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 Thursday, April 30th, 2026, as of the recording. This is a live recording of this episode.
Riley Bowman: And I am your host, Riley Bowman. And I'm joined today by a special guest and
Riley Bowman: friend of mine, Matt Little of Graybeard Actual. Hello, Matt.
Matt Little: Hello. Hello, everybody. I'm looking forward to the show. I think we're going
Matt Little: to have a good time, Riley.
Riley Bowman: We are going to have a good time, especially starting off like that.
Riley Bowman: We're going to talk about harmful phrases, particularly things that hold us
Riley Bowman: back in training and in some cases can actually get people in trouble.
Riley Bowman: And I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that.
Riley Bowman: As always, Matt's one of my most favorite people and a trusted individual in
Riley Bowman: this regard because of your unique background and experience.
Riley Bowman: So looking forward to today's discussion.
Matt Little: I am too. I think some of these are actually some of my biggest pet peeves in
Matt Little: training, so this should be a lot of fun. Yep, yep.
Riley Bowman: We'll get into that momentarily, but today's episode, first of all,
Riley Bowman: sponsored by Guardian University, which is actually our video library available
Riley Bowman: at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: The best way to get there, the shortcut,
Riley Bowman: if you will, is you can go to concealedcarry.com forward slash videos.
Riley Bowman: And we actually announced this on the podcast recently, but I'm intentionally
Riley Bowman: calling it out as a sponsor, if you will, of today's episode,
Riley Bowman: just to encourage you all to go and check it out.
Riley Bowman: If you want to support us here at the Concealed Carry Podcast,
Riley Bowman: if you like what you see or hear here, or you just want to find some way to
Riley Bowman: give back a little bit for a free podcast,
Riley Bowman: well, the easy thing you could do is just go to concealedcarry.com forward slash videos.
Riley Bowman: You'll see we've got over 2 000 videos in our video library there at guardian university
Riley Bowman: Some of them are are paid or at
Riley Bowman: least only available to members of guardian
Riley Bowman: nation which of course you can look into that
Riley Bowman: as well if you don't if you don't know what that membership is i'll talk
Riley Bowman: about that some more here in a moment but we've worked
Riley Bowman: really hard recently to completely redesign and
Riley Bowman: revamp guardian university uh
Riley Bowman: so it's it's a lot cleaner looking it's easier to
Riley Bowman: navigate it's usually your fine stuff you can if you
Riley Bowman: go to the concealed carry.com forward slash videos you'll
Riley Bowman: see you can select courses you can select shows and
Riley Bowman: topics uh you can actually create your own list meaning that you can favorite
Riley Bowman: videos and add those to your own list uh so you can go back and you know find
Riley Bowman: things later you save you know basically the whole idea here with Guardian University
Riley Bowman: is to make it as similar to like a YouTube or whatever as possible.
Riley Bowman: So pretty excited with the interface now. And you'll see there's just a whole
Riley Bowman: bunch of content available at Guardian University.
Riley Bowman: You'll see that some of them will have in the upper right corner a little Guardian Nation logo.
Riley Bowman: That means that those are only available to members or if you've purchased those videos a la carte.
Riley Bowman: So if you see that, that's what that means. But join Guardian Nation and you'll
Riley Bowman: be able to have access to everything for completely free.
Riley Bowman: It's included in the membership, right? So that's our other episode sponsor is Guardian Nation.
Riley Bowman: Go to GuardianNation.com to learn more.
Riley Bowman: But this is only one of the many great benefits of membership is to have full
Riley Bowman: and complete access to Guardian University.
Riley Bowman: So hope that you'll do that.
Riley Bowman: Again, ConcealedCarry.com forward slash videos and Guardian Nation membership.
Riley Bowman: GuardianNation.com. Those are two things I'll point you to as far as sponsorships today go.
Riley Bowman: We appreciate your support of our sponsors that make it possible to do what
Riley Bowman: we do on the podcast, including having excellent guests like Matt.
Riley Bowman: We've got some comments already rolling in. Thanks, guys. We've got Eddie who's
Riley Bowman: watching on Facebook saying, howdy, guys.
Riley Bowman: Now, is that a good old Texas howdy, or is that just a howdy,
Riley Bowman: like a regular howdy? Because they do things different down in Texas like where Matt's at.
Matt Little: Let's give him the benefit of the doubt we'll say it's a Texas hug Texas is
Matt Little: the greatest country in North America.
Riley Bowman: I love it. And we got Messy Rides on YouTube saying, let's go. Absolutely.
Riley Bowman: And somebody's already chiming in. In fact, the first comment of today's show,
Riley Bowman: I'm not sure, DMLA6371, whoever you are, but thank you for joining,
Riley Bowman: saying, how about the phrase, I'll be shooting limited optics today?
Riley Bowman: As far as harmful phrases go, I don't know. I like limited optics.
Riley Bowman: I've been having fun in that division this last year a little bit.
Riley Bowman: So thanks for tuning in, guys. If you have comments, want to share them with
Riley Bowman: us and you're watching live, you can drop those, whether you're on Facebook
Riley Bowman: or YouTube, just drop them in the comments.
Riley Bowman: They come right into the interface here and I can put them up on the screen and share them.
Riley Bowman: I won't share anything that's like ridiculous or unrelated to what we're talking
Riley Bowman: about generally just so we stay on topic, but appreciate your comments and questions.
Riley Bowman: Also, if you want to just reach out and you're catching this after the fact,
Riley Bowman: you can always contact us at podcast at concealed carry.com.
Riley Bowman: That's our email address that comes into, to Jacob and I here at the podcast.
Riley Bowman: So podcast at concealed carry.com.
Riley Bowman: Well, Matt, let's get into the topic.
Riley Bowman: Uh, harmful phrases. All right. Where do you want to start?
Matt Little: Oh, that's just so many. Um,
Matt Little: Why don't we start with train like you fight?
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Matt Little: Let's start with that one. Yeah. Because I think that's a big one.
Matt Little: And it's not that you should never try to simulate the fight in training.
Matt Little: I mean, obviously, that should be part of your training.
Matt Little: But people tend to take this and they run with it and they make it where everything
Matt Little: they do has to be a full-blown representation of an actual fight.
Matt Little: And that's not the best way to get better, right? That's not the best way to
Matt Little: build your skills. It's not the best way to actually get good at the fight.
Matt Little: Like if you look at UFC fighters, none of them do nothing but spar in the octagon
Matt Little: every time they practice or train, right?
Matt Little: Football teams. There's no football team that does nothing but put on the pads and scrimmage.
Matt Little: But somehow there are guys on SWAT teams who feel like they should put on every
Matt Little: piece of kit they own every time they go to the range so they train like they fight.
Matt Little: And I just think it's harmful for actual skill development and figuring out
Matt Little: what things work and how they work. Yeah. You know, what do you think?
Riley Bowman: I completely agree. In fact, I'm going to use this opportunity because I probably
Riley Bowman: should have reintroduced you a little bit to those watching the podcast here or listening.
Riley Bowman: You've been on before, of course, and you guys are welcome to go back and catch.
Riley Bowman: I think we've had you on at least twice, if I recall.
Matt Little: I think so. I think it's twice.
Riley Bowman: And I remember one of those episodes, we were talking, well,
Riley Bowman: I don't remember what the main topic was, but I remember we talked a fair bit
Riley Bowman: about training methodologies or, well,
Riley Bowman: like we talked about the different training, I'm at a loss for the word all of a sudden,
Matt Little: Different types of drills. Different types of drills.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Like experimentation drills, isolation drills, combination drills, and so on.
Riley Bowman: And that was really good. And I think that's actually relevant to how we,
Riley Bowman: you know, that's one example of how we might train as we're talking about training as you fight.
Riley Bowman: But I wanted to just take the opportunity to reintroduce you to listeners and viewers.
Riley Bowman: You might know a thing or two about fighting. So tell us a little bit about
Riley Bowman: your background in fighting, Matt.
Matt Little: So, well, I started out as a martial artist when I was young.
Matt Little: Then I joined the Army at 18, made my way to Special Forces.
Matt Little: I wound up, nothing was going on because of Mogadishu. So I wound up being in
Matt Little: 20th Special Forces Group, which is in the Guard, and becoming a Chicago cop
Matt Little: so I could get some action that way. So I did 21 years as a Chicago cop.
Matt Little: Once the towers fell, we were bouncing back and forth with 20th Group to Afghanistan.
Matt Little: I spent some time in Iraq as well.
Matt Little: And I did about 25-ish years in the military all total and 21 years as a cop
Matt Little: and then retired and started my business. So a little bit of competitive shooting in there too.
Matt Little: So I got a pretty good look at several different ways of looking at this problem.
Matt Little: So I know plenty of people that have done more of each of those things.
