Month: January 2012

Rangemaster February 2012 newsletter

/ hsoi

The Rangemaster February 2012 newsletter is now available.

You must read this issue.

The article on mindset is required reading.

There will be a test, and it’ll be administered when you find yourself in that life-or-death conflict that supposedly you’ve been training for.

This is one of the most gripping, blunt, and vital articles I’ve read in a long time, on the subject of mindset and how that alone will determine if you will survive the fight or not. While it examines encounters by law enforcement officials, the content is relevant to non-LEO’s as well.

I’ve wasted how much of my life?!?

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I just learned the Ian Knot.

How much of my life have I wasted tying shoes the “standard” way?

If you don’t know what the Ian Knot is, watch:

Youngest is still struggling with shoelace tying. Understandable because he rarely wears shoes with laces, so far too often when he wears those shoes we don’t have the time to teach him properly. Couple that with the fact that knots are useful, and I’ve been on a kick to get the kiddos to learn a bunch of basic knots (Oldest fights it and refuses to learn… then every time I see him struggling to tie something up, I remind him how much easier things would be if he’d listen to his old man once in a while and learn proper knots). All the basic ones they teach in Boy Scouts: square knot, two half-hitches, taught-line hitch, bowline, sheet bend, clove hitch, etc..

Might as well start with shoelaces.

And yes, while the rest of the household knows how to tie laces the old fashioned way, we’re all going to learn the Ian knot. Well, we’ve mostly got it… doesn’t take long. But mastering it so we can tie it super fast will just take practice.

So what are some other useful knots?

Figure 8 knot is simple, and good to know about as a stopper.

Lark’s Head is another simple one, useful too.

I read about the Trucker’s Knot and think that would be useful to learn. I don’t know it myself.

Of course there’s the basic overhand knot, but you tend to learn that one as you do other knots.

It’s good to learn about the granny knot… just so you can recognize it, since you’ll probably tie it a bunch while learning the square knot.

What are some other essential knots to know?

KR Training January 2012 Newsletter

/ hsoi

The KR Training January 2012 Newsletter is now available.

Biggest thing? Folks, if you’re wanting to do any training you should sign up as soon as possible. We’ve got things scheduled out through May, and classes have been filling up VERY quickly. Plan ahead, get signed up as soon as possible.

 

2012-01-30 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 6, Press 1

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Starting off cycle 6, and it wasn’t a good day, tho it got better.

“Week 1”

  • 5 reps – Press (working max: 150#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x60
    • 1x5x75
    • 1x3x90
    • 1x5x100 (work)
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x5x130
  • Asst. #1 – Press
    • 4 x 10 x 75
    • 1 x 12/6/4 x 75 (rest-pause set)
  • Asst. #2 – Supinated Close-grip Pulldowns
    • 4 x 10 x 140
    • 1 x 10/4/3 x 140 (rest-pause set)
  • GPP – Elliptical
    • Tabata style (20 sec. 160-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
    • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
    • 1 Tabata set
    • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)

First, I’m starting on cycle 6. I haven’t changed much compared to cycle 5. Cycle 5 was a bigger change to things and so I’m sticking with it for a bit, just letting the groove settle. I am trying to up the weights on assistance work and just push harder with things.

So the work pressing. Bleah. I only got the prescribed reps. I’m not totally sure why. I was just not there. This past weekend drained me with the medical training on Saturday, long-ass naps on Sunday, and then not eating/drinking like I should be doing. I also unracked the bar on that last set, felt light-headed, held the bar for a bit while I tried to regain things, but that did me in. Drained me too much, took away my focus, and I just couldn’t get that 6th rep out. Next time I should just rack the bar, wait a minute, collect myself, then try again. Live and learn.

Assistance pressing was fine. On rest-pause sets I’m fixing things to push myself… the first iteration isn’t just 10 reps but “to failure”. Push myself. But I was feeling better here. In fact, as I’ve been working to get the full body more into pressing (e.g. clench the butt), it’s been hard because when I try to just do that it feels unnatural and gets in the way. On the last couple sets here I found myself clenching naturally and my whole body getting tight and behind the lift. I need to pay more attention to when this happens and work to replicate that setup and feeling. Furthermore, don’t totally sweat it if the body doesn’t get into it… it will when it needs to.

