Month: April 2012

2012-04-11 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 8, Deadlift 1

/ hsoi

I knew this was going to be tough….

“Week 1” – BBB 3 Month Challenge

  • 5 reps – Deadlift (working max: 335#)
    • 1x5x135 (warmup)
    • 1x5x170
    • 1x3x205
    • 1x5x225 (work)
    • 1x5x255
    • 1x5x290
  • Asst. #1 – Squat
    • 5 x 10/10/10/8/8 x 170
  • Foam Rolling

Ooof…. that’s hard. 🙂

The deadlifting went fine. I actually was to do 220 but did 225 instead because I was being lazy with plates. The notable thing was I did the last set with double-overhand grip. I usually go mixed on the last set, but I wanted to see how well I could handle it with this weight. It was hard to hold on, but I did.

Then squats. Oh my… you can see I only got to 8 and the last 2 sets. I could have ground out 2 more reps on each of those sets, but why? This isn’t about going to failure, especially on assistance work. I sure pushed it, but wasn’t going to kill myself. Tough tough tough.

One thing I did try was a different cue. I forget where I read this, but it was saying that instead of a “chest up” cue to use a “head back” cue. That is, you pull your head back… or more like drawing/sucking your chin in. If you do that, it really tightens everything up in your shoulders AND brings your chest up. I find this a far better cue than “chest up”.

I dropped the ab wheel. As I mentioned before, it gives me massive intra-cranial pressure. I had enough after squatting, why make it worse? I’m not sure what else I’ll do for ab work here, if anything. Maybe I will do nothing because, at least at my level, do I need specific ab work or should I be getting all I need out of good squats and deadlifts? What would Rippetoe say…?

New shooting glasses

/ hsoi / 13 Comments

I wear prescription glasses.

When I shoot guns, I wear safety glasses over my prescription glasses. Yes, prescription glasses with polycarbonate lenses offer some level of eye protection from impact, but I don’t consider it adequate — better than nothing, but far from ideal. Reason being, most prescription eye glasses aren’t certified to handle impact, and I don’t really feel like the glasses breaking and potentially making the situation worse. As well, a lot of modern prescription glasses are designed to look good, not to adequately protect. For example, they might be rimless, only being held in by a bit of fishing line. Or the lenses are made very small thus they don’t provide a lot of coverage from the front — no common prescription glasses are going to provide protection from the side, and how many of us have been on the firing line with someone to our left and their ejected brass landing on us? Besides, if say my gun opted to spontaneously disassemble itself, it’s going to be expensive enough to replace the gun let alone a few hundred dollars more to replace my glasses… which I may need in order to drive myself home! I’d rather sacrifice a $10-$20 pair of safety glasses than my prescription glasses. Yes, sometimes when I shoot I just wear my glasses (e.g. when I’m out hunting), but on the whole I prefer to wear safety glasses.

The trouble is, I wear prescription glasses, and most safety glasses are designed for people who don’t wear glasses. *sigh*  You can find inexpensive shop glasses at the hardware that will go over glasses, but they suck… they never fit well, they’re uncomfortable, they fog, they just suck. Better than nothing tho, and I have a couple of pairs because for short-term needs they certainly work or are easy to have on hand for other people to use.

I was happy when, a couple of years ago, I saw these glasses advertised in the NRA Store. I picked up a pair of both the clear and the tinted, and have been using them as my shooting glasses ever since. I’ve been generally pleased with them. I will say they are large, and so they should fit over most glasses and onto most faces. But because they are large, they also may not fit you tight enough. I know around my temple area there’s just enough of a gap… and one time a piece of ejected brass from the guy to my left hit my head JUST right and entered the glasses! That was a bit of a surprise and scary moment. Plus, the tinting on the lenses has gotten all scratched up… but that’s more my own fault for not putting them into some sort of case. The scratching has gotten pretty bad, and this past weekend I notice one of the stems had a crack in it, so it’s only a matter of time before they fall apart. Time to get new glasses.

Of course, my initial reaction was to go back to the NRA Store and pick up the same, but… there’s got to be something else out there. I don’t feel like going the prescription route because honestly, it’s too expensive for me to try to maintain multiple expensive sets of prescription glasses as the prescription changes over the years. So, cheap “overs” will have to do.

