“Truth was never meant to make you comfortable, unless you stand in the middle of it with acceptance.” ― Shannon L. Alder

The world we live in now is driven by social media, by idealized representations captured in digital video or photographs for the purpose of gathering adoration. In order to market my business, I’m forced to feed the social media machine daily myself. But video footage of our training is valuable far beyond its use on Instagram.

I routinely review video of my matches as well as my live and dry fire training sessions. This review is invaluable for informing my training. With the advent of software apps such as Coach’s Eye, detailed frame by frame video analysis can be done on your smartphone. This is just as applicable to combatives and complex fitness movements such as the Olympic lifts as it is to performance shooting. It’s extremely applicable in fact to CQB. When I run CQB training, I routinely video runs in the shoothouse for review with the students.

What are the considerations for using video for review? How to we maximize the value without becoming over-inundated with information that isn’t useful? There are a few guidelines that can help.

Immediacy matters. The sooner the video can be reviewed thoroughly the better. Not only does reviewing it as soon as possible make the feedback more effective for improving as rapidly as possible, but it keeps it relevant, as our technique grows and evolves over time.

The flip side of immediacy is that there is no need to maintain the majority of your video once it’s reviewed. It won’t be relevant in short order for any reason beyond nostalgia. From a purely practical standpoint, it also takes up a lot of data storage space, especially high resolution, longer videos, and slow-motion ones.

There is coaching value in both third and first person points of view, so it helps to obtain both. I use a smartphone or tablet on a tripod combined with video glasses. There are a myriad of alternatives available today. GoPro cameras, drones, helmet cams. Use any two of these so that you can obtain footage from both viewpoints.

The third person footage is best for showing the nuances of stance and movement. This is huge not just for shooting, but also for tactics training. When I ran the training for the Chicago SWAT team, I would routinely set up a tablet on a tripod and video room entries and hallway movements. We could then view the video immediately after the runs. This enabled me to both avoid any conflict in AARs over what actually occurred, and also do a deep dive into the nuances of individual and team movement technique.

The first person video shows you how your vision interacts with your technique. Vision drives our technique, and with this you can review exactly what you look at. It’s also effective at showing you where this breaks down, like when we pull off a target on a close fast array because we looked at the next target too soon. Or in CQB how quickly we are actually hitting our corner, not how quickly we think we are.

And if you compete as a shooter, video review of our match and training footage with a critical eye gives invaluable input for improvement. And if you compete, and train tactics as well, you’ll discover the same thing I did. The better I got at competition, the better I got at tactics. Even though they are very different, there is a huge amount of carryover from matches to be exploited in your tactical training.

So use video. Use it in an organized fashion, and with a plan. Review the footage thoroughly and critically, and you will accelerate your improvement exponentially.