Pulldowns. I opted to jump 10# from last cycle and was figuring that would take me to 5×8 across. Then last minute I changed my mind and figured to just do 10 reps and if it doesn’t happen my body will obviously tell me. It didn’t. 10 reps worked just fine. I’ll keep upping it as we go along. The intent is to get myself doing chins and get away from doing pulldowns, so I’m wanting my pulldowns to use heavier weight and start to go into the 5-8 rep range. I also realized that I have been forgetting to do chins between my assistance pressing sets. I adjusted my templated in my iPhone tracking app to help me remember to do that next time.

On the elliptical, I opted to bump the resistance setting from 12 to 14, and the strides per minute from 150’s th 160’s. That seems to have been just enough to push me, because I felt good and nauseous afterwards. 🙂 I want to keep upping my threshold. Before I start adding more “reps” I want to ensure the reps I’m doing now are as intense as I can make them.

Then on the walk home, my left calf cramped up horribly. I haven’t had a calf cramp in a few years, so this points to 1. that I worked things hard, 2. that there’s some nutritional issues from the past weekend. I’ll fix that.

On to the deadlift! I can’t wait… this cycle will have me break 300# in my work weight. Cool milestone.

AAR – Lone Star Medics’ Dynamic First Aid

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On Saturday January 28, 2012 I was at student in Lone Star Medics‘ Dynamic First Aid course, hosted by KR Training and taught by Caleb Causey.

I’ve wanted to brush up on my first aid skills ever since being involved in an incident a few years ago. I came upon a motorcycle accident before police, fire, or EMS arrived. I jumped out to help as I could, and was able to administer first aid to the downed bikers.

I was surprised at how much first aid I remembered, I was also dismayed by how much I had forgotten.

Since that day I’ve been trying to take some first aid courses. It’s been hard to find them or then to find one that worked into my schedule.

So when this guest spot came up, I was happy to finally be able to take a course.

Dynamic First Aid

The class was focused on more major first aid skills used to try to keep people alive until they can get under more “advanced” care be it from EMT’s or to a hospital. You are the first responder, so what can you do to keep them alive. Topics like cuts and bruises, bug bites, bee stings, etc. were not the focus of this course. The big things covered were bleeding from things like punctures or blunt force trauma, issues of dehydration and heat stroke.

But it went beyond just “here the guy is bleeding, here’s how to apply a tourniquet” or “here’s how to pack a wound”. One of the key issues Caleb stressed with us was “scene safety”. When you come upon a scene, you need to ensure it’s safe. You may not know what happened, but whatever happened could have caused or could cause again the scene to be unsafe. Downed power line? fire? debris? If you’re on the side of the road, could there be more cars rushing past you? if the person was mauled by a bear, could the bear still be in the area? someone was shot, is the bad guy still around? And then to ensure while you are working to NOT get task-fixated, because the scene could become dangerous. Make sure YOU can go home. This is the first time I’ve heard such a topic discussed in a first aid course, and it’s a welcome topic.

We learned a great deal about how to help manage bleeding. Why so much focus on this? Well, the interesting thing. As gun folk we’re always worried about gunshot wounds. Caleb made a good point: how many gunshot wounds have you encountered this week? this month? this year? OK, now how about car accidents? Bleeding, shock, far more common to deal with. Even more so? dehydration, heat exhaustion, heat stroke.

The last points are one of Caleb’s big issues? Why? Because they can kill you, and they are so preventable. Living here in Texas, we all deal with heat issues on a regular basis. We all must know the signs, we all must know how to prevent, we all must know then how to help someone else if the signs manifest themselves. The biggest thing? Drink water. A lot. A lot more than you think. For someone my size, I should drink a gallon of water a day — and that’s just sitting at my desk doing nothing all day. Wife? drink about half a gallon. Don’t forget to consume electrolytes too; if you’re at the office all day, eating regular meals, you’re probably ok. Out working in the heat all day? For every 2 waters, drink 1 “sports drink” (Powerade, Gatorade, etc.). This is so preventable.

There’s much more to the class than these basic topics. Things you cannot learn from reading a book or a blog. You have to attend a course and have a knowledgeable teacher watching and helping you. Caleb constantly put our learning to the test by having us participate in scenarios — role playing, a sort of “medical force-on-force”. He’s set up a scene, then you come upon it with a medical bag (that we had to put together), and now you have to do everything. Like most role-playing-based training, the intent is to not only help you reinforce the skills you’re  learning, but give you a chance to make your mistakes HERE and not when it really matters. These scenarios are a crucial part of the class and learning.

