trident fitness

Navy SEAL Rich Graham didn’t take too kindly to us making fun of his youtube training video in my last post The Fog Of Derp – Shooting Under Stress.

You can view the video below, and click on the link above to see the comments that were made about it:

For those that are not subscribed to the comments on that post, here’s what he wrote tonight:

OK, OK, you guys can put your stones back into your old testament! I am Rich Graham, and I instructed the course every one is ripping apart. I’m not going writing back to engage in a pissing match, but I do want to clarify a few things. After reading all of your comments and watching from your point of view, I can see how what I was teaching these guys could be misinterpreted. It is very difficult to take and entire course and put it into a 1min-6min promo video, that is exciting to watch, but informative at the same time. There is just to much info and the guys in the course don’t want to see a video of me just talking, they want to see clips of them doing the drills.

So, lets start from the top. Yes, I was a SEAL, class 236, and I did have an honorable discharge for those suggesting otherwise. In the beginning of the video I was talking about thought process that is proactive instead of reactive. Is it easier to block punches or throw them? Same concept.
The drills on muzzle discipline were the first drills of the day, done with no ammo on the range, all magazines in your bags, slide locked to the rear(if you look closely) and group buddy checks from everyone in the group, every time a new student was up. I would not do this drill with live ammo!

I’m glad everyone liked my break dancing, I thought I did it pretty good! Ha ha! Again this is out of context. I was demonstrating soft vs. rigid shooting stances. A shooter needs to be able to get bumped, bounced, tripped, etc. and be able to maintain his muzzle on the target at all times even as his body moves and changes under him. Think about it. A tank can lock onto a target and change directions, go over hills and bumps but the barrel stays locked onto the target at all times. This was not just break dancing to look cool on you tube I was teaching a very important lesson on gun control.

As for the stress courses that some guys find unrealistic, I don’t know what to say there. Just a difference in training opinions I guess. I train Law Enforcement, Contractors, and civilians also. Needless to say if you where a Cop and you chased a guy two blocks, climbed three fences, at night in the dark and it came to an end breathing heavy in a hostage situation… that is NOT the first time to shoot tired, stressed, and under pressure. So lifting weights, running, crawling, multiple targets, etc. is how I try to put it together. One person asked “why would you crawl or who crawls in a gun fight” seriously? If you have not trained shooting from the prone position with a pistol your wrong. How many people carry concealed rifles? If you always have a pistol and you run into a situation and bullets are flying and you don’t know where they are coming form your may want to get down!

With the spray paint, some of the guys got carried away at lunch. The course is serious but we like to have fun also. I am not hazing or running a militia by any means. We got rained on half way through the day so a few guys took there shirts off because every one was soaked. And the best for last the combat roll… I don’t teach that ha ha one of the guys asked about it and if he could try it. I don’t do that, some teach it in Systema, etc. but he did perform it safely so….  Yah I know maybe I should have left that out.

This response is becoming to long, I know you guys just brought up a lot of questions about my video. If you really want to know what the course was like or what people thought of it you could have, or can just go to my website tridentfitness.net and read the testimonials from the course. I have had over 30 SWAT Team operators from NJ, PA, DE, and MD tell me that this course was the best pistol training that they had received so that is why I am not taking offense to these remarks on your site. I truly believe if you had attended the course and had been taught the thought process and reasoning behind the drills you would view this video differently.

He also was butthurt enough to email me this:

Mike-I posted a reply to the less than respectful comments about my video.
In the future you may want to do a little more homework before throwing
someone under the bus like that. I don’t know who the bloggers are or who
you are for that matter thats why I am not going to run my mouth or make
false statements about your club or your site. If you want to know more
about how and why I train the way I do all you had to do was ask.

Rich Graham

To which I responded to with this:

Rich,

My goal wasn’t to throw you (or any of the guys in the other vids I’ve made fun of) under the bus.  The videos speak for themselves.   I could have just put “presented without comment” under your video, and everyone would have pointed out the same things I did, in the comments section anyway.

I’m no one important, and I’ve never operated in any operations.  I’m just a regular guy that happens to blog about stuff that amuses me, in an attempt to keep myself and the several hundred thousand people that stop buy the site every month entertained.

All the best,

-Mike

His comments about the legitimacy of the training exercises was predictable.  We have seen similar justification from other guys who’s vids I’ve made fun of.   I guess it’s one of those things I’ll never really understand because I’m not an operator.

Are you guys convinced by his response? Or are you still leaning more towards Derp?

UPDATE: see the Rich Graham – Tactical Internet Fail post after this one for some extra laughs

39 COMMENTS

I hope I never run out of videos like this:

This video has it all!  Tactical break dancing, tactical muzzle control on a crowded street simulation, tactical beam overturning!  

– I don’t lift heavy beams on the reg, but i’m pretty sure the deflating tire “pssssssssssssssssssshhhhtttt” sound isn’t necessary.  They are all doing it though.

– What’s with the spray painting of the guys back at 3:53?  Some sort of hazing?  haha that would be a pain to remove.

– Forward roll at 4:54!  OH NO HE DIDN’T! ahahha

The training school is called Trident Fitness, you can check out their website – HERE

According to the about page, the instructor (Rick Graham) is a former Navy Seal. *shrug* who knows… I’m pretty sure he didn’t learn a lot of this stuff during his SEAL training.

I’ll never be that high speed low drag. :(  Save the video quick guys, these things have a bad habit of disappearing once we make fun of them.

What are your thoughts?

60 COMMENTS