Phoenix Fitness & Performance
2026 Firearms Training Classes
Tactical Mastery... Redefined
Hosted by:
Phoenix Fitness and Performance, Raynham MA
at:
🧭 K & H Facility, Plainfield, CT
🧭 Garnet School, Candia NH, &
🧭 Phoenix Fitness & Performance, Raynham, MA
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Elevate your mindset. Sharpen your skills. Become the defender you were meant to be.
Step beyond ordinary firearms training and forge yourself into a truly elite defender. Every program developed and delivered by Critical Dynamics™ is built for students who are serious about developing tactical firearms proficiency through training grounded in research-backed science, proven human performance principles, and practical methods designed to enhance survivability in real-world encounters. Each training experience targets a different critical domain and utilizes a variety of weapons platforms, including the semi-automatic pistol, semi-automatic rifle (defensive, patrol rifle, or carbine), and shotgun. From foundational instruction to advanced courses, this is your path to tactical excellence.
With focused instruction, expert diagnostics, and immersive hands-on drills, the training delivers personalized attention and real-world application. Whether you're preparing for personal defense or professional deployment, you’ll build exceptional competence in decision-based shooting, movement under threat, and high-stakes performance.
Led by seasoned law enforcement master instructors and engineered for maximum skill retention under pressure, this training is your gateway to real-world readiness. You’ll develop combat-tested techniques, stress-proof your motor skills, and gain the confidence to perform when it counts.
This is the real deal.
No gimmicks. No fluff. No egos. No BS.
Just elite training for elite defenders, grounded in human performance science.
We guarantee it.
UNLOCKING THE BRAIN CODE
Exposing the Limits of Traditional Firearms Instruction and High-Liability Training Through Neuroscience, Psychology, and Human Performance Research
Paperback; 7x10, 230 pages: $14.95
(Keith will sign and personalize your copy when you see him in a class.)
Most training does not fail because instructors lack passion, experience, or technical skill. It fails because it is built on assumptions about learning that are incomplete, outdated, or simply wrong.
Unlocking the Brain Code is a clear-eyed examination of how human beings actually acquire, retain, and retrieve skills, and why so many traditional training models produce short-lived performance gains that collapse under time, stress, or real-world conditions.
Drawing on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, motor learning, and performance science, this book reveals the hidden mechanisms that shape learning: how memory is formed and consolidated, how bias distorts feedback and evaluation, how stress affects decision-making, and how instructional structure determines whether skills endure or decay.
Rather than offering drills, shortcuts, or motivational slogans, Unlocking the Brain Code focuses on something more fundamental: the architecture of instruction itself. It explains why outcome-focused training creates illusions of competence, how familiar methods persist despite poor retention, and why well-intentioned instructors often reinforce the very failures they are trying to prevent.
This book is written for instructors, trainers, and professionals operating in high-consequence environments, where performance failures are not academic and where the cost of ineffective training is measured in real outcomes. While grounded in firearms instruction, its principles apply broadly to coaching, professional development, and any discipline where durable skill acquisition matters.
Inside, you will learn:
- Why “performance during training” is a poor predictor of real capability
- How biases such as familiarity, confirmation, and the illusion of learning distort instruction
- What neuroscience and motor learning reveal about retention, transfer, and stress resilience
- Why traditional instructor development models struggle to evolve
- How a learning-centered framework reshapes how training should be designed and evaluated
Unlocking the Brain Code does not compete with existing instructor certification programs. It examines the blind spots they rarely address and provides the conceptual tools needed to evaluate training through the lens of how the brain actually learns.
If you have ever wondered why skilled students regress, why training gains disappear, or why experience alone does not guarantee instructional effectiveness, this book offers the missing framework.
This is not a manual, nor is it a motivational guide.
It is a recalibration of how training itself should be understood.
Beginning in January of 2026, Critical Dynamics' Director of Law Enforcement Training, Keith Hanson, was asked to join Officer Media Group, and specifically, Officer.com and Officer Magazine as a featured contributing writer, where he now writes a weekly segment on various aspects of operational and tactical firearms instruction, special operations training, and other topics pertaining the design and development of curriculua responsible for ingraining durable, transferable skills within high-liability training domains.
