Month: August 2012

2012-08-15 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 1, Day 3, reloads

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 20 reps reload from slidelock, slow, 2H
  3. 20 reps reload from slidelock, 3/4 speed, 2H
  4. 10 reps reload from slidelock, slow, 2H
  5. 10 reps of wall drill form press-out, 2H

Started late on this, but at least I got it done today. If the goal is to work every day, I have to work every day. It’s weird how some things in life I can get so dedicated on and other things I don’t. Hrm. Something for me to cogitate on.

I really need to find a mag solution. Using regular mags is ok, but you can’t really get the motion of reloads down if things keep hanging up on the slide stop. I do what I can.

One nice thing about today? 70 reps of the press-out. Make ’em count.

on diet

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I don’t talk much on diet because well.. it’s the toughest part of fitness things for me. There’s no question it’s where I struggle, it’s where I fail. But I have noticed bringing things to light here, keeping logs, for whatever reason it helps me keep more on track. So, let’s try it with diet. I won’t keep logs like I do for the lifting or the dry fire, but I will try to mention it more and be more up-front about it when and where it’s relevant.

Backstory

I’m not fat, but I carry more fat than I care for. I’ve got a gut and frankly I hate it. I’m 6’3″, weigh 235-240# depending on the day. Semi-recent picture of me here (scroll to the end). If I got down to 200, I’d be feeling and looking much better. But I also cannot track pure weight because weight is made up of fat, muscle, bone, organs, water, etc.. I am working to build muscle, so my weight is going up from muscle growth. I also refuse to follow BMI because it’s a bullshit measure. Really in the end it’s about body composition and the ratio of tissues, and I just want less fat (and more muscle). So while I might target a weight, while I might track weight changes per week, it’s more about composition. I will need to take pictures every week, but well… I am not sure I’ll share them. 😉

My general goal is to keep myself healthy. I grant that I will die someday. So much of what people strive to do is find ways to recapture youth and avoid death. I acknowledge the futility of that, and just want to ensure I can enjoy the life I have while I have it. I know I’ll never be an elite powerlifter, I’ll never total 2000#, but that’s fine with me. If I can be strong enough, mobile enough, and continue to function as well as I can, that’s all I’m wanting and is the general goal that directs me.

So with that in mind, my initial milestone was to get off my butt. I had to give up martial arts for numerous reasons, but sitting on my butt wasn’t welcome. Returning to lifting started out more along the bodybuilding routines that I did as a teenager, but thankfully I got sick and in that downtime discovered Rippetoe and Wendler and it’s been a great year. My goal then became to build strength. Sure build muscle, but I really wanted to be strong because you can have muscles and not be strong but if you’re strong you’re going to also have muscles. But even if I didn’t have sexy bulging muscles, that’s fine… it’s more important to be strong as that’s far more useful.

But in getting bigger you well… you get bigger. I’ve built strength, I’ve built muscle, but I’ve also put on fat. You just have to eat a lot to get big, and that can lead to eating more than needed and thus you pack on fat with the muscles. Typical bodybuilder routine was to have “bulking” and “cutting” cycles, where you’d lift heavy and eat like crazy for some months to pack on the pounds, then you’d cut back on food and bump up the cardio to shed the fat. A constant cycle of binge and purge, if you will. But it tended to work. However that sort of thing is just… painful. I’m just not cut out for it. It’s simple. I love food way too much.

See… I recall watching a video on Rich Gaspari. Back when I was a teenager, Rich was my bodybuilding idol. In this video I watched Rich having a family dinner, but he was dedicated to his bodybuilding lifestyle and eating something different from everyone else. Then there was something about his breakfast, and I don’t recall the whole concoction, but it was rather bland and well.. functional. It certainly was the right thing for his lifestyle and greater goals, but there was no pleasure nor fun in that food, from my point of view. When I look at the typical bodybuilder diet plans of chicken breasts and rice, that’s fine for a day or two, but 3 months of that shit would drive me mad. I respect those guys for what they do, but I can’t do that (I’ve got different goals in life). I love food. Not that I love eating crappy food, I just know the wonderful things out there in the world and I wish to enjoy them. It’s like that opening scene in the Pixar movie “Ratatouille” where Remy is talking about one flavor, then another, but put them together and it’s sensational… that’s what I like. Compounding things, Wife is an awesome cook.

