Mike Lamb of Stoic Ventures. Outed as not being a Recon Marine.

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Integrity matters, real world fighting experience or not. Plus, Lamb is still full of shit trying to brag about "deployments with agencies." Yeah...an intel pogue "deploying" with intel agencies almost always is not in any way, close to say, a standard infantryman's deployment. ToddG didn't lie about a damn thing regarding his resume and he was an excellent trainer whom never had a problem filling a class.

Before we head down the road of other forums, let me just drop this here, and then we can continue with whatever folks feel is necessary to make themselves feel better.

First..Mike is a friend. Is he a dumb ass on this, yes. Did he screw up, yes. Will this likely ruin his world, yes. Did he flush some of that honor a man gifts himself down the toilet, yes. Moving on.

Mike is a very good top level instructor. Mike did do some very impressive things overseas that is unique for the military side of things. I got email confirmation this morning from a high level alphabet guy confirming that Mike did some extensive, dangerous work overseas in a very sensitive arena. The guy was running the group Mike was with, and it was only one of multiples. He had never heard Mike claim to be a Force guy. By all accounts, Mike was a stellar Marine. How this Force thing came up and grew legs.....don't know. When it started, Mike was not teaching, so it likely had little to do with pure profit. I would imagine that stopping it a long time ago would have been a far more profitable thing to do. This is not a case of a guy who never went to boot camp claiming he was a war hero. If you want to lump Mike into that group...fine, but that is not the case.

If you were a Force Marine .......free fire zone. You have every right to say anything you want. It is like all the folks running around with toy badge claiming to be "cops" in this same industry. Guess what, some of us went through real hiring processes, real backgrounds, real psych evaluations, real competitive processes, real police academy's, real FTO training, real probation, and the real stuff that goes along with job.......which earns me the right to be pissed at those who didn't and claim to hold equal status. I will apply the same standard.

Okay, begin the dog pile as you find necessary.

Emphasis added by me. Source: http://www.lightfighter.net/topic/mi...39392945634909

[LittleLebowski]

Emphasis added by me. Source: http://www.lightfighter.net/topic/mi...39392945634909

My opinion remains unchanged.

[rob_s]

I'm honestly not sure what you mean. I have a lot of experience teaching people complex material. So, I tend to look first at teaching style and engagement then at curriculum. As for how would I know?

A critical self-assessment of my changing needs as a person/professional, so that I am looking for training that makes sense in my real-world setting. Seeking out training from folks who have a short catalog of fundamentals and train hard in the application of those. Ultimately, that's how you successfully teach anything, a breakdown into fundamental components, drill those components, and then combine those components for more advanced techniques. Shooting a gun isn't difficult, neither for that matter, is using a knife to stab someone. There is some nuance to it, but not a lot and mastery (or at least plenty of experience) of basic fundamentals is mostly what it takes to be successful in virtually anything. The only other component is to be able to link fundamentals together and problem solve in a dynamic way.

Good instructors will teach and drill fundamentals.
Excellent instructors will teach and drill fundamentals and show you how to link them together for more complex problem solving.

None of which answers my question.

You said "they teach good stuff".

I'm curious as to how you know what they are teaching is "good stuff"?

[Trooper224]

The really shouldn't surprise anyone. In the current training profession, the guys who have shit on their shoes in one form or another outweigh the guys who don't. Egos get involved and everyone wants to be the alphaest male in the alpha group. It seems, in order to appear credible (read that as sellable) you have to have a few tours in the sandbox, or some kind of theater with a playground attached nickname. Being a ground pounder humping an M4 isn't good enough either, you have to have served with some "force", "unit" or "team" which shall not be named but of course everyone knows about. At the very least, if you're an ex-LEO you'd better have experience with something on the minimum level of LAPDs D Platoon, 'cause ya know this is all necessary to teach people basic self defense in urban america. "Please tell me how you fast roped out of a Blackhawk by the light of the moon into Fallujah, or explain how you breached the embassy and took out terrorists with your MP5, because those are the skills I need to defend myself with my Kel-Tec during a mugging." The training environment has turned into something of a shit show where everyone with a DD214 and a Youtube presence thinks they can teach. So it's not surprising people feel the need to pad their resume, even guys with pretty extensive qualifications spin stories about gunning down Texas carjackers and what not. You know, alpha among alphas and all that. Personally, integrity matters to me more than anything and I'm not impressed by past shannanigans, so pieces of bovine excrement like Force Recon Wannabe Lamb won't get my money, but I'm hardly shocked or surprised.

