Month: May 2013

AAR – KR Training – Basic Pistol 1 – 2013-05-11

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

This past Basic Pistol 1 @ KR Training was different, for me at least.

It was my first time as lead instructor. I’ve been an assistant instructor at KR Training for a number of years, and I’m happy in that capacity. But now I get to step up and do a little more. While the past some whiles I’ve done segments of the BP1 class, this was doing the whole thing and well… it didn’t go as smoothly as I wanted it. Others thought I did fine, and I know my critique is just me looking at myself and what I can do improve my own presentation and flow. Always looking for things I can do better.

That said, the class itself went really well.

First, the weather was perfect. It always seems the case: weather reports for rain, there’s rain Thursday or Friday, people get nervous… but then, it always clears up and is gorgeous. Rare is the Saturday class actually rained out, and often is the weather agreeable. This was a great day to be outside and on the range.

I always like reporting on demographics. This class was over two-thirds female. Had a couple mother-daughter. Had people from all walks of life, social background, ethnicity/race. I’m sorry, but the stereotype of “old white redneck guy” just isn’t the case.

This group of students was very engaged, asking a lot of questions going beyond the BP1 material. I hope to see everyone back for future classes!

I think the only bummer of the day was the fire ants. With all the recent rain, they were driven out of the dirt — mounds everywhere. Just had to tread carefully, and thankfully not too many mounds on the range.

Thank you all for coming out and entrusting us with your first steps on this journey.

 

2013-05-13 training log

/ hsoi

Pause squats will be interesting.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 19, week 4

  • Work Set – Squat (working max: 305#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 2x5x120
    • 2x5x155
    • 2x5x185
    • 1x5x185 (paused)
  • Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 240#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 2x5x95
    • 2x5x120
    • 2x5x145
  • Assistance – DB Rows
    • 2 x 25 x 45
  • Assistance – Pulldown Abs (standing)
    • 3 x 15 x 60
  • 100 rep work – JM Presses, Face Pulls

It’s deload week, so nothing much to say. Just get in, do a little work, get blood flowing, don’t put anything too hard, and go home.

I did want to try out pause squats tho, since I’ll be adding them in next cycle. My question has been: how much to do? What’s the right weight? What’s right number of sets/reps? People have been down this road, so why not learn from their wisdom and experience, right?

Found this post (well, comment) from Paul Carter:

(“Tiny David” asked):

Quick Question. How would you incorporate pause squatting into a 5-3-1 template?

I’ll run “boring but big” for a few more cycles so I was thinking-
Squat 5-3-1
Squat 5×10
Pause squats (light, but not sure reps and sets?)

Or Do some pause squats on my deadlift day?

Thoughts?

(Paul’s reply):

I wouldn’t do pause squats for 10. Ever. 5 at the most. They really zap you and you have to hold your breathe in the bottom.

If you’re already doing the BBB template, I wouldn’t add more squatting to that. I’d run 531 and do pause squats after with what you used on your first set.

So on the 5 week use 65%x 5

On the 3 week use 70% x 5

On the 531 week use 75% x 3

that’s how I would do it.

So there we go. I saw a lot of Cube Method folks would do a similar thing, but maybe 3 sets of 10. One thing Paul’s reply doesn’t make clear is the number of sets, but from a subsequent comment he made, I get the feeling that 5 sets is where to go. But I could be wrong. My approach will be to strive for at least 3 sets, ideally go for 5, but if I have to work up to 5 then I do because I’d rather do 3 strong sets than 5 half-assed ones, y’know?

Thus today after my last normal set, I left the 185 on the bar and did 1 pause set of 5. My pause? Seems that’s another variable people will manipulate, but if the main point of pause squats is to lose momentum and the stretch reflex out of the hole, then I figured well… go down until I settle in, lose momentum, stay for a “still” moment, then come back up. So that was what? 2-3 seconds? That’s fine. I’m not going to count, just ensure I have come full stop, wait a sec, then back up. And I can tell with the 185 that this is going to be fun. 🙂

How to lose friends and alienate people

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

So long as you deny our humanity, so long as you malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom, so long as you seek to shade us under a cloud of evil that we do not partake in or support, so long as you tell us that because we own guns we are terrible people, you will prove yourselves absolutely right in that we won’t come to the table to talk with you.

This. So very much, this.

Read the full article. It’s long, but well-written. (h/t Jon Thomas)

They want to have a “national conversation on guns”, but there’s no conversation. It’s just a lecture, a scolding. Who wants to listen to that? When someone dresses you down, how much do you listen to them? How much do you want to cooperate with them? If they call you names, tell you you’re evil, put words in your mouth… do you really want to listen to what they have to say? Are you going to be receptive to anything they propose? It has nothing to do with guns; that’s just a human reaction.

