ALERRT Center / Texas State University
The Advanced Training
Design Workshop 2026
Designing Training That Transfers
A small, working conference for people who train law enforcement and tactical professionals. Sixty seats, a single track, and a simple rule: show the method, explain why you do it that way.
Not a lecture hall
The audience is a mix of working trainers, tactical practitioners, and training-science researchers. The point of the room is not to sit through talks. It is to put methods on the mat, in front of people who train for a living, and take them apart together.
Watch
Every session opens with a hands-on demonstration. Presenters run their method live, with attendees on the mat or close enough to see the details.
Ask
Hard questions are the point. Presenters explain what they do and why, then the room pushes on the evidence, the trade-offs, and the edge cases.
Take home
The goal for every attendee is the same: leave with something you can use in your next training cycle.
The 2026 program
Sixteen sessions across Friday and Saturday, from trainers who are putting these ideas to work on the mat, in the scenario, and in the academy.
Opening keynote / Friday 8:00 AM
Rob Gray
Author of How We Learn to Move and host of the Perception & Action Podcast, Dr. Gray (Arizona State University) is the leading voice on ecological approaches to skill acquisition. He opens the workshop with The What, Why, and How of Educating Attention.
Sessions include:
- Active attacker tactics: constraints-led room entry and hallway movement
- Scenario design: turning dead drills into live problems
- Use-of-force decisions: coupling threat recognition with weapon access
- Control tactics: prone restraint and hand extraction under real resistance
- Weapons-based grappling: edged-weapon defense in the clinch
- Micro-dosed training: 15-minute roll-call modules with measured retention gains
- Tactical medicine: scenario-first hemorrhage control and limited-resource care
- Instructor development: Socratic feedback, scaffolding, and humor that sticks
Full descriptions on the sessions page, running order on the schedule.
Presenting agencies
ALERRT Center at Texas State University · Arizona State University · Austin PD · Boise PD · Cary PD (NC) · Cobb County PD · Denver PD · Town of Colonie PD (NY) · Jefferson Parish SO (LA) · Winnebago County SO (IL) · Walworth County SO (WI) · Abbotsford PD (BC) · Royal Canadian Mounted Police · SBG Athens · Raptor Public Safety Coaching · Masaryk University (Czech Republic)
How a session runs
Every session is 50 minutes, and the clock favors the mat.
One 50-minute block, single track, no live fire. Sims, scenarios, and mat work.
Key dates
- 05 Jun 2026Presentation proposals dueClosed
- ~12 Jun 2026Presenter notifications sentDone
- Sep 2026Draft program posted, 16 sessionsDone
- NowRegistration open, $695 room and board, most seats takenFilling
- 03 Dec 2026Arrival and dinner at TBarMUpcoming
- 04-05 Dec 2026Full session daysUpcoming
- 06 Dec 2026Breakfast, wrap-up, checkoutUpcoming