My Take

I’m happy I took the course. It was one of the best Saturday’s I’ve had in a long time. Time very well spent.

Oh sure, I love all the gun stuff. But on a daily basis? I’m going to use medical knowledge more often. If we want to truly be prepared, having basic first aid knowledge is vital.

Caleb’s approach here works to give you a plan. A plan to be prepared (e.g. a proper first aid kit). A plan of what to do when you arrive at the scene (scene safety, how to approach the scene, how to approach the person, how to assess and deal with the situation). And then, the skills needed to do something about it.

I was surprised at some of the approaches Caleb spoke about. I know that medical knowledge changes and this is why what you learned 20 years ago may not apply any longer. The data on tourniquets has changed from when I was in Boy Scouts, and I was happy to see how the knowledge has worked to simplify and improve process. It minimizes the amount of decision making required under the stress of the situation, and allows you to just take care of business as quickly and effectively as possible. This updating of my knowledge was most useful.

I also appreciated Caleb as an instructor. It’s evident he knows what he’s talking about. If you paid attention to how he spoke, you could discern he was well-versed and experienced in this realm, but he knew the focus and audience of his class and would work to present things in a manner relevant to the audience. As a former teacher of public speaking, I know the importance of knowing your audience and tailoring your message to them. It’s not that Caleb dumbed things down, it was a matter of crafting an appropriate message. I thought he did this quite well.

Another thing I appreciated about him was his willingness to be truly open. He wasn’t afraid to say when he didn’t know or if there just wasn’t yet an answer that medical science had come up with. You could tell he was willing to try and experience with gear or techniques until they found the right one that worked best. Best of all? At the end of class he went around the room asking for not just what we got out of the class, but what he could do better. He SOUGHT criticism. He doesn’t just want his horn tooted, he wants to become better. If there’s a problem, he wants to fix it. You have to respect that, not just in terms of running a business, but as a person. He also encouraged us to seek additional training — with other trainers.

I came out of the class with a laundry list of things to buy to beef up my first aid kits, and a desire to not just practice what I learned but to learn more. Need to make first aid training a regular part of my continuing education. And hearing what some of the other Lone Star Medic courses are? Oh, I’d love to take them.

Thank you, Caleb.

Updated: Dave Re attended the Sunday edition of the class. He just posted his AAR. He touched on a lot of points that I forgot to mention. Seems that we both got a lot of the same out of the class.

And yes… it’s time to go shopping.

The Importance of the First Shot

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The NSSF‘s January 2012 edition of “Pull The Trigger” features a video by champion pistol shooter Doug Koenig on “The All-Important First Shot”

This is true. There’s no more important shot than your first shot. If you need another tenth of a second to ensure a good hit? Take that tenth of a second. As the old say goes, “you can’t miss fast enough”. Or as I prefer to say, you can’t afford unacceptable hits; slow down and get acceptable hits. Accept nothing else.

Tom Givens made me realize there’s more than one first shot. We tend to consider the “first shot” to be the shot fired at the start of the string, or the initial shot fired after we walked up to the firing line. But realize any shot other than an immediately subsequent shot is a first shot. So you draw and shoot? That’s a first shot. While shooting there’s a malfunction that you have to clear; when you come back on target, that’s also a first shot. It’s also a first shot when you come back up after performing a reload.

What’s the most important shot? The first shot.

What’s shot you’re most likely to screw up? The first shot.

The screw up will tend to happen because we’ll get in a hurry. This will be most evident on “subsquent first shots”, like after a reload or malfunction. We know we’re down, we need to get back to business quickly, and so we’ll rush and blow the first shot. You must make a conscious decision to slow down. It doesn’t mean move at a glacial pace, but if you have to take 0.2 seconds to verify a sight picture and ensure a smooth trigger press, then do so. Again, we don’t want unacceptable hits.

