Riley Bowman: And welcome to the Concealed Carry
Riley Bowman: Podcast, part of the ConcealedCarry.com network, brought to you by HK.
Riley Bowman: Today is September 25th, 2025, as we're recording this episode.
Riley Bowman: I'm your host, Riley Bowman, and I'm joined today by a special guest.
Riley Bowman: We'll call him honorary co-host as well. I mean, he's been on the show more
Riley Bowman: than once now, so he can have the honorary co-host chair now as well.
Riley Bowman: That's Charlie Perez. Hello, Charlie.
Jacob Paulsen: Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to our discussion.
Riley Bowman: Likewise. We'll get into that shortly. But first, today's episode is sponsored
Riley Bowman: and brought to you by Guardian Nation.
Riley Bowman: GuardianNation.com is a website where you can learn more. Guardian Nation is
Riley Bowman: our membership program for people to get access to tons of training resources,
Riley Bowman: including what we refer to as guardian university
Riley Bowman: which is our video repository or video
Riley Bowman: library of hundreds of hours of content
Riley Bowman: that you can learn a ton
Riley Bowman: about concealed carry shooting defensive tactics.
Riley Bowman: All kinds of things including very soon.
Riley Bowman: We will have in the video library the
Riley Bowman: guardian university library we will have a red dot pistol
Riley Bowman: course that was that i filmed over
Riley Bowman: the course of summer that'll be going live hopefully soon
Riley Bowman: so watch for that as well but guardian nation members
Riley Bowman: get full and complete access to guardian university as well
Riley Bowman: as discounts off of everything available for sale at
Riley Bowman: concealed carry.com membership of things
Riley Bowman: like ccw safe you get discount off of that as well discounts off
Riley Bowman: of the guardian conference each year
Riley Bowman: which we just got done hosting this last weekend we had
Riley Bowman: a great time in oklahoma city for the
Riley Bowman: fifth year now for the guardian conference and
Riley Bowman: in fact tickets are available right now for the 2026 guardian
Riley Bowman: conference and again guardian nation members save
Riley Bowman: big like 250 bucks or something like that um off
Riley Bowman: of the ticket for the conference so
Riley Bowman: you'll want to check that out and learn more at guardian nation.com you
Riley Bowman: can also learn more about guardian university at guardian or concealed
Riley Bowman: carry.com forward see concealed carry.com
Riley Bowman: yeah forward slash guardian dash university and
Riley Bowman: also if you want to learn more about the guardian conference go to guardianconference.com
Riley Bowman: all right uh sponsors today you'll see on the banner for those you uh watching
Riley Bowman: the video uh ccw safe is also a major sponsor of the podcast they were a sponsor
Riley Bowman: of the Guardian conference as well.
Riley Bowman: So just recognizing them with that here today.
Riley Bowman: But we have today with us, well, I guess we could give you not only the honorary
Riley Bowman: co-host seat of the podcast, Charlie, but also honorary sponsor in a way because
Riley Bowman: you're here and you're representing yourself and we want to plug your stuff too.
Riley Bowman: And Charlie's website is bigpandaperformance.com.
Riley Bowman: If you want to learn more about Charlie and sign up for a training or buy his
Riley Bowman: book called The Path of Focused Effort, that's available on his website as well.
Riley Bowman: But yeah, if you don't know who Charlie Perez is, Charlie is a top 10 ranked
Riley Bowman: competitive practical shooter. He very consistently finished in the top 10 at
Riley Bowman: national level matches, national championships.
Riley Bowman: He's a respected trainer and instructor.
Riley Bowman: He's been doing classes here locally in the Colorado Front Range area for a
Riley Bowman: number of years and also takes his classes out on the road periodically.
Riley Bowman: I don't know how many times you get out on the road this last year, Charlie.
Jacob Paulsen: I usually do like five or six classes on the road. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And I've seen you all over the place, Texas and back east somewhere.
Riley Bowman: I don't remember where that was now.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, all the hot places.
Riley Bowman: All the hot places.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, so Grandmaster Shooter in multiple divisions.
Riley Bowman: And, yeah, like I said, just a great – well, you're a great all-around guy,
Riley Bowman: too. That's the thing. People like you.
Riley Bowman: You're a big panda, hence the name, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. Who doesn't like a big panda? Exactly.
Jacob Paulsen: Thanks for that introduction
Riley Bowman: Yeah and thanks for being on the podcast this evening with me.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. I think today, like we were going to talk about, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: why attend training, even as an instructor.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that it's important that we kind of set the ground rules of like,
Jacob Paulsen: what really is an instructor?
Jacob Paulsen: So what's your opinion on what an instructor is?
Riley Bowman: Well, I like, you're really leaning into that co-host responsibility now by
Riley Bowman: asking the questions, man. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: I like it. So, you know, and in all transparency, you and I were discussing
Riley Bowman: this a little bit before show and it is a very valid question.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, because a lot of people, they may even see the title of this
Riley Bowman: episode and think, well, I'm not an instructor, you know.
Riley Bowman: So I'd like to think we're going to talk about attending training today from
Riley Bowman: a perspective that I think can apply to everybody.
Riley Bowman: But who's an instructor? It's a very fair question.
Riley Bowman: I think traditionally speaking, people are like, well, if I got a NRA instructor
Riley Bowman: certificate or something from another training organization or law enforcement
Riley Bowman: or something like that, then, okay, that must make me an instructor.
Riley Bowman: And certainly, I guess that technically qualifies someone as an instructor in
Riley Bowman: terms of having the requisite certificate or whatever.
Riley Bowman: Even that alone doesn't necessarily make an instructor or at least a quality instructor.
Riley Bowman: Correct. And so just because you have a certificate does not mean that,
Riley Bowman: you know, you're, you're very good at doing that.
Riley Bowman: And I'm not speaking about anyone for, you know, in particular here,
Riley Bowman: but that that's just a fact, but that's also true of, you know,
Riley Bowman: you could say a teacher at, you know, my kids elementary school,
Riley Bowman: I know teachers or I've known teachers.
Riley Bowman: I'm not going to say there's one in particular right now. Actually,
Riley Bowman: I think my teachers, my kids are pretty good right now, but I've known teachers
Riley Bowman: that, yes, they have the training and the certificate as a teacher,
Riley Bowman: but I'm like, how are you a teacher?
Jacob Paulsen: Questionable effectivity.
Riley Bowman: You should understand some basic things you clearly aren't understanding about
Riley Bowman: working with, you know, children and trying to teach them stuff.
Riley Bowman: Anyway, but so, you know, flip that around because just because you have a certificate
Riley Bowman: doesn't necessarily make you an instructor or at least a good one.
Riley Bowman: But just because you don't have the traditional, you know, training or certification
Riley Bowman: background doesn't necessarily mean you aren't an instructor or a teacher at the very least.
Riley Bowman: Um, and so, you know, it's kind of like when I first became an instructor,
Riley Bowman: you know, by certification process, I had already been spending some time teaching
Riley Bowman: people close to me about,
Riley Bowman: you know, guns, about safety, about how to shoot a little bit.
Riley Bowman: Now I, I, I apologize to anyone that received training from me back in those
Riley Bowman: days, cause I didn't know a whole lot and I'm still learning even today.