[RevolverRob]

None of which answers my question.

You said "they teach good stuff".

I'm curious as to how you know what they are teaching is "good stuff"?

You want an objective measure of good?

The folks I've trained with have trained tens of thousands of people over probably a 100-years of combined training experience. The individuals who they have trained have employed those techniques (by their (the trainees) own admission) in various encounters with virtually universal success. In terms of raw numbers success rates are in the 99% range, which means even under a strict frequentist statistical setting the curricula taught have the highest statistical confidence value. - If your objective measure of "good" is, "The material taught and internalized by students results in them successfully surviving violent encounters, therefore the material is good." - Then a ~1% failure rate is by proxy also good.
___

Other techniques/approaches/etc. may (not necessarily) have lower success rates. Those which have anything lower than a comparable system would be/should be deemed objectively "bad".

I, personally, take time to investigate folks and ask for these types of numbers. By the by, this objective measure may not make Mike Lamb an objectively "bad" instructor (I've never bothered to investigate Lamb's numbers, so I don't know). A lack of honesty and integrity is a a related, but still partly separate matter from teaching good or bad material. However, the way in which someone conducts their self as a professional often shapes the way in which they think, build, and teach their curricula.

One of the best parts about the "success metric" is that it encompasses not only curriculum, but the teaching of it. If students can learn and internalize the lessons, they are better able to use them successfully. That's not "fighting science" - that's straight pedagogical effectiveness 101. It's probably the best metric for assessing "good" and "bad" that one can get. But it may not give you the most nuanced answer. It's up to the end user to determine if the material taught is relevant to their life. And unfortunately, without ground truthing it's impossible to know good from bad. Which means, at the end of the day, you may not know good from bad until your world is upside down. So, you have to have confidence that something you're learning has a high(er) chance of success than not learning anything at all.

That is a strong advantage of force-on-force working against a resisting opponent-type training. Shooting static or even moving targets isn't going to give you a sense of...failure...in a gunfight. Not, at least, like three dudes jumping on you, while you try to get a simunitions gun out and shoot them will.

I really don't have more to say on this matter. I try to be objective in my measure of "good stuff". Basing it on success rate, applicability to my own circumstances, and teaching style. I like working with folks who have successfully taught a large(r) number of people. It tends to tell you that they are good teachers AND that what they are teaching isn't completely bogus. The reality is that even in the training world, there is some "peer review" going on. Just ask any trainer what he thinks about X, Y, or Z. You'll get a biased opinion, but often one that has objectivity in its own right.

[HopetonBrown]

I'm reading that others said Mike was a Recon Marine, and he just never corrected them. This is a screen cap of his background from his website before the revelation.



And after.

[LittleLebowski]

Yup, he knowingly perpetuated the lie.

I'm reading that others said Mike was a Recon Marine, and he just never corrected them. This is a screen cap of his background from his website before the revelation.



And after.

[Shoresy]

I would say that mostly because there's no reason to. Does he have some secret sauce or teach something that nobody else does?

No?

Then why not take the class from someone that hasn't lied about their background?

Pretty much this, especially the bolded. There are times when you might have no other option but to hold your nose and deal with someone because there are no other good options. I don't see this as being one of those times.

[Chance]

Yup, he knowingly perpetuated the lie.

His Panteao videos have a similar description. I can't find him on their website. If the guy has no-shit experience, and he apparently does, he could have just said so.

I don't get it.

[LOKNLOD]

Sooooo.... from the blurb above: Stoic ventures takes its name from Stoicism and the "belief that destructive emotions cause errors in judgement".

The irony is thick enough to cut with a tomahawk.