Matt Little: I don't really know anybody else that's done as much of each of those things combined.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, yeah.
Matt Little: For whatever that's worth.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, well, and I agree with your assessment on that because,
Riley Bowman: I mean, I know a number of people that have similar backgrounds.
Riley Bowman: But as you said, to have full careers in military,
Riley Bowman: especially, you know, special forces and police and competitive shooting,
Riley Bowman: as you said, you see kind of all the different sides that most people typically see.
Riley Bowman: And of course, now you've been living as a cop, you're kind of also in that
Riley Bowman: civilian world space, too.
Riley Bowman: But you've been retired now for how many years?
Matt Little: Since uh the beginning of 2019 so five-ish six-ish years yeah so.
Riley Bowman: I mean you
Riley Bowman: to what i'm saying you you see all the kind of
Riley Bowman: main sides of the coin so to speak or the
Riley Bowman: whatever of you know
Riley Bowman: the different worlds people live in that care about fighting
Riley Bowman: about martial arts and i'm
Riley Bowman: being very broad as i use that term and uh
Riley Bowman: you know people that carry guns or other defensive tools so there you go there's
Riley Bowman: there's matt's background uh we could go deeper than that but You can go catch
Riley Bowman: other episodes of ours and hear more about Matt and some things I'm sure will
Riley Bowman: come up in the course of this discussion.
Riley Bowman: But back to you throwing the question back to me about, you know,
Riley Bowman: what do you think about training like a fight?
Riley Bowman: And, you know, I see this get used. I agree.
Riley Bowman: Like sometimes people will throw on all their kit, all their gear because,
Riley Bowman: well, that's how I'm going to fight. So that's how I should train.
Riley Bowman: And I think it's important to...
Riley Bowman: I mean, that's why I brought up the different types of drills,
Riley Bowman: you know, like experimentation drills, isolation drills, combination drills,
Riley Bowman: because those are specific and unique and individual ways of training specific skills.
Riley Bowman: And we could say in shooting but you could use a similar approach in martial
Riley Bowman: arts in combat sports in you know any number of things that are skill oriented
Riley Bowman: and you could break those into
Riley Bowman: similar categories of well i'm doing you know this mode of practice right now
Riley Bowman: it's more experimentation or now i'm isolating into a very specific thing because
Riley Bowman: i want to really work on that one thing and then okay now i want to put it in
Riley Bowman: combination with other things and see if it It still holds up when we start
Riley Bowman: adding some pressure and some, you know,
Riley Bowman: more dynamic and, you know,
Riley Bowman: just more variables, you know, at play here.
Riley Bowman: And I'm using that as an avenue to answer your question to suggest that if you
Riley Bowman: think, like you said, you brought up, you know, football scrimmaging or whatever.
Riley Bowman: If you think training should be done, you know, full contact,
Riley Bowman: full speed, full everything all the time, then you're probably not taking advantage
Riley Bowman: of some of those other opportunities, some of those other maybe modes of practice
Riley Bowman: that actually help you develop skill the most effectively.
Matt Little: You know, I'm going to, if you don't mind, I'm going to quote a friend of mine, Bryce Frank.
Matt Little: Bryce is a really good dude, former pro kickboxer. He's a SWAT boss in an Illinois department.
Matt Little: Does BJJ now. And he said something that I really love.
Matt Little: He said, you know, Matt, nobody ever paid me to win a round of sparring.
Matt Little: You know, sparring for him was technical development. And it was closer to the
Matt Little: real fight than, you know, drill work or hitting the heavy bag or pad work.
Matt Little: But it's still learning. It's still a learning process.
Matt Little: And I think that like really validation drills, you know, testing is the time
Matt Little: to actually make it as close to a fight as you can and do that pressure testing
Matt Little: to see what's working, what's not working.
Matt Little: And that's vital. That's absolutely important.
Matt Little: But if you treat everything like it's pressure testing, you'll never try anything
Matt Little: you're not confident or comfortable with, which means you won't get better.
Matt Little: So like to use a martial arts analogy, if I'm treating my sparring like a fight, I have to win.
Matt Little: If I'm treating my roles at the BJJ gym, like something I have to win,
Matt Little: that I'm not going to try something I'm not good at yet. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Riley Bowman: And even if you do, it's probably not going to work very well.
Riley Bowman: Right? True. True. Because you just will not have, I mean, like,
Riley Bowman: if you try to take something into the fight for the first time ever that you've
Riley Bowman: never actually practiced, you're probably going to fail.
Matt Little: Yeah. And, like, to put it back into shooting, I know that I'm sure everybody
Matt Little: else has had this experience that shoots competitively,
Matt Little: but I know I have, where i'll be in a match
Matt Little: and i mean to be fair locals should kind of
Matt Little: be treated like sparring sessions really you know what i mean that's the
Matt Little: time to try new things but i've gone
Matt Little: up to stages and i've gone like well you know i'm going to try this and under
Matt Little: the stress of competing it never seems to go like it would if you if you practice
Matt Little: at first right you know it's uh hollywood loves to show people pulling things
Matt Little: through because they're pure of heart in the end and doing better than they
Matt Little: did training but it's a myth it's a hollywood lie it doesn't happen in real life.
Riley Bowman: Yeah well as we've established
Riley Bowman: with your background and experience uh you would you would know i would think
Riley Bowman: so um train like you fight you know so here's another one like in in that same
Riley Bowman: vein i've i've heard people say things like uh
Riley Bowman: you know, well, if it ain't raining, you ain't training kind of thing.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, it's like, I get that.
Riley Bowman: In fact, I just spent the weekend teaching a small private class and a few hours west of here.
Riley Bowman: And it was, it was crappy weather all weekend. I mean, it rained on us every day.
Riley Bowman: You know, it was cold, it was wet, it was not ideal.
Riley Bowman: And so that quote, that quote, that phrase definitely was
Riley Bowman: brought up if it ain't raining you ain't training and and and
Riley Bowman: so that's that's that's okay like i get it like you
Riley Bowman: know whatever the conditions are we're going to go out and
Riley Bowman: do the thing uh and i'm not i'm not
Riley Bowman: you know throwing shade at that at all okay just so
Riley Bowman: you know you know who you are uh out there
Riley Bowman: because he listens to the podcast uh regular regularly
Riley Bowman: uh but you know there's something we said
Riley Bowman: about that that it's okay to like it's
Riley Bowman: good to have those opportunities when conditions are less than ideal to
Riley Bowman: get out and get some training in and sometimes you have
Riley Bowman: no other choice but that but i will say this uh in this i think ties back to
Riley Bowman: the train like you fight phrase is that if there's times when if conditions
Riley Bowman: are less than ideal and you really are trying to focus on a specific skill
Riley Bowman: In other words, when it's more like an isolation drill, let's say,
Riley Bowman: that you're really wanting to focus on,
Riley Bowman: if you've got a bunch of other things that are complicating matters,
Riley Bowman: then it'll take away from your ability to drill down and really isolate that
Riley Bowman: thing that you're trying to work on. Does that make sense?
Matt Little: Yeah. No, I have really strong beliefs on this one, too, because I kind of look
Matt Little: at those as training distractors.
Riley Bowman: Exactly.
Matt Little: And the idea is when you're trying to build skill, you want to remove as many
Matt Little: distractors as possible.
Matt Little: Yep. and then you layer them back on to test the skill
Matt Little: right so like a certain amount of training when you're
Matt Little: miserable is really valuable because you need to know you can perform
Matt Little: when you're miserable yeah like you need to know that right yep but it's
Matt Little: not the time you're going to develop skill what you're doing then is you're just
Matt Little: kind of hanging on through the misery yep and trying to do as well as you can
Matt Little: and if you do too much of that you're not getting skill development because
Matt Little: that's really not skill development like it's kind of a question of what are
Matt Little: you training yep You're training the ability to perform while miserable for
Matt Little: environmental reasons or because of kit reasons,
Matt Little: gear reasons, contextual reasons.
Matt Little: You're trying to perform as close as you can to your best given those distractors.
Matt Little: But you're not going to improve your best doing that, if that makes sense.
Riley Bowman: That's exactly what I'm saying. And so it's a tricky thing sometimes because,
Riley Bowman: I mean, especially when you have a class that's on the schedule,
Riley Bowman: you're going to do the class, right?
Riley Bowman: So even if conditions are less than ideal, there's times that I had to remind
Riley Bowman: students of mine that, hey, I know you didn't do as well as you thought you could.
Riley Bowman: You didn't do as well as you probably actually could.
Riley Bowman: You did not deliver just now your actual baseline level of skill.
Riley Bowman: And that's okay because there's all these other factors. Like you can't feel your hands right now.
Riley Bowman: Things are wet. You're a little bit cold and miserable.
