Distance learning for bodyguards, or learning sex from books

People ask us with alarming regularity whether we run distance bodyguard training courses.

The obvious answer is, of course, no. But after answering that way for the fourteenth time or so, you start to doubt your own position: the demand is clearly there, people want it.

Looking back at our teaching and bodyguard training experience, it became clear that lecture material, the theory, can perfectly well be moved to a distance format. That includes a large tactical block, psychology and communication, surveillance and counter-surveillance, medicine. Many, many hours of video.

But theory of that kind, however valuable, will not be absorbed away from practice. Knowing is not being able.

​And, by the way, what useful things can you do with a weapon besides shooting?

Take the piece of counter-surveillance knowledge that you should pay attention to footwear. Can we say a student will actually apply it if the skill is never drilled in regular tactical training?​

The student has to see and understand, and then perform and feel the action many times over, in different states, contexts and circumstances, before we can say the knowledge and the skill are anywhere near set.

The theoretical knowledge that you should strike the chin will not help an “expert” who cannot deliver a strike. Or how about an intravenous injection?

So-called vicarious learning, a term introduced by the Canadian-American psychologist Albert Bandura, means learning through observation. An important aspect of the process, according to Bandura, is that the model must be available for contact; then the chance of copying the actions successfully goes up. Obviously, in distance close protection training that condition is only partly met.

The next thing that keeps distance learning from being an effective way of training bodyguards is the absence of immediate feedback. The instructor will not see, and therefore will not correct, the student’s actions at the right moment, in the right measure and in the words that particular student needs. And until technology learns to digitise moving objects quickly, precisely and at scale, interactive remote two-way work stays a dream.

And the final nail in the coffin of distance close protection training is krav maga for bodyguards. Yes, you can memorise some movements, but without a partner giving a realistic attack the skill cannot be mastered in full. Video on the subject helps only when the student already has the basics and wants to check himself against the reference.

In short.
Distance bodyguard training has a right to exist, but not as the first phase. First you have to lay the foundation, and only then add properly packaged information on top, where the delivery channel no longer matters.

And in general, there is no better theory than good practice.