So it turns out, American Shooting Journal did an interview with Chris Sajnog; you know, author of 'How to Shoot like a Navy SEAL' and 'Navy SEAL Shooting', and founder of "Center Mass Group", -That- Chris Sajnog. I got to wondering, how much has changed in SEAL training since he started teaching?

He talks a lot about the psychology of shooting, and Psychology has definitely changed a lot in the past 20 years, or at least the way we work with it. Everywhere from the military to police and more seem to have changed the way they understand and use Psychology, from department training to handling grief and beyond.

Chris' teaching method includes correcting a problem with form after every shot until each problem with form is resolved, to make sure that muscle memory and neural pathways remember only the correct way to shoot. Sounds like a good plan to me! But it's difficult to teach a physical class that way for time's take. He says he's moving away from doing physical courses for exactly that sort of reason, but it makes me wonder, how are we training SEALs now? Are we using this method, and if so, how are we teaching it to groups? Are Webinars that teach how to learn enough for SEALs, or is that purely for civilian training?  

To the Vets and currents, how and when did you learn to shoot for your branch, and what was your training environment like? Do all branches learn in vastly different ways? How often does training change?

Chris also talks about his favorite choices in weaponry and accessories and the like, and naturally I'm interested if any of you have differing opinions on that. I imagine different branches have different needs and different choice weapons to fit those needs.

And, just as a personal curiosity, how many Vets here have also taken up meditation?

Here's the article if anyone's got an interest in seeing the whole thing and comparing-- http://americanshootingjournal.com/chris-sajnog-neural-zen-training/

You get your crash course for known distance over a week called grass week then you shoot for 3 days and quall on the 4th.

You learn more in the fleat than you do at bootcamp.  Instructors preach heavely on basic fundimentals such as breathing, sight picture, sight alignment, and so forth.

In the fleet you also learn more about combat marksmanship than you do your standard sitting kneeling standing type shooting.

In Army basic we got our M16A2's in week 1 then we spent week 2 learning to love our rifles and spending a lot of time alternating the prone unsupported with I'm up he sees me I'm down drills, dime drills, and spending a lot of time on our knees getting used to that pain. Weeks 3-6 were basic rifle marksmanship with a week learning to zero and spending time in the EST 2000. Sometime at the beginning of Weeks 7-9 we turned in our A2's and drew A4's with peq-14's (?) and began advanced rifle marksmanship where we learned night fire, reactive fire drills, bounding/buddy fire. If you're not combat arms, forget about rifle training in AIT and most pog units for that matter. The Army made it suck and not a lot of fun. I didn't really learn to shoot until I got to pre-mob and the Ft Dix SARG taught me how to get a consistent sight picture. I wish the Army would teach HOW to teach rifle marksmanship at WLC, ALC, and SLC, because there are a lot of NCO's that can't shoot or teach shooting. I'm better at shooting now but it's not the Army that has made me better.