The Combat Mindset

Below you will find a transcript from my live presentation of The Combat Mindset! This information is crucial to your mental ability to WIN a lethal encounter.

This transcript follows the lecture transcript to the Color Code of Mental Awareness that I shared with you a couple of days ago.

Warning: If you have not yet read the Color Code transcript (reports #8 and #9), then DO NOT read The Combat Mindset yet. Instead, go back and read the Color Code Reports #8 and #9 first as they lay the foundation for the following Combat Mindset transcript.

I’m serious about this. Please. These are life-changing, thought provoking lectures and need to be read in the proper order to allow full assimilation of the concepts and philosophies.

My goal is for you to adopt the Color Code of Mental Awareness and the Combat Mindset as your own, so even if you are never able to attend a course with us at Front Sight, at least you will be less likely to be picked as a victim of a violent criminal.

So please read them in the proper order. Then read them again. And then share them with your family and friends so they too understand and adopt them as their own. You all will be safer and more confident as a result.

(At the end of this report, I have arranged for a former US Assemblyman — now a Senator running for Governor — to share his Front Sight experience with you.)

The Combat Mindset picks up at the point where your opponent trips your mental trigger and mentally move from Condition Red to Condition Black.

Begin Transcript:

The Color Code of Mental Awareness

Part 3 of 3

Condition Black is that point when your opponent trips your mental trigger and crosses your mental line in the sand. I’m going to talk about Condition Black in terms of a gunfight, but it can be applied to any type of lethal encounter.

At the point your opponent trips that mental trigger, at the point where he crosses the line in the sand, you ramp into Condition Black and this is where the Combat Mindset comes into play.

Simply stated, The Combat Mindset is the ability to block everything else out and focus on the one thing that’s going to get you through that gunfight. Now what is the One Thing that you should be focusing on in a gunfight? The front sight! It’s so important we named the school after it!

Why the front sight? Because that’s where the bullet is going! The best cover in a gunfight is behind the two bullets traveling down range — right at your opponent. The best cover in the world is behind a controlled pair of center-of-mass hits.

Focus on that front sight. That’s where the bullet is going.

If you can focus on two things in a gunfight, then first focus to see that front sight and the second is to tell yourself to prreessssss that trigger. Prrreessss the trigger. Don’t yank it. Don’t mash it. Prreesssss it for a surprise trigger break.

If you put that front sight on your opponent’s chest, then you’ve got 90% of the battle won right there. If you can tell yourself to prreesssss the trigger and you get a surprise break, then where your sights are is exactly where the bullets are going to hit!

I will tell you that in a gunfight you may be a little excited. You may press that trigger a little harder than you do in training. Remember, you are going to be about HALF as good in a real gunfight as you are on your best day on the range, simply from the stress of a lethal encounter. Your trigger control may suffer a bit. What’s going to happen to the point of impact of a bullet if you are a little heavy on the trigger? It’s going to hit a little lower at conversational distances — gun fighting distances; still a good hit. And of course you’re going to be firing two rounds. That’s the standard response, so you’ve got twice the chance of getting a good chest cavity hit.

But if you don’t see the front sight, where is that bullet going to go? Where is it going to go? You have no idea! None. Zero. That is the importance of seeing the front sight. A flash sight picture guarantees that the bullet is going to be somewhere in the chest area — if you don’t see the front sight, then all bets are off.

How is it that people miss at these conversational distances? It happens all the time. All the time! When they put cameras in the patrol cars — the highway patrol cars — so many amazing things were seen across the hoods of these cars. Officer and bad guy engaged in a gunfight, firing back and forth. Emptying guns, nobody is getting hit or the hits are just peripheral. How can that happen?

How can somebody be shot by four different people in the confines of a hotel room with nearly fifty rounds fired, and less than 20% of the shots fired hit, and most of the hits are non-vital area hits? How can that happen?

It happens because they’re not looking at their front sights!

The natural tendency is to look at your opponent or to look at his gun with both eyes open (eyes as big as saucers) and yank that trigger as fast as you can. That’s the natural thing to do. And when that occurs, guess where those rounds go? Low and Left, or Low and Right, depending on the shooter’s dominant hand. So people unload guns at each other and don’t get hit.

