Leveraging Groups in MantisX to Encourage Practice and Have Fun!

If you are anything like the vast majority of the population, your time is scarce in 2026 and it’s very easy for practice with your firearm to be pushed to the back burner unless you have some motivating factors driving you to practice.  Many times we just need to be motivated by either accountability or some are motivated by gamification of a task promoting competition.  Either way, using the Groups function with the MantisX Pistol/Rifle app can provide that nudge we could need.

What are Mantis Groups?

Groups within the Mantis Pistol/Rifle app are collections of people with some commonality that brings them together.  Think of it like a Facebook group.  It’s a place for people to interact with other people that have either a common ideology, goal, or relationship.  You can decide how granular or how broad of a group you wish to be a part of.  Let’s talk about what Groups look like within the app.

Groups has its own menu item at the bottom of the app and the first thing you will see on the Groups page is specific people that you are following, similar to social media.  It’s a person that you have chosen to see their Mantis data.  You have access to see that person’s last 50 session’s history, all the way down to each screen available in history for that drill and any added notes that they inputted on that session.  With the integration of Laser Academy targets in the Pistol/Rifle app, if that person used integration during the session, you can even view their hits on target!  From this page you can also choose to see who is following you, and you can manage those who you are following as well as your followers in the event that you want to curate either list.

Following a person is a great way to have accountability with them.  Not only can you see how many shots they’ve done in the past week, but you have access to see their scores and how they are improving.  If you are an instructor, this is a great way to keep tabs on a student and assist them remotely as you analyze their data from wherever you are.  Following someone is best used if you only have a few people you want to check on, but creating your own Group gives you even more flexibility and additional functionality that you cannot have with just following people.

Creating and Managing Groups

There is no limit to what you choose to create a group for.  Many people create a group for their own family, or they have a specific group for their circle of friends or accountability partners.  Creating a group is as easy as tapping the add “+ Group” button on the far top right corner of your device’s screen.  If you are a part of other groups, you may need to swipe left on the group names to see the add button.  This is also how you can find and join groups, just choose the “Find a Group” option once you open the add button.

There are groups for specific firearm manufacturers, social influencers have groups specific to their followings, and you will see groups named for ranges, law enforcement departments, and many other firearm organizations.  Mantis even has its own private group for students who are part of our MantisX Mastermind course where we dig into all the nuts and bolts of the Pistol/Rifle app.  Groups can have different privacy settings.  Just because you can see the group and send a join request, doesn’t mean you are automatically accepted in the group.  It depends on the settings and administrators of a group can have an approval process in place for those who request to be part of the group.

Once you tap the add group button and choose to “Create a Group”, give it a name.  Consider naming it something unique to describe the group’s purpose, and that is not already used.  Next you need to decide whether you want the group to be public (OPEN) or private (CLOSED).  This will dictate whether your group will have an approval gate in place for you to approve or reject member requests.  Public or open groups automatically allow anyone who requests to join to be added to the group and have immediate visibility to all member’s history in the group.

If you want a bit more control of your group, consider making it a private or closed group.  This gives you the ability to ensure those who are requesting to join are who you want in the group.  This is done by the Mantis username, so make sure you ask those who you are wanting to join the group to share their username with you so you can accept them into the group.

Once you click “Create”, your group is now live!  You can then scroll through your group list at the top and see the new group name.  If you select the group, you will see yourself as a member, and that you are automatically set as an administrator of the group.  You can manually add members to your group from this screen using the “+Add Member” button if you have their Mantis username.

Being an administrator gives you the ability to modify the group settings, manage members and make announcements to the group with the “SETTINGS” button at the top of your group.  Here is where you can change the name, privacy and visibility of the group.  All groups default to being visible, so if you do not want your group showing to everyone, choose “HIDDEN”.  It’s important to know that if your group is hidden, you will need to manually add members to your group, or you must share your group with others using the share button to the right of the settings button.

And don’t shoulder the responsibility of being the only administrator, you can promote other members to be an admin within the “Manage Members” area in settings.  This is also where you can remove members from your group.  Also you can use “Make Announcement” to state the weekly goal, or to congratulate the prior week’s winner!

One of the most powerful things within groups is to set a goal for your group.  Setting a goal is not required, but highly recommended to help nudge people to practice to meet the specific goal.  There are 3 types of goals to choose from (only one can be chosen per week).  Total Shots for the group has a purpose that all members are contributing to the same goal of meeting a specific number of shots for that week.  A Member Shots goal is similar, but sets a shot count goal for each member to reach in the week.  Finally there is the Drill of The Week.

Using the Drill of the Week goal can bring a little bit of competition into the group.  Competition can be a motivator for many people.  You can choose any drill from the list and set an Average Score goal for the group members.  It’s important to know that any goal set will not go into effect until the following week, which is counted Sunday through Saturday.  Setting the average goal gives the member something to target and work for, so don’t make it too far out of reach.  

The purpose is to motivate members to strive to reach the goal, that means the goal needs to be attainable through practice, not a gimme.  If you have a diverse group of skill levels, it might be best to choose Member Shots as the goal, as it puts each member responsible to meet their goal for the week, and is not tied into performance and not leaning on others in the group to meet the group goal if you were to use Total Shots.  You also may encourage members to leave messages in the group and check out the latest sessions in the group by using the “Conversation” area to encourage members.

If you are a range or an instructor, consider using groups and group goals for your business to motivate your range members or students to get their practice in for the week.  You can encourage participation by offering coupons, gift cards, or discounts on your classes or products to get repeat customers.  It also encourages more practice and that keeps people in the mindset of training - whether that is taking classes or upgrading equipment.

As a range, you could encourage people to participate, even if they don’t have a Mantis unit.  Use the store’s demo unit and allow them to do the drill of the week, or whatever goal/competition you are doing with the Mantis drills at the shop or range.  This would require having customers sign up for an account on train.mantisx.com and either download the MantisX Pistol/Rifle app on their own device or sign into the store demo tablet or phone to log their sessions.  

This would encourage foot traffic, and expose customers to the data the MantisX Pistol/Rifle app captures from the products like the X10 Elite, BlackbeardX or the TitanX.  You could even do in-store contests or special competitions at range days that require people to stop by to do their sessions with specific firearms outfitted with Mantis products, or use the TitanX, which would level the playing field with everyone using the same equipment.

Wrapping It Up

As you can see groups within the Pistol/Rifle app can provide that motivation through accountability or a little bit of competition, however you want to look at it.  Groups are most effective when they are curated often.  Make sure to update the goal each week, communicate to your members about the goal for each week, maybe a little trash talking if that’s appropriate for your group, and celebrate everyone’s wins to pump up people to continue practicing.  Any practice is better than no practice, and groups can be that little bit of motivation that people need to strive to be better!