By Ron, Founder of Tactical Fitness Austin
Last updated: July 2026
TL;DR
If you carry a gun, you already have a physical standard. Carrying created it. The only question is whether you meet it. Here’s the mobility, strength, and endurance a defensive encounter actually demands.
Walk any range in Texas and you’ll see it.
Serious carry guns. Serious optics. Serious holsters.
Attached to bodies that can’t sprint 50 yards, can’t get off the ground quickly, and can’t drag another adult ten feet.
Here’s the part nobody wants to hear: if you carry a gun, you already have a physical readiness standard. Carrying created it. The only question is whether you meet it.
A defensive encounter is a physical event before it’s a shooting event. You may have to move explosively, fight for control of your own weapon, get to cover, or carry someone you love out of danger. The gun doesn’t do any of that. Your body does.
Why it matters
Every skill you’ve built on the range sits on top of your physical capacity. Grip strength holds the gun and your sight picture through recoil. Mobility gets you behind cover. Endurance keeps your brain working when the event doesn’t end in three seconds. Lose the base and the shooting skills degrade with it.
The standard has three components. This is how I break it down for everyone I train:
1. Mobility first. It’s the base, before strength, before endurance. You need to get in and out of positions fast: kneeling, prone, back up, and conform to cover: knees tucked, body tight behind something that stops bullets. And you need to do it without tearing something. If dropping to a knee costs you a shoulder or a hamstring, you’ve taken yourself out of the fight without help.
2. Strength. Four abilities: push, pull, change levels, and control rotation. Push an attacker off you to make space to work. Pull someone into a clinch, or pull yourself over an obstacle. And grip: the stronger your grip, the better you hold the gun and keep your sights through a string. There’s also the ugly job nobody trains: dragging a person out of danger. If you can’t move a body, your plan for protecting anyone is incomplete.
3. Endurance. The one everyone skips because it’s hard. You need the short sprint, to cover, away from a threat, past a fatal funnel, and the capacity to stay focused and functional when the event runs long. Fatigue doesn’t just slow your legs. It shuts down your decision-making, and that’s the part keeping you alive.
Why most carriers never build this
Because it’s uncomfortable, nobody’s testing them, and the industry sells gear instead of capacity. You can buy a better trigger this afternoon. You can’t buy a 50-yard sprint. So people keep upgrading the gun and ignoring the body that has to deliver it.
This is what Combat Club is built on.
It’s a qualification-based training community. The standards are physical and marksmanship both, and you earn your way through them. You train the sprint, the level changes, the grip, and the gun handling together, under ex-special-forces instructors, alongside people held to the same bar. Not fitness for its own sake. Combat readiness with a scoreboard.
Train hard,
Ron
Founder, Tactical Fitness Austin
P.S. Test yourself this week, no gun required. Three checks: from flat on your back, get to your feet fast, five times, no hands if you can. Sprint 50 yards, all-out. Drag something roughly your own weight ten yards. If any of the three makes you hesitate, that’s your standard talking, and now you know exactly what to train.
See if you qualify for Combat Club →
Frequently asked questions
Do you need to be physically fit to carry a gun?
If you carry a gun you already have a physical readiness standard, because carrying created it. A defensive encounter is a physical event before it is a shooting event: moving explosively, fighting for control of your own weapon, getting to cover, or carrying someone you love out of danger. The gun does none of that. The only real question is whether your body can deliver the skills you have built.
What physical standards matter for self-defense?
Three, in order: mobility, strength, and endurance. Mobility is the base, getting in and out of kneeling and prone fast and conforming tight to cover without tearing something. Strength is four abilities, push, pull, change levels, and control rotation, plus grip. Endurance is the short sprint to cover and the capacity to keep deciding well when the event runs longer than three seconds.
How does grip strength affect shooting under stress?
Grip strength decides how well you hold the gun and keep your sight picture through a string of fire. Recoil management is structure, and a weak grip leaks that structure shot after shot, so the group opens as the string goes on. The same ability matters if someone gets hands on your weapon. That is combat readiness, measured against a standard, not a number chased for its own sake.