Riley Bowman: Guess what? Those are going to be factors. And I know some people are like,
Riley Bowman: well, yeah, but that's, you know, we don't get to pick and choose our time of
Riley Bowman: or day or weather condition of fight. It's like, I know, I get that.
Riley Bowman: That's okay. But the distinction here is there is like training and validation,
Riley Bowman: which you mentioned a bit ago, and those things are valid.
Riley Bowman: But there's also skill development, and I find that skill development happens
Riley Bowman: best when we can actually focus on the skill development, right?
Matt Little: I think it becomes a question of what are you training?
Matt Little: What are you working on improving? because some things are skills and some things are attributes, right?
Matt Little: And the ability to put up with physical discomfort, psychological discomfort,
Matt Little: stress, that's an attribute that you do need to train, but it's separate from training the skill.
Matt Little: The skill needs to be trained without that, and then you can add that in and
Matt Little: train those things while maintaining the skill at as high a level as possible.
Riley Bowman: That's a perfect distinction right there. Yeah, I like that.
Riley Bowman: Hey, just recognizing a couple other comments here, uh brian saying on youtube
Riley Bowman: this is a texas howdy from a born and raised texan
Riley Bowman: texas a&m grad uh project 1868 says if it's snowing i ain't going
Riley Bowman: and then uh i like that variation that's fun uh messy rides commenting would
Riley Bowman: you say it's okay to train till failure i know that's broad but could you could
Riley Bowman: say start slow speed up reps until you finally fail and then dial it back.
Riley Bowman: I think this might be a good...
Matt Little: Can I... Yeah, I want to address that one because I have some thoughts on that
Matt Little: because I think the way people look at this a lot of times, especially more
Matt Little: defensive-minded shooters, is kind of an error, right? And it's not their fault.
Matt Little: It's the way they've been taught.
Matt Little: But yes, you absolutely go until you fail. But the problem is if you dial it
Matt Little: back, if you, here's my next phrase, if you slow down and get your hits,
Matt Little: you're not actually improving.
Matt Little: What you're doing is going back to your comfort zone, right?
Matt Little: So what you wind up with is kind of this sine wave effect where you go faster
Matt Little: and make it more difficult.
Matt Little: Then once it starts to break, you dial it back down to where you can get all
Matt Little: the hits back into your comfort zone.
Matt Little: So the sine waves aren't actually increasing in skill. They're just kind of
Matt Little: going up and down in place, if that makes sense.
Matt Little: I think a better way to look at it, and this is specifically for like isolation
Matt Little: work, right? Trying to build speed and accuracy.
Matt Little: Push it till it breaks. It starts to break. Not completely off the rails,
Matt Little: not driving off the cliff, but until it starts to break.
Matt Little: And then rather than dialing it back down, stay right there and try to figure it out.
Matt Little: And then once you figure it out at that pace, at that difficulty,
Matt Little: turn it up a little bit more until it breaks a little bit again.
Matt Little: And then stay there until you figure that out. That's kind of the way I like
Matt Little: to look at it for isolation. What do you think, Riley?
Riley Bowman: I agree. I think that is how it works, how it should work, especially if we're
Riley Bowman: talking in the context of shooting, because that's what I know the most.
Riley Bowman: Although I imagine it can be applied elsewhere, too.
Riley Bowman: But usually what happens is, especially once a shooter has a pretty solid base,
Riley Bowman: meaning like their grip is pretty solid.
Riley Bowman: They don't have any major issues with, say, stance. Just overall,
Riley Bowman: like their fundamentals are pretty solid.
Riley Bowman: Usually what is not quite there yet matching the biomechanical or the physical
Riley Bowman: or the technical skill is things like their vision.
Riley Bowman: It's like what you're describing is you start, you know, picking up the pace
Riley Bowman: or the speed and then the wheels start to fall off.
Riley Bowman: That may not be because of a technical reason.
Riley Bowman: Like the grip may still be there. Stance may still be there.
Riley Bowman: All that may still be fine. but it's like but
Riley Bowman: what else is missing that's usually that vision visual piece and
Riley Bowman: vision slash the brain requires some
Riley Bowman: amount of exposure to a thing to start picking up
Riley Bowman: on patterns and cues right and
Riley Bowman: so you're like well how come i'm not seeing that how
Riley Bowman: come i'm not able to keep that in the a zone on the
Riley Bowman: target when i'm going at this pace and i'm trying to transition you
Riley Bowman: know trying to do all these transitions across the target array maybe there's
Riley Bowman: movement involved like whatever you're trying to do all these different things
Riley Bowman: let's say like you need some amount of
Riley Bowman: exposure to the to that
Riley Bowman: higher rate of speed before your
Riley Bowman: brain goes oh there's there
Riley Bowman: is something here and there's things
Riley Bowman: we can do visual you know training wise to help speed up
Riley Bowman: that process but for sure at the end of the day like what has to happen ultimately
Riley Bowman: is we push ourselves to this newer threshold and hang out there and see if we
Riley Bowman: can't start like you said figuring it out and that i think is usually more of
Riley Bowman: a a vision catching up to the speed of the gun the speed of what you're doing
Riley Bowman: you know everything else what do you think
Matt Little: Yeah. And I think it's, people misunderstand, I think, especially like newer shooters.
Matt Little: When we talk about vision, they start thinking that we're talking about visual
Matt Little: acuity and that's not it at all. It's the speed of visual perception.
Matt Little: It really is more a brain thing than an eye thing.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, exactly.
Matt Little: Long as you're moving the eyes
Matt Little: to the right place, it's how quickly can my brain pick up on the input?
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Matt Little: And it's like when I teach shot calling to newer shooters, invariably there's
Matt Little: at least part of the class that looks at me like I'm talking about some kind
Matt Little: of black magic, like they can't even comprehend it yet.
Matt Little: And that's because they're not seeing what the sites are doing in recoil yet.
Matt Little: And it's not their fault.
Matt Little: They haven't been exposed to that enough times trying to see it to get that
Matt Little: visual speed, that perceptual speed built up, I think.
Matt Little: An analogy from martial arts, one of the things I really like about the Filipino
Matt Little: martial arts is they start with weapons.
Matt Little: It's technically a stick, but it's really meant to be a stand-in for a blade first.
Matt Little: And the tip of that stick is moving way faster than somebody's punch or kick, right?
Matt Little: So after a year or two of working with those, when you go back to an empty hand
Matt Little: encounter, it seems very slow.
Matt Little: Or like CQB when I was still at work.
Matt Little: When I made master in USPSA, all of a sudden CQB felt much slower to me than
Matt Little: it had before because I was used to operating at a faster pace.
Matt Little: My brain was picking things up at a faster pace and I could be more aware.
Matt Little: And it was like kind of a secret sauce, even though I didn't need to go any
Matt Little: faster in CQB than I was already going.
Matt Little: But I could see more at the same speed, if that makes sense.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the example, too. I mean, as you brought in,
Riley Bowman: I assume you're referring to like Kali or Screema, right?
Riley Bowman: Like with the sticks, especially because like that's, that's a, that's a,
Riley Bowman: I think that's a really cool connection there talking about how it's like,
Riley Bowman: well, if I can start picking up what's happening with this stick or this weapon,
Riley Bowman: then hands are much easier, much easier.
Riley Bowman: It's sort of like the opposite of training wheels almost in a way,
Riley Bowman: you know, like there's, There's a place for training wheels, but yeah,
Riley Bowman: if you can make riding a bike, if you can start there, I know that's hard to
Riley Bowman: do, then when you go to training wheels, it's like, oh,
Riley Bowman: it's like slow motion.
Matt Little: I kind of think of it like as overspeed training for a sprinter or a swimmer.
Matt Little: Right. Like when the swimmer swims with the artificial current at their back,
Matt Little: so they're going faster than they normally would. Yep.
Matt Little: You know, or the sprinter gets pulled along with the bungee cord.
Matt Little: Because they're forced to work faster than they're comfortable working, right?
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Matt Little: And like, for instance, this is the way I do a Blake drill.
Matt Little: Like, I don't treat a Blake drill like a target array that I would shoot,
Matt Little: the way I would shoot a target array in a match or in real life. Right. Right? Right.
Matt Little: For a blake drill, I'm going to set the artificial pace and try to make the sights be there.
Matt Little: And they won't always be there because I'm setting a pace faster than I'm comfortable
Matt Little: with. But that's the way to increase that pace, that visual perception, I think.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I agree. And that's where we need to spend our time at in practice.
Riley Bowman: I had it here on the screen, but I just turned it off. But Messi rides following
Riley Bowman: up to his question about training to failure.