Here’s a PDF from Dale Carnegie.  Just about every rule gets violated in this “conversation”, and so we’re losing friends and alienating people.

To be fair, it’s not just the anti-gun folk that are like this. I see pro-gun folk that are this way as well. I cannot stand looking at my Twitter feed because I see so much  … well… asshole-ish behavior going on. Conversations in less than 140 characters is not a conversation. I see name-calling, baiting, and just general rudeness. I mean, there’s assholes in every crowd, alas they tend to be the ones creating the most jibber-jabber, thus they create the perception. This sort of behavior won’t win anyone over to our cause. There’s no attempt to educate, just more violations of Dale’s rules. Really, what Mr. Snell’s article concludes cuts both ways: that so long as pro-gun folks treat anti-gun folk in a bad way (denying humanity, maligning their dignity, intelligence and wisdom, etc.), well… they won’t come talk to us either.

We can even step back from guns. Look at abortion, LGBT equality, environment (e.g. global warming), food (GMO, etc.), race, religion (including a-religion), whatever. Ever notice how divisive things are today? How the media no longer maintains a facade of neutrality but now blatantly takes and panders to “sides”? How politicians hammer on “the other side” for being in the way of progress, instead of they themselves trying to progress? How there’s so much spitting of venom and hate? There’s so much talk of tolerance, but little is given, especially to those that don’t agree with me. It doesn’t matter the topic. So long as we deny humanity, malign dignity, shade “the other side” under a cloud of evil… we’ll never come to the table and break bread together.

If united we stand and divided we fall… then it looks like we’ve fallen, and at this rate, we’re not going to get back up. Because while our humanity is crumpled on the ground crying for help, you’d rather Instagram ‘dat shit’ and walk away laughing at the ‘dumb bitch’. We need people to put their smartphones away, give our collective humanity a humble look in the eyes, and offer it a helping hand.

It just doesn’t fly

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The Hunt Independent School District  (Hunt is about 120 miles west of Austin, in the Texas Hill Country) just approved a measure to allow certain people to carry concealed firearms on HISD grounds.

Naturally, some people object.

“I feel it is a really strong overreaction to what happened at Sandy Hook,” said Clayton Rascoe, parent of a Hunt pre-kindergarten student, referring to the Connecticut elementary where 20 children and six staff members were shot dead in December. “Clearly teachers and staff are not trained to carry firearms and take care of crisis situations,” Rascoe said.

So were Obama, Biden, Bloomberg, Feinstein’s actions not a strong overreaction as well?

Teachers are not trained to take care of crisis situations. What about bullying? What about troubled students? depressed students? There’s all manner of crises that teachers have to deal with. Violence in our schools is nothing new, from the “schoolyard fight”, to now students getting quite aggressive and physically violent with teachers over things like requests to put away mobile phones. Should teachers not be able to handle a crisis?

“There are police and military personnel who train their entire lives for such a situation and they unfortunately get it wrong sometimes,” he said. “I don’t think it is going to solve anything. I think it will introduce more problems than it could ever cure.”

How? What facts and evidence can support your claim? Firearms ownership has risen. Concealed carry has risen. There are more people walking around you today that have guns hidden on their person. And just-released BJS data shows that firearm homicides have decreased. More guns, less firearm homicide. How is this a reduction in violent crime a problem? Is that what you want?

“We teach kids implicitly with everything we do,” he said. “By doing this we are teaching them that violence is a viable solution.”

I hate to say it, Jack, but sometimes violence is not just a viable solution, it’s the only solution. I used to say that to, that violence is not the answer. But now I know that sometimes it is. Oh sure, you cannot make it your only answer, and you must consider if it is the best solution to the given problem. I mean, look at what women’s “rape prevention” seminars are all about — kick him in the groin, palm strike him in the nose, kick, bite, punch. That’s the offered — and socially and culturally acceptable solution — and it looks a lot like violence to me.  Are you saying we shouldn’t teach rape prevention, because that would be teaching violence as a viable solution?

“I own guns. I hunt with guns. I teach my kids to use guns,” he said. “But this is a place of education and safety.”

It should be a place of education and safety. Alas, it is not. Granted, mass shootings are rare and on the decline (despite the media and political hype), so you should look at the mundane. I mean, bullying is pretty common at school. Schoolyard fights happen. A school is no magic bubble that somehow prevents bad things from happening. But I can think of things that can further deter and prevent bad things from happening.

A gun owner himself, Moseley said he didn’t vote for the measure because letting guns in school is not the right answer.

“Teachers are trained to be nurturers, not protectors,” he said.

To nurture is to care for and encourage the growth of development of. If you care for these kids, isn’t their safey important? If you want to see them grow, shouldn’t you want to also ensure they can live to see another day? We put fire alarms, extinguishers, and suppression systems in our schools. We have the kids go through fire drills so they can know precisely how to evacuate the school in the event of a fire. Depending where you live, you might have tornado drills. And the teachers and staff run these drills, maintain the order, and help to deal with the crisis.

