Garry Marr Talks Firearm Training, Force-on-Force, and Fitness
I want to start off the interview below by saying that Garry Marr and I have been friends for many years. Our friendship started through a mutual training instructor friend of ours, Jordan Winkler, which has lead to our friendship today. Both of us live in Pennsylvania, we’ve hung out, check in on each other from time to time, and if you want someone in your corner who is a straight-shooter (no pun intended) and will make you laugh so hard your sides will hurt, Garry Marr is the guy. So, without further ado, let’s jump into my interview with Garry Marr.
Table of contents
An Interview with Tremis Dynamics Owner and Firearms Instructor Garry Marr
1. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, Tremis Dynamics, and what you do in your line of work?
Garry Marr: I’ve been in adult education for nearly 15 years. First at a private college while teaching gun stuff part-time. In 2015 I went full time as a firearms instructor for a company in Tennessee. A couple of years later, I moved back to PA and went to work for another company and just wasn’t satisfied teaching somebody else’s curriculum.
Both times that I taught for someone else, they were too locked into always doing things the way they had always been done. So, in July of 2019, I went out on my own so that I could be more nimble to react to new developments in the training world. Doing that has been the most fulfilling decision I’ve ever made in my career.
2. What types of classes do you offer, and are they for law enforcement/military or also open to civilians?
Garry Marr: I started back in the day with the standard 2-day Pistol and Carbine classes. So, of course, we still offer those, although now we have added two more days to each of those, so folks have the option to continue down those respective paths.
We offer classes based around fighting in and around your vehicle and Force-on-Force classes relating to all of those. We also do some other things we lump into outdoor skills, including some practical bug-out events as well as Land Navigation and Radio classes.
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3. What states do you currently run classes in?
Garry Marr: Obviously, we’re based in PA. But we make frequent trips to multiple locations in Texas, Illinois, and we have been to or are planning to go to Georgia, Virginia, South Dakota, and Montana. We’ll travel, and if folks are interested in hosting, they just need to reach out, and we can get that ball rolling.
4. Many people are intimidated to take a class with others. It could be that they’re intimidated or don’t want to look like a noob, among other reasons. What would you tell someone who is on the fence and nervous about taking classes?
Garry Marr: I can’t tell you how many times people tell me they will get to a class once they can get up to speed for it. But that’s exactly what class is for. They are ready right now. They are coming to learn, not to show off. Too many times, potential students want to be able to come to class just to impress the instructor, what impresses me is coming to class with an open mind, ready to get your learn on.
5. Being that fitness and firearms go hand-in-hand, can you describe how you view the relationship between the two?
Garry Marr: Most folks wouldn’t consider me to be the guy to ask that question to. My fitness levels have gone up, and they’ve gone down. Sure, as a young man in the Navy (doing nothing cool), I was pretty fit. Afterward, it fell off, and then I got it back on track, and a few years later, it dropped. Rinse and repeat. That’s probably a common story in the average pool of guys.
I can absolutely say that at those peaks, doing all the cool gun stuff was much more effortless than when I was in those valleys. We’re talking about a drastic difference. I have had to recover from some injuries that made it easy to say, “fuck it,” and then, of course, had to put my big boy pants on and turn that mindset around. That’s not a unique situation, and it takes some inner discipline to get that mindset back on track.
6. Just like with fitness, you must put in the time and reps to get better and become proficient with a firearm (results come with time, not overnight). For those who have never taken a class or are just in the infancy stage of owning a firearm, what types of classes should they look for?
Garry Marr: We just started offering “Day 0” classes, which are really meant for someone brand new to learn their way around the controls of a gun. If someone already has that, coming to our core classes, Dynamic Pistol or Dynamic Carbine, is going to give somebody all of the tools they need to get quite proficient. We can only cover so much in a couple of days, so what we do is cover a lot of ground, giving a student a roadmap for things to do after they leave class.
Something unique we do for our PA students is we hold “Study Groups” regularly where students can come put some reps in with the stuff they learn in class. We’ve also helped students in our travel classes start their own study groups in their locations.
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7. Mike Tyson is famous for saying, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It’s safe to say the same can be said about self-defense. You can take a bunch of classes and work on your movement and draw, but when a life-threatening event happens under stress, everything seems to be thrown out the window. You have a force-on-force class where live simunition training rounds are fired. Can you tell us why force-on-force training is so valuable and what all it entails?
Garry Marr: Force-on-Force is likely more helpful to students than live fire is. It’s a chance to pressure test the skills and tactics learned in classes. The more Force-on-Force we do, the more data we collect on what we teach. Force-on-Force has done more to alter our curriculum than anything else. We’re always looking to find the flaws in not only what we teach but what anybody teaches.
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We’ve tailored our Force-on-Force classes to cover as many aspects of fighting as we could. There are scenario-based classes that challenge one’s mindset and decision making, diagnostic classes where we pick apart the skills taught in a standard live fire class, as well as instructional classes that allow us to work on tactics that logistically are out of reach for most students to do with live fire.
It may not come across in a short interview, but Force-on-Force is my passion, I could talk for days just on this subject.
8. One thing that I respect is that you walk the walk and talk the talk. Additionally, you like to tinker with things to improve training, such as creating the Sling Doober, Target Template, Instructor Target Stand, etc. Can you briefly touch on why you made them and the need they filled?
Garry Marr: Most of the time, I try to find a software answer to a problem. Every once in a while, the answer is hardware.
The first product was the Instructor Target Stand. Ranges often have fixed brackets for hanging targets, or if they have portable ones, they are only as portable as being in storage at the range and brought out as needed. I was looking for a way to travel in an SUV with everything needed to run 10 students in class. So, I drew up and fabricated that target stand to fill the need of a traveling instructor.
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The Target Template was a way to modify common targets to show the aiming zones based on our curriculum.
And the Sling Doober was my development team and me finding the best way to stow a sling for travel or even storage and be able to deploy it with some rapidity and easily stow it again to get lots of reps in at the range.
So, while I try to find ways to train around any issues we find, sometimes a simple piece of gear is the obvious solution.
9. Let’s take things in a different direction to close this out. Obviously, your best defense is to not put yourself in a bad situation in the first place (although you don’t always get to make that decision, you’re simply thrown into it and must react quickly). What tips would you give someone to help them avoid a confrontation in the first place?
Garry Marr: I’ll give two simple tips since most of my other answers are lengthy.
1. Put your phone in your pocket and look around you.
2. Don’t go to bars. It costs less if you drink at home, and the company is better. Fact is, 100% of bar fights happen in bars.
10. Where can people follow you, or how can they contact you regarding classes and training?
Garry Marr: We’re on the major social media channels, but TremisDynamics.com is the central hub for everything we do.
If you want a good book to read that discusses similar topics to what was found in this article, check out my book below. Garry Marr is also in the book providing wisdom and insight.
Check out Garry Marr and Tremis Dynamics on their YouTube channel!
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