An acceptable first shot is of paramount importance in a self-defense context. That first shot may be the one that saves your life. Yes it must be fast, but more so it must be accurate. Do the math. On paper, taking that extra 0.2 seconds to ensure an acceptable hit may seem like too much time — every millisecond matters, right? But what if you didn’t take that 0.2 seconds and had an unacceptable hit? Now you’ll have to shoot again, and that will take more time. In making that second shot, your shooting scenario may have changed (e.g. bad guy moved because they realized incoming lead has the right-of-way) which forces your OODA loop to reset and now you take even more time to get re-situated and get that second shot off. And what of the first unacceptable hit? if it hit grandma, that’s going to be far more costly than the 0.2 seconds.

Yes speed matters, but speed without accuracy is worthless. You should shoot (only) as fast as you can get acceptable hits. In practice, use a timer and find out how fast you actually can shoot to get acceptable hits. Take a drill, any drill (KR Training’s “3 Seconds or Less” is a good one). Or since we’re talking first shots, just start with the gun in the holster, concealment garment if applicable, and work on the drawing and firing off a single shot. Shoot it with no timer, no par times, just shoot it at your own pace that enables you to get a clean 100% score. Make sure you can repeat that clean performance on-demand. The next step is to use a timer to for a starting beep and to record shot times, but no ending “par time” beep — leave it open-ended. You want a starting tone, and by recording your shots you can look at the last time and see how long it took you to shoot that string/drill. You want to see how long it takes you to cleanly shoot the string/drill, but with no time pressures. This will establish your “shooting it cleanly” par time. Once you have that established, now you can put a stop tone/par time on the timer and work to shoot the drill before the closing buzzer. Then next time, drop the par time by some amount, maybe 0.2 seconds. Try again. Incrementally lowering the par time, pushing yourself a little more until you can be faster AND accurate.

Your first shot is your most important shot. Make it count.

2012-01-27 workout – didn’t

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Today would have been the last day of cycle 5 (squat, week 4, deload). However I didn’t make it into the gym.

I’ve been sleeping horribly lately, getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night. I think last night my body finally chose to do something about it. I sat on the couch and promptly fell asleep. Wife roused me after a few hours to move me into the bedroom where I zonked right back out. Wife tells me I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night. I do feel better this morning.

Upon waking, I got deeply into a programming problem on a new project for my company and didn’t realize what time it was. Before I knew it, time to go to the gym had passed and time to start the day job workday had to start.

So, no squats for me today. 😦  Won’t be able to make it up. Will just deal with it and start cycle 6 on Monday.

More grease

/ hsoi

Fortunately today was a slow day at work, so I put the time to good use and did a little more work on the truck.

Today was gear lubes. Changing the front differential gear oil, the rear differential gear oil, and the transfer case. I’ve never changed these things in my life. Well, on my motorcycle I sorta did — the V*Star 1100′ is a shaft-drive, so I did change the gear oil on the final drive there. And essentially these were no different, other than being a lot harder to get to. 😉

The rear diff was difficult just because it was cramped and difficult to get my arms in the right places. The oil stunk pretty bad too. I’m not sure it was ever changed because the magnet had a huge cake of shavings on it. This was time consuming as well because of the need to scrape off the old gasket. Wasn’t hard, just time consuming. I’m thankful tho I still had some gasket sealant left over from the motorcycle days; came in handy for putting on the new gasket. Put almost 3 quarts of Mobil 1 75W-90 in it.

The front diff was pretty easy, since it was just removing the skid plate, then simply removing the fill bolt and drain bolt. Use about 2 quarts of Valvoline DuraBlend 80w-90 here.

The transfer case was a bit of a pain, but only because AutoZone had only one pump, made for gallon jugs. So Daughter and I had to do some jury rigging to get the pump working right. We did like that the GM AutoTrak II fluid is Smurf-blue. 🙂

Ran her through all the gears and all the drives. Went around the neighborhood. All seemed OK. I’m a little nervous that I did everything right, that I got the proper amounts of fluid in everything. I think that’s just because it’s a first time doing it and you always get a little nervous about your first time performance. 😉  We’ll see if there are any puddles under the truck in the morning and how things hold up in the days to come.

I am going to let someone else change the transmission fluid and filter, and the coolant. It’s a matter of 1. the hassle, 2. the amount of liquid and being able to properly handle and dispose of it. Maybe I can do that next week. There’s only a few things left to do, and who knows… if the shop will do them for a reasonable price I may just have them do it and be done with it. I don’t mind doing it all myself, but it’s coming down to a time/hassle factor.