Riley Bowman: And then he commented almost sitting in the discomfort
Riley Bowman: or failure for a bit and working it out and
Riley Bowman: that that's what we're talking about here uh and so like let's say you really
Riley Bowman: want to improve the speed and efficiency of transitions you brought up a blake
Riley Bowman: drill uh matt which not everybody listening or watching maybe knows what a blake
Riley Bowman: drill is but just just to well why don't you explain it rather than me so
Matt Little: People so it's it's typically it's typically three targets
Matt Little: at seven or ten yards depending on who you talk to about a
Matt Little: target's distance apart and the idea is you kind of well not everybody may know
Matt Little: what a bill drill is but hopefully they do so bill drills six shots one target
Matt Little: seven yards from the holster blake drill is six shots but they're divided evenly
Matt Little: between three targets from the holster so it's two on each target,
Matt Little: and the idea is you want to do it at the same speed you do a bill drill at you
Matt Little: want the splits and transitions to be the same speed, which is really,
Matt Little: really difficult to do. It's a very, very hard thing to do. Mm-hmm.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So you're just basically taking that six shot bill drill,
Riley Bowman: spreading out across six or excuse me, three targets.
Riley Bowman: And yeah, so we did that very same thing in the class I was teaching this last weekend.
Riley Bowman: In fact, it's also kind of a part of my pistol IQ standards.
Riley Bowman: The transition part of that is essentially a Blake drill.
Riley Bowman: And that's intentional for a reason because it falls on the heels of a bill drill, right?
Riley Bowman: And so you want to really work on your efficiency of your transitions you let's
Riley Bowman: just say your baseline is like normally you can do that blake drill with splits
Riley Bowman: and transition speed of 0.25 okay just throwing out a number here that's pretty that's pretty spicy you
Matt Little: Can that is pretty spicy.
Riley Bowman: You could definitely pick it up but like that's that's pretty
Riley Bowman: spicy but let's just say that's where you are and you
Riley Bowman: want to get even better even faster even more efficient
Riley Bowman: so now you start trying to push it more like 0.22 0.20
Riley Bowman: and pretty soon that's going to start feeling real uncomfortable like what messy
Riley Bowman: rides was saying a minute ago sitting in that discomfort for a while and trying
Riley Bowman: to work it out and sometimes you're going to nail it and other times like you
Riley Bowman: said the sites just aren't going to quite be there because you're just not quite
Riley Bowman: getting off target three and getting on target,
Riley Bowman: excuse me, target two and not getting on target three soon enough.
Riley Bowman: And so, but you push yourself in that way and you work it again and again and again and again.
Riley Bowman: And then at some point you go, oh, now I'm seeing something that I wasn't seeing before.
Riley Bowman: I mean, it was always there, but now the brain is like, oh, hey,
Riley Bowman: there's something here.
Riley Bowman: And now you can maybe start doing something with that and building upon it.
Riley Bowman: I mean, is that kind of where your mind is at?
Matt Little: It is, and I just had a thought. I want to thank Messy Rides personally because
Matt Little: now I've got a new teaching cue that I'm going to use in class. So,
Matt Little: Here's the problem with training like you fight, or if it's not raining, we're not training.
Matt Little: All training is about discomfort. Everything you do in training is about discomfort,
Matt Little: but it's about different types of discomfort depending on what you're training.
Matt Little: And people tend to confuse the physical discomfort of the environment or the
Matt Little: exertion or of wearing all the kit with the psychological discomfort of pushing
Matt Little: things just a little bit faster are more difficult in complexity or accuracy than you're used to.
Matt Little: And you've got to know which discomfort it is you need for the training effect
Matt Little: you're trying to create.
Matt Little: So if I'm trying to create more speed, more accuracy, I want that psychological discomfort.
Matt Little: If I'm trying to create the mental toughness of being able to function,
Matt Little: if I'm cold, injured, tired, exhausted, then I want that environmental discomfort.
Matt Little: If I'm trying to train the physical discomfort of operating in regular clothes
Matt Little: or kit or like a carry concealed or any of that stuff, then I need to seek out that discomfort.
Matt Little: But I don't want to combine the different kinds of discomfort.
Matt Little: I want to work on one at a time. So I want to isolate what's making me uncomfortable
Matt Little: so that I can improve on it.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, that's very good. I appreciate you for articulating that in another way.
Riley Bowman: And again, thank you, Messy Rides on YouTube for your own contribution to this. I was just thinking...
Matt Little: I'll give you attribution in class. I'm telling Messi, right?
Matt Little: I'll give him attribution in class.
Riley Bowman: There's some other comments here I'll get to, but I was just thinking that, you know,
Riley Bowman: another place where this kind of like saying comes up and gets applied is stuff like, for instance,
Riley Bowman: like I've had students, you've probably had this too, Matt, where they're like,
Riley Bowman: they're going to come take a class from you.
Riley Bowman: And they're like, you know, I normally carry a...
Riley Bowman: Let's just say it's an OG Smith & Weston Shield 1.0, you know?
Riley Bowman: Just like the current iteration of Shields are awesome pistols.
Riley Bowman: The original was okay, too, but it left a lot to be desired,
Riley Bowman: especially compared to, you know, some of its competitors now.
Riley Bowman: But they're like, you know, what I carry is a Smith & Weston Shield.
Riley Bowman: It's like, okay, cool, bro. So I'm going to take your, you know,
Riley Bowman: two-day 800-round count class that, you know, With this shield,
Riley Bowman: with OG, again, 1.0 capacity of what, like seven or eight rounds,
Riley Bowman: and it's like, okay, I appreciate the desire to train like you fight,
Riley Bowman: meaning that you're going to run the gear you actually run on a daily basis
Riley Bowman: in your concealed context. right?
Riley Bowman: I get that. That's cool. That is important to do.
Riley Bowman: But you might get more out of my class if you run a gun or gear that just removes
Riley Bowman: some of the disadvantages of your normal concealed carry gear.
Riley Bowman: Like you might carry normally something that is technically you're compromising
Riley Bowman: somewhere and you're compromising because of your lifestyle,
Riley Bowman: how you got to dress, the environment you find yourself in whatever
Riley Bowman: it is that's why you're not packing around a
Riley Bowman: full-size gun all the time or whatever okay i understand
Riley Bowman: that but i've had the discussion with students like i
Riley Bowman: if that's what you want to do that's on you but i'm recommending come with a
Riley Bowman: full-size gun that's you know that's going to just give you the you know where
Riley Bowman: you're not thinking about the gun as much you're there focusing on learning
Riley Bowman: what I'm trying to teach you, the techniques,
Riley Bowman: you know, the training methodologies, all of that, it's going to work a lot
Riley Bowman: better and go easier for you.
Riley Bowman: And your hand's not going to feel so beat up after 800 rounds with a little
Riley Bowman: tiny gun. Thoughts on that?
Matt Little: Yeah, I'm a big believer, and I tell people like newer shooters this all the
Matt Little: time, newer, you know, concealed carry people.
Matt Little: You want the same operating system, right?
Matt Little: Like you want your carry gun and your full-size gun to reflect each other in
Matt Little: a way that's, it transfers, skill transfers.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Matt Little: But you're never going to shoot the tiny gun as well as you shoot the big gun.
Matt Little: Yeah. So you should, when you're working on skill, and you're right,
Matt Little: it's important to sometimes shoot the carry gun, right? To do that,
Matt Little: to do enough of that that you're comfortable with it, that you can see what
Matt Little: you have to change and modify compared to the larger pistol.
Matt Little: But you're going to learn better with a full-size pistol. You just are,
Matt Little: even if it's not what you carry every day.
Matt Little: I just wouldn't switch operating systems, especially if you're a newer shooter.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, no, and that is a good distinction, meaning that, you know, you're not running a...
Riley Bowman: You know, a full size DASA gun for training, but then carrying a micro compact striker fired,
Riley Bowman: you know, totally different operating system or, you know, a full size 2011
Riley Bowman: in training class, but then you're carrying a Glock 43.
Riley Bowman: Right. Those would be different operating systems as you as you explain it.
Riley Bowman: So that's that's a good distinction.
Riley Bowman: Comment here from Messy Rides. Discomfort doesn't just equate to physical sweat
Riley Bowman: or stress, but could also translate to mental. absolutely no kit needed stress
Riley Bowman: i don't know no kit needed stress not quite
Matt Little: Entirely i think i think he means you can apply stress without
Matt Little: it being the kit and he's completely correct yeah and and you should especially
Matt Little: not so much in the isolation work but especially like when you validate or even
Matt Little: in like a lot of the combination work it should be kind of that mental stress
Matt Little: of I want this to be as close to perfect to run as I can make it.
Matt Little: And there's consequences if I don't.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Yeah, that's good. Hello, guys, says Matt on Facebook.
Riley Bowman: Hello, Matt. Thanks for a fellow Matt.