Carb Cycling

Backing up a bit, before I went back to the gym I tried shedding some of the fat through simple diet changes. A friend of mine had pretty good success following this “Up Day, Down Day” diet. I tried it and actually lost some good weight and got myself to 212. But you can see in the 1.5 years since falling off that wagon I put 30# on. I know a fair portion of that is muscle, but there’s no question flab came with it. It was tough doing that diet because of the denial, but it worked alright. And when you start to think about the logic behind why it works well… it leads me to think about… carb cycling.

As I’ve been researching stuff on lifting, of course you come across diet issues. These days the two big dietary plans (ignoring “bloat”) seem to be things from John Kiefer, like Carb Nite and Carb Backloading, and then Carb Cycling from guys like Shelby Starnes. It’s all about playing with carb (and other macronutrient) levels, when you take them, and how much you take of them. Given how I was able to deal with Up Day Down Day, plus given all that I’ve learned and much that’s changed in my diet since then (e.g. how we get the weekly veggie box from a local farmer) well.. I wonder if Carb Cycling could work for me.

The trouble is… numbers.

Look at this plan from Shelby Starnes. Now compare to this version from Christian Thibaudeau.

Here’s how it would work out for me, at my present 240# bodyweight

Starnes:

High Day
Protein: 240g – 300g
Carbs: 480g – 720g
Fat: as little as possible

Low & Moderate Days
Protein: 300g – 360g
Carbs: 120g – 360g
Fat: 36g – 84g

Thibaudeau

BMR: 2237 kcals/day, base but I’d cycle between 1.2 (off days) and 1.6 (work days) so 2685 kcals on off days and 3580 kcals on work days. BUT since I want to lose weight, that becomes 2148 off and 2864 work. Using those then, macros calculate out to:

High
Protein: 360g
Carbs: 375g
Fat: 29g

Low & Moderate
Protein: 360g
Carbs: 225g – 300g (low – mod)
Fat: 29g

So you can see, there’s a lot of variation here. Some overlap, some general agreement, but gee… what to follow? What to do?

Then I read this article that tries to simplify things.

To quote Vinnie Barbarino, “I’m so confused!”

I’m not starting this in earnest yet. I still have at least 2 more Wendler cycles to go through because I want to get my bench press to 225#. But I am going to continue reading and trying to figure things. Plus I can start trying to do a few useful things. First, I’ve been very good about measuring/weighing my protein consumption but not my carbs. Today when getting my dinner I scooped my brown rice into a measuring cup to see what 1 cup of cooked rice actually looked like (more than I thought!). I can work on measuring and seeing what I really am eating, what am I actually consuming and how carbs calculate out so I can get a handle on things. I can also see about carbs before noon, only. That seems to be a constant no matter what flavor I follow, so let’s see what I can do there.

If I could drop 40#, that’d be awesome and a great bit of progress, but that’s merely a guide because again it’s more about composition than numbers. I reckon that could take me up to 6 months, and that’s going to require a metric ton of dedication. I do hope I can do it. I hope Wife can tolerate and support me through it. 🙂  But I may only try running this for 2-3 months and then reevaluate. We’ll see.

Wish me luck.

2012-07-24 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 1, Day 2, draws.

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 20 reps of wall drill from holster 2H
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from holster, SHO
  4. 5 reps of wall drill from holster, WHO
  5. 10 reps draw & fire at 3/4 speed, 2H
  6. 10 reps draw & fire slow 2H

Had more front sight dips than I cared for. Tightened up my grip and it went away. That’s a big thing for me to work on right now: keeping a tight grip during dry fire. Or rather, keeping a tight grip always.

True Nutrition Whey – Round 2, Natural Chocolate

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

After trying TrueNutrition.com’s 38 flavor sample pack, I made a few choices for further experimentation.

“Natural” Chocolate

This is their chocolate flavor using stevia as a natural sweetener.

In a word? No.

Actually I need more words: Hell No.

The first time I tried it, I had a scoop of the unsweetened chocolate, so I mixed that with 1 scoop of this stuff. The first thing I noticed? Different colors. The unsweet was a darker brown, this stevia-chocolate was rather light in color.

The taste?

“Oh Dear God No!”