But I found this: Safety Glasses USA and they have a whole section for over-the-glasses safety glasses!

Multiple models, styles, tints, sizes, features. Quite a nice selection.

I’m going to order their “Guardian Pro Over-The-Glass Safety Glasses with Gray Anti-Fog Lens”. It comes in three sizes: medium, medium-large, and large. I don’t know which will fit me best, so I’m going to order all three. I will pick the smallest one that works. I want to have it as tight as possible to my head so that 1. it minimizes chances for something to get in there, 2. I don’t look like a giant bug. 🙂

FWIW, I’m chosing that particular model because 1. they go over the glasses, full coverage on all sides, 2. they have tint, so should be nice on sunny Texas days, 3. anti-fog is useful, because we’ll sweat a lot on those sunny Texas days, 4. they appear to be similar to the NRA glasses I currently have in terms of form factor, so they hopefully will fit the same and be about the same level of comfort.

When I get them in, I’ll of course try things out and give a further review here.

 

DeSantis Clip-Grip – second impressions

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I got to shoot my S&W 442 with the DeSantis Clip-Grip this past Saturday while out at KR Training.

Click here to read my first impressions.

The main thing I wanted to do was shoot the gun with those grips to see how it fared.

It went about as I expected.

You can’t get a great grip on the snub with these grips because they’re small. But you can get enough of a grip that you can shoot, and shoot I could. I could do some slow fire and nail the small steel plate at about 20 yards, once I figured out the hold-under for the load I was using.  I shot some of my .38 Special 158 grain handloads, and I also shot some Remington R38S12 .38 Special +P 158 grain stuff. Everything went about as I expected it would. You feel it, the +P of course stings a bit more, nothing I’d want to shoot a few hundred rounds of, but I can certainly practice with the plinking loads well enough and shoot enough of the carry loads to get by. It’s not horrible, but not the more pleasant thing in the world.

I didn’t really notice much difference between this and the factor boot grips. I expected maybe a little more felt-recoil, and perhaps there was on a meter, but nothing I could really notice.

The one kicker? I didn’t try a full draw as I’m not ready to do that (I like my femoral artery), but I have been working on the draw dry at home. When drawing, due to the way you have to get a “grip” on the gun to draw it, you don’t get a nice “choked up grip” on the gun… you’re a little down the back of the grip. I tried shooting from this grip and it works but it’s not ideal because of course after the first shot the gun now torques back and nestles into that “choked up” position… but now everything has changed, different sight picture, the gun and grip have shifted… not ideal. There may be a different way to draw to mitigate this. I’ll have to experiment.

All in all, I’m alright with these grips. I’m going to keep them on my 442 and see how it goes. If nothing else, they don’t really change the form factor all that much from the regular boot grips, and it gives me options.

Things your burglar won’t tell you – #15

/ hsoi

I’ll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he’ll stop what he’s doing and wait to hear it again. If it doesn’t hear it again, he’ll just got back to what he was doing. It’s human nature.

2012-04-09 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 8, Press 1

/ hsoi

And so begins month 2 of the “BBB 3 Month Challenge”. Also my 8th cycle on Wendler 5/3/1.

“Week 1” – BBB 3 Month Challenge

  • 5 reps – Press (working max: 160#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x65
    • 1x5x80
    • 1x3x95
    • 1x5x105 (work)
    • 1x5x120
    • 1x5x140
  • Asst. #1A – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 140
  • Asst. #1B – Chinups (supersetted with Bench Press)
    • 5 x 4/4/3/2.5/2.5 x BW
  • Asst. #2 – Face Pulls
    • 3 x 12 x 65
  • Asst. #3 – DB Hammer Curls
    • 3 x 10/9/8 x 35
  • Foam Rolling

Yeah… month 2 is where the challenge really starts. 🙂 Assistance weights go up to 60% now. Bench press isn’t a big deal for me, but others… we’ll see how it goes.

All in all, the pressing went fine. I wasn’t in a good groove this morning (slept weird last night) and my form wasn’t as good as it should have been in either pressing movement. But you get through and do what you have to do.