Articles include:
“How Hydration Impacts Learning and Performance in Police Training”
Hydration involves more than simply drinking water. This article examines how fluid balance, electrolytes, heat, and fatigue influence attention, working memory, judgment, and skill development during firearms training, defensive tactics, and other physically demanding police training.
“Police Training Flaws: Why Top Performers Don’t Always Make Effective Instructors”
Technical proficiency does not automatically produce instructional competence. This article addresses the mistaken assumption that an exceptional shooter or tactical performer necessarily possesses the educational knowledge, communication ability, and diagnostic skills required to develop others effectively.
“Why Firearms Training Can’t Ignore Moral Judgment”
Firearms instruction develops more than physical skill because instructors also reinforce standards, values, and decision-making behaviors. The article explains how moral reasoning, accountability, and organizational culture influence the actions of armed professionals when rules conflict, supervision is absent, or circumstances become ambiguous.
Click the link below to be taken to his contributor page and review his recent articles.
Join the Phoenix Fitness private community on the brand new
Critical Dynamics website today for FREE!
Once enrolled, members can:
⭐ create posts and comment on other posts
⭐ share photos and videos
⭐ start discussions and join other topic threads
⭐ view class announcements
⭐ access member-only training materials
⭐ enjoy member-only specials and discounts
⭐ and much more!
To get started, simply visit www.critical-dynamics.com and create your account, then visit the link below to request access.
Again, this is a private community, reserved exclusively for students, employees, friends, and family of Phoenix Fitness & Performance!
Phoenix Fitness & Performance
2026 Firearms Training Course Roster
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Gunshot Wound and Trauma First-Aid Training
🗓️ TBD • Raynham, MA
💲 US LawShield MEMBER course fee: $10.00 pp
💲 NON-MEMBER course fee: $15.00
What's worse than a life lost? A life that could have been saved.
This comprehensive training program is designed to equip you with the understanding and knowledge you need to save a life, maybe even your own, in the event of a GSW (gunshot wound) or other types of life-threatening trauma.
While based directly upon updated Co-TCCC (Council on Tactical Combat Casualty Care), TEMS (Tactical Emergency Medical Services), and TECC (Tactical Emergency Casualty Care) standards, this program was developed for use by the medical layman or average person. This means that NO previous medical knowledge or training is required to learn, understand, and apply these life-saving techniques!
This comprehensive four-hour training program will cover:
- Essential items for your IFAK (individual first-aid kit) and go-bag
- Understanding 'Good Samaritan' laws
- Safety & security concerns regarding care under fire
- How to properly stage and use a Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT)
- Treatment of massive hemorrhaging
- Understanding and using hemostatic agents & anti-hemorrhagics
- Treatment, dressing, and stabilization of a penetrating chest wound
- Recognizing and treating a "sucking chest wound"
- Differentiating an open pneumothorax versus tension pneumothorax
- Vented and non-vented chest seals... what they are and when to use
- Controlling shock
- Airway maintenance
- Treatment of evisceration injuries
- Effects of hypothermia on massive hemorrhaging and how to prevent it using passive and active warming
- Recovery positions and patient reassessments
- and much more!
Students will get hands-on training with several of the techniques taught in this program.
EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS:
👉 If you have a trauma kit/gunshot wound kit/IFAK, please feel free to bring it. The course will provide an opportunity to review the materials contained in student IFAKs.
👉 All training materials will be provided as part of the program.
👉 Participants are encouraged to bring a notebook and a pen.
FAQS:
Q: Is there a minimum age requirement to participate?
A: This training program takes a very frank approach to the treatment of life-threatening injuries and requires that participants remain focused and attentive for approximately four hours. The modules presented, however, are easy to learn, understand, and practice.
This program has been presented to Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, youth sports teams, and various other extracurricular student groups. It is recommended (although not required) that participants be twelve (12) years of age or older and accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Use the link below to complete your course registration via the US LawShield website.
