Our love of guns may have started us on the path to becoming an instructor, but we are still running businesses! Whether this is a full-time income or a gig to fuel your passion, the goal is having full classes and students who can’t wait to return. One way to do this is to give students something that lasts longer than the class—something that they can take home and continue to get value out of.
1. Exercises
The first take-home item I’d recommend falls under the broad group of exercises. Here are some ideas for what could be covered—remember, it doesn’t have to have been the focus of the class but it should be relevant. The first two categories are obvious dry- and live-fire drills, from drilling a single fundamental to a full speed drill.
Share with them what each exercise or drill focuses on, what they should be looking for to know if they are improving or not, and how this can improve their shooting. Different training tools can help, like the MantisX Shooting Performance System, which ensures they are executing their fundamentals correctly.
Vision exercises can help us become better shooters because they can help us improve in coordination, tracking and focusing. Share firearm-related vision exercises which largely revolve around quickly shifting focus planes or tracking.
Other exercises are for optical health, to reduce eye strain and fatigue, strengthen eye muscles, and improve depth perception and coordination.
Movement exercises can be done with or without a gun, and can make large contributions to the efficiency of dynamic shooting. Learning to shoot a gun and incorporate movement is hard, so give them ways to break it down and master the movement at home.
We all want to be fast, and our reaction time contributes to that. Expose students to exercises that work their reaction time, as well as different ideas of stimulus. Apps can be a great way to train reaction time routinely. On the range, shooters are listening for the beep, but oftentimes in real-life encounters our cues are visual. Mix it up and increase reaction time overall, not a Pavlovian response. These are just a few ideas for exercises. Your students who incorporate this won’t forget that you were the one who taught them, and gave them the ability to own the skill. That’s a student for life.
2. Targets
This is an easy one! Put target forms on your website, link them in your emails, and make them part of your email signature. It is easy to create standard multi-use targets that can be printed on 8.5”x11” and add your logo, but if you really want to step it up, create a target with an associated drill and put the instructions and a standard on it. You can use these in class, and then the students can repeat that exercise exactly at home or on the range.
3. Content Recommendations
We all learned from somewhere, and sharing those resources is a great way to pay it forward. This could be any type of media and can be directly related to firearms or on an adjacent topic like personal safety or athletic and mental performance.
One of my all time favorite classes was a week long, and as soon as I found out the instructor had a few books which incorporated much of his teachings, I devoured them. I only wish I had read them before the class. Now I take as many of his classes as I can and read what he publishes … and you can do the same.
4. Standards
Shooting is a personal journey, but shooters should still be aiming for proficiency and many want to move beyond that. Improvement needs to be measured, and standards need to be met. If you created your own target, give it a standard or even a tiered one and share it with them. Go one step further and clue them in on how to measure themselves overall.
Teach them to create a benchmark drill for themselves, set a standard, and consistently pass it and set a higher one. Show them how to break it up by skill and explain the use of a shot timer and journal to gather information. It’s an easy value-add to give students the right size standards to encourage quality training and consistent improvement. After all, what gets measured gets managed.
5. An Individual Improvement Plan
Here’s an idea: Institute a quick debrief after each training block, in which each student had to say one thing that stood out to them from that block. You can then respond with an actionable tip for that student to incorporate. At the end of the class, you could distribute individual debriefs and actionable improvement plans. The basic idea is to pick out one or two things for each student that they could improve upon, then tell them how to focus in and hone that particular weakness in their skillset.
6. Preparation For The Next Class
For many instructors, class offerings are built in a progressive fashion, so why not sell the students on the full suite? During the end-of-class debrief as you go over each skill and topic covered (you are doing that, right?), connect it to the next layer up in the next class.
Let them know the skill or drill they learned today will be built upon, giving them a preview of how skills will be progressed. This gives them encouragement that they are ready for the next level, has them considering it when they are on the high of a completed class, and the sneak peek gives them a way to prepare and know what to focus on if they want to perform well.
Go one step further and give them an alumni sign up link, perhaps for a discount or swag. Better yet, connect it to that individual improvement plan, let them know you look forward to seeing their improvement, and will continue to help them strengthen that skill in the next class. Show them you're invested in their journey and will assist however you can, which leads us to our final take home idea.
7. A Direct Invitation to Contact You
Students already have your website and contact information, but adding that personal touch to let them know they can reach out for advice or help anytime they need adds that human factor. Being helpful and supportive on a new shooter's journey can earn you a repeat student and referrals.
Each class you give is an opportunity to impact someone's shooting journey. You’re already delivering the best class you can, so why not continue that with some take home material and earn a repeat customer? After all, if you help them solidify a skill or bust a plateau, they’ll never forget you.
