 you are supposed to train like you fight. Right? Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Sibdel Defense. I'm about to go out and do some training tonight. And as I was preparing my gear to do my last-minute checks for that, I was thinking about something. I was thinking about that phrase, you know, train like you fight. Right? Which is a good phrase, has some good meaning. And I think that the way most of us tend to interpret that is bring all your stuff. Right? Well you got to train like you fight, so you have to have everything on. You know, I'm talking about like getting all kitted up and going out and going on patrol or doing some shooting or whatever. You know, what we're talking about, train like you fight. So you're going to wear all your stuff and wear it like you would really wear it and whatever. And I think for most of us, like I said, that equates to bring it all. Right? I'm going to get my chest rig. I'm going to make sure I have every mag and every one of my chest rig. I'm going to put my pack on. I'm going to make sure I have all my stuff in my pack, you know, whatever that means for you. Right? I'm going to have all my stuff because I'm training like I fight. Now, let's be clear. There is something to get used to wearing kit and wearing moving under load and wearing all the stuff because hey, you know, if you're doing this and you're practicing this, well, you might have to have all the stuff on sometimes. The other side of that coin to me is prep for the mission you're doing. Right? Train like you fight. Prep for that mission that you're trying to accomplish. What's the mission that you're trying to accomplish and prep for that? And I say that because look, if, you know, you had to step off and do something, you are only going to bring or you should only bring what you need for that mission. Everything else that you carry is dead weight. Right? That's extra fatigue on your person. It wears you out quicker. It enables you to be less ready for the fight. Your physical fitness peak should be as good as you can get it. Right? But that being said, you still want to carry as little stuff as you possibly need. And if you don't need something, you don't want to bring it. So if your chest rig can hold eight mags across the front because you got a cool, I just got the grand thumb chest rig. Right? It's a great chest rig. We'll do a video about that sometime. But it can hold eight across the front. But you're going out for a, you know, two hour property patrol. Well, do you need, do you need eight mags plus one in the gun? Right? And then another two in your pack for backup. Do you need 11 mags to just go out for a little property patrol on your, I don't know, 40, 50 acre farm or whatever? Ah, no, probably not. Right? What's the mission at hand? The mission at hand is you're going to, you're going to go walk around. Maybe it's like a mile or two and you're never more than like 800 yards from your house as the crow flies. Right? Do you need 11 mags to get back to your house? Probably not. And if you do, well, you probably got bigger problems. You're not going to make it anyway. Right? The mission at hand would say, well, you know, I only need like maybe two or three, whatever, you know, that would be the mission at hand. So when you start to do training exercises, start to think of sometimes not all the time, but rotate this in, start to think of those training missions as the mission at hand. Well, I'm going to go out and we're going to run around for six hours during the daytime and, you know, we're going to patrol in this area and then move over here and do a little bit of classroom work and then do a little bit of shooting. So for that mission at hand, what do I need? Well, you know, I'm going to need some water and a pack because we're doing the patrolling things for the first, you know, three, four hours in the morning there. And then I'm going to need a big notebook with a couple pens because we're going to sit down and do some classroom stuff in the field. So I need to take some notes. I'll need a big notebook that I'm going to stuff in my pack. And then after that, we're doing some shooting. So I need, I need four mags, three or four mags today. Right? Like that, that's the mission set. And the reason I'm telling you to do that is not so that you can carry less shit. Although, hey, that's nice. We always want to carry less shit. But because when you think through that and think through the mission at hand, it's training you to do that if you ever have to. It's training you to think through the mission as you're going to do it, the training mission that you're on or the training session or whatever you want to call it, right? This training block that you're going through of thinking that is your mission, building your kit around that mission. That's training you that if you ever have to do a real mission, you're going to look at the mission and you say, okay, well, this is what the mission is. This is what I need to accomplish it. And you're not going to turn your brain off and default to, well, just stuff everything full and go. Because if that's how we practice stuff, everything full and go, then that's what you're going to do, right? That's, well, just grab all the stuff and all those go. And now you're overburdened with stuff you don't need. You never needed. Shouldn't be in your pack anyway, but you think you do. So when we say train like you fight, what I mean is start treating the train block as a mission, not all the time, but most of the time, because sometimes you just do need to be fully kitted out and you need to practice moving under that. But train like you fight, treat that training block as the mission and pack, prepare, equip accordingly. Do brave deeds and endure.