System Upgrade

I just finished updating a presentation on self-defense for women that I hadn’t opened since 2021, and quite frankly, I was initially a bit horrified with what I was teaching back then. It wasn’t BAD advice, like I was advocating for wasp spray or stun guns, it’s just that it was disjointed and kinda… off. 

Since then, thanks to people like Greg Ellifritz, Chuck Haggard and Shelley Hill, I’ve learned a lot more about how to stay safe without getting your gun into play, so the quality of the information is better now, as is the flow of the presentation itself.

But it got me thinking: How many instructors are out there who are still teaching the same stuff, the same way from two years ago? 

Probably quite a few. And I’d be willing to bet there’s quite a lot who are teaching the same stuff they taught five years ago. Front Sight has gone the way of the dodo, but I found it amusing that the stuff I learned in my class there in 2021 was identical to what was taught to me when I went there in 2013. Everything was pretty much the same, right down to the sales pitch to sign up as a  life member or whatever. 

Reviewing old curricula and updating with new information is absolutely vital. I don’t want to teach dogma, I want to teach what works.