Riley Bowman: But I was doing a little teaching, and I would like to think that I was at least
Riley Bowman: doing a good job with respect of teaching people safety because that was something
Riley Bowman: that was always really important to me.
Riley Bowman: I never really had a tolerance for a lack of safety,
Riley Bowman: and I think that's something that more and more people today need because we
Riley Bowman: need good representatives in all of the 2A community that are encouraging proper safety.
Riley Bowman: So there's my initial answer. So what are your thoughts on who is an instructor?
Jacob Paulsen: I think yours hits on a lot of the heavy hitters there, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like I think that it's important that we all kind of have a duality mindset
Jacob Paulsen: of being both a teacher or instructor,
Jacob Paulsen: whatever word you want to use for it, as well as a student.
Jacob Paulsen: Because instructors or trainers or educators, they need to learn how to do that craft and,
Jacob Paulsen: And they need to be a student in order to learn and be able to execute that craft effectively.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that just marksmen in general, like getting into,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, plinking on the range, competitive shooting,
Jacob Paulsen: self-defense, like any of that kind of stuff, it usually starts with a family
Jacob Paulsen: member or a friend that starts with some base level of safety.
Jacob Paulsen: And here's what the basics are of how to hold a firearm, the safety part of it.
Jacob Paulsen: There's how we align sites. This is what we need to do to not displace our hits.
Jacob Paulsen: You know, those kind of things.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, I mean, the effectivity of that training can always be kind of subjective.
Jacob Paulsen: Like what we learn as humans, you know, 10 years ago versus now, right?
Jacob Paulsen: It's always going to be evolving. So I don't think we can beat each other up
Jacob Paulsen: too bad about saying like my training so many years ago was poor.
Jacob Paulsen: It was probably as effective as we knew of the skill set that we were trying to convey at the time.
Jacob Paulsen: And also like the skill set of being a trainer and conveying content.
Jacob Paulsen: So I think that the thing I'm trying to get to here is if anybody wants to get
Jacob Paulsen: really good in any specific skill,
Jacob Paulsen: whether it's firearms or anything
Jacob Paulsen: else, it's going to be very difficult if you're not a trainer, right?
Jacob Paulsen: If you don't have that assessment mindset to observe how things are being done,
Jacob Paulsen: break it down, build a process on what is causing the lack of performance,
Jacob Paulsen: and then let's rebuild that process to make it more efficient or more aggressively
Jacob Paulsen: or whatever the thing is to make it happen,
Jacob Paulsen: quote-unquote, gooder, right?
Jacob Paulsen: If you don't have that skill, it's going to be very difficult to increase your
Jacob Paulsen: skill set, right? So I think it's important that
Jacob Paulsen: Everybody kind of put on that quote unquote trainer hat from time to time to
Jacob Paulsen: exercise their own knowledge of the content they're trying to master themselves, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Because the more you understand the content and the foundational information
Jacob Paulsen: and how to convey that content, it makes it much easier for you yourself to
Jacob Paulsen: understand and absorb that content.
Riley Bowman: I like that. The way you articulated that, I think, is really quite profound, actually.
Riley Bowman: It made me think about where I started to advance my own skills pretty quickly.
Riley Bowman: If you look at my whole life, because I've been shooting for most of my life,
Riley Bowman: there was kind of this slow burn, slow growth, right? Just little by little.
Riley Bowman: Um, and then, you know, in a couple of little spots where maybe a little bit
Riley Bowman: of a quick little jump up, um, but, uh, there was a period, you know,
Riley Bowman: roughly a decade ago and, and, and even up through, you know,
Riley Bowman: now we're, and again, there's still some little kind of plateaus and things
Riley Bowman: here and there, but there was
Riley Bowman: a point where like, really things started to take off for me skill wise.
Riley Bowman: And as I, like what you just said made me think about is once I started, um,
Riley Bowman: putting that trainer hat on with regards to myself and really looking at what I was doing.
Riley Bowman: You got some friends there wanting to join. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Sorry about that.
Riley Bowman: You know, I started looking at my, at what I was doing, you know,
Riley Bowman: technique wise, what I understood good just in general about shooting and,
Riley Bowman: and starting to really like look inward and evaluate myself with like, okay, what am I doing?
Riley Bowman: How am I doing it? How well am I doing it?
Riley Bowman: That led me to really start to improve. And so it was sort of a way of looking,
Riley Bowman: you know, kind of being my own instructor in a way, which is hard to do.
Riley Bowman: I think that's something that's, you know it's challenging
Riley Bowman: to be self-aware and to
Riley Bowman: be able to kind of look as if you're
Riley Bowman: looking at yourself from a third person point of view um
Riley Bowman: i mean you can literally do that by setting up a camera and filming yourself
Riley Bowman: and seeing what you do which is a very legitimate approach but it's not the
Riley Bowman: only thing is even then you i i've i've you know showed people video of them
Riley Bowman: shooting before uh i've had a few people over the years you know even even pay to have me review,
Riley Bowman: video of themselves shooting kind of a remote coaching session and
Riley Bowman: you know they've clearly watched the video
Riley Bowman: themselves shooting and you know many times i can point something out they sometimes
Riley Bowman: still doesn't quite you know register like what they're looking at um so that
Riley Bowman: can be really challenging to do but i do think that when we can start approaching
Riley Bowman: our own training and practice with that kind of trainer hat on and in mind,
Riley Bowman: there's a huge opportunity for growth as a shooter.
Jacob Paulsen: Absolutely. For me, it basically forced me to break down.
Jacob Paulsen: If I thought about, I want to improve a specific skill or a task that I'm trying
Jacob Paulsen: to do, if I broke that down in a way and say, well, how would I explain to do
Jacob Paulsen: this thing to somebody else?
Jacob Paulsen: That puts my like technical
Jacob Paulsen: assessment cap on to be
Jacob Paulsen: like okay step one step two step three step four
Jacob Paulsen: where are the inefficiencies within each of those sub steps and
Jacob Paulsen: then that just that process in of itself brings a
Jacob Paulsen: highlight to the things that how i'm conveying
Jacob Paulsen: that or how i'm performing performing that right so if i can't explain to myself
Jacob Paulsen: how that thing is supposed to happen you know what i mean like it's going to
Jacob Paulsen: be very hard to pick out the individual components to identify and fix them
Jacob Paulsen: so i i think that it's important that but everybody kind of
Jacob Paulsen: Put on that trainer hat and say okay for this
Jacob Paulsen: skill i want to improve let me bust it up
Jacob Paulsen: into its sub elements and convey it
Jacob Paulsen: in a concise succinct way
Jacob Paulsen: to somebody else that would get it right and that
Jacob Paulsen: that skill that is a very difficult
Jacob Paulsen: skill to master right just like marksmanship in
Jacob Paulsen: itself it's it's a difficult skill to master being a
Jacob Paulsen: succinct and precise prescriptive trainer to be able to observe a student's
Jacob Paulsen: skill set and then cherry pick out what i like to call the deepest cuts in performance
Jacob Paulsen: right or skill set and not worry about the shallow cuts.