Immersive Force Dynamics™
🗓️ TBD • Raynham, MA
💲 Course Only: $159.00 pp
💲 Course PLUS book: $173.95 pp
From the range to reality, Immersive Force Dynamics™ is designed to close the gap between square-range performance and real-world capability.
In a violent encounter, you will not rise to the occasion. You will default to the level of skill your brain has actually encoded, stabilized, and made retrievable under pressure. That distinction matters. Traditional range training often produces visible performance, tight groups, clean repetitions, passing drills, but those outcomes can create a dangerous illusion of learning when the skill has not been built for retention, transfer, or adaptive use in chaos.
Most armed citizens, and even many professionals, spend the majority of their training time in static, low-variability, and highly-controlled environments. Paper targets do not think, they do not move, they do not deceive or evade, and they do not fight back. They do not compress time, force decisions, or exploit hesitation. Real violence does all of that. It creates cognitive overload, uncertainty, perceptual distortion, and rapidly changing demands that expose the limits of mechanically polished but context-bound skill.
That is where high-fidelity reality-based training becomes essential. Using defensive handguns converted to fire man-marking ammunition, this immersive program places you inside representative force-on-force problems designed to challenge perception, decision-making, movement, emotional control, and action selection under pressure. These are not theatrical drills. They are structured training experiences built to develop adaptable performance against live, thinking adversaries who react, resist, and force your brain to solve problems in real time.
Critical Dynamics™ uses these scenarios to move students beyond the seductive simplicity of outcome-based training and into the development of resilient capability. The goal is not merely to perform well in the moment. The goal is to build skill that holds up when context shifts, stress rises, and the environment stops cooperating. In other words, this program is about more than shooting. It is about learning to process, decide, and act when the cost of hesitation is real.
This course draws from the same reality-based training principles used in federal, state, military, and high-liability professional environments, while applying them through a cognitive lens that recognizes a hard truth: performance on demand is not the same as durable learning. Here, students are exposed to contextual variability, unpredictable resistance, and the kinds of perceptual and decisional demands that traditional drills cannot reproduce. The result is training that more directly supports retention, transfer, and real-world application when it matters most.
Use the "PAY NOW" link below to submit a credit/debit card payment once you've completed your course registration. Thank you!
NRA Range Safety Officer Training & Certification
🗓️ TBD • Raynham, MA
💲 Course Only: $99.00 pp
💲 Course PLUS book: $113.95 pp
The NRA Range Safety Officer (RSO) program was developed in response to the demand for a nationally-recognized range safety officer certification. NRA Range Safety Officers are people who possess the knowledge, skills, and attitude essential to organizing, conducting, and supervising safe shooting activities and range operations.
RSO courses are NOT all the same, and this one proves it. There is no 'Death by PowerPoint' here. Instead, you'll get an exceptionally robust and highly engaging RSO training program that goes far beyond the minimum requirements. This presentation integrates the full NRA curriculum with the instructor's over 24 years of real-world operational and instructional experience in developing and delivering firearms and high-liability training curricula for federal and state law enforcement, federal security contractors, and responsible private citizens. He brings a proven background as a law enforcement Rangemaster, small arms master instructor, and tactical operations trainer in active shooter response, tactical counterterrorism, and TCCC/TEMS. He is a certified Force Science Analyst, a court-recognized expert witness in both police and civilian use-of-force cases, and the author of “Unlocking the Brain Code,” a book about the science behind advanced firearms and tactical instruction.
Students will be presented with detailed educational modules on:
- The role of the Range Safety Officer (RSO)
- Implementing range Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Fundamentals of indoor and outdoor range inspections
- Structuring and delivering effective range safety briefings
- Emergency procedures and emergency incident management
- Recognize and remediate firearm stoppages and ammunition-related malfunctions
This training and certification program is a fun-filled and informative day packed with volumes of information and lots of student input, role-playing, and interactive dialogue.
Use the "PAY NOW" link below to submit a credit/debit card payment once you've completed your course registration. Thank you!
Practical Pistol Dynamics (Level 1 Pistol)
🗓️ Saturday, August 1st, 2026 • 10:00am - 5:00pm