MVT Tactical Training: Perspective
I’m going to put some thoughts down related to the tactical training we offer at MVT. This has come about because I have begun to think that some out there are starting to get the impression that we are teaching something a little too ‘extreme’ (as in extreme sports, not extremism!) Perhaps something a little too hard, or a little too ‘military,’ or not needed for what most ‘preppers’ think will be necessary should a collapse some about.
Well, I’ll start by saying that I am very proud of where we are as a training school. We have taken combat proven tactics, gained via a wealth of training and experience among the cadre, and translated them to a civilian use. We teach a mix of ‘old school’ and current proven methods to give you what we believe you need, not what an FM-reading armchair commando thinks you need.
And this is where we need to put it all into perspective. I originally started down this training path by preparing for uncertain times myself. That led me to decide to pass on some of my own training and experience by writing the manual ‘Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post-Collapse Survival.‘ The existence of the book inevitably led to requests for training. Faced with that, I decided that I wanted to be able to bring the training the right way, how I wanted it to be delivered, at a high quality level, so I purchased 100 acres of land in West Virginia and ran the first class back in May 2013. In over 2 years the school has evolved, grown and improved, with great changes to the ranges and class offerings. At some point during this period, I decided to give up my day job and make a go of it full time, in order to make the school available to those who want to train.
From the start, the mission in my mind was always along the lines of providing information and training ‘in order to keep the good folks alive.’ However, the offerings at MVT are a little different from the normal, and some who only know ‘tacticool’ training needed to get their heads around this. This is real live fire combat training tailored to the needs of a civilian audience and designed for potential uncertain times ahead.
Of course, with what I do, MVT was picked up by various websites and publicized, which helped get the word out, but it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, or with the associations that I wanted. Why? Because this training is aimed at what you may need to keep yourself and your loved ones alive in future uncertain times. It is not political, or religious, or about anarchy or civil disorder. It’s not about ‘revolution’ or ‘anarchy.’ It is about ‘keeping the good folks alive.’ Yes, I am about Liberty and such, and I have posted about this. Bottom line, I believe in the Constitutional Republic. The rest is just political madness on the internet as far as I am concerned. Just politics and talk.
I believe we face uncertain times. We are vulnerable to a multitude of threats. Anything that threatens the grid threatens life as we know it. War, cyber-attack, economic collapse, encroaching tyranny, social turmoil, in whatever order or relationship you wish to put them. Maybe soon, maybe in 5 or 10 years, who knows? You can read about that here:
The trouble with tactical training as offered at MVT is that many either:
1) Don’t see the need for it i.e. don’t know what they don’t know.
2) Don’t think it is the ‘right’ training because they have been sold on the necessity for only ‘tacticool’ square range training.
3) Are intimidated for a number of reasons, such as the woods, lack of fitness, fear of failure or embarrassment etc.
I mean, if we really look at this, most of this comes down to fear of an ego bruising, and the fact that our society is woefully physically unfit. Well, MVT is not there to bruise your ego, it is there to train you, and if you wish to stand a better chance of surviving a collapse, you need to be as fit as you can be.
The other side is that the ‘tacticool’ trainers have a good scam going on the American Civilian, and they don’t want that to be rumbled. It is worth too much money to them, to have you ‘driving your AR’ stood in front of targets on a square range, and occasionally doing a bit of ‘blue barrel stuff’ to make you think it is tactical training. You know, all that’pew pew’ stuff. That is mostly just weapon handling and shooting and does not progress naturally to actual tactical training. And in fact, even the weapon handling is flawed, as we see when guys get ‘out in the wild’ on the tactical ranges at MVT and it suddenly doesn’t seem so easy now, like when it was easy just stood there on the square range.
As Americans, these are not things that should turn us away from training. We need to be better than that.