What’s the national hit ratio for law enforcement shootings?

Very, very low. It’s less than 20%.

Depending on the sources it ranges from 12 to 17%. That’s the national law enforcement hit ratio. That means out of 100 rounds fired, only 12 to 17 actually hit! That’s not 12 to 17 center hits. No. That’s a hit anywhere. And most of those are down below the waist or peripheral hits in the legs and arms.

Why? Because most officers have NOT adopted as their own the information we are sharing with you today.

Don’t think for a second that you’ll be any better unless you adopt this Color Code of Mental Awareness and the Combat Mindset as your own and practice it every day.

The good news is that if you do practice, you will fall in with those special officers and private citizens that collectively have 85-90% hit ratios. What is the difference? They have adopted the Color Code of Mental Awareness and Combat Mindset as their own and they practice it regularly.

So how do you practice the Color Code of Mental Awareness and the Combat Mindset?

Well, the first thing you must do is be able to visualize it. You must be able to see it in your mind’s eye. If you can’t see it in your mind’s eye and can’t visualize it, don’t expect your body to do it. Visualize the different scenarios that you could be in. If you’re in law enforcement, then there are thousands of them. If you are a business owner, then there are hundreds of them. Homeowners, college students, vacationers, you name it, there are hundreds of potential life-threatening scenarios that you can visualize.

Create a scenario. What can happen to you? Pick up the scenario in your mind’s eye while in Condition Yellow. Mentally ramp up to Orange. Allow the Scenario to be a real threat and move mentally into Condition Red. Set the mental trigger, draw a mental line in the sand. In the visualization allow your opponent to trip the mental trigger you set, and then move into Condition Black. Then see in your mind’s eye picking up that front sight, focusing on it and telling yourself Prreesssss the trigger.

If you do this enough, you’ll begin to dream about it from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with that. If in your dreams you see the front sight and you tell yourself prreessss that trigger, you’re there! You’ve driven this training into your subconscious to the point where when the chips are down, it will all come back to you.

So once this is ingrained, then you have to practice it physically. You have to fine tune those muscles and those nerves to where they’ll quickly perform everything your brain is telling them to do. How do you do that?

Dry practice with your weapon. It’s cheap. You can do it in your home. It’s doesn’t cost you a dime. Fifteen to twenty minutes every day. Fifteen to twenty minutes every other day. Fifteen to twenty minutes every third day. Whatever it is, you’ll be amazed at the improvement in your skill with nothing more than dry practicing the gun handling and marksmanship techniques you learned here this weekend.

(Have you ordered your dry practice manual yet? If not, for your last chance at free shipping, click on: Dry Practice Manual)

The lens in your eye that allows you to focus on the front sight is shaped and moved by muscles and those muscles are controlled by nerves from the brain. You must exercise those muscles and ingrain the neurological pathways.

Pressing that trigger smoothly to the rear without disrupting the sight alignment is a coordinated effort between the muscles, nerves and brain. You must practice to ingrain these neuromuscular pathways as well.

The more you dry practice the better you get. And conversely, what you don’t use you lose, so you need to practice regularly.

You also need to put yourself under some stress to test yourself. How do you do that? Well this is a commercial for our Advanced Tactical Handgun Course and Tactical Scenarios Course. We’ll put you under stress. We’ll put you in tactical scenarios — live-fire scenarios. And when you get up into our highest level courses, you’ll actually go up against our instructors and other students with real guns that shoot a paint bullet.

There are some very interesting things that happen in those simulators. But one thing for sure, you’ll find out how important it is that you see that front sight. Because by the end of the course, you will be winning those simulated gun fights when you see your front sight and losing those simulated guns fights when you don’t focus on the front sight.

Another way to put yourself under some stress is to participate in shooting competitions. We recommend the type of shooting competition that we provide in our Four Day Defensive Handgun Course. It is very simple, but most effective. You simply stand next to another shooter on the firing line. You each have an identical situation to deal with. Usually a hostage taker at about 7 yards that requires a precision head shot and a couple of bad guy steel targets at 15 and 25 yards. At the sound of the whistle, the race is to see who is the fastest at presenting their weapon from the holster, picking up the front sight, focusing on it, and pressing the trigger straight to the rear without disrupting the sight alignment to place a precision head shot on the hostage taker and drop the two other steel targets.

