Sunday morning at 10, everyone is present, and sitting ready with a notepad and full attention to hear all about POMW – Project Old Modern Warrior – shooting in a martial arts and martial arts context, and not least – to try it yourself.

POMW is an international project, developed by the Shindenkan Competence and Development Center SKUC in the period 2011-2015, and the course series is carried out for the 3rd time here in 2019.

Here in POMW I, the introductory course series, only new POMW course participants take part, completing the course for the first time, or course participants who have not maintained their shooting in the intervening period. In POMW II and III, they are joined by POMW BIO OBC participants – participants who, through Shindenkan's successful and unique OBC concept, maintain and upgrade their POMW competencies, in a constant improvement spiral towards the essence.

The first lesson deals with the history and purpose of the shooting, told "The Shindenkan way", where the focus is on the facts and where the myths are cut away. As an example, when you ask questions about shooting in shooting circles, you hear many stories about how complex and difficult it is to shoot, when the reality is that firearms have been developed to be as simple as possible, with the aim that as soon as possible can teach "any peasant" to become an effective soldier.

Throughout the teaching, the course participants are involved and express their opinions and attitudes, and everyone must take a stand on their attitudes as well as reality. And part of the reality is that weapons are increasingly becoming part of the everyday life we all move around in and meet, for everyday as well as for parties. And if you can't see reality, you can't relate to it, and thus you can't make informed and optimal choices in all situations, both those you voluntarily find yourself in, as well as those you find yourself in involuntarily.

The challenge for today's instructors and course participants is clear: To complete POMW with the same high quality as the previous 2 course teams. And it could also be that Shindenkan's previous high standard and good results could be made even better by this particular course team 🙂 The gauntlet has been thrown, and then it's just a matter of picking it up.

So whether you started out with a dream of being the new "Lucky Luke - faster than your own shadow", or if you are intimidated by guns and reluctant to get your hands on them, now is the time to be introduced to reality, through Shindenkan's schooled and structured approach. You can draw on your experience from the multi-track martial arts training you know, and many of the tools and approaches within it.

There was excitement and anticipation during the review of the POMW shooting technical handbook, which, with the essence of safe and basic shooting – do's and don'ts, is the basis of POMW Shooting.

The anticipation and joy of the participants increased further when they were handed and unpacked their airguns. So it was time to learn the basics in practice, namely:

• Security
• Basic, but optimal shooting technique
• Security
• Basic, but optimal shooting technique
• Security
• Basic, but optimal shooting technique
• Security
• Basic, but optimal shooting technique
• Security

And then there was instruction in and practice in dry training, and the smiles turned more into concentration and focus, while the individual parts of the correct shooting technique were rehearsed, adjusted, rehearsed again and adjusted again.

After almost 5 hours of training, it was a happy, relieved and a little tired group that went home from today's course, knowing that they had homework, as POMW shooting technique must be trained daily and continuously to hit the target correctly, because now "Living POMW" started for everyone.

We are all looking forward to meeting next week to continue the journey and see how much we have developed since the last time.

Shindenkan POMW Instructor Team