Jacob Paulsen: Like we got to fix the deep cuts first and then worry about the shallow cuts
Jacob Paulsen: second or third or 10th or 100th, right? But having that
Jacob Paulsen: Ability to pick out those cuts is i
Jacob Paulsen: think where it all starts right so if it
Jacob Paulsen: starts with your own self-assessment and i like when
Jacob Paulsen: i first started this train of your
Jacob Paulsen: people process it started with going to the range with buddies
Jacob Paulsen: right and we would trade time on the range and
Jacob Paulsen: be like okay for this next 30 minute minutes you'll
Jacob Paulsen: be the instructor and i'll be the student and then we'll reverse it and
Jacob Paulsen: we'll pick any given skill that we think that
Jacob Paulsen: we need help with and then we'll just act
Jacob Paulsen: and it's mainly just an exercising of the
Jacob Paulsen: observation skill effort right so that it really started to highlight how do
Jacob Paulsen: i strategize around what am i looking for when do i look for that thing how
Jacob Paulsen: do identify what somebody is doing
Jacob Paulsen: like there's a lot of things that micro movements that we do behind a
Jacob Paulsen: firearm that an instructor can't see directly, but they can see the aftermath
Jacob Paulsen: of a failed attempt, if that makes sense.
Jacob Paulsen: Not, and I'm not talking about hits and targets. I'm talking about really subtle
Jacob Paulsen: body movements, really subtle events that happen that the student does while
Jacob Paulsen: they're trying to perform the task.
Riley Bowman: So, yeah. Well, and that's in addition to the one thing that any of us,
Riley Bowman: including as an instructor cannot see is what somebody else actually sees,
Riley Bowman: as much as i'd like to as much as even when we could put little cameras or whatever right here,
Riley Bowman: above or near the eye it's still not exactly what
Riley Bowman: that person sees and even then it's not even if we could in theory put a camera
Riley Bowman: right where a person's eye is to see their exact point of view it also doesn't
Riley Bowman: even show us exactly how they perceive what they're seeing or looking at which is really key the.
Jacob Paulsen: Eyeballs could be open but the lights are not on right
Riley Bowman: Right including you know in addition to that you know things like you know what
Riley Bowman: where their focal focal plane is at or their accommodation and things like that
Riley Bowman: you know That can be a factor in certain things.
Riley Bowman: And so, yeah, that's always been one fascinating thing as an instructor that
Riley Bowman: just kind of gets me is like,
Riley Bowman: it's like, you know, I wish I could see what you're seeing, you know,
Riley Bowman: because that would like open up so much potential to be like,
Riley Bowman: you know, to really break that down and really find some of those, you know,
Riley Bowman: just little really nuanced things a lot of times too that it's like,
Riley Bowman: if I could just see what you're seeing, I know there's something there.
Riley Bowman: That's just being missed, that we're not quite, you know, capturing or understanding.
Riley Bowman: As you know, that's something that,
Riley Bowman: Especially when you want to really push the performance envelope as a shooter,
Riley Bowman: a lot of that is being able to understand and process all this visual information
Riley Bowman: that's happening at a high rate of speed.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And, you know, we could try to communicate it. And I've certainly,
Riley Bowman: like you just got done talking about, you know.
Riley Bowman: Trying to, you know, think my way through the, you know, step by step by step
Riley Bowman: processes of how I do certain things.
Riley Bowman: And therefore, how would I communicate that to someone else, things of that nature.
Riley Bowman: And it would just be so powerful to be able to articulate things exactly to
Riley Bowman: someone, you know, based on what they're actually seeing,
Riley Bowman: what they're actually perceiving, what they're actually thinking,
Riley Bowman: what they're actually feeling, too.
Riley Bowman: That's a whole other rabbit hole we could go down is the emotions that someone's
Riley Bowman: experiencing, which can widely vary from person to person in positive and negative ways, too.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. So one thing, like little nuance thing that I've learned is trying to
Jacob Paulsen: gain that content that the student has visually.
Jacob Paulsen: What are they seeing? What are they thinking of at that given time?
Jacob Paulsen: And I'll ask, like, I'll have this student shoot a drill and there'll be either
Jacob Paulsen: success or failure at the given drill.
Jacob Paulsen: And in both scenarios, I'll ask them, what did you see?
Jacob Paulsen: And that's to me, that's what's opened the door. That gets us our mind open
Jacob Paulsen: to like, oh, I got to pay attention to what's happening in this,
Jacob Paulsen: the duration of this event.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's where once I get them to open that door, then I can open the second
Jacob Paulsen: door and say, okay, when did you see?
Jacob Paulsen: When did the things happen?
Jacob Paulsen: So to me, step one is like, were you paying attention during the event?
Jacob Paulsen: What did you see? Did your conscious mind consume that content that went into
Jacob Paulsen: your eyeball and into your brain?
Jacob Paulsen: And then when did you perceive these things to happen right because if if we can't put a very
Jacob Paulsen: definitive point on when something happened
Jacob Paulsen: it's very hard for us to give instruction on what
Jacob Paulsen: to do in antithesis to that right whether
Jacob Paulsen: it's absolutely oh let's reinforce this appropriate
Jacob Paulsen: when that resulted in a desired result on
Jacob Paulsen: target or whatever we're trying to do or an inappropriate
Jacob Paulsen: when like oh yeah my eyeballs flicked to this other place during the shot instead
Jacob Paulsen: of watching the shot happen and all the stuff behind it right so I think it's
Jacob Paulsen: important that we always kind of have an open mind and you kind of tickled on that where
Jacob Paulsen: People's inherent behaviors and their mindset um they
Jacob Paulsen: need to be open to learning right like i've i've
Jacob Paulsen: had plenty of times where there's students
Jacob Paulsen: that feel for some reason some performance pressure with
Jacob Paulsen: just being in a class and having to perform in front
Jacob Paulsen: of an instructor and in those scenarios that's where
Jacob Paulsen: i think my skill set of trying to keep it light a
Jacob Paulsen: little bit joking that kind of stuff not making
Jacob Paulsen: it super serious but also trying to
Jacob Paulsen: enforce the the factor of like if
Jacob Paulsen: i have a student that has this mindset of i'm only going to perform properly
Jacob Paulsen: through the whole class that person's not going to learn nearly as much as a
Jacob Paulsen: person willing to try try and fail try and succeed try and fit like the people
Jacob Paulsen: that are willing to try and fail and not feel self-conscious about that,
Jacob Paulsen: these are the people that are willing to learn, right?
Jacob Paulsen: So if you kind of stay in your own little comfort zone, I got my warm little
Jacob Paulsen: jacket on, I'm not going to do anything out of my normal wheelhouse.
Jacob Paulsen: I think you're really squandering that opportunity to find new levels of performance
Jacob Paulsen: or new levels of understanding of what you're trying to do.
Riley Bowman: Mm-hmm i couldn't agree more with that
Riley Bowman: i i just saw that this last weekend
Riley Bowman: teaching some course blocks at the guardian conference and there were a couple
Riley Bowman: of students where i remember you know encouraging them reminding them like you're
Riley Bowman: here to learn you're not here to show me how good you can shoot and how well
Riley Bowman: you do um you know so it's it's great that you're keeping all your shots right in there,
Riley Bowman: you know, tight in the zone or whatever,
Riley Bowman: that's, that's, you know, like, bravo, good for you.
Riley Bowman: But I, if you want to get something out of this, you need to actually push yourself
Riley Bowman: to, to a new place where you're, you're learning new things and,
Riley Bowman: you know, the wheels start to fall off the bus a little bit.