Riley Bowman: And then a comment here from Project 1868. Just about every shooting catchphrase
Riley Bowman: can be harmful if the speaker cannot articulate the reason or history behind it.
Riley Bowman: What some non-harmful statements, what are some, I mean, I assume that's what
Riley Bowman: it should say. What are some non-harmful statements for 2026 and beyond question?
Riley Bowman: So I think this is a good opportunity to move. Let's talk about some additional
Riley Bowman: of these kind of harmful phrases, Matt.
Matt Little: Yeah. And I'd like to touch on something he brought up here,
Matt Little: if I could, if you don't mind.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Matt Little: About how just about every catchphrase can be harmful. And I think that what happens a lot,
Matt Little: is, especially like in institutional training, like military and law enforcement,
Matt Little: but then a lot of that filters down to concealed carry training,
Matt Little: you know, whether basic or advanced,
Matt Little: is we tend to be taught a certain way with certain phrases and we repeat those
Matt Little: phrases without actually understanding the intent behind it.
Matt Little: So like one of the phrases that I cannot stand is slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Matt Little: Because it doesn't even, it's logically a non-sequitur, right?
Matt Little: Like it's actually, logically speaking, it is incorrect.
Matt Little: But the intent behind it for beginners can be valid.
Matt Little: Because if somebody's spazzing out when they're brand new with a gun,
Matt Little: they're not going to be fast because their movements aren't smooth and athletic
Matt Little: yet. So they need to get that first.
Matt Little: So that is actually true. But then it becomes a limiting factor immediately after that, right?
Matt Little: If you rely on that smooth comfort zone, you'll never truly be fast.
Matt Little: So there is some truth to it for beginners, but because people don't understand
Matt Little: the intent of the phrase, it becomes a harmful phrase.
Matt Little: So I think it's a great example of what Project Agent 68 is bringing up here,
Matt Little: is that the people that use that in a harmful way, they use it that way because
Matt Little: they don't understand the original intent, I think. Yeah, absolutely.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, and slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I mean, it's gotten really just blown
Riley Bowman: out of proportion, I think, in training lingo, so to speak.
Riley Bowman: And it also gets kind of linked to that, you know, slow down and get your hits,
Riley Bowman: which you brought up, you know, a little bit ago of, well, if you're missing
Riley Bowman: all the time, well, hey, you know, like you got to go back to slowest moves,
Riley Bowman: smoothest fast, you know.
Riley Bowman: Do it at a slow pace until you can do it and you can't screw it up and then you can speed up.
Riley Bowman: And I understand, again, where people are coming from, but here's kind of my
Riley Bowman: variation of that phrase, Matt, and this has worked better for me,
Riley Bowman: is that slow can be smooth.
Riley Bowman: But also fast can be smooth too, right? Yeah.
Riley Bowman: And flow is not fast. And that's the non-sequitur part you're referring to is
Riley Bowman: like, and so just because something is slow does not necessarily,
Riley Bowman: and so you can flip this around,
Riley Bowman: just because something is slow does not necessarily mean that it is smooth or will be smooth.
Riley Bowman: So in other words, speed does not dictate quality. See, smooth is like a qualitative
Riley Bowman: statement, whereas slow or fast are speeds.
Matt Little: Objective statements, yeah.
Riley Bowman: And so speed does not dictate quality. That's basically where I'm at with it.
Riley Bowman: And then to go back to what we've been talking for about the last 10 minutes
Riley Bowman: or so, is that it's okay to live in that discomfort zone.
Riley Bowman: And sometimes pushing things faster, it will make us uncomfortable.
Riley Bowman: And it might look janky and weird and not correct.
Riley Bowman: But if you can hang out with it for a minute or a while and work through that,
Riley Bowman: then eventually you can make that become more smooth as the movements get a
Riley Bowman: little bit more refined and as you get things dialed in a little bit more and
Riley Bowman: as you find opportunities that you wouldn't have otherwise discovered to find
Riley Bowman: efficiencies because when you were going slow,
Riley Bowman: there wasn't a need to find additional efficiency because you were able to just, you know,
Riley Bowman: hey, you're going slow. So the efficiency didn't really matter anymore.
Riley Bowman: So by pushing to a new level of speed allows you or creates opportunities for
Riley Bowman: you to discover efficiencies.
Riley Bowman: And ultimately, those efficiencies might be what creates the smoothness.
Riley Bowman: So, again, this is where slow is not necessarily smooth and fast might not be
Riley Bowman: either, but neither one of those are a qualitative statement anyway.
Riley Bowman: So, focus on doing things correctly.
Riley Bowman: And then do it as fast as you can and live in that uncomfortable zone and figure it out.
Matt Little: I have so many thoughts on this one. So here's part of it, right?
Matt Little: I think that what can make your movement smooth and basically smooth for this
Matt Little: would be athletic and precise, right?
Matt Little: Like that's kind of a good analogy, a good synonym, I think,
Matt Little: for the quality that we're talking about when we talk about smooth.
Matt Little: Is not applying muscular tension the entire way through. Like think about a draw.
Matt Little: You know, at the end of a draw, you cut off all the force and let the sights
Matt Little: kind of flow into place, kind of glide into place.
Matt Little: On a wide target transition, you're going to fire pretty aggressively.
Matt Little: Your muscles, I mean, are going to fire pretty aggressively leaving the target.
Matt Little: But then by the time you get to the second target, they're going to be relaxing
Matt Little: and just kind of smoothing into place.
Matt Little: And I think that quality is an important quality for shooting.
Matt Little: Like it's one of the biggest things for shooting because otherwise I wind up
Matt Little: wasting more time correcting my sites at the end or by missing and doing a makeup shot.
Matt Little: Then I would have gained by just letting, by going fast the whole way instead
Matt Little: of letting the muscles kind of relax at the end of the movement.
Matt Little: So as a qualitative thing, I think that's the quality people are talking about
Matt Little: when they talk about smooth, right? Or should be, or should be.
Riley Bowman: That's how I think of it. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Little: I think in the past people confuse the,
Matt Little: speed on the clock with what the speed is a product of, right?
Matt Little: So I think what makes your shooting objectively fast or slow is what technique
Matt Little: you use for your sights and your trigger.
Matt Little: And choosing those techniques appropriately for the target is what gets you the accuracy.
Matt Little: And the better you are, the more you can get away with a looser,
Matt Little: faster technique on both trigger and sights because you've gotten better at shooting.
Matt Little: And I think when people think in terms of fast or slow, it invariably messes
Matt Little: me up every time I think in terms of fast or slow, like every single time.
Matt Little: I have to think about how much confirmation I need in my sights and how much
Matt Little: care I need to take with the trigger press.
Matt Little: And if I do that and maintain a good grip and a good structure,
Matt Little: a good stance, it'll all take care of itself. And the speed will be the speed
Matt Little: that I can achieve with my skill level, right? Yep.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Matt Little: If I try to make an artificial pace, either I'm going to wind up with a lot
Matt Little: of dead time because I'm going slower than I need to because I need to get my hits.
Matt Little: So I'm just kind of hanging out on the sights or hanging out on the trigger
Matt Little: because I think somehow that'll magically make me more accurate.
Matt Little: Or if I'm trying to go too fast, I'm cutting corners more than my skill level allows.
Matt Little: My visual speed isn't good enough to do it. I'm not refining my sights enough
Matt Little: for my current level of skill.
Matt Little: I'm not taking enough care on the trigger for my current level of skill.
Matt Little: And then i get all sloppy even though i'm going faster i think yep.
Riley Bowman: Yeah absolutely all valid points uh
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I had another thought there, but it has slipped off into the ether.
Riley Bowman: So, hey, here's another comment here, and I would put this in one of these potentially harmful phrases.
Riley Bowman: I don't know if it's harmful or not, but definitely like what I don't necessarily agree with.
Riley Bowman: And there's this comment here from Clark on Facebook saying,
Riley Bowman: 95% of the way you shoot is how the gun fits in your hand.
Riley Bowman: And I'm rather ambiguous to how, okay, I think we have to clarify a couple things
Riley Bowman: here, and I want to hear your thoughts for sure.
Riley Bowman: There's fitting of a gun to a hand as far as like, there's a minimum standard
Riley Bowman: that needs to be achieved, right?
Riley Bowman: Like, you need to be able to primarily get your hand wrapped around the grip.
Riley Bowman: And you need to be able to reach the trigger. Those are like the two things
Riley Bowman: that you really need, right?
Riley Bowman: So I can take a pretty large gun and put it in somebody with really small hands,
Riley Bowman: and they might have a hard time kind of wrapping their hand around that grip.
Riley Bowman: And they certainly, if that's the case, they're probably going to have a hard
Riley Bowman: time reaching the trigger, right?