It was horrid. The mix of that cardboard flavor of the unsweet and this… odd flavor from the stevia.

I tried the stevia-chocolate again in water (all stevia-chocolate this time), and then in some skimmed raw milk (which is about the same as a 2%). While it got a little more palatable each time I tried it, it still is… weird.

I don’t know how to describe it, you just have to try it. The sweet isn’t what I expected. We all know what sugar sweet is like. Honey sweet. And even HFCS sweet. Most sweets try to chase the sweet of sugar, especially artificial sweeteners. This stevia? the taste is nothing like a sugar sweet. It’s sweet, very sweet, wicked sweet… but it’s some sort of different sweet.

I did work to finish the pound that I purchased. It did get a little better, it wasn’t as ugly tasting to drink, but it still left this weird taste in my mouth, a weird aftertaste, and that never went away and never became pleasant to me. I gave it as fair a shot as I could give it.

I won’t totally write off stevia yet, because maybe it’s this particular batch or this particular mix. Maybe it’ll taste better in other products. But I will say I’m in no rush to try it again. If I go the rest of my life never having stevia again, I’m OK with that.

I know some people are all happy about stevia. I’ve spoken with a few people and they are crazy about the stuff. Well, they can have it. 🙂

2012-08-13 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 1, Day 1, basic routine

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
  2. 5 reps of wall drill from extension SHO
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from extension WHO
  4. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  5. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out SHO
  6. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out WHO

Start of “cycle 2” of this routine.

Probably my favorite day/routine because it’s the fundamentals.

2012-08-13 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 13, Squat/Bench Press 1

/ hsoi

Not the day I wanted.

“Week 1”

  • 5 reps – Squat (working max: 290#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x5x145
    • 1x3x175
    • 1x5x190 (work)
    • 1x5x220
    • 1x6x250
  • 5 rep – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x3x140
    • 1x5x150 (work)
    • 1x5x175
    • 1x8x200
  • Asst. #1 – Shoulder-width pronated grip, lat pulldowns
    • 3 x 10 x 135
  • Asst. #2 – Back Raises
    • 3 x 12 x 10 (plate held on chest, arms crossed over
  • Asst. #3 – DB Bench Press
    • 3 x 10 x 130
  • Asst. #4 – Face Pulls
    • 3 x 12 x 75
  • Foam Rolling

Wasn’t the workout I wanted. I wanted to break some rep PR’s but didn’t. Ah well. I also didn’t do as hot on my last set of squats, but I know why — my head wasn’t there. I didn’t go low enough on rep 3, realized it, realized everyone else in the gym was watching me squat, and that blew my focus… rep 4 sucked, tho I got it back for 5 and 6 and 6 was a tough one but I got it. This also started fertilized the seeds in my head about program change.

Everything else was what it was…

As for program change, I’ve got a post coming up later this week talking about diet, which factors in. I’ve already started to think about program change, and this furthers it along. But what I think I should do is go slow. In this cycle stay the course, but add in the sled drags. Next cycle, change up the lifting routine. Cycle after that, change up the dietary stuff.

But even with that, I am going to try some diet stuff now… like I’m eating 1 cup of Ezekiel cinnamon raison cereal in a bit of raw milk as I write this.

Let’s be consistent

/ hsoi

From Unc I read how a man was fired from his job for “liking” a Facebook post.

Daniel Ray Carter Jr. logged on to Facebook and did what millions do each day: He “liked” a page by clicking the site’s thumbs up icon. The problem was that the page was for a candidate who was challenging his boss, the sheriff of Hampton, Va.

That simple mouse click, Carter says, caused the sheriff to fire him from his job as a deputy and put him at the center of an emerging First Amendment debate over the ubiquitous digital seal of approval: Is liking something on Facebook protected free speech?

I think most people would agree that yes it is free speech, it should be protected. You are expressing your opinion. To “click Like” is merely a shortcut/shorthand for saying “I like this” or “I agree with this” or some other statement of agreement and affirmation. It’s just a more efficient (lazy?) way to do it. Are we saying that if someone typed a comment under the posting “I like this” that that wouldn’t be protected? or if I wrote it on a piece of paper, or spoke it aloud in a public venue for others to hear? So why wouldn’t clicking “like” be offered the same protection under 1A?

