tactics that will help you survive: this is my primary mission at Concealed Carry University. In this mission, I can promise you something: I will always be honest with you. I’ll always tell you the truth as I’ve come to see it. I won’t BS you. I won’t lure or trick you into chasing that 1%, where we’re practicing 1-second speed reloads that we’ll never use. I will always tell you the difference between ‘good enough’ and ‘the ideal standard.’ I will not scare you with worst-case hypotheticals, but I also won’t lower the bar just to give you false confidence, the way at least 80% of those who call themselves trainers or educators in this space will. Will it be hard sometimes? You’re damn right it will be. Of course, it will be hard sometimes. It will get physically hard, and it will get mentally hard. It’s hard for me, too, my brothers; my sisters. Becoming and remaining an effective guardian is a struggle. The struggle is life. That’s what life is. The challenge is life. And I just think that is so beautiful. And listen: I am with you in that struggle. I am teaching you things that may mean the difference between your life and death one day, and I do not weigh lightly or flippantly that duty, that honor of your trust and attention. This isn’t a hobby for me. This isn’t a business for me. This is my work, and it is as important to me as my children are. It is more important to me than my life is. Through this, as my students, I am bonded to you for life. I love you. Hard core? Maybe I am… Browse all Guardian Broadcasts. Explore Concealed Carry University’s Education and Training. Contact Patrick Kilchermann.