Survival Instructor Certification — GB2 Train-the-Trainer Program

Survival Instructor Certification — The GB2 Train-the-Trainer Program

The GB2 Survival Instructor Certification is a multi-phase, multi-year training program designed to produce professional wilderness survival instructors who can work anywhere in the outdoor education industry — not practitioners who completed a checklist, and not graduates who are only qualified to teach at the school that trained them. The program is built for people who want to teach survival skills professionally, and who want a credential that is worth something outside the walls of the program that issued it. Phase 1 covers 25 days of structured field instruction across six courses. Phase 2 adds a 4-day Train the Trainer Course and a minimum 20-day On-the-Job Training component at live GB2 events with real paying students. Phase 3 is a 4-day Final Instructor Evaluation that tests skills, teaching ability, and physical fitness against a 100% proficiency standard. That is a minimum of 53 days of structured training before certification is awarded — completed on your schedule, with no expiration on your tuition.

Program Overview and Savings

The bundle includes all eight program components — six Phase 1 courses, the Train the Trainer Course, and the Final Instructor Evaluation — at 25% off the combined individual pricing. See individual course listings for detailed information on each component course. For the full program to function, all phases must be completed in the sequence described above.

Who This Program Is For

The Survival Instructor Certification is built for people who want to teach survival skills professionally — as a primary career, a second career, or as a credentialed addition to an existing outdoor guiding or education background. The program attracts former military with strong field skills who want to translate that background into civilian instruction, experienced outdoors people who've been informally teaching for years and want a formal framework, and career changers who see the outdoor education industry as a serious professional direction.

The skills component of Phase 1 — the six foundational courses — is the same curriculum offered to civilian students through the GB2 course lineup. Instructor candidates go through that curriculum as students first, building the skill baseline that teaching requires. What distinguishes the instructor track is everything that follows: the Train the Trainer Course, the OJT requirement, and the Final Evaluation that doesn't allow you to graduate on good enough.

Phase 1 — Survival Skills Development

Before you can teach a skill, you have to own it. Phase 1 covers six courses — the same courses available to civilian students — but instructor candidates are evaluated against a higher standard throughout. The goal isn't just to complete the courses. It's to develop the depth of understanding in each skill set that allows you to answer questions you weren't expecting, adapt instruction to a student who isn't getting it, and demonstrate any skill correctly under pressure at the start of a long day in the field.

The six Phase 1 courses are the Wilderness Survival Course (3 days), the Bushcraft Skills Course (3 days), the Winter Survival Course (4 days), the Primitive Survival Course (3 days), the Master Navigator™ Course (4 days), and the Wilderness First Responder Course (8 days). That's 25 days of structured field instruction before the instructor-specific phases begin. Courses can be completed in any order, and candidates are expected to practice between courses — the skills taught in each course need to be maintained, not just demonstrated once and forgotten.

Phase 2 — Instructor Development

Phase 2 is where the program diverges from anything available through a standard survival course lineup. Most instructor certifications in the outdoor education industry skip this phase — they assume that if you know the content, you can teach it. That assumption produces instructors who are good at demonstrating skills and weak at everything else: managing a diverse group of students, adapting when a lesson isn't landing, running a safe field environment, making curriculum decisions in real time, and building the kind of business infrastructure that makes a survival school viable beyond year one. Phase 2 addresses all of that.

Train the Trainer Course — 4 Days

The Train the Trainer Course is a 4-day residential course covering the principles of adult learning, curriculum development, instructional methodology, safety management for field-based instruction, and the fundamentals of building and running a survival school or instructional business. This is where instructor candidates learn the difference between knowing something and being able to teach it — why adult learners need different approaches than children, how to structure a progression from crawl to run for a skill that has fifteen variables, how to manage a field environment with students at different competency levels, and how to build a curriculum that produces consistent outcomes regardless of which instructor is running it. Business content covers pricing, liability, marketing, student management, and the legal and insurance landscape for outdoor education businesses.

Hybrid Distance Learning

Between the Train the Trainer Course and the OJT component, candidates complete a hybrid distance learning track. This involves filming assigned instructional modules and submitting them for critique from GB2 leadership. The purpose is preparation, not evaluation — the feedback candidates receive on technique, pacing, safety management, and accuracy is designed to build the foundation they need to show up to OJT ready to deliver instruction in front of real students. The video format forces candidates to prepare and deliver without a live coaching safety net, which means the problems that need to be fixed get identified before they surface in front of a paying class.