But apparently not:

The interest was sparked by a lower court’s ruling that “liking” a page does not warrant protection because it does not involve “actual statements.” If the ruling is upheld, the ACLU and others worry, a host of Web-based, mouse-click actions, such as re-tweeting (hitting a button to post someone else’s tweet on your Twitter account), won’t be protected as free speech.

Methinks someone in the lower court doesn’t quite understand technology advancements.

“We think it’s important as new technologies emerge . . . that the First Amendment is interpreted to protect those new ways of communicating,” said Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia. “Pressing a ‘like’ button is analogous to other forms of speech, such as putting a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it.”

So isn’t that interesting? Our Founding Fathers never could have imagined this thing called the Internet. They could never have imagined Facebook or Twitter or iPhone’s. They could never have imagined the act of pressing with your finger could act as a proxy for expressing your liking something. But just like they understood technology advancements like clay tablets, papyrus paper, quill pens, moveable type, printing presses, pony express, and so on… they probably understood that technology would continue to advance. I’m sure they wanted speech to be protected regardless of the technology used to convey it. Certainly that’s what it seems the WaPo, the ACLU, and others put forth. I know many people will be outraged if these advances in technology would not be upheld as protected under that 200-year old document written by men that (some day) had no clue.

So why isn’t this same standard held to the Second Amendment?

Mind your mind (or, what I got from the BP2 class at KR Training, 11 Aug 2012)

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Saturday August 11, 2012 was another fine day at KR Training. This time it was Basic Pistol 2. Class was sold out at 16 students, and we had a great mix: about 1/3 women, various ages, various ethnicities, various backgrounds. Yeah… keep trying to stereotype gun owners, keep showing your ignorance by doing so.

Class went well, and went just about as most BP2 classes do. Students learning fundamentals of sights and trigger control, and basic manipulations and shooting skills towards helping them pass the Texas Concealed Handgun License test. And the usual stuff crops up, of slapping/yanking the trigger, breaking old habits, not getting going fast enough, learning that DA/SA style guns are harder to shoot, and so on.

I want to expand on that last point for a moment. Hardware. It matters and can affect your skill, both positively and negatively. Many people come with DA/SA style guns and come to realize that first long heavy double-action trigger press is just difficult to manage, but you can’t avoid it and have to learn it. And then you also have to learn to change gears and shoot single-action. You have two things to learn, it’s harder, it’s more time being spent on things you don’t necessarily need to — have one trigger press and learn that sole thing and save some time so you can spend your finite time focusing on other areas that need work. Oh sure, you can be awesome with a DA/SA gun, look at Ben Stoeger, but are you willing to put in that much work to get there? If so, awesome. If you’re like me and have only so much time in a day, maybe you should look at something that permits more efficient use of your time.

As well, we had some folks come with guns that just weren’t right for them. A young lady came with a Glock 27, which is a fine handgun but is not something suitable for a beginner. It’s small, it’s harder to shoot, it’s going to be very snappy (.40 S&W, small gun). We loaned her a Glock 22 to use and things went much better for her. I think she’s now in the market for a Glock 19. Another lady in class had a M&P9c, but it was proving difficult for her to work with. I loaned her my full-sized M&P9 to shoot, and instantly she did better. Small guns are fine, and it’s understandable for people to buy them because we’re trying to be frugal and spend our money wisely, we’re thinking about concealed carry, and so we think “buy a small gun”. It’s what I did. I learned, and these folks learned, that it’s better — as a beginner — to get a bigger gun and learn your fundamentals with that larger gun. Once you have those down, then you can work on learning with the smaller gun because now you just are learning the gun, not learning the gun AND learning to shoot.

Hardware matters. It can make you shoot worse, or it can help you shoot better.

But the biggest thing that came from class was attitude.

We all want to do well. We don’t like it when we mess up. I saw many students get upset with themselves, shaking their head, muttering, and otherwise chastising themselves for messing up.

Please don’t do that.

You are learning. That’s why you came to class, right? You admitted you didn’t know something and you wanted to gain knowledge. So why get mad about not getting it? What happens then is you have a mental conversation like “Damnit! Messed up again!” and then it’s time to shoot again, and the only thought in your head is about messing up. So what do you think that’s going to lead your mind and body to do? Succeed? Unlikely.

