I have a quick teaching tip for all of you who are instructing firearms or combatives classes. Last week I wrote about a relationship workshop that a friend and I took together. About half of the class consisted of drills where we students were paired up with each other as partners to practice the […]
A friend and fellow firearms instructor asked me an interesting question a few weeks ago. I thought that my answer would have a broad appeal for the instructors who read my articles. Here is the question, with some details redacted/edited to preserve anonymity: “Hey Greg, I have an instructor question that I would […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Daniel Coyle author of The Talent Code reported the results of a study that yielded incredible results. In the study, a single phrase improved teaching outcomes between 40% and 320% depending on the group studied. If you are a coach, trainer, or educator you must understand these concepts. What […]
There are more competent firearms instructors teaching quality classes than ever before in human history. None of us has a corner on the market. Just like I’ve trained with dozens of top instructors over the years, my students will also train with other teachers. That’s a good thing. In my view, steering […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz If you’ve been teaching for any time at all, you will have undoubtedly had a frustrated student who has uttered the phrase “I can’t do it.” How do you deal with this problem? The first thing to recognize is that the “I can’t” response comes from the emotional brain. […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz I’ve known for a long time that the words we use when coaching a shooting student can affect how quickly that student grasps a certain concept. One important concept I’ve used over the years is to express all of my coaching cues as positive statements. If you […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz It’s common that instructors will occasionally have frustrated students who “aren’t getting it.” The students may actually even be proceeding at a normal rate, but feel bad because other students are performing better. Most instructors find it’s hard to help a student in this situation. The student’s frustration creates a continuing […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz “Simply put, the human brain can only consume about three ‘chunks’ of information in short term, or working, memory. As more and more items are added to a list, the average person retains less and less. Four items are a bit harder to remember than three. Five items are even harder. […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz I was recently reading an article called The Coach’s Cue – Breaking the OODA Loop. It was an excellent read for me because it combined two passions, combative strategy and strength training. In the article, the author speaks about the importance of simple, one-word, vocal performance cues. He was speaking […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz Dan Ariely’s book The Upside of Irrationality is a book about making rational and irrational decisions. Books like these are a goldmine of information for firearms and combatives trainers. We regularly see people making irrational decisions in the context of self defense. It’s nice to figure out why they are doing […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz At the Rangemaster Tactical Conference last month, quite a few of my fellow instructors and I had some in depth conversations about the topic of teaching. The general consensus we came to was that there is an endless variety of information available concerning the relative merits of every tactic and […]
Written by Greg Ellifritz A couple weeks I wrote an article encouraging instructors to do shooting demonstrations in front of their classes. I think the best learning for the student occurs after he or she actually has a visual model of the drill the instructor is asking the student to perform. Visual models created […]
Written by: Greg Ellifritz If you are a shooting instructor, do you demonstrate your shooting drills in front of your class? I strongly believe that you should. If you disagree, you might want to check out an article I recently read: Six Things You Should Know About How Your Brain Learns The […]
