Beyond TASER Training

For nearly 30 years, TASER energy weapons have been one of the most used less-lethal devices by law enforcement officers around the world. Over the last decade, the company that manufactures the device has undergone a paradigm shift, changing its name to Axon Enterprise in 2017 to encompass its other offerings, including software, connected devices and body-worn cameras. Despite this change, TASER energy weapons have remained a stalwart of the company. TASER 10 was introduced in 2023, and the introduction of Axon VR has allowed for more efficient and cost-effective training for officers. Now, Axon has taken the next step in the evolution of TASER energy weapons, reimagining its training program for instructors and reshaping how law enforcement agencies will integrate the devices into their curriculum.

At Axon Week 2026 in Nashville this past April, Andy Wrenn, VP of Global Training Services; Espen DahlenLervåg, Chief Instructor, Global Training; and Dr. Paul Taylor, a Law Enforcement Researcher and Instructor who has partnered with the company, hosted a session titled “The Future of Axon Training,” examining the company’s shift to what it calls an ecological, learner-centered model, moving away from tool-centric instruction. All three spoke to OFFICER Magazine during the event about Axon’s new training mindset, along with major initiatives, including the company’s redesigned Master Instructor School and Adaptive Control course.

Taylor, who studies law enforcement decision-making, believes the move by Axon will help expose more officers to a different approach to training. “When you take some of the concepts that we’re teaching and insert them around the margins of classic police training, we see dramatic improvements.”

Current training inefficiencies

Wrenn, who has been with the company since 2012 and previously served in the training division of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, began the session comparing the training required to become a law enforcement officer to that required to be licensed as a barber in the state of Tennessee. According to Wrenn, the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission requires a minimum of 488 hours of instruction for the Basic Law Enforcement Course, while some police department training academies require approximately 1,000 hours of instruction. In one city, the requirement for police recruits is around 900 hours. To obtain a master barber license in the state of Tennessee, a person needs 1,500 hours in a registered barber school.

“Why are barbers getting double or triple the time in training in their profession compared to cops? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he says. “The lens is what can we do to create training opportunities and our ethos on training approach, and it really comes down to being creative.”

He stressed that Axon isn’t looking to be a “change agent” for national policing reform or on the state level but instead is focused on what can be done to help instructors. “We’re getting a lot of inspiration from Espen and our colleagues in Europe about how much time they spend on training. As a DT (Defensive Tactics) instructor in North Carolina, we had to recertify for 12 hours every other year. As a DT instructor under Espen, who just retired as the head of combatants for all of Norway, his instructors had to do 300 hours a year. In some European programs, instructors spend dramatically more time developing coaching and performance skills than we typically invest in the U.S. We believe increasing that investment here can improve officer readiness, confidence and decision-making under stress.”

Critical feedback

While Wrenn says Axon saw positive outcomes from its training model in the past, the company had been using essentially the same program since its inception. Discussions around changing that program began after Taylor wrote a research paper detailing its shortfalls. “Paul wrote this really articulate and really solid piece that just said, effectively, that Axon should be doing more. So what we did with Paul is, we said, ‘Tell us more about that,’ ” recalls Wrenn. “We were highly focused on product proficiency, but not enough on broader instructional development and real-world performance.”

One of Taylor’s key arguments for shifting from traditional training methods is the need to change from a “block-and-silo” model, which teaches skills in isolation with the expectation that they will come together in the field. “Police training for a long time has looked at it as we’re going to give officers another tool for their toolbox. When we go to de-escalation training, I’m giving them the tool of de-escalation for their toolbox. When we go to TASER energy device training, I’m giving them the TASER energy device tool for their toolbox. DT (Defensive Tactics), I’m going to give them the DT tool for their toolbox,” he says. He equated this style of training to teaching a carpenter how to use a hammer, but not how to use it in the context of building a house. “We have to integrate that skill into the decision-making process and all of the environmental constraints in which a carpenter is going to use that skill.”

He also pushed back on the ways academies have traditionally taught some skills. “How many officers use the handcuffing technique that you were trained on in the academy? Yet we spend hours and hours of block training developing handcuffing skills that we don’t use out on the street,” he says. “Fundamentally, we’ve developed something so complex to solve a problem in a sterile environment that when we go out on the street, it’s completely impractical for actual police work. They relearn how to cuff out on the street in a way that’s effective for them.”

Taylor says the goal is to move that out of the high-risk environment of the street into the safe environment of the mat room and classroom through lessons, scenarios and drills. “Officers can develop skills that work for them, for their body type, their decision-making process, and their strengths, to minimize their own weaknesses.”