Riley Bowman: So if that's a problem, if you can't comfortably, like if you can't,
Riley Bowman: I don't mean like comfortably, like as in it feels good,
Riley Bowman: but like if you can't get your hand wrapped around the grip and you can't get
Riley Bowman: your finger reaching forward far enough to where you can get good contact on the trigger
Riley Bowman: Without causing other problems like rubbing your finger on the side of the frame
Riley Bowman: or something like that because you're just barely reaching it, then that's a problem.
Riley Bowman: So assuming that's not the case, if the gun technically fits your hand,
Riley Bowman: then what most people then are referring to when they talk about gun fit, Matt, is how it feels.
Riley Bowman: Like is it ergonomic does it you know
Riley Bowman: feel right and that's where
Riley Bowman: i'm kind of like yeah i don't think it really matters
Riley Bowman: how it feels to how it actually is capable of shooting in your hand there could
Riley Bowman: be a mental block like if it doesn't feel right i'm not going to shoot good
Riley Bowman: well i i would say that's probably more up here than like the technical biomechanical
Riley Bowman: you know reasons for shooting well or not.
Riley Bowman: But I wanted to throw this quote at you too. I say it's a quote.
Riley Bowman: I actually just transcribed this from a video that Jerry Michelek filmed a few
Riley Bowman: years ago where he said, because somebody asked this question,
Riley Bowman: he said, if your pistol feels good in your hand, it's probably wrong.
Riley Bowman: You have to form yourself to it and not it to you.
Riley Bowman: That's straight from Jerry Michelek. Man, you know. So I was like,
Riley Bowman: I don't know, what are your thoughts on stuff like I hear pretty regularly in
Riley Bowman: some of the shooting communities that you got to make that gun fit your hand
Riley Bowman: because if it doesn't fit right, you're not going to shoot good.
Matt Little: You know, it's funny because I didn't know Jerry said that, but what I was going
Matt Little: to do was flip his quote around, his comment here, and say 95% of the way you
Matt Little: shoot is how your hand fits the gun.
Matt Little: And that's, that I think is the key is an example, like Angela,
Matt Little: you know, Angela, she's got a little bitty Smurfette hands. My wife,
Matt Little: she has very small hands.
Matt Little: She shoots a full size 2011 and she shoots it really well. Yeah.
Matt Little: Her hands don't even meet on the grip. Like the, the palm, the base of her palms
Matt Little: don't touch on the side of the grip.
Matt Little: And she still runs that gun really fast. She's got fast.
Matt Little: So I don't think, I think that usually what we talk about when you say how the
Matt Little: gun fits in your hand, we're talking about two different things, right?
Matt Little: We're talking about surface area for friction and we're talking about that subjective feel. Okay.
Matt Little: I don't think friction matters as much as leverage. I think friction can help,
Matt Little: but friction's the small force multiplier where leverage is the big one, right?
Matt Little: And the other thing I think is that I don't think the feel matters except for this.
Matt Little: The gun you're going to shoot the best is the one you enjoy shooting enough
Matt Little: to put the most practice on.
Matt Little: So if you love a gun and you love the way it feels in your hand,
Matt Little: you're going to practice more and shoot more. So you probably over time will
Matt Little: become better with that gun.
Matt Little: So that's not a bad thing to think, but you can get used to all kinds of grip
Matt Little: angles, all kinds of grip sizes.
Matt Little: All of those things can be trained through.
Matt Little: And people demonstrate that all the time who carry a gun for a living and have
Matt Little: to carry a particular gun.
Matt Little: You know, I had to carry Glocks for years for both jobs, for both the military and the police.
Matt Little: And I'm not a Glock fan, but I had to carry them anyway. So I shot them all
Matt Little: the time because that's what I had to do. Right.
Matt Little: And, you know, there's other examples like that all over kind of institutional firearms use. Right.
Matt Little: So you can learn to shoot any gun that's not a substandard piece of equipment
Matt Little: unless your hands are just so small. like you said, you can't reach the controls.
Riley Bowman: So we are definitely in agreement on that. And that's a great example of a phrase,
Riley Bowman: I think, that here's where I think it's potentially harmful.
Riley Bowman: And I understand, and I said something similar, too, that there is something
Riley Bowman: to be said about a gun that feels right to you, that feels like it fits your
Riley Bowman: hand, that feels like it's, like, you know, a glove, like, that fits your hand. Like, oh, yeah.
Riley Bowman: Like, there's something to be said about that making the shooting experience
Riley Bowman: more enjoyable. And therefore, you do it more.
Riley Bowman: But like you see years ago when I was just a little you know reserve cop and uh
Riley Bowman: What I started out with shooting, going through the academy with and everything,
Riley Bowman: was a SIG SP-2022, which, by the way, I think it's a fine gun.
Riley Bowman: I like it. I still like it. I think it's a fine gun.
Riley Bowman: I shot well with it. I liked it. I carried it. I shot it. It was awesome.
Riley Bowman: You know what I didn't like about it?
Riley Bowman: It was hard to find accessories for. It was hard to find holsters.
Riley Bowman: It was on a different level where it came to Glocks in terms of the amount of
Riley Bowman: aftermarket support and equipment that I could get for it.
Riley Bowman: Even just finding mags for it was more challenging.
Riley Bowman: And so I eventually switched to carrying a Glock.
Riley Bowman: And I didn't like that necessarily because I didn't really like how a Glock felt.
Riley Bowman: But I also just started putting the time. And before I knew it,
Riley Bowman: the Glock started to feel like home.
Riley Bowman: It took some time, you know, took a number of hours and hours and hours of dry
Riley Bowman: fire practice and time on the range.
Riley Bowman: But now, and I haven't, you know, I haven't carried a Glock regularly for a number of years.
Riley Bowman: But I carried it and practiced with it enough for long enough for a stretch
Riley Bowman: of probably about five years there or whatever.
Riley Bowman: That it, now when you put a Glock on my hand, it feels kind of like I'm going
Riley Bowman: home in a way. which is weird because I still don't really prefer it.
Riley Bowman: I know what it feels like, and it feels comfortable as far as I have a lot of time on that system.
Riley Bowman: So to your point, you can learn to shoot and to practice and to be effective
Riley Bowman: with just about anything.
Riley Bowman: And I think you can make anything eventually feel comfortable.
Riley Bowman: Just my take.
Matt Little: And there are nuances. Like my trigger finger placement is different on a Glock
Matt Little: than it is on a 2011. Oh, yeah, sure. Absolutely.
Matt Little: There's differences in grip. You have to kind of work through those things if
Matt Little: you're used to one platform and you go to another one.
Matt Little: But that doesn't mean you can't get every bit as good with the new platform
Matt Little: as you were with the old one or even better.
Matt Little: But I do think there is something to be said for a gun that you love to shoot.
Riley Bowman: Because you'll shoot more. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah,
Riley Bowman: I guess I didn't finish my full thought there.
Riley Bowman: The harmful part of phrases like that, though, could be that I think there's advice that is given,
Riley Bowman: especially at the gun counter, that's like, well, choose the one that feels
Riley Bowman: good to somebody that doesn't really know what is good. They don't know what's quality.
Riley Bowman: They don't know a lot of things.
Riley Bowman: And it's like, well, I'm going to end up choosing some subpar gun maybe for
Riley Bowman: whatever reason because that's what feels good to me.
Riley Bowman: No, no, no. That's not the right approach. So, anyway.
Matt Little: Well, and there's, sorry, brother. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a difference between
Matt Little: feels good when you're picking it out of a gun box at the counter and feels
Matt Little: good when you're putting 15 magazines of defensive ammo through it.
Matt Little: Like, those are two different kinds of feels good.
Riley Bowman: That's fair. That is very true. Good comment here from Brian on YouTube.
Riley Bowman: Just, I think he's reiterating some of the things we talked about.
Riley Bowman: Having compact and full-size versions of my HKs and Berettas gives me a backup
Riley Bowman: with identical manual arms for training and classes. Yep.
Riley Bowman: Yep. That sounds like a solid approach.
Riley Bowman: We have just a little bit more time left, Matt. I don't know.
Riley Bowman: Got another phrase you want to throw out into the mix here?
Riley Bowman: If not, I could definitely pull from my bag of things here.
Matt Little: Let's do one of yours first, and then I'll think of something.
Riley Bowman: Okay. All right. All right. Let's see here. I'm scrolling through.
Riley Bowman: I got a document here. Here's one.
Riley Bowman: How about the phrase like tactical shooting or defensive shooting versus competition
Riley Bowman: shooting this is not really I guess a phrase but it's sort of like the words
Riley Bowman: if you will here's my what I'm going to posit along with this is that
Riley Bowman: when someone says to me defensive shooting
Riley Bowman: now I know kind of what they mean you know uh meaning
Riley Bowman: that we're kind of we're talking shooting but in a defensive context
Riley Bowman: um as opposed to maybe a competitive one but sometimes you hear people throw
Riley Bowman: it out there like well i'm more of a defensive shooter and i'm like but what
Riley Bowman: does that really mean like what is defensive shooting as opposed to say competitive shooting isn't So
Matt Little: I've got so many thoughts on this, like so many, right?
