How does training help you keep functioning under fire?

Derrick McManus, former STAR Group officer and founder of Human Durability, speaking with podcast host Aleksandra King on The BEYOND Podcast. Derrick McManus says deep training let him carry on with the job while a passing thought ran, and that the gunman only stopped when Derrick McManus fired back.

Lying shot on the ground, McManus found odd thoughts arriving, including a worry about shooting himself in the foot. He comes back to the point deliberately, because it is the one he wants understood. The thoughts were possible precisely because the training had let him anticipate what the job would put in front of him.

His next shot, as he describes it, struck the wall beside the gunman's head, missed by millimetres and sent a little shrapnel into him. That near miss, fired at a sound, is the trained response at work while the thought about his colleagues ran.