Chin-ups move to 4 reps across, but as you can see I didn’t get there. In fact, I’m upset that I dropped to “2.5” reps on the last 2 sets. The only people recording half-reps are those that can’t do enough (which is me), but I want to remember them because I am getting up there, can’t get all the way… hold it… hold it… hold it… then slow lower. So it’s still some sort of work, and I’m hoping it will be something that helps get me over the hump towards more full reps.

All that extra work from the chins, the face pulls… it didn’t leave me with much in the tank for the curls, but meh.. it’s curls. I thought about dropping down to 30’s and trying to get 10-12 reps instead, but no… just stay with this. This is a challenge, so keep moving along.

Next workout is going to be… interesting. Squats assistance… should kick my ass. 🙂

Been there, done that

/ hsoi

Sammy DeMarco, a student at Eastern Michigan University, writes about his change of heart:

Concealed weapons should be allowed on campus. There, I said it. After years of believing weapons should not be allowed on university property, I have flipped my position. I can no longer find a valid reason as to why law-abiding citizens who attend and work at Eastern Michigan University or any university campus should be left defenseless.

I know where Sammy is coming from. I too flipped my position some years ago. I gave up on my ignorance and my emotion, and looked at logic. I was convinced by logic because well… some things are just hard to defend, once you take your fingers out of your ears.

The EMU Public Safety folks are some of the most professional authorities I’ve encountered. I have no doubt they are highly capable of handling a situation similar to what happened last week at Oikos. But we cannot expect police to be on every corner, in every parking lot and every classroom every minute….

Many students live off campus, have night classes and walk home. We regularly receive emails and texts alerting us that yet another classmate was robbed or assaulted while walking home.

So, not only are citizens not allowed to defend themselves while on campus, they are left defenseless going to and coming from the university, too.

We don’t deny that police and other people whose job it is to “bring safety” can do their job, but the reality is they can’t always be around to do their job. Look around right now… is there a police officer within arms reach of you? And is that police officer always there? If the fact we have police is sufficient to stop people from being assaulted or mugged, then why do we have so many assaults and muggings? Obviously having a police force is not sufficient to get the job done.

Consider where people live vs. where they work or go to school. Maybe we can have useful tools at our disposal at some time, but then due to certain laws we cannot. Why should law-abiding citizens have to reduce their ability to stay safe? Isn’t the general argument towards increasing safety? So how is telling that 5′ 4″ 105# woman she cannot have a gun to fend off a rapist or crazed ex- going to make her any safer? Restraining orders are just pieces of paper and really don’t stop people hell-bent on doing evil. So why should she have to choose between her personal safety and getting an education?

I realize many people will say we need stricter gun laws, not less strict, to deter crime. That logic goes something like this: We need to restrict law abiding citizens from carrying concealed weapons. This in turn will reduce the crime that criminals commit on those very law abiding folks.

So, out of all the laws criminals break, we think the one law they will obey is not carrying a concealed weapon? I’m having trouble reaching that conclusion.

That’s pretty much the case. In fact, many criminals are repeat offenders. They’re already felons, legally prohibited from having a gun. Yet they do. The law hasn’t stopped them, it won’t stop them (it sure didn’t stop them from committing their original crimes), so the only people abridged and hurt by the law are the law-abiding good people. Why are we doing that? What logic is there, other than perhaps someone having an agenda… or just being ignorant.

Sammy sums it up:

Self defense should go beyond law; it’s a right by nature. Denying someone a right to defend themselves against his or her would-be attackers is immoral. The reasons opponents give for supporting restrictions is not supported by data. The restrictions criminalize the good guys and empowers the bad ones. Police cannot be everywhere at once. Ultimately, there is only one person truly responsible for your safety: you.

That’s the thing. When you look at straight data, it’s there. Oh some will say it’s all statistics that the NRA provided to help further their “bloodbath agenda”. But that’s the funny thing… when folks like Howard Nemerov study data exclusively from anti-gun or neutral sources and the factual data and interpretation of it supports that gun control doesn’t work, how can you continue to argue against the facts? unless you just like to argue or are unwilling to accept the logic, reason, and hard fact.

It took me years to arrive here, but here I stand. It’s time we’re allowed to defend ourselves with more than a pen and a sharp tongue.