This is one of the reasons that I have added the new class ‘Civilian Close Combat,’ which is a two day square range based class that covers the best practice for anyone who is concerned about having to protect their home or fight anywhere around it, such as perhaps a suburban neighborhood. It is running your rifle, fire positions, rifle to handgun transitions, cover, high threat room entry and clearance and all that good stuff. The first class is offered on July 11/12.
CLASS SCHEDULE
TRAINING CALENDAR
Civilian Close Combat can be taken by anyone who is not fully confident of going straight onto Combat Team Tactics, or who wants to bring other less confident members of their team. It is in itself a great skill builder and I recommend it for anyone seeking to remain current, even if you have already taken Combat Team Tactics. I see the close combat class as a confidence/skill builder and feeder to the more demanding classes that take place out in the woods on the tactical ranges.
At MVT we always strive for excellence in our offerings and instruction. This has led us to offer classes such as the MVT Rifleman Challenge. This is to offer those who strive for improvement and excellence a goal to work towards, both in their tactical skills and physical fitness. A challenge and a motivator. It is not to push people away with elitism, or tell anyone that they are not good enough. At MVT we strive to encourage students to improve both their tactical skills, and their physical fitness, and we allow for that and compensate for it in order to help people reach those goals. We are not creating an elite resistance force in the woods! We are offering carefully thought out training aimed at a number of skill and fitness levels in order to “keep the good folks alive.’ What I encourage is the forming of teams and communities and the ability to provide mutual support in times of crisis.
Whether or not you choose to take advantage of this training, get out of your comfort zone, and make improvements, is up to you. We can provide the water, but we can’t lead the horse to it, or make it drink! We cannot provide the fighting spirit or intestinal fortitude, we can only provide an environment suited to its growth, and encourage you towards it.
What I want you the reader, the potential student, to understand, is that coming to MVT is not to enter a maelstrom of elitism and extreme tactical/physical undertakings. We offer courses at all levels and physical ability, and only hope that once you see the need for more fitness, you pursue that course and come back for more.
A read of the student reviews will help you to understand this.
We also offer tailored tactical fitness training plans:
A little more on the ‘politics’ that we see out there on numerous Patriot/Prepper/Survivalist websites: As far as anarchy and Constitution hating goes, one thing is certain, and that is that if we do have a collapse, we will be unwittingly thrown into anarchy and chaos. Not because it is what we want, but because it will result. In that event, it will be upon us to rebuild, to build sustainable communities and attempt to return to civil society and common law.
Now, it is true that the country is in a very bad state in terms of encroaching tyranny, general craziness, and messed up ‘liberal’ thinking. The sad thing is that it is as a result to this that we may end up in a collapse. We are, after all, broke. But, keep your politics out of it. I’m not a Democrat, or a Republican, or a ‘law and order’ conservative (the enablers of tyranny), or a theocrat, or an anarchist. The sad fact is that the only way out of the current situation may be for it to collapse. It appears many on the left want it to collapse, in order to bring in their vision of communism etc. ‘Law and order’ conservatives will stand by as the left brings in more tyranny, for ‘safety.’ Many ‘prepper’ types also want it to collapse, in order to have a reset. It seems to be the only way to purge society of the loony left. After all, none of them are armed or prepped in any way, which is sort of amusing and justice all at the same time.
However, whichever side of this equation wants collapse, it is easy to plan to ride the tiger, but not so easy to actually do so. Unless you are trained and prepared, have team, have organization, have community, then who is to say you will survive? Who is to say any sort of ordered society will result? What about foreign powers watching us eat ourselves alive and then stepping into the vacuum? What about organized collective bad guys going around killing off the good guys? The anarchists among us will never organize as they wail that “you are not the boss of me”, so they will either die off or survive just because they were overlooked in the woods, but they will never help anyone rebuild. Because they are all about themselves, and extreme individualism, not about any sort of civil society.
So, just be careful about this collapse thing. It may be that a reset is the only way out of this mess, because the politicians will not fix it themselves. But if it is, in whatever form the collapse takes, and whatever form the tides of war take, what is to say that any of us will survive it?
Max