Month: February 2010

Random health and fitness

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

There’s an article at LowTechCombat that had a few random fitness things I wanted to keep around.

Talks about running barefoot. I walk around barefoot as much as possible and have tried running barefoot only to have everything from the knee down hate me after a short while. This may be a better way to get started.

A discussion of milk. I have noticed that I don’t consume milk that much in my adult life. I’ll have some with a bowl of cereal and I do love ice cream, but that’s about it. One issue not addressed in the article is the consumption of cow milk. Cows have a more intensive digestive system than we humans do, thus it stands to reason cow milk is oriented towards… well… cows. I’ve been told that humans can bode better with simpler milks, such as goat milk. Of course, I’ve tried goat milk and I can’t stand it.

Crossfit intrigues me. I like their 100-word description of world-class fitness:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

Is it worth dying over?

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

Boy, so many things from this past weekend are just coming back. It’s wonderful!

KR Training’s AT-1A class is good because, as I said before, we spend all this time teaching you how to use your gun and use it well, then we throw something at you where using your gun may not be the right thing to do.

tgace’s tactical preschool 45 is titled “What’s Your Hurry?” He goes on to discuss the thought process you must have about “clearing a building”:

Going into a building after an armed and barricaded man or clearing your home in the middle of the night is probably the most dangerous thing you could ever do. You need to seriously consider the necessity of attempting it before you do it. Ask yourself, is there really a need to “go in”? Is someone in danger?

If you know someone is inside a building, armed, alone, and not ready to surrender, what is the hurry? Why would you need to “go dynamic” and risk getting shot? Perhaps there IS a reason, but you really need to figure out what that reason is first and be able to articulate it. If you go in and get yourself or someone else killed, what will your explanation be for your decision? If you and your wife are in your bedroom and you hear someone in the house (you KNOW someone is in the house and there is nobody else living in the house with you), what possible reason is there to go out looking? Arm yourself, call 911 and bunker down. It may even be a good idea to announce what you have done quite loudly. ..the fact that you are armed and have called the cops that is.

Breaking the rules has serious consequences. Don’t do it.

/ hsoi

This past weekend, ToddG had a student in class that shot himself (in the leg). Todd relays the story here, not to chastise but to point out to everyone the importance of having an emergency plan in place and ensuring all students in the class know where first aid materials are and how each person in the class should react should something occur (e.g. you call 911).

The reason for the discharge? The student admits he had his finger on the trigger when he went to reholster.

I wanted to relay this because while the 3 classes I helped with this past weekend went pretty well, the worst thing I saw, overall, were violations of the two cardinal safety rules. I don’t care if you follow Jeff Cooper’s rules or the NRA’s rules, the two key rules come down to muzzle awareness and direction, and trigger discipline (and keeping your finger off the trigger when it shouldn’t be there).

In terms of muzzle awareness, people get slack about awareness at “off” times. That is, when it’s time to shoot they know to point the muzzle downrange. When it’s a not-shooting time, that’s when muzzle awareness and discipline falters. People would go to rack their slides and muzzles got pointed in all sorts of directions, typically somewhere to their left (for right-handed shooters). Many times people would be in a ready position with the muzzle pointed up… not straight vertical, but enough of an upwards angle that if a shot fired from that angle it would go over the berm. Most of this was unconscious action — the student wasn’t aware they were doing it. You cannot not be aware. You must always know the direction of your muzzle, and take steps to ensure your muzzle is pointed in a safe direction.

In terms of trigger discipline, when the muzzle is properly on target and you are ready to shoot, the finger can be on the trigger. Else, the finger is off the trigger and indexed along the upper part of the frame or slide. Helping people gain such trigger discipline was probably the biggest thing done throughout the course of the class. Unless your muzzle is on target and you are explicitly going to shoot, finger must not be on the trigger and must be indexed along the slide or upper frame. That’s all there is to say.

Violation of one of these rules is bad. Violation of both of these rules is what leads to tragedy.