My Interview With Todd Jarrett (part 1)

For my readers who are not aware, Todd Jarrett is like royalty in the world of competitive shooting. If his pistol was a musical instrument, Todd would most certainly be a rock star. I have to admit to my readers, that even though I am a firearms enthusiast, I never really followed the sport of competitive shooting that closely. I did take notice of Todd a few years back when I was watching one of the sports channels, and there he was tearing it up in the heat of competition, and admittedly it was quite impressive. Part of my back ground consists of years of studying, and then teaching empty hand combat systems and disarms, as well as systems that include weaponry which spans over a good share of my life. At one juncture, I also worked with high level athletes who participated in fast paced contact sports such as ice hockey and lacrosse, so when I see someone who moves smoothly, deliberately, and methodically while pushing the speed envelope as they compete in their particular sport, I am always captivated by this high level of performance.

After watching a lot of footage on the net, and then observing him in person, in my opinion Todd Jarrett is definitively more than just a competitive shooter. A more accurate description would be a martial artist with a firearm. When he moves from box to box, it is done with smooth cat like movements, combined with a system that I have often referred to in other sports as soft feet. He doesn’t stomp through the course, he flows through it while always maintaining a quiet upper body, which is key to achieving a stable shooting platform. I had a chance to observe him warming up at each station yesterday as he was preparing to shoot. It almost appeared like he had a step motor built into his midsection, as he smoothly and accurately rotated his torso quickly to the exact detent where he could accurately align his front sight to acquire the target. We are talking the perfect blend of fast twitch muscle combined with accurately controlled fine motor skills. It was quite impressive in person to say the least.

Now before I go any further, let me back this up a bit and give the readers a little background of what compelled me to do this interview with Todd Jarrett in the first place. A while back, after returning to Florida from living in the gun repressive state of California, I was in the market for some new 1911 style pistols, and a friend of mine, who is a knowledgable gunsmith that works on Colts introduced me to Para Ordnance pistols. He demonstrated all the quality features found on their pistols, and then put one in my hand. I admitted that I liked the quality and feel of them, and within a few weeks, I ended up purchasing a few. When I got the pistols home, there was an instructional DVD inside, and after I got over my man ego thinking of “I already know everything about 1911’s” attitude, I decided to pop it in the player and take a look. I was multi tasking writing as I usually do when the DVD started to play, I looked up when I heard a voice and there on the screen was Todd Jarrett extolling the virtues of the LDA trigger. My first thought was, is this another sports celebrity endorsing a product or feature that they probably don’t even use themselves? I lightly dismissed it and went back to my writing. A few days later I was over on fellow gunblogger Robb Allen’s Sharp as a Marble blog snooping around in his archives, when I ran across his articles about the gunbloggers camp sponsored by Para Ordnance, that was hosted at the Blackwater training facility in North Carolina. Their instructor for the camp was none other than Todd Jarrett, so I decided to watch a video. I ended up getting sucked in and watching the whole video series that was hosted over at Down Range TV. During the very first segment when the bloggers were getting off the Blackhawk bus meeting and greeting, and after a little basic classroom instruction Todd says with this big kid like grin “Something is wrong with me I’m telling you…I’m going into DT’s or something…I gotta shoot!…I’m ready!…LET’S GO!”, right then I found myself starting to really like this guy. To me personally, Todd’s energy and excitement was almost addictive. He reminded me of everyone’s best friend when you were a kid, that had just gotten a new bb gun with a huge tube of bb’s, and wanted to go out and shoot it with you, so that you both could share in the excitement. As the videos progressed, you see Todd encouraging the campers as he instructs them, saying to Caleb from gunnuts media after he shot a nice group, “Who did this...is this you? I need to take your class”. The final footage that hooked me in was when the bloggers did a little run and gun in the Blackwater shoot house. After Todd finished cheering on the bloggers, and sharing in their excitement as he watched them run through the shoot house, he decided to make a run of his own where he blew through the rooms at light speed, like a machine running flat out with only a fractional margin left before reaching the point of meltdown. At the end of the run, the camera zoomed in, and winded he says with a big boyish grin “That was awesome man…you know what? As much as I see my students do here, I still get the biggest rush that you have ever seen man…the funnest thing that you can do with a handgun…I’m juiced buddy…let’s do it again!” After watching the final segment and getting all pumped up myself, I started to wonder if this guy could really be as animated and down home as he appeared to be. Could anyone be this good of an actor? Was this just another sports celebrity doing sponsored public relations type mugging for the camera? Needless to say, when some of my associates who are range masters at a facility where I shoot informed me that Todd was going to be in town competing at another outdoor facility, I decided that I was going to have to make the trek there to view the competition and meet this man in order to find out for myself if Todd Jarrett was the real deal, and in the process, hopefully ask him all the questions that my readers would probably want to ask for themselves if they had the opportunity.

Click here for part 2 of my 3 part article…