Isn’t that what occurs in a gun fight? Isn’t that the bottom line? He who HITS first and most in a gunfight wins (emphasis on HITS).

Quite often the winner of the shoot-off is not the fastest out of the holster. Quite often it is not the most accurate shooter in the class. Quite often it is not the police officer or soldier. It is quite often the person who can control his mind to focus on that front sight and tell himself prreessss that trigger when shots are being fired around him and time is of the essence!

It is the person with the Combat Mindset who wins.

So it’s really up to you. Where do you want to be should you be forced to use your weapon to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones? Do you want to be in the 12 to 17% hit ratio group? Or the 85 to 90% hit ratio group? The choice is yours. It is totally in your control.

Visualize the Color Code of Mental Awareness and Combat Mindset and adopt it as your own. Then dry practice regularly and you too will be in that 85-90% hit ratio should you ever be in a situation where you have no other choice but to defend your life or the lives of your loved ones.

There’s one other thing I need to tell you about
The Combat Mindset.

The Combat Mindset also states that you must be willing to show absolutely no regard for your opponent’s well being. And that’s difficult for us to do. It’s difficult for us to do because we’re not internally wired to hurt people. It takes a definite mental effort to do it. And I’ll prove this to you.

How many of you would feel some physical discomfort, meaning your stomach would churn to think about biting your opponent’s nose clean off his face? Biting right through it and spitting it out! If you really think about it, if you put yourself in that scenario, it turns your stomach a little bit.

How about this — driving your thumb through your opponent’s eye socket as deep as you can to try to shut him down?

How about breaking an opponent’s finger, then another and then another, because that’s all you’ve got to hold on to and that’s all you can do?

We do not normally think such terrible things, do we? It’s not something that we would do unless we absolutely, positively had no other choice. Well, it is something that you need to think about. Why? Because the people who are out there preying on good folks like you have no problem doing these things. And when we catch them and we put them in jails, they do this stuff to each other, don’t they? Ask anybody who works in a prison. You’ll hear some of the most hideous stories. Things that will turn your stomach. Things that criminals do to each other.

When they are released from prison, they are the same person (or worse) that assaulted, raped, or murdered before, but now they are out on the street coming in contact with you and your family.

For the first time in America’s history, one out of every 32 adults is either in prison, jail, on parole or probation. One out of every 32 adults!

It is not a question of IF you and your family will come into contact with them, it is a question of WHEN. That’s who is out there. And when it comes time to deal with criminals like this, you have to be willing to show absolutely no regard for their well being, because they’re not going to show any regard for yours. If you cut them any slack, if you give them any rope, they will turn it around and hang you with it.

How many of you have seen the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales? If you haven’t seen it you should rent it. It’s a great western. The reason it’s a great western for you to watch is because it is full of the Combat Mindset. Lots of great one-liners and scenes that bring the Combat Mindset home for you when you watch it.

There’s one scene in The Outlaw Josey Wales that I always share with the group at this point in the lecture. Realize that Josey Wales, played by Clint Eastwood, is really not an outlaw. He’s a good man (who is great with a gun) that is being chased by some unethical men under very bad circumstances. Along the way, he saves a number decent folks from all sorts of predicaments, usually employing his skills with firearms against numerous opponents. As a result, the people he saves cling to him out of thanks and their own need to survive. At one point, Josey Wales and his eclectic band of greenhorns — they are not warriors by any means — end up in a cabin preparing to be attacked by the Indians. They’re fortifying the cabin doors and windows and he’s showing the women folk how to load the rifles, where to stand, and what places to protect from entry. There is a fire in the fireplace with an iron poker glowing red.