Instead, learn to let it go.

Acknowledge you didn’t do something right. Yes it might get you a little steamed or frustrated, but let it go. Let the frustration pass through you and out. If you dwell on it, that means you are making yourself stay in a state of frustration, and that will not help you. So let it go.

Then, tell yourself what you need to do. Be mindful of phrasing here. If you are having problems yanking the trigger, don’t tell yourself “don’t yank the trigger”. Instead, tell yourself “press the trigger smoothly”. You need to know what TO do, because if you only say what NOT to do, it still doesn’t tell you want TO do, and what TO do is what matters.

So while hardware matters, really what matters more is you and what you do. Your mindset matters much more than anything. As you are learning, as you are practicing, don’t be hard on yourself. Be honest with yourself, and work to know what TO do; direct yourself in that way.

Apart from that (and being wicked hot out), a great day. Much thanx to Ed for driving. And great to run into Rog and Dock at lunch. Makes for a good day.

A month of dry fire – a review

/ hsoi

For the past 4 weeks I’ve been following TLG’s dry practice routine.

I’m ashamed to admit it’s the most religious I’ve been about dry practice.

First, the frequency. This program has me practicing 5 times a week. In the past, at most I’d work 2-3 times a week, if that often.

Second, the duration. In the past when I did practice, my sessions tended to be longer. These sessions don’t take more than 10 minutes, if that.

Third, the solid program. In the past when I did dry fire, there was no formal program — I worked on whatever I felt I needed to work on at the time. If I didn’t have something solid to do, I had a few simple routines, like one from Tom Givens, that I would run through. But often that would cause me to gravitate towards specific things, and certainly other skills would be neglected or not get enough of the focus they deserved. On this program, just about everything gets covered and in a reasonable proportion.

TLG makes it clear this is an example program, but I think it’s a good one and certainly would recommend it as a starting point for others. I like that it focuses most essential skills like trigger press and sights, and on the press out. I like that it works a full set of skills so even “less important” skills like flashlight work isn’t forgotten, but it’s also not emphasized. I like there’s some flexibility to work on other things, like I used those sessions to work on the basics with my snub. My take is one should try the routine as-written, then see from there how it could change. I wouldn’t change anything too radically, but you might see that wow, my WHO really is bad and perhaps add a little more WHO time.

I think what opened my eyes to this approach was all my weightlifting. Since my teenage years, any time I picked up iron it was always some willy-nilly routine probably based upon whatever I read in that month’s Flex or Muscle & Fitness. It never took, and while I saw some progress, I see now that progress was merely because ANYONE will see progress in that initial beginner phase because the body easily adapts. But once you get through that phase, you need some greater smarts about how to progress — if only I had Rippetoe and Wendler, Starr and Tate, WFAC and EliteFTS back then. Following a solid program has made all the difference in the world. And the right thing to do is find a solid program created by someone else — not just anyone else, but someone who has a clue. They will probably create a program that’s right and correct. You follow it, you get your results. You stay in the game long enough, you’ll be able to formulate your own that best suits you. It’s the sort of progress I hear about all the time for lifters, and the concepts really are the same in any field so it applies just the same here to shooting.

I can see solid improvement in my skill. I still have a long ways to go, but improvement is there and I’m happy. I attribute it to a solid working of fundamentals AND that it’s done often. Again back to lifting… to see strength gains you have to lift, recover, and then during the period when your body “supercompensates” you lift again… so it’s always this level, dip down, peak up, and then continue progressing from that peak. That’s how you progress. If you lifted say only once a week, you will have come down off that peak when you start again and so at best you’ll maintain. If you lifted once a month, you’d never see any progress. And so it is here, dry practicing every day leading towards gain, instead of a couple times a week and merely maintaining. I would say that if a couple of times a week is all you can do, that’s alright — it’s a minimum to maintain your skills. If you want to improve, you gotta do more. I want to improve, I gotta do more.

The road ahead is long, but the journey is good.

I’m going to stick with TLG’s routine as is for now. I don’t see much reason to change. The “shooter’s choice” Fridays might change up a bit as I get to them (e.g. drawing from an off-body carry mode that is used on occasion; perhaps transitions from primary to BUG), but for now that’s all I can see changing.