On-the-Job Training — Minimum 20 Days

OJT is conducted at live GB2 events with paying civilian students. Candidates deliver instruction in the field under the supervision of qualified GB2 instructors, working through the curriculum they've been studying and practicing since Phase 1. The OJT component serves multiple purposes: it produces teaching experience under real conditions, it exposes candidates to the full range of student profiles and field scenarios they'll encounter as working instructors, and it gives GB2 leadership sustained observation time to evaluate whether a candidate is actually ready for certification. Candidates are responsible for their own travel to OJT events. A minimum of 20 OJT days is required, and candidates should expect to exceed that minimum before their evaluation is scheduled.

Phase 3 — Final Instructor Evaluation

The Final Instructor Evaluation is the capstone of the program. It tests survival skills, teaching ability, and physical fitness against a 100% proficiency standard. The specific format and content of the evaluation are not disclosed in advance to preserve its integrity as an assessment — knowing exactly what you'll be tested on before you arrive is a different kind of preparation than being ready for anything. What candidates can expect is that every major skill domain covered in the program will be in scope, that the teaching component will require demonstrating instructional effectiveness in a private evaluation setting under field conditions, and that the physical fitness standard is non-negotiable.

Candidates who complete the Final Instructor Evaluation successfully earn the GB2 Instructor Tab and formal certification. The Tab is a physical patch that represents a specific standard, not a participation marker. The certification is the credential that backs it. Both are earned, not issued.

What the GB2 Instructor Credential Represents

Most survival instructor certifications are built around a skills checklist completed over a set number of consecutive days in the field. A candidate who finishes the checklist earns the credential. What that credential qualifies them to do outside the school that issued it is typically unclear, because the program was never designed to address instructional methodology, curriculum development, student management, or the business and safety infrastructure required to operate a professional program. The result is practitioners with instructor titles, not instructors.

The GB2 program was designed specifically to change that outcome. Former Army Ranger and Green Beret Joshua Enyart, with three decades of professional instruction across military and civilian programs, built it to answer a direct question: what does it actually take to produce an instructor who can work professionally in the outdoor education industry — at an established school, as an independent operator, or as a credentialed hire for an existing outdoor or guiding program? The curriculum follows from that question: skills development evaluated at a higher standard than a civilian student is held to, formal training in adult learning methodology and curriculum development, supervised OJT with real paying students under qualified oversight, and a final evaluation with no partial credit.

The GB2 certification is recognized within the industry as a meaningful credential because it is designed to produce instructors who can actually work in the industry. That distinction takes time and commitment to earn. The 45-plus days of structured training, the OJT at live GB2 events, and the 100% proficiency standard at the Final Evaluation are not arbitrary requirements — they are what separates an instructor from a practitioner who completed a program.

Scheduling and Program Flexibility

The program is self-paced with no expiration on tuition. Most candidates complete Phase 1 over one to three years, attending courses as their schedule and course availability allow. The Train the Trainer Course and Final Instructor Evaluation require prerequisites to be completed and an invitation from GB2 before enrollment — these components cannot be attended out of sequence. Candidates should plan OJT scheduling in coordination with GB2 to align with the live event calendar.

Because of the deep discount and the administrative and logistical overhead involved in tracking candidates through a multi-phase certification program, this bundle is 100% non-refundable. That policy exists because the program is designed to be completed — candidates who aren't ready to commit to the full track should start with individual courses rather than purchasing the bundle. Students who want to complete all six courses for personal mastery without the instructor qualification should consider the Wilderness Survival Certification program instead.

Safety and Instructor Credentials

All GB2 field instruction is conducted under the same safety infrastructure that governs every course in the lineup: on-site Medic Station with appropriate medical equipment, dedicated medic and Search and Rescue staff, and instructors certified in CPR/AED and Wilderness First Responder at minimum. The program is fully insured. Instructor candidates operating in an OJT capacity work under direct supervision until their certification is complete.

Joshua Enyart developed and supervises the program. His background — Former Army Ranger and Green Beret, three decades of professional instructor experience — informs every aspect of the curriculum, from the sequencing of skill development in Phase 1 to the content of the Train the Trainer Course to the design of the Final Evaluation. The standard he holds candidates to is the standard he was held to, and that he held others to, throughout his service.

Supporting Study Resources

Instructor candidates who want to build their theoretical foundation alongside their field training will find the GB2 study resources aligned with the Phase 1 curriculum. The Master Navigator™ PDF Series covers the navigation curriculum across 8 parts. Joshua's field manual Surviving the Wild — 80,000 words of field-tested survival methodology — is used by many GB2 students and instructor candidates as a primary study reference.

The GB2 Network™ hosts two video instructional series that map directly to Phase 1 courses in this program. The Master Navigator™ Course Instructional Series covers the navigation curriculum in structured video format — useful preparation before the live course and as a review resource between courses. The Wilderness Medical Course Instructional Series covers wilderness medicine principles and field techniques, and pairs directly with the WFR course in Phase 1.

View all scheduled dates and locations at the Live Training Events & Courses collection.