These decent folks are scared — really scared. So Josey stops them in their preparations and he says to them, When the fightin’ starts, and things look bad, and it looks like you’re not going to make it, you gotta get mean. I mean plum mad dog mean. ’Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you’ll neither win nor live. That’s just the way it is …

What’s he saying there? He’s telling them about the Combat Mindset. He’s telling them that no matter what happens, you have to take the fight to your opponent with absolutely no regard for his or her well-being. You gotta get plum mad dog mean. And he says one other thing. He says, If anyone gets hit, sing out and we’ll slap a hot iron to it … What’s he telling them there?

He’s telling them, they’re going to get hit! That doesn’t mean you lose, it just means the fight started. Slap a hot iron to it (to cauterize the wound) and get back into the fight. And we’ll tell you the same thing. Don’t think for one second that if you’re involved in a gunfight, that you’re not going to get hit. Chances are you’re going to get hit! That doesn’t mean you lose, it doesn’t mean you die. It just means the fight started.

People get hit in gunfights all the time and do not die. The question is, did they win?

How do you explain a person that takes a major caliber hit in a vital area, yet finishes the fight and wins? When the ambulance arrives, he goes into cardiac arrest but the paramedics revive him! When placed on the operating table, he again goes into cardiac arrest but the doctors revive him! He recovers to live and fight another day.

How do you explain when another person takes a sub caliber hit in a non-vital area, goes into shock, then dies and cannot be revived. How do you explain the difference? Some say it is the will to live, the survival instinct or any number of similar names. We say it is the Combat Mindset!

Remember, we said on the first day that you need to be able to look in the mirror and say to yourself and believe it, Today could be the day I use this weapon to defend my life and the lives of my loved ones. And we also said, If you can’t say it and believe it, you’re fooling yourselves.

Well we would suggest you take it one step further, as do many of our instructors — who carry guns for a living day in and day out. They say, Today could be the day that I use this weapon to defend my life and the lives of loved ones. And today could be the day I take a round in doing so, but I will WIN! If you’re that person, you have the Combat Mindset; you are the very dedicated opponent.You are your opponent’s worst nightmare. You’re somebody who’s trained, who’s ready, who’s willing, and who’s able to win!

Let’s head out to the range … End of Transcript

I hope you have enjoyed reading the transcript of my Combat Mindset Lecture. If you adopt The Combat Mindset as your own and take a course at Front Sight, then should you ever be faced with using a gun to defend your life or the lives of your loved one, you too will win! I am sure of it. In fact, Front Sight will more than satisfy your expectations or I will pay for your training. You have my personal guarantee.

But again, don’t take my word for it. To watch a U.S. Assemblyman (now Senator who is running for Governor) tell you what he thinks about Front Sight, click on: A Senator Who Wants You Gun Trained!

Tomorrow, Watch for Bonus Report #11 from me, where I will lighten things up with a handful of Quotes, Catchy Phrases, Sage Thoughts — and some questions from students that made me go Huh?

Feel free to share this report with your family and friends. For them to receive their own reports, our brochure, and 90-minute award-winning DVD, then please direct them to: Front Sight

I look forward to seeing you at Front Sight!

Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Front Sight Founder and Director
Four-Weapons Combat Master
Your host of Front Sight Challenge Reality TV Series

P.S. I know I promised 10 Special Gun Training Reports plus 5 Bonus Reports. Tomorrow you will get your first Bonus Report. I have a few bonus reports, after tomorrow’s report, which will save you a ton of money on your first course and allow you to bring your family and friends with you to Front Sight. So hold off on purchasing any courses or memberships from us until you get the bonus reports. We want to build a relationship with you that lasts a lifetime and we want to train all your family and friends as well, so a few more days won’t make a difference over our lifetimes together and it will save you a ton of money. …

P.P.S. With that in mind, you should have ordered our Dry Practice Manual by now. If you have not, this is the last time I can offer free shipping so order it today by clicking on: Dry Practice Manual now.

E-mail Dr. Piazza. I’m always happy to hear from you, so please email me after you’ve read this gun training report to confirm you are receiving my reports, and to tell me what you think about the reports so far.

If you missed the link above to watch a former US Assemblyman (he is now a Senator running for Governor) tell you what he thinks about Front Sight click on: A Senator Who Wants You Gun Trained!