Riley Bowman: And then we can actually look at, well, why did the wheels fall off?
Riley Bowman: You know, what, you know, where was the breaking point? Now we pushed you to
Riley Bowman: a new place, a new performance threshold that you, you know,
Riley Bowman: weren't able to previously go or you didn't allow yourself to go.
Riley Bowman: And now, now we're seeing things are a little bit uncomfortable. I understand that.
Riley Bowman: Okay, where's the failure points now? And so then we can start analyzing and
Riley Bowman: breaking that down. That's really key.
Riley Bowman: So that's really good advice, I think, what you just brought in to the conversation,
Riley Bowman: whether you are attending a class or some kind of training event and looking
Riley Bowman: for instruction from an instructor or trainer, or whether you're just practicing things you've learned,
Riley Bowman: uh, on your own, if you're not pushing yourself and you're just staying in that
Riley Bowman: comfortable, you know, place, uh,
Riley Bowman: you're, you got your little, you know, woobie or whatever, and you're not,
Riley Bowman: you're refusing to let go of it.
Riley Bowman: Um, it's, it's hard to get better. You're just going to kind of plateau out
Riley Bowman: and stay, stay where you always have been.
Jacob Paulsen: I jokingly tell my students that, um, there,
Jacob Paulsen: nobody has learned how to pop wheelies on their bicycle as
Jacob Paulsen: a kid without wrecking yeah right there's plenty
Jacob Paulsen: of scraped knees and beat up bikes right like you're
Jacob Paulsen: not going to learn how to do it without a bunch of failures to get
Jacob Paulsen: to the point of oh now i can do the wheelie and this is how we do
Jacob Paulsen: it and this is how i not wreck right there's lots of wrecking that
Jacob Paulsen: needs to happen and we got to be graceful in
Jacob Paulsen: the wrecks right meaning okay like there's
Jacob Paulsen: plenty of times in my classes when maybe i'm
Jacob Paulsen: pushing a student's level of aggression on
Jacob Paulsen: a transition between targets and i
Jacob Paulsen: could care less if they actually hit the targets when
Jacob Paulsen: we start doing it because if i don't get
Jacob Paulsen: them used to moving their appendages at the appropriate aggressive pace then
Jacob Paulsen: the hits don't matter if that makes sense right so that there'll be a time when
Jacob Paulsen: the hits do matter but like it's kind of like the like certain athletes like gymnasts or whatnot,
Jacob Paulsen: they jump into big foam pits, right?
Jacob Paulsen: When they're figuring out how many flips can I do in this one jump,
Jacob Paulsen: right? Or that kind of stuff.
Jacob Paulsen: Like there needs to be that safety net of failure that is a open environment
Jacob Paulsen: to be able to try and fail.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. I like to call that like the discovery and push portion of training, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Because if we're not willing to discover what the limits are and what the limits
Jacob Paulsen: are not, right, then what are we doing?
Riley Bowman: Yeah, it kind of, you just reminded me of, and I've always been fascinated by
Riley Bowman: this, but, you know, like Travis Pastrana and his whole, like,
Riley Bowman: Nitro Circus, you know, group, all the guys associated with that.
Riley Bowman: Like i mean guys are doing tricks on
Riley Bowman: bikes on with atvs
Riley Bowman: with cars with all kinds of things these days that we never would have imagined
Riley Bowman: a decade ago two decades ago three decades ago because somebody had to be like
Riley Bowman: hey let's let's try something crazy and like i'm going to wreck and probably
Riley Bowman: break bones You know, of course they got smarter with time,
Riley Bowman: like develop these huge, um, uh,
Riley Bowman: foam pits and, and, and, and inflated bags and everything to make that a lot
Riley Bowman: safer to do and padded, you know, landing, uh, uh, ramps and zones and things.
Riley Bowman: But even with all that, you watch these guys practice these,
Riley Bowman: these tricks and like they wreck all the time. They wreck so many times.
Riley Bowman: Oh yeah. And it's like, that's got to hurt so bad doing it again and again.
Riley Bowman: And like, it's literally hurting their bodies to learn how to do these things.
Riley Bowman: Meanwhile, we can, I mean, within safe limits with a firearm,
Riley Bowman: we don't want to end up shooting ourselves or anybody else, but we can push
Riley Bowman: the limits tremendously with a gun in our hands and fail,
Riley Bowman: you know, spectacularly.
Riley Bowman: And, and we're not like actually hurting ourselves. It may hurt our egos,
Riley Bowman: but that's like the beautiful thing is we can push the limits quite a bit and
Riley Bowman: it's not actually hurting us as long as we're being safe.
Riley Bowman: And that's a huge opportunity to learn stuff. A common, I think you kind of
Riley Bowman: already touched on this, but I see a common piece of advice thrown out there on the interwebs,
Riley Bowman: on social media especially, where someone maybe posts up a video,
Riley Bowman: like a match video, a stage they're shooting or something.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, they're asking for some advice or something.
Riley Bowman: And sometimes that advice might, they might be saying something along the lines
Riley Bowman: of, you know, like, I'm struggling to kind of find the right balance of,
Riley Bowman: you know, I go to a match and I'm really accurate, but slow,
Riley Bowman: or I'm really fast and like woefully inaccurate.
Riley Bowman: And it's sort of like, you know, how do I, how do I put this together?
Riley Bowman: And one of the things that I see bandied about as advice is to feel free to go to a match,
Riley Bowman: inappropriate settings, I think, of course, where you kind of push a little
Riley Bowman: bit and allow things to fall apart a little bit with the encouragement of see
Riley Bowman: if you can get used to seeing the chaoticness.
Riley Bowman: The chaos of this, you know, much faster speed of shooting or level of aggression, if you will.
Riley Bowman: And, and if you can start picking up on what's actually going on right before your eyes,
Riley Bowman: then, you know, you eventually you can start to sort of exert a little bit of
Riley Bowman: control over that and start bringing it back within your wheelhouse of, of skill.
Riley Bowman: And, and like, um i've certainly have experimented
Riley Bowman: without uh heck i shot a match um not
Riley Bowman: that long ago uh went and shot one at paul clark
Riley Bowman: jr's place like last month and that
Riley Bowman: was one i just showed up i'm like this is a match of low consequence
Riley Bowman: i'm just gonna push push speed
Riley Bowman: and kind of see how it goes and it
Riley Bowman: pleasantly surprised me with some of the takeaways that i
Riley Bowman: came came you know with from that of like
Riley Bowman: oh wow like i was able to do more than what i expected uh were there some you
Riley Bowman: know slight missteps here and there sure but you know it's hard to learn and
Riley Bowman: if you're not actually pushing yourself into new territories i don't know any
Riley Bowman: additional thoughts on that before i maybe move on to something else i.
Jacob Paulsen: Think that that's like i i
Jacob Paulsen: think that any any of the practical shooting sports or
Jacob Paulsen: if we want to put rounds down range
Jacob Paulsen: in an aggressive manner it's always going
Jacob Paulsen: to be a game of what's good enough like is
Jacob Paulsen: this sight picture sight movie good enough for the given target difficulty and
Jacob Paulsen: the attenuation of the gun during recoil like that that's the to me i think
Jacob Paulsen: that that's for most of the if i talk about this from a perspective of uspsa skill set But,
Jacob Paulsen: The skill set of C class, you know, skill set shooters and below versus B and
Jacob Paulsen: above the B and above people are getting in that mode of, I probably don't need
Jacob Paulsen: super steady sites on this given site picture.