Wrenn recalled feedback from experienced instructors who wanted more advanced and evolving content from the program as their own expertise grew. That feedback, he says, reinforced the need to rethink how Axon approached instructor development.

According to Wrenn, the biggest change that Axon is making involves the interweaving of skills. I’m not going to just firearms training, I’m not going to just TASER energy device training, but I’m interweaving those trainings together in a creative environment and introducing problem solving,” he says. “We are creating safe opportunities for failure in the academy, and as a result, not necessarily seeing those failures for the first time in the field.”

Master Instructor School

This year, Axon launched its retooled Master Instructor School, touting the new MIS as a milestone in its commitment to evidence-based training by integrating immersive learning, performance science and real-world data.

Wrenn says the needed changes will help Axon add more value to its training program. “We have had, historically, great training on how to use a product, but not great training on how to be creative and problem-solve,” he says. “We had to evolve into what would be a realistic way to train or to teach, which is an ecological model.”

Taylor defines an ecological approach training as a model that ties skills to environmental stimulus. “What we need to understand is that a skill performed independent of any stimulus is separate from a skill that I’m engaging in response to something. We want the response to be similar to what an officer will face out on the street. I can learn how to swing a baseball bat, and I can get perfect form swinging a baseball bat. But if you’re never pitching a ball at someone and that person isn’t actually having to hit the ball in a very similar environmental way, you haven’t had the opportunity to work on that skill.”

He stressed that currently, very little of law enforcement training reflects the appropriate focus of attention for officers. “An ecological approach to training means that we’re tying our skill sets to a realistic decision environment,” he says. “If you look at any sport, that’s exactly how you learn and train a sport. You can do it in a VR headset. You can even do it in the classroom.”

Another upside to an ecological approach is the ability to get effective training in a short period of time. “You can use VR for micro-training and getting multiple reps with an appropriate focus of attention where dynamics are changing as you’re making a decision with the tool. You can do this in the mat room. You can do this during briefing training in 10 to 15 minutes,” he says. “Ultimately, it allows each individual to start to adapt what works for them. When you think about the different-sized officers that you have and the different capacities that they have, everybody needs to learn it for themselves. Nobody draws a handgun the same way. Nobody presents a TASER energy weapon the same way. There’s no strike or grappling move that somebody performs in the same way. People have to start to figure it out for themselves. We call it self-organizing around the skill, and that is critical to the learning process. Otherwise, it dies in the training room.”

Wrenn says the early feedback has been positive, though he acknowledges the shift requires instructors to adapt to a different training philosophy. Some returning Master Instructors initially found the approach unfamiliar because it moves away from traditional block-and-silo instruction, he says. However, Axon has already seen significantly more hands-on time with TASER energy weapons and VR-based scenario training in the redesigned program, along with encouraging early outcomes.

Adaptive Control

Dahlen-Lervåg developed Adaptive Control as a modern, research-based combatives program that focuses on integrating tools like TASER devices into close-quarters, realistic control and arrest tactics. As with the Master Instructor School changes, the goal of Adaptive Control is to move away from rigid, technique-based training toward an ecological model that emphasizes adaptability under pressure.

According to the company, the Adaptive Control program prepares instructors to teach with clarity, consistency, and purpose, emphasizing safe, controlled execution and instructional best practices, equipping instructors with the tools they need to deliver impactful training within their organizations.

Dahlen-Lervåg spoke during the session about the need to shift from a tool-centered model to a performance-centered model. “I like to have a problem-oriented focus. Starting with the problem and then facilitating for people to figure out for themselves what works and what doesn’t work, that gives us creative and adaptive problem solvers.”

Having left Norway’s police force, where he served as as training coordinator and national lead on conducted electrical weapons (CEWs), he spoke about the successes they had seen from adapting a program built around the principles of Adaptive Control. “We saw a significant increase in performance rate, a significant increase in confidence in themselves, in trust, in being those adaptive, creative problem solvers. We saw meaningful change.”

Following the session, Dahlen-Lervåg spoke about his new role with Axon and his high hopes for Adaptive Control. “I’ve been given autonomy to do it the way that I wanted. Axon has a great reputation, and that’s a great facilitator for getting best practice training out there.”

Dahlen-Lervåg added that he has received a lot of positive feedback from officers he interacted with during Axon Week following his classes and demonstrations. This was his second year attending the event. “There’s been a lot of interest, a lot of people reaching out, and it’s mostly that they desperately need new perspectives, new thoughts, and not to say the least, a new way to approach training and development that many of them haven’t played around with before,” he says. “When we expose them to it, it makes a lot of sense."