Matt Little: So first off, shooting is shooting.
Matt Little: Like if you're talking about learning to shoot fast and accurately,
Matt Little: which both tactical or defensive shooting and competitive shooting are,
Matt Little: the physical skills are the same, like completely the same.
Riley Bowman: Right?
Matt Little: Even the movement skills are at a fundamental principle-based level the same.
Matt Little: Now, what does change, and this is kind of the flip side of this,
Matt Little: because this is one of those things where both sides are right and both sides
Matt Little: are wrong at the same time,
Matt Little: right, is that the context in which you apply your shooting skill does differ between the two.
Matt Little: So the context in which you apply everything is
Matt Little: different and that's why i think it's important no matter whether you're more
Matt Little: of a competitive shooter than a defensive shooter or vice versa to build a good
Matt Little: mental transmission where you can scale your accuracy and speed requirements
Matt Little: up and down and to not be so inoculated into one way of doing things that you
Matt Little: can't adapt to a new context,
Matt Little: because tactics get overlaid on the shooting right like the shooting is still
Matt Little: the shooting but you do change the way you address the problem based on the context.
Matt Little: Just like you change the way you address the problem on a stage compared to,
Matt Little: you know, whether it's USPSA or IDPA, right?
Matt Little: They're very similar from the outside, but you change the way you address things
Matt Little: based on the context of the rule set, right?
Matt Little: Well, the real world has a rule set too. It's a little bit different than either
Matt Little: one of those because both of those are, they're valuable games, but they are games.
Matt Little: Now, none of this is saying that the skill you're developing in competition
Matt Little: isn't incredibly valuable.
Matt Little: I'm a huge proponent of competitive shooting for soldiers, for law enforcement,
Matt Little: for concealed carriers. It's going to make you better without a doubt.
Matt Little: But sometimes people that only think about the competitive shooting also forget
Matt Little: about the fact that there is a different context.
Matt Little: So like the pace, the pace of your splits is going to be different.
Matt Little: The way you address multiple targets is going to be different.
Matt Little: The way you address vision barriers, whether they're concealment or cover in
Matt Little: the real world or whether it's a wall at a stage, are going to be different.
Matt Little: From a contextual standpoint, that doesn't mean that the techniques,
Matt Little: the physical techniques are any different because they're not.
Matt Little: You're applying them differently.
Matt Little: So, like, I think this is a case where both sides have it a bit right and both
Matt Little: sides have it a bit wrong, if that makes sense.
Riley Bowman: We end up talking past each other, you know.
Matt Little: Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, all too often, all the tactics in the world
Matt Little: won't help you if you can't hit what you're aiming at fast enough.
Matt Little: And all the shooting skill in the world won't help you if you get shot because
Matt Little: you took the wrong place and stood in the wrong position for too long and forgot
Matt Little: the bullets were coming back at you. Like, both of those things are true, right?
Matt Little: I love it when people say there's, you know, you can't miss fast enough.
Matt Little: And that's true. But you can hit too slowly, too. Yeah.
Matt Little: Right? But there is a time factor in both sets of contexts, both competitive and real world.
Matt Little: And at least in the competitive one, you know to some degree how fast you need
Matt Little: to be to have a good score or to win.
Matt Little: In the real world, that time is just totally dependent on how good the other
Matt Little: person is. And that's an unknown. You have no idea.
Matt Little: Or how behind the power curve you are times how good they are.
Matt Little: And you don't really know what that is. So you have to be as fast as you can
Matt Little: be while still being accurate enough.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Matt Little: That whole like speed is fine, but accuracy is final is kind of true and kind of not true.
Matt Little: I think the way Earp meant it is true because in the same paragraph,
Matt Little: he also says you have to go as fast as your muscles will allow.
Matt Little: So he's talking about being fast.
Matt Little: He's saying you have to be fast and accurate.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Matt Little: And I think that when you think about what an acceptable scoring zone is for
Matt Little: each context, it changes.
Matt Little: It changes from USPSA to IDPA to the real world.
Matt Little: But if you're good enough and you train with the sense of I can scale this up
Matt Little: and down in my head and address each of these different contexts differently,
Matt Little: then you're only going to get better at the real world by shooting competitively.
Matt Little: That's the only possible result, I think.
Riley Bowman: And thank you by the way because you said you would maybe bring
Riley Bowman: into the conversation uh one
Riley Bowman: more uh harmful phrase so to speak and
Riley Bowman: i think you did that with the uh fast or
Riley Bowman: speed is fine but accuracy is final uh yeah
Riley Bowman: uh which is which is perfect because that gets thrown out you
Riley Bowman: know out there quite a quite a bit about uh you
Riley Bowman: know kind of but usually usually it seems like that said by someone
Riley Bowman: who is trying to justify their lack of
Riley Bowman: skill for being you know fast or
Riley Bowman: fast enough uh because the only
Riley Bowman: thing that ultimately matters is accuracy but the i'll let you sorry but the
Riley Bowman: full quote by the way from wyatt erp is speed is fine but accuracy is final
Riley Bowman: you must learn to be slow in a hurry yes anyway and
Matt Little: And to me i think that was a way of and this
Matt Little: is something that i really meant to touch on when you're talking about how fast
Matt Little: or slow is the wrong way to look at it right that mental flow state that you
Matt Little: need to be in for your best performance whether you call it the zone or the
Matt Little: flow state our martial artists call it no mind you know zan shen everybody describes
Matt Little: it the same way and people who have been in like officer involved shootings talk about this too,
Matt Little: where everything seems timeless and you want that because that is your best performance.
Matt Little: That's when your subconscious will perform at its best.
Matt Little: But if I think about fast or slow, that pulls me right out of that.
Matt Little: I get right out of that mental state I need to be in.
Matt Little: And I think that's like one of the biggest problems with thinking slow down
Matt Little: and get your hits or speed up is that now I'm no longer, my brain is not functioning optimally.
Matt Little: I'm not letting my subconscious do its job.
Matt Little: My conscious mind is interfering with the subconscious.
Matt Little: And I think Wyatt Earp was describing the same thing. When you learn to make
Matt Little: haste slowly, what does that sound like? You're moving as fast as you can,
Matt Little: but it feels like no time is passing, which is the same thing you feel in a shooting. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. You know, earlier,
Riley Bowman: I've actually mentioned the follow up with this when you said it earlier,
Riley Bowman: but you were talking earlier instead of about being so much speed oriented,
Riley Bowman: you started describing in language process focused things like, you know,
Riley Bowman: getting my sights aligned and, you know, the appropriate sight picture,
Riley Bowman: like whatever that is based on the target.
Riley Bowman: And that was basically my thought was instead of thinking about speed,
Riley Bowman: focus on process and focus on executing that process as soon as you can, right?
Riley Bowman: But if you distill the process down to its simplest form, meaning you just execute
Riley Bowman: step by step by step by step a process, by nature that should happen in an efficient way.
Riley Bowman: It's all this other noise that you know we allow to kind of get in the way of
Riley Bowman: of completing that process in an
Riley Bowman: efficient manner if that makes sense it's kind of how i think of it yeah
Matt Little: No absolutely i think you have to stay plugged into that process.
Riley Bowman: And if you look at stage design
Matt Little: What is every stage that's difficult trying to do they're trying to put things
Matt Little: in your head to pull you out of that process things to make you think about.
Riley Bowman: That aren't normal conscious thought things you got to think about and that's
Riley Bowman: what takes us out of that that flow state
Matt Little: And to go back to my previous life, people that aren't good shooters are never good at CQB, ever,
Matt Little: because they have to consciously think about the shooting, and that interferes
Matt Little: with all the things they have to be thinking about for CQB.
Matt Little: So to be good at CQB, the footsteps part, the shooting part,
Matt Little: all those physical tasks have to be subconscious, and your conscious mind has
Matt Little: to make the big decisions.
Matt Little: We're going left at this hallway intersection. We're going right. I need to pin this door.
Matt Little: I need to fill in that gap, right? That's what your conscious mind should be
Matt Little: doing, and it can only do that if everything else is running like a background
Matt Little: program, like background software.
Matt Little: So anybody that's not good at shooting, they can't be good at CQB.
Matt Little: It's just they're thinking too much about getting their hits.
Matt Little: They're slowing down to get their hits.
Riley Bowman: Yes, yes. Great point. I'm going to throw at you one – I'm going to call it
Riley Bowman: one final question because we're about to our time mark here.