Jacob Paulsen: Like this wobbly site picture is good enough.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. Or I'm still a little physically bouncy coming into this shooting position,
Jacob Paulsen: but I'm going to shoot anyway.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So as you were stating, like it, it would be very difficult for a race
Jacob Paulsen: car driver to feel comfortable driving at 200 miles an hour.
Jacob Paulsen: If the only time they drive 200 miles an hour is on during race day.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So outside of race day, you know, on a track day where they're training
Jacob Paulsen: or practicing, they need to be doing a lot of 200 mile an hour training, right?
Jacob Paulsen: They probably need to be doing 250 mile an hour training.
Jacob Paulsen: You know, you know, what, what are the limits? What is this?
Jacob Paulsen: When does this become normal? because that's really
Jacob Paulsen: I think one of the hardest things about you know
Jacob Paulsen: shooting firearms at a very high skill
Jacob Paulsen: level is it is a super abnormal
Jacob Paulsen: skill set that humans are are just not inherently built to do as a normal thing
Jacob Paulsen: to every day right it not I would sum it up as at least in the practical shooting
Jacob Paulsen: sports you can be on the self-defense side of it but i need to be
Jacob Paulsen: Visually patient while very physically
Jacob Paulsen: aggressive well those two things
Jacob Paulsen: mixed together are like oil and water because behaviors are usually tied together
Jacob Paulsen: like it's very easy for someone to be visually aggressive and physically aggressive
Jacob Paulsen: right or visually passive and
Jacob Paulsen: physically passive But it is much more difficult to be visually patient,
Jacob Paulsen: to wait for the desired sight picture or sight movie before we actually send
Jacob Paulsen: the round, while also pushing our appendages to their physical limit.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: That's the hard part about it.
Riley Bowman: I like how you just explained that. Like oil and water.
Riley Bowman: Patient with the eyes. Aggressive with the hands. And feet. Yeah, that's fascinating.
Jacob Paulsen: I have a thing. I make it a point.
Jacob Paulsen: I train a lot of people throughout the year. I'm a high-level competitor.
Jacob Paulsen: I do a lot of my own self-assessment. The thing that I try to make a point to
Jacob Paulsen: do, and knock on wood, I've successfully done this every year,
Jacob Paulsen: is take a training class from a different instructor and have the opportunity to be a student, right?
Jacob Paulsen: And take off the instructor hat and then be that person that can attend the
Jacob Paulsen: class and try the stuff, pop the wheelies, skin my knees, right?
Jacob Paulsen: And try to figure out what I need to do, right?
Jacob Paulsen: To potentially find what is the next level, right?
Jacob Paulsen: And, or what is the augmented level that I need to be at given my current physicality, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like as we get older, like our mobility, our flexibility, our strength,
Jacob Paulsen: our eyeballs, like our visual processing skills, like all that stuff is always
Jacob Paulsen: evolving, sometimes in a good direction, sometimes in a bad direction, right?
Jacob Paulsen: So I think it's, at least for me, it's always been a process of re-evaluating
Jacob Paulsen: what do I need to do to be able to perform at my maximum skill.
Jacob Paulsen: And I've had the best of luck of, of taking, you know, collaborating with trainers.
Jacob Paulsen: That actually like the foundation of their skillset is opposite of mine,
Jacob Paulsen: meaning their style or their presentation of content is, I don't want to say bad.
Jacob Paulsen: Like it's just in a different methodology than what I normally convey or what I normally embrace.
Jacob Paulsen: And I I've, I've done the years of, Oh, this, this trainer has a shooting and
Jacob Paulsen: a training style is very similar to me.
Jacob Paulsen: Let me take that training, try to enforce, like build these things together.
Jacob Paulsen: But I've actually found that I make much more effective discoveries when I take
Jacob Paulsen: a class from a trainer that has an alternate way of not just performing the skill,
Jacob Paulsen: but more importantly, conveying the content.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. A different combination of words to convey the same thing that we're
Jacob Paulsen: all talking about. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: Sometimes that just makes things click. right so
Jacob Paulsen: i think it's important that even though people may have their favorite trainer
Jacob Paulsen: or the person they feel like oh this i really get it with this person always
Jacob Paulsen: leave the door open to try you know take training from people you wouldn't think
Jacob Paulsen: that hey i could learn something different from this person
Riley Bowman: Yeah well i
Riley Bowman: mean and i'm glad you're uh moving the
Riley Bowman: conversation this direction now uh and so
Riley Bowman: let's continue to explore a little bit more the idea of
Riley Bowman: of trainers take taking classes from
Riley Bowman: other trainers uh i'm kind
Riley Bowman: of curious and i've been in class in fact i've been in classes with you uh i
Riley Bowman: think you hosted tim harron at home range several years ago you were in that
Riley Bowman: class i was in that class it was really cool to be and to share that class with
Riley Bowman: you and other other a number of really good shooters in that class as well.
Riley Bowman: And it was fascinating to kind of watch you,
Riley Bowman: ask questions and like you were really getting into the
Riley Bowman: weeds on a couple of things that i mean it was very apparent you know where
Riley Bowman: your mind was at and what you were trying to uh figure out you know in the context
Riley Bowman: of that class at times it was it was it was cool to to you know kind of just
Riley Bowman: at times just be the fly on the wall and like listen to charlie ask questions of tim heron,
Riley Bowman: but who are some of the trainers if you want to throw out some names that you've
Riley Bowman: trained with that you like, maybe even in a surprising fashion,
Riley Bowman: like you learned something from that were like,
Riley Bowman: wow, that was, you know, I'm really glad I took that class.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. So I've taken a bunch of different classes from a bunch of different trainers like Tim Heron.
Jacob Paulsen: I've trained with him several different times, either in group classes or even
Jacob Paulsen: one-on-one training events.
Jacob Paulsen: Manny Bragg, taken several classes from him.
Jacob Paulsen: Travis Tomasi, another great trainer. Todd Jarrett, Bob Bogle.
Jacob Paulsen: It's interesting because when I was newer in the shooting sports,
Jacob Paulsen: I always thought that there was the way.
Jacob Paulsen: Here's the way from start to finish, step one through five million. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: And this instructor is going to have the magical process from step one to whatever. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: And as the years went by, I really started to learn myself that there's no one way.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. Because in the end, we're all unique humans.
Jacob Paulsen: We all have our advantages and
Jacob Paulsen: our disadvantages and our abilities to absorb content or
Jacob Paulsen: do the thing that this person does right
Jacob Paulsen: so like i quickly found that i'm gonna have to find charlie's way to perform
Jacob Paulsen: the best that i can and that is kind of like the bruce lee methodology of do
Jacob Paulsen: all the ways right like try all the ways and what take what works and abandon what doesn't Right.
Jacob Paulsen: And at the end of it, meaning once somebody has built a solid foundation of skill set,
Jacob Paulsen: That is going to contain a bunch of different varied methodologies to be well-rounded.
