When it comes to home defense training, you have to train like you intend to fight.
In 2013, I hunted with some American war fighters on the U.S. Army’s base in Hohenfels, Germany. That was an interesting experience—a story for another time—and it has nothing to do with home defense. However, while I was in Germany, I went to a Pond Training Academy. At that time, Pond was conducting some of the security at the gates to the Hohenfels Army base, and in the Pond Academy, they had a unique shooting range.
That shooting range does have something to do with home defense.
In the basement of the academy, they had a video range, where they would play video on the large movie screen and cadets could engage targets in the video. A unique light system marked their shots, and the video could be replayed to see where they hit. This was a very cool range experience, and I got to shoot on it with a rifle and with a handgun.
With the rifle, I shot running boar targets, and with the handgun, I shot cartoons. (In Germany, it was against the law for non-security or law enforcement to shoot at humanoid targets.) The video range training for the Pond security cadets was custom tailored to the job they were going to perform.
The academy had video of the gates at Hohenfels base where the Pond officers worked, and in this video they had various scenarios on film for the cadets to respond to with firearms. Talk about training like you intend to fight, this video system put the security officers in the field where they would actually be working and allowed them to respond to nefarious actions like they might have to in real life.
Training like you intend to fight is nothing new. The U.S. Army and American law enforcement switched to humanoid targets a long time ago. At Gunsite, Jeff Cooper began crafting shooting drills that mirrored real-life and/or imagined incidents, and ever since then combat pistol competitions have been built around theoretical—but of course highly unlikely—self-defense scenarios.
It’s a training concept that’s very old and one that’s routinely used in sports: You practice like you intend to play.
How does all this dovetail into home defense? Well, it’s very simple.
If it’s your desire to be able to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones in your home, you should train for that exact circumstance. Sure, shooting a handgun, shotgun or carbine is the same no matter where you’re shooting them—sights on target/trigger press—but practice and training for the exact situation you might have to encounter goes a step further. Of course, you cannot go to some video range where there will be a video of your home with bad guys attacking you and for you to shoot at.
But you can simulate the experience.
Make a Plan
The first thing you need to do is make a plan, and the plan needs to be multi-faceted to include various points of potential entry, various locations you would likely respond from, and it needs to address not just you, but everyone in the household. If someone busts through your front door while you’re eating dinner, how do you respond and what should everyone else in your home immediately do?
A book could be written about proper planning and all the variables for dealing with a home invasion. There are so many different homes containing so many different family units that could be attacked, from so many different points of entry, that proper planning just cannot be covered in this format. However, we can look at a hypothetical situation and examine how we might create a training program to help us prepare for it.
Situational Considerations
Let’s imagine you live in a home with a floor plan as shown below. Let’s also imagine you want to devise a plan to deal with a two-attacker home invasion through your front door while you’re eating dinner. And finally, let’s assume your home is occupied by you, your wife and your 6-year-old son. The first thing I would do is invite two of my shooting friends over for dinner, but before dinner I would let them play the bad guys and walk through a home invasion scenario several times. This will give you some insight as to what the attackers’ movements might be as well as what your response could be.
The goal here is three-fold. First, you want to familiarize yourself and your family with how everything might unfold. Secondly, you want to devise your plan of response. And finally, you want to identify the locations, situations and targets you might have to engage. Essentially, you are creating a mental video you can play out at the range. Granted, this is a very simplified plan and as with most tactical considerations, there is always more than one answer. However, it serves to illustrate the point.
Make a Range Card
A range card is a standard shooting tool used by the military and snipers. It details your field of fire and where potential targets are. In a combat situation, the actual range—distance to targets—is important, but in a home defense situation it’s generally not. You want to create a range card that will detail your planned point of defense and the potential locations of possible threats. Drawing it out is not a bad idea, because it can help you illustrate your plan to other family members, but in most cases a mental picture is sufficient.
When you’re creating this range card, you should also take note of the cover and concealment you and your attackers might use. For example, if there is a dividing wall the attacker might hide behind, is it a solid wall or just a shell wall? If it’s solid, you cannot shoot through it, but if you see an attacker duck behind a shell wall, you can. Most furniture will not stop bullets, and while it can provide concealment, it is not cover.
Live Fire
Once you have a range card, go to the range and practice the shots you will probably need to make, at the distances relative to your home. When you’re competent at getting hits, set up a stage reflecting the situation and the range card, and run through it while engaging the targets. Start slow, like a walkthrough, and then advance to real time. The training stage example below assumes you are wearing your home defense handgun in a holster while you’re eating dinner.
However, when you make your plan, consider situations and build a range card, and do it realistically to represent where your gun might be in a real-life situation. If you keep your gun on top of the refrigerator, in the nightstand, or maybe in a gun safe, all this needs to be reflected in your plan and range card, and it will dictate your plan … and ultimately the training stage you set up.
Force on Force
Once you have worked through the training stage at the range that will likely replicate a real-life home invasion, you should then do a walkthrough at home, with your family and your two shooting friends. Invite them over for dinner again and simulate the scenario. If you’re smart, you will arm yourself and your friends with airsoft guns and give everyone a face shield. This not only adds some fun to the exercise, but it also adds adrenalin and can highlight flaws in your plan that might cause you to rethink everything.
Depending on the situation and where you keep your gun, the best plan may be to retreat to another room that is easier to defend. It might make you rethink where everyone normally sits at the dinner table. One thing you want to do is require your wife and son to react as planned when the exercise begins. Where do they go, where is the phone to call 911, and who is going to make the call?
Train Like You’ll Fight
The underlying premise here is to evaluate the unknown. You and your family are mostly finding answers for questions that might be asked. As Jeff Cooper explained in his book, Principles of Personal Defense: “Short of extensive personal experience, which most of us would rather not amass, the best way to cultivate such tactical decisiveness is through hypothesis: ‘What would I do if … ?’ By thinking tactically, we can more easily arrive at correct tactical solutions, and practice even theoretical practice tends to produce confidence in our solutions, which, in turn, makes it easier for us, and thus quicker, to reach a decision.”
Unfortunately, few if any of us have access to a video range, where we can watch and shoot at the screen where images of our own home being invaded is playing out. But we can plan and train accordingly. This is not a new or revolutionary concept. If you train like you’ll fight, you will fight like you have trained. And if you trained well enough, you’ll win.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2026 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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