Riley Bowman: But since it came up and we were talking about defensive shooting or tactical
Riley Bowman: shooting versus competitive shooting, and I think you made some amazing points about that.
Riley Bowman: Do you feel like your efforts in competitive shooting ever created problems
Riley Bowman: for you on the tactical side?
Matt Little: Yes, but not in the way people think.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, so that's where I'd like to – can we spend just a moment and elaborate on that?
Matt Little: Yeah, definitely not in the way people think. So early on in my competition
Matt Little: career, I was really trying to get faster because I was very accurate,
Matt Little: but by competition standards, I was rather slow like most soldiers and cops are, right?
Matt Little: I wasn't super slow because I'd always kind of tried to be a fast shooter,
Matt Little: but I was fast by those standards, not by competition standards.
Matt Little: So I went through about six months where I just blazed and let the chips fall where they may.
Matt Little: But one of the things I did wrong that hurt me on the other side,
Matt Little: and thankfully I was able to realize it and rein it in before it had any bad
Matt Little: effects professionally, like before I actually made a mistake in the real situation.
Matt Little: It was causing me to be too sloppy all the time.
Matt Little: You get addicted to that speed, to that push, to that pace. So what I started
Matt Little: doing is something I still recommend to everybody now, whether they carry for
Matt Little: work or not, is you need to do some work at the end,
Matt Little: especially at the end of each training session, but definitely, definitely that.
Matt Little: But also probably for earlier on, you should probably do it at the end of each
Matt Little: drill where you push for speed.
Matt Little: Your last rep should be a no fail rep.
Matt Little: Where whatever the parameters you set for failure are, you cannot fail,
Matt Little: right? You can't have a miss. You can't have a no shoot.
Matt Little: You can't have a Delta, whatever those standards you set for yourself are and
Matt Little: make those standards apply to whether you carry concealed or whether you shoot
Matt Little: in a match, what your standards would be in a match or whether you carry a gun
Matt Little: for work, what the standards are at work.
Matt Little: Apply those standards to yourself on that last rep to reset that mental transmission
Matt Little: I talked about so that you won't do that.
Riley Bowman: I've heard you mention that before, and I like that approach of finishing up,
Riley Bowman: because I might spend, just depending on what I'm working on,
Riley Bowman: of course, but let's just say I spend a whole practice session working on a
Riley Bowman: whole bunch of Blake drills.
Riley Bowman: That has value, that has benefit, especially if I'm looking to really improve
Riley Bowman: my transition efficiency, but also is accompanied with some pretty spicy shooting.
Riley Bowman: And uh just to put the
Riley Bowman: brakes on a little bit and put on you know
Riley Bowman: some kind of shooting challenge or a drill or something like you
Riley Bowman: just said that i finish up with that requires me
Riley Bowman: to execute it perfectly uh carefully precisely whatever that is i think that's
Riley Bowman: uh i think that's good advice to walk away you know knowing that you you have
Riley Bowman: the discipline still to um do whatever you got to do.
Matt Little: Yeah. And I think that that discipline and that mental transmission,
Matt Little: they kind of go hand in hand, although they are two different attributes because
Matt Little: the discipline is what keeps you in the right gear, right? And the mental transmission
Matt Little: is what gives you the different gears.
Matt Little: I think that is maybe even more important, a skill to develop as a shooter than
Matt Little: any of the hard skills like trigger press and sight picture and all of that.
Matt Little: Because if you have the discipline, you'll shoot at your current rate of skill when you need to.
Matt Little: If you don't have the discipline, you'll push too much. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yes. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Good advice right there that's a probably pretty good place to i think wrap
Riley Bowman: this up uh i really appreciate your thoughts today matt this was fantastic we
Riley Bowman: covered a lot of ground a lot of different subjects some great comments and
Riley Bowman: questions from folks in the chat thank you for joining those of you that did
Riley Bowman: so live with us again if you're unable to catch it live
Riley Bowman: please feel free to email us your comments thoughts questions concerns whatever
Riley Bowman: to podcast at concealed carry.com matt before we uh officially wrap up and let you go though
Riley Bowman: where can people find you if they you know want to look you up online or maybe
Riley Bowman: shoot you a message on social or whatever uh what do you want to share for where people can find you so
Matt Little: On instagram and facebook it's graybeard actual on instagram it's got an underscore
Matt Little: between the two um same thing on youtube and i've got a website,
Matt Little: graybirdactual.com it's on the website you
Matt Little: can type in g-r-e-y or g-r-a-y they'll both take
Matt Little: you there i bought both urls because i knew they were
Matt Little: spelled both ways um i've got a book on amazon that i'm pretty proud of so uh
Matt Little: the way is in training on amazon yeah and that's that's probably about it you
Matt Little: can email me through my website and if you have any questions reach out to me
Matt Little: on instagram or reach out to me in an email um it may take me a day or two to
Matt Little: get back to you i'm not always the best at that. You can ask Riley, he'll back you up.
Matt Little: But I promise you that I will eventually get back to you. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Good stuff. And you've got some great resources.
Riley Bowman: You've got a great blog. You got, I mean, you write up some posts and articles
Riley Bowman: and things on your website that I think have a lot of excellent food for thought.
Riley Bowman: I mean, if you, if you just want to feast at the
Riley Bowman: table of training and shooting and fighting and warrior wisdom uh go read matt's
Riley Bowman: blog at graveyardactual.com uh also you got some excellent drills like your
Riley Bowman: three four five uh and uh your the v uh
Riley Bowman: fluid fluid be like you got some you got some
Riley Bowman: drills published on your site that are that are awesome that people
Riley Bowman: can you know put put to practice and do different things with um
Riley Bowman: and yeah and you're not doing a really uh open enrollment classes these days
Riley Bowman: but uh but you you've just put out some great content oh you have your own you
Riley Bowman: know podcast you you do uh i think about once a week you you have yeah once
Riley Bowman: a week interviews on your youtube channel the
Matt Little: Ways in Training also is the name of the podcast. It's on my YouTube channel
Matt Little: and it's also on all the podcast feeds.
Matt Little: So if you subscribe to any podcast, not fast or slow, podcast.
Matt Little: If you subscribe to any podcast feed, it's on there as well. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: There you go. I'm glad I remembered that because you failed to plug it yourself.
Matt Little: So I'm not a good businessman. I'm really not.
Riley Bowman: I'm just not. So folks, check him out.
Riley Bowman: I think you'll enjoy. He has some awesome guests and topics discussed on his podcast as well.
Riley Bowman: Well, before we wrap up, a reminder that today's episode is made possible by
Riley Bowman: your support of our newly redesigned, reworked, reengineered video library on
Riley Bowman: our website, which you can find at concealedcarry.com forward slash videos.
Riley Bowman: Guardian University is a great repository of video content, lots of training
Riley Bowman: content, lots of informational content.
Riley Bowman: And then also the Guardian Nation membership, which comes with a lot of benefits.
Riley Bowman: It's one of the biggest ones being the full and complete access to Guardian
Riley Bowman: University and all of our training videos.
Riley Bowman: I mean, we've got full-fledged feature-length training videos.
Riley Bowman: Well, one of the more recent ones that comes to mind is Red Dot course that
Riley Bowman: we filmed last year and is up there and has a lot of great information and wisdom
Riley Bowman: for you if you're just looking to transition or get better at using an optic on a pistol.
Riley Bowman: We've got another great one coming here very soon. And we're actively working
Riley Bowman: through the editing on that.
Riley Bowman: So look forward to look for more information on that here soon.
Riley Bowman: But those are sponsors. And with your support, we're able to continue doing
Riley Bowman: this and continue having awesome guests like Matt on the podcast.
Matt Little: So go ahead. Thanks for having me, Riley. It's always a good conversation.
Riley Bowman: I enjoy these. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. I'm sure we'll do it again.
Riley Bowman: So until next time, though, a reminder to train right, train often,
Riley Bowman: and train safe so you can fight hard, fight fast, and fight true. Take care.
Riley Bowman: A reminder that laws vary from place to place, and we encourage listeners to
Riley Bowman: seek local legal advice to understand applicable laws.
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, Inc., its brands and properties, and the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: is not a legal service, nor are we attorneys at law.
Riley Bowman: We make our best faith effort to share Concealed Carry-related insights and
Riley Bowman: information about firearm-related incidents and the laws pertaining,
Riley Bowman: based on our own understanding and experience.
Riley Bowman: But things can be different where you live, or laws may have changed by the
Riley Bowman: time you listen to this. We cannot be held liable for your actions based on
Riley Bowman: the information shared in this podcast.
Riley Bowman: Please exercise care with all things pertaining to firearm use,
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, and always practice following basic firearm safety rules.
Riley Bowman: More information about safety can be found at concealedcarry.com forward slash safety. Thank you.