Jacob Paulsen: I think absolutely the people that are very effective, skilled shooters,
Jacob Paulsen: they've either taken a decent chunk of training from people or they've consumed
Jacob Paulsen: quite a bit of training content.
Jacob Paulsen: And whether that's watching other competitors perform their craft on range or
Jacob Paulsen: attending matches with those competitors and seeing what they're doing on the squad.
Jacob Paulsen: I think that it's always going to be a what is best for you to build your own style.
Jacob Paulsen: And to get to the pinnacle of skill set, the student really needs to own that.
Jacob Paulsen: This needs to be me, if that makes sense. instead of, I want to be like Charlie,
Jacob Paulsen: right? Or I want to be like Riley.
Jacob Paulsen: I want to do exactly what Riley does. That's going to get people to a certain
Jacob Paulsen: level of skill that's usually pretty high level proficiency.
Jacob Paulsen: But if they want to truly maximize their performance, they need to break out
Jacob Paulsen: of that mimicry and build their own skill set around their own behaviors and their own strengths.
Jacob Paulsen: Because we all have our own inherent strengths.
Jacob Paulsen: And the thing is that we like to do versus the things that we don't like to do, right?
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I'm glad that you explained that the way you did.
Riley Bowman: For instance, kind of at the beginning of that commentary, you said something
Riley Bowman: along the lines of, you know, earlier on feeling like or believing that there
Riley Bowman: was the way and, you know,
Riley Bowman: step one to 5 million or whatever, however many steps there are,
Riley Bowman: there's probably 5 million steps.
Riley Bowman: It feels like that sometimes. it's easy to kind
Riley Bowman: of fall into that trap i have fallen into that trap i mean
Riley Bowman: like i'll give you a good example you mentioned
Riley Bowman: you trained with todd jarrett and i mean this is a guy that's that holds multiple
Riley Bowman: multiple national and world championship titles uh he's been competing at a
Riley Bowman: very high level for a long time and still is uh even you know as a basically
Riley Bowman: senior aged competitor right um Um,
Riley Bowman: and so it's easy to be like, well, if I just did exactly what Todd Jarrett does,
Riley Bowman: well then like, I'll be it.
Riley Bowman: I'm just another Todd Jarrett. Like I'll be a national and a world champion
Riley Bowman: too. Right. But it's not that simple.
Riley Bowman: Uh, it doesn't work that way. Like you said, we got to find our way, uh, whatever that is.
Riley Bowman: I, I have had to learn that same lesson myself because I have trained with,
Riley Bowman: A few instructors, you know, especially earlier on in my own career where it's
Riley Bowman: like, yeah, I really respect that guy and he clearly knows his stuff.
Riley Bowman: So I'm just going to go learn what he has to teach and then I'll be awesome, right?
Riley Bowman: And what I've really learned is that the more instructors I've trained with
Riley Bowman: over the years, it's opened me up to additional perspectives,
Riley Bowman: different ways of doing things,
Riley Bowman: different, um, different articulations of language, uh, which that's been huge.
Riley Bowman: Cause there's been times where there's like a difficult to understand concept
Riley Bowman: and you've heard it explained by this instructor, that instructor,
Riley Bowman: this other instructor, and then you take this class with somebody and you're
Riley Bowman: not even expecting it at times.
Riley Bowman: Like you're, they might even know, they may not even be a so-called specialist
Riley Bowman: in whatever that thing is.
Riley Bowman: You know, you're, they're there to primarily learn, I don't know,
Riley Bowman: this is somebody that's really good at teaching movement, let's say,
Riley Bowman: or transitions or whatever.
Riley Bowman: And like, you're there to learn that, but they, they drop a comment sometimes,
Riley Bowman: offhand, not even realizing what, what they're saying.
Riley Bowman: And all of a sudden it clicks these dots of like, oh,
Riley Bowman: you know, this thing about, let's just say it's grip or whatever,
Riley Bowman: you know, uh, and also you're like, oh my goodness, that just,
Riley Bowman: you know, my, my world has shifted because I have heard this.
Riley Bowman: Three, four, five, half dozen times. And now all of a sudden this one thing clicks for me.
Riley Bowman: And so it's really, really wise to expose yourself to multiple different methodologies
Riley Bowman: and techniques and ways of teaching.
Riley Bowman: And the only way that's going to happen is by exposing yourself to multiple
Riley Bowman: different instructors as well. Like you, I've had the opportunity.
Riley Bowman: It's been a little bit lighter in the last couple of years, but at one time
Riley Bowman: I made it my personal goal to take 80 hours of training, uh, in the course of a year.
Riley Bowman: And, um, that was hugely beneficial when I was like, you know,
Riley Bowman: really locked in on that goal.
Riley Bowman: Uh, you know, a couple of years, I even, you know, exceeded that,
Riley Bowman: you know, more like a hundred or so hours of training that, that was hugely
Riley Bowman: beneficial because during that time, you know, and I made sure I took good notes.
Riley Bowman: And so you You start compiling things from notes and you start realizing,
Riley Bowman: you start making these connections from other classes or trainers that,
Riley Bowman: you know, just like as you go through those notes and things that can continue
Riley Bowman: to pay dividends even long after the class is done and over with to have additional
Riley Bowman: aha moments that could be really transformational for a person as a shooter.
Jacob Paulsen: Absolutely. absolutely yeah like the thing that maybe
Jacob Paulsen: this is a weirdness about me is that it once
Jacob Paulsen: you once i became an instructor
Jacob Paulsen: we'll just use that term it's very
Jacob Paulsen: hard to turn off the instructor observation
Jacob Paulsen: skills and and so what
Jacob Paulsen: i found is and it was bad on me
Jacob Paulsen: the first class or two that
Jacob Paulsen: i took from another trainer after i was training i'd
Jacob Paulsen: be interacting in the class and then i would say inappropriately
Jacob Paulsen: injecting my thoughts or my
Jacob Paulsen: methodologies around a given skill set or whatnot thinking
Jacob Paulsen: that i'm enriching the class and i'm
Jacob Paulsen: not saying it was bad content but i don't want to put that instructor in a mode
Jacob Paulsen: where i'm derailing their formula of the content presentation right but I since
Jacob Paulsen: then what I've always done is I when I'm attending a class I have
Jacob Paulsen: Basically two sides of a page in the
Jacob Paulsen: notebook one side is charlie's feedback meaning
Jacob Paulsen: these are the nuggets of goodness that i found about myself
Jacob Paulsen: and then on the other side of the page i'm
Jacob Paulsen: writing down the good or bad nuggets that i
Jacob Paulsen: Got from how the content was conveyed by
Jacob Paulsen: the instructor right and i i
Jacob Paulsen: try to do my justice to the instructor and say after the
Jacob Paulsen: class in a private format like hey here's what i
Jacob Paulsen: see and what was effective and what i
Jacob Paulsen: think could have been a little bit better and how you presented the content
Jacob Paulsen: and that has always been very
Jacob Paulsen: well received by the instructors i've taken
Jacob Paulsen: classes from and that's the one thing that's
Jacob Paulsen: the one consistent thing that i've noticed from trainers
Jacob Paulsen: effective trainers is that they're always open minded
Jacob Paulsen: they're always open minded to finding a
Jacob Paulsen: better more effective way of honing
Jacob Paulsen: their craft right so i think
Jacob Paulsen: that that and that's kind of at least to
Jacob Paulsen: me goes hand in hand with the shooting community
Jacob Paulsen: like we're all here even though we could be fighting like cats
Jacob Paulsen: and dogs on a match we want to beat each other but we're
Jacob Paulsen: also the first people like oh dude you ran out of ammo here's
Jacob Paulsen: some ammo or here's a gun or right i see you walking by that target dude don't
Jacob Paulsen: forget to shoot that target you know that kind of stuff like we're our best
Jacob Paulsen: cheerleaders even though we're our hardest fought enemies on the range if that
Jacob Paulsen: makes sense and i think that that sportsman mentality
Jacob Paulsen: Transitions into the training environment as well. So that's one of the things
Jacob Paulsen: that I really like about the shooting sports is that, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: for the most part, it's, it's very genuine people that have each other's best interest in mind.