Sammy, it took me years to arrive here as well, but here I stand and stand with you. Don’t give up your pen and sharp tongue tho… keep spreading the word.

AAR – BP1 and AT-6 @ KR Training, 7 April 2012 — where I stink up the joint

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

This day at KR Training was a little different for me.

In the morning, we had Basic Pistol 1, and in the afternoon was AT-6: Pistol Workout.

What made it a little different was in BP1 I got to do a little more teaching in the lecture portion of the class than I have in the past. I’m enjoying that, and the more I get to do it the better I get. The BP1 class was small due to some people withdrawing at the last minute, so we had an especially good teacher-student ratio. More than half the class was women. Because of the smaller class size, we got through things a little quicker than usual and Karl was able to field a lot of questions from the class. It seemed to be a very informative session today, and the students seemed pleased.

But what really made it different for me today was I got to shoot! Instead of assisting with AT-6 I got to shoot AT-6. The class size was small enough and the class content is directed and advanced enough that Karl was able to run things and we all just shoot drills and work on skills. The general design of AT-6 is to work on all those things you hate to do, like 25 yard group shooting, shot calling, one-hand-only shooting, and so on. It really pushes you to your limit.

And oh… I stunk up the joint.

I was very unhappy with my performance. I dropped too many shots, where I shouldn’t.

There’s a part of me that wants to double-check some things with the M&P to ensure it’s good and dialed in correctly, especially with my practice ammo. But I’ll be honest… I’d love to blame things on the gun, to say it’s things like me still getting used to the gun, to the heavier and longer trigger, and all that stuff. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in part that was involved in why I stunk so badly today.

But in the end, it’s not the equipment, it’s the shooter. I know it’s me, and even if it’s things like the trigger or other gun things, it still comes down to me improving my use of the tool, not fixing nor improving the tool itself. The only thing tool-wise I might want to improve is mag pouches. The Blade-Tech dual mag pouch I couldn’t stand… dug into my leg, too close together. I borrowed Tom’s 4-pouch Raven, which was OK but like all Raven products they’re a huge slab of Kydex. I did like how tight to the body the inner pouches were held tho. I’ll probably get a Beltfeed from Comp-Tac one of these days.

I already knew I needed work on one-hand press-outs, especially weak hand. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on weak-hand-only shooting, and when it comes to slow fire I’m fairly pleased with my improvement. But once some time pressure is added, I start dropping shots all over the place. Sure I can do tricks like aiming higher so when I slap the trigger on a WHO press-out the shot still lands within the target zone, but that just masks the problem. But what hit me was how much I need press-out work in general: both hands, SHO, WHO. I’ve been working the press-out in a very slow and smooth way, but it’s too slow. So when I had to speed up to today’s speeds, everything went to crap — too wide a jump from the speeds I’ve been doing to the speed I needed.

I have also noticed that I’m retraining myself on a lot of things. I’m finding the way my eyes are working regarding finding the front sight and the target is changing. Due to all my weightlifting, my grip is MUCH stronger and I find myself wanting to use it, really crushing the gun, but all that grip changing isn’t consistent yet and could even be why I’m mashing the trigger (HULK SMASH!).

I really don’t know exactly why I’m doing all that I’m doing. There’s a lot I’ve been working on, that’s changing, but then also because time is limited some things haven’t been worked on and thus have suffered and regressed. So today was a good diagnostic towards things I need to work on more, but I need to do more to figure out just what the problem is and thus properly correct it.

Lots of 25 yard shooting, and that’s improved, I feel more confident in shooting that slow fire… but then I haven’t done much 3-10 yard shooting for speed and obviously that’s regressed. Lots of slow fire doesn’t require lots of pressing out, and that regressed.  I still need more 25 yard shooting, I still need more slow fire, but I need to not neglect these other areas. And at least more trigger time like that should help me figure out and get over my slapping… stop rushing.

In a side note… the grip texturing on the M&P is great. It actually rubbed me a little raw today in some spots, but it’s not overly rough. I like it better than the XD or XDm grip texture. I don’t think I’ll bother getting any stippling or other texturing work on my M&P. It’s pretty nice as it is.

Well, I’ve got homework to do….