Jacob Paulsen: And if we go into any kind of thing that we're doing on the range,
Jacob Paulsen: whether we're, we're doing a training for somebody or we're getting trained
Jacob Paulsen: from somebody, if we have that mindset,
Jacob Paulsen: we're going to be in a receptive mindset, if that makes sense.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Well, so opening that up in a broader sense,
Riley Bowman: I think this kind of cuts at the core of what this is all about,
Riley Bowman: I think, for all of us, regardless of instructor, trainer,
Riley Bowman: or someone that doesn't even remotely think of themselves as,
Riley Bowman: like not even in the smallest sense, they're like, no way, I'm not a teacher.
Riley Bowman: I'm not a trainer. I don't, you know, I'm just a shooter. I just do the thing.
Riley Bowman: Um, and that is having a insatiable desire to learn.
Riley Bowman: Like if, if you care about getting better, um, which I mean,
Riley Bowman: you're here, if you're listening to the podcast, I'd like to think that's because
Riley Bowman: you, you care enough to learn something to make yourself better in some way.
Riley Bowman: Um, if that's the case, then make it your habit, make it your lifelong pursuit.
Riley Bowman: And not even just in shooting. I think just even, we could think real big picture here.
Riley Bowman: If you want to enhance your life in any way at all, then just have a insatiable
Riley Bowman: desire to learn where you are just always interested in what can I learn from this?
Riley Bowman: What can I learn from that? This source, that source, this topic, that topic.
Riley Bowman: You know and that's.
Riley Bowman: Which, you know, coincidentally, I just taught this last weekend,
Riley Bowman: we did kind of an introduction to competition shooting course at the Guardian
Riley Bowman: Conference. And I've taught that almost every year.
Riley Bowman: I think it's a wonderful way to get people kind of get their feet wet because,
Riley Bowman: you know, usually they haven't dived into competitive shooting because a lot
Riley Bowman: of times they don't know where to get started. They don't know what they don't know.
Riley Bowman: Maybe there's some anxiety there, whatever it is.
Riley Bowman: And so it's a super laid back, low commitment way of like, hey,
Riley Bowman: here's here's an introduction to competitive shooting and you're going to shoot
Riley Bowman: your first stage like ever, you know, and it's going to be a lot of fun.
Riley Bowman: And I but I titled that course this year, the best thing you could do for your
Riley Bowman: shooting skill or something to that effect.
Riley Bowman: And if it wasn't obvious to the students that attended, I explained it later on in the class.
Riley Bowman: Like the reason I called it that is because when you start doing this and you
Riley Bowman: start having fun and you want to have more fun.
Riley Bowman: And even if you don't care about being like the best in the world or the best
Riley Bowman: in your state or the best in your community, but you just, but you enjoy it
Riley Bowman: and you want to keep doing it and, and be good at it.
Riley Bowman: It creates this desire to learn more about it.
Riley Bowman: And at least it has for me, and I've seen that in many other shooters over the
Riley Bowman: years, that they can even be quite stagnant.
Riley Bowman: We see this a lot of times with law enforcement officers that get into competitive
Riley Bowman: shooting, Charlie, where they've
Riley Bowman: probably been pretty stagnant as a shooter, as a cop, for a long time.
Riley Bowman: Because, no offense, I mean, I was a reserve cop.
Riley Bowman: Uh i i understand the mentality i understand what goes with the job enough to
Riley Bowman: know that you can very easily achieve a certain skill level in that profession as a shooter,
Riley Bowman: and just kind of maintain that it's it's
Riley Bowman: good enough um and then
Riley Bowman: the box is checked right exactly and
Riley Bowman: then and then for whatever reason maybe it's because their buddy is like hey
Riley Bowman: man come come shoot this match with me or whatever they showed up they show
Riley Bowman: up at their first match ever and they're like yeah i'm like the i'm like the
Riley Bowman: top guy at my local department i mean i pass all my quals with perfect scores
Riley Bowman: i'm even an agency instructor whatever,
Riley Bowman: and they show up in their first match and it's like oh what did i just get into because.
Riley Bowman: Here's a here's a dentist that is like or
Riley Bowman: a real estate agent or whatever you know a
Riley Bowman: janitor at a school it doesn't even like that is
Riley Bowman: just crushing my soul with you
Riley Bowman: know here i thought i was a good shooter and uh
Riley Bowman: i clearly have a lot to learn and and so my point is is then you see some a
Riley Bowman: lot of times if they can stay with it if they don't immediately get turned off
Riley Bowman: from you know the idea of making made to be being made to feel bad about their
Riley Bowman: shooting skill as a as a top cop,
Riley Bowman: then you see them start to grow and progress.
Riley Bowman: And I think a lot of times because they've, they've had this whole world like
Riley Bowman: opened up to them of, wow, there's a lot more to explore here. And all of a sudden,
Riley Bowman: There's more to learn and there's an interest to learn of, oh, hold on.
Riley Bowman: I thought I knew this stuff, but clearly there's, there's more to learn.
Riley Bowman: And, and then you, next thing you know, they're kicking your butts,
Riley Bowman: you know, a couple of years down the road.
Riley Bowman: It's been really cool to, to see.
Riley Bowman: I, I, I just give, you know, one example.
Riley Bowman: I remember meeting Quinn Cunningham years ago and just a cop,
Riley Bowman: you know, function, you know, like kind of being aware of him.
Riley Bowman: And just knowing he was a cop, but then like seeing, you know,
Riley Bowman: how, well, how good he became as a competitive shooter.
Riley Bowman: It's like, okay, that's a, that's really, really cool and really impressive to see.
Riley Bowman: Um, and many, many, many others have done that and not just meaning to make
Riley Bowman: this about cops because it could be for, for anybody.
Riley Bowman: Um, but, uh, yeah. So anyway,
Riley Bowman: some, some thoughts there and i just think having that interest created within
Riley Bowman: yourself to get out there and try new things and learn new things i think is
Riley Bowman: is key for shooters key for instructors key for those that want to do well in
Riley Bowman: their jobs and in their life in general.
Jacob Paulsen: Absolutely i think it's
Jacob Paulsen: all i think that the whole like going to
Jacob Paulsen: your first match or two or ten and you
Jacob Paulsen: know getting a sobering result right like
Jacob Paulsen: i i think that the thing
Jacob Paulsen: that's a little bit abnormal to me about it is the when
Jacob Paulsen: these people attend when anybody attends a match there's
Jacob Paulsen: not a heckling section and on your squad like there's not like everybody is
Jacob Paulsen: there if you're safe and you're enjoying yourself everybody is treated the same
Jacob Paulsen: if that makes any sense so like there's not like a you know
Jacob Paulsen: Like ostracization of somebody because they can't
Jacob Paulsen: perform on the range or those kind of things
Jacob Paulsen: like i think a lot of that um oh
Jacob Paulsen: i'm not good enough or i just got beat it is really an ego thing with the individual
Jacob Paulsen: right right so i think that if if we want to learn and we got to pop the wheelies
Jacob Paulsen: and we got to fall and wreck and scrape our knees we got to really set our ego aside
Jacob Paulsen: right you're going to leave the ego at the door because if you're only expecting
Jacob Paulsen: to perform perfectly on everything that you do you're never going to grow your
Jacob Paulsen: skill set skill set and that's like you said that applies to anything we do
Jacob Paulsen: in our life not just firearms right so
Jacob Paulsen: i think that if step one if people can kind of set aside their ego and have
Jacob Paulsen: an open mind of, let me try this thing.
Jacob Paulsen: Let's, you know, run it like a rental, see what happens.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. And try to see at a faster pace, try to run our appendages at a faster pace.
Jacob Paulsen: Um, if our ego is always in play, we're never going to give ourselves the failure grace to get there.
Riley Bowman: Right. Yep. 100%. Well, we're kind of coming up against the hour mark,
Riley Bowman: which is usually where we try to keep things too so as an opportunity here uh
Riley Bowman: to do so i'm going to ask if you were to summarize in you know three points
Riley Bowman: uh our discussion here tonight and kind of some things you'd like to leave folks
Riley Bowman: with or maybe some final words of parting advice what would that be.
Jacob Paulsen: I think it's as simple as this really teach yourself how to fish
Jacob Paulsen: right like a lot of people come to classes to be
Jacob Paulsen: given fish yeah there's a
Jacob Paulsen: like we all need to be given fish at points in time right in our life right
Jacob Paulsen: like how do i do this freaking thing i don't know right but the more you can
Jacob Paulsen: teach yourself how to fish right putting on that instructor hat and figuring
Jacob Paulsen: out how do i do this process how would i tell somebody else how to do this process
Jacob Paulsen: That's the path to success, I think.
Riley Bowman: Awesome.
Riley Bowman: Wonderful advice. I appreciate you and for making for making some time for us this evening.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, even in a busy schedule, you just got done running the state
Riley Bowman: championship recently.
Riley Bowman: And of course, you got work and family life and lots of things going on.
Riley Bowman: But you made some time for the podcast tonight. So thank you for your time.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Riley. I really appreciate it.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I hope, folks, you're able to take something away from this.
Riley Bowman: And, of course, if you'd like to reach out to Charlie and learn more from Charlie
Riley Bowman: Perez, including taking a class, you can go to BigPandaPerformance.com.
Riley Bowman: Highly recommend reading his book, The Path of Focused Effort, which is great.
Riley Bowman: I mean, it really breaks things down in Charlie's framework, the way he views things.
Riley Bowman: And I think it's a really solid framework and is just another one of those perspectives
Riley Bowman: that can really enrich your own personal journeys to mastering shooting.
Riley Bowman: It's readily available and also quite affordable. So, and you do something kind
Riley Bowman: of unique, at least I think you still do this or require this,
Riley Bowman: but with your, like your two day, you know,
Riley Bowman: big panda performance class or whatever it is you call it, you basically make
Riley Bowman: students buy and read the book before you come to your class.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, that's a requirement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I try as much as having
Jacob Paulsen: students read that book preceding the class at a minimum puts us on the same vernacular.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. There's no specific skill set that is like, oh, I don't know.
Jacob Paulsen: What is what are you talking about? Like you're talking about fuzzy bunnies or whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: Like it really cuts down on the unknown, like absorbing unknown content from
Jacob Paulsen: a fruit. Like they may not fully understand the depth of the content,
Jacob Paulsen: but that's not a foreign piece of content. That makes sense.
Riley Bowman: And in case that, you know, scares anybody away, trust me, it's worth it.
Riley Bowman: It's worth, it's precisely what I did.
Riley Bowman: You know, I took your class, read your book and got a lot from that and got,
Riley Bowman: I mean, and got even more from the class because as you already know,
Riley Bowman: reading the book beforehand and getting the vernacular and just sort of putting
Riley Bowman: myself in your frame of mind and how you view things, teach things, explain things.
Riley Bowman: Then it just set me up for, for having a successful class.
Riley Bowman: And I think you probably can see and probably can tell students that say they
Riley Bowman: read the book and, and, and didn't actually.
Jacob Paulsen: Sure.
Riley Bowman: But those that do that and take a good faith effort in that regard, get a lot out of it.
Riley Bowman: But anyway, lots to be learned from taking training with Charlie.
Riley Bowman: So big panda performance.com. A reminder of our sponsors of tonight's episode
Riley Bowman: were GuardianNation.com and some other links I mentioned earlier were also GuardianConference.com
Riley Bowman: to learn more about next year's conference.
Riley Bowman: You missed this year's, folks, but next year, I mean, every year just keeps
Riley Bowman: getting bigger and better.
Riley Bowman: One of the things that was really reassuring to me and to our team from this year's event was.
Riley Bowman: Was uh i mean we had some people there at the
Riley Bowman: fifth annual guardian conference that had been there all five years we
Riley Bowman: had some that were there for you know their fourth year their third
Riley Bowman: year their second year um there were there
Riley Bowman: were a couple people i talked to that were at the
Riley Bowman: conference for the first year and then
Riley Bowman: this was this year the fifth year was their second
Riley Bowman: time so that you know they basically missed you know three years in between there
Riley Bowman: uh and i remember them making the comment
Riley Bowman: of wow it's like so much better than
Riley Bowman: you know the first year and the first year was great you
Riley Bowman: know it was good i mean but it was the first year and you know we were we were
Riley Bowman: learning uh all kinds of lessons and doing something like that for the first
Riley Bowman: time and even from those that have been there every every year for five years
Riley Bowman: it just so reassuring to hear the comments of it just keeps getting better uh
Riley Bowman: you guys keep working at it and keep making it better,
Riley Bowman: you know and that is something that's important to us putting on
Riley Bowman: that event i know that something is important to charlie
Riley Bowman: to make himself a better instructor it's important to me
Riley Bowman: to make myself better instructor uh that's just something i
Riley Bowman: think that hopefully all of us have a desire to do with life
Riley Bowman: in anything in life is to is just to improve um i think it's i kind of feel
Riley Bowman: like life is not very much worth living charlie if we don't actually try to
Riley Bowman: get better at all the things that we do heck yeah i suspect you feel similarly so you got to.
Jacob Paulsen: Have some kind of enjoyment in life you know
Riley Bowman: Yeah figuring.
Jacob Paulsen: Out things out and having success is one of those things right
Riley Bowman: It does bring joy and satisfaction so anyway great lessons here tonight thanks
Riley Bowman: again for your time charlie and uh hope to do again sometime with you so until
Riley Bowman: next time folks a reminder to train right train often and train safe so you
Riley Bowman: can fight hard fight fast and fight true take care,
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