Why shouldn’t we enable our teachers — who we entrust with the future of this country — to be able to fully care for their students?

 

2013-05-10 training log

/ hsoi

PR fail… because a tie isn’t quite a win. 😦

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 19, week 3

  • Work Set – Press (working max: 160#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x65
    • 1x5x80
    • 1x3x95
    • 1x5x120 (work)
    • 1x3x140
    • 1x3x155 (PR-tie)
  • Assistance – Press
    • 5 x 10 x 80
  • Assistance – Lat pulldowns (pronated grip)
    • 1 x 100/25 x 50/60
  • 100 rep work – Front plate raise, Rope Triceps Pressdowns, Hammer Curls

Changing my setup for deadlift is helping. But Press still alludes me because I continue to have the “get light-headed” issue. *sigh* That’s what played in here. I unracked, forced to take a breath, got out of sync with my breathing, paused too much at the bottoms, and well, things didn’t play out right. I tried to go for 4, tried to even push-press it out, but no go. So I tied my existing PR for Press, which is better than regressing, but still disappointing.

I ripped the assistance pressing hard, and then opted to go for 100 reps on everything else. Started too light on the lat pulldowns and 100 didn’t feel all that much… did 25 more with 60#. Still didn’t feel like much… but about 30 seconds after I stopped oh, I felt it. 🙂 Not against pullups, but no way I’ll get 100 reps doing pullups. Just felt like trying 100 pulldowns today.

Anyways… the upshot of this cycle? Again, every 5/3/1 session was a PR attempt, which is a situation I haven’t experienced in a long time. I did set (or here tie) PR’s, but the only one I felt good about was the deadlift (which I’ve always been pretty good at). I thought about what I should do next cycle…. is this a hint to reset? I’m not sure yet. I think it’s worthwhile for me to forge ahead. In part yes, it’s some ego and goal “blindness” because I’m really gunning for some particular milestones before the end of 2013 and I may well not hit them if I reset. But I also wonder… could it just have been a bad day? No question the bench press fail was a “bad day” and not fully indicative of things. Plus if I do reset, I have determined I won’t just do something simple like drop 20# or “fall back 3 cycles” or something like that. I will take whatever my last 5/3/1 success was, consider that my “true max” (because if it’s less than 5 reps, it probably is indicative enough… or at worst it makes me go lighter than I need to, and that’s not a bad thing), and fully recalucate based upon that. Point is, we figure out the max, then it’s up by 5 or 10# each cycle, which may not strictly follow the math. So then like today I only got 3 @ 155… but note that all the original numbers were calculated on a 5RM. No, I’d calc it based on the true numbers… which yes, will drop me lower, and while that’s probably good for me in general, it doesn’t help my goals.

So my plan for now? Keep weights the same on Press, Squat, and Bench Press, go for rep PR’s. If they are satisfactory, forge ahead. If they are not, then I’ll consider a reset.

More Data – and if the data points this way….

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A study released Tuesday by the government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. That’s a 39 percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country’s growing population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

Both reports also found that non-fatal crimes involving guns were down by roughly 70 percent over that period. The Justice report said the number of such crimes diminished from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

Full story. The Associated Press’ story continues tho:

But perhaps because of the intense publicity generated by recent mass shootings such as the December massacre of 20 school children and six educators in Newtown, Conn., the public seems to have barely noticed the reductions in gun violence, the Pew study shows.

See that’s the thing. Perspective is lacking.

One event happens, the media hype machine gets fired up, and it’s blown out of proportion. I’m not saying what happened in Newtown or any school shooting should be minimized, but rather kept in perspective. I mean, how many people were killed in Chicago this past weekend, and where’s the media hype and outrage over that?

When you look at the BJS’s data, if those homicides are going down folks… why don’t you look at that? I mean, you want gun-based violence to decline, right? Well, we have a decline! Let’s try to see why!

Were guns banned? Were magazine capacities restricted? Nope. In fact if anything, anti-gun folks are going to point out how over the past 10-20 years “gun rights” have expanded, the laws have become too loose, all these states adopting concealed carry laws.

But I thought blood was going to flow in the streets, and we’d return to the Wild West with shootouts over parking spaces? If that happened, wouldn’t gun-related homicide numbers have risen?

Evidently they declined.

I don’t think we can say “expanded gun rights” is the sole cause for this decline, because factors such as the health of the economy, jobs, drugs (e.g. late 1980’s saw a rise due to crack cocaine) certainly come into the equation. But just because it’s not the sole cause doesn’t mean it’s not part of the equation, that it’s not part of the solution.

Look, when it comes to a violent crime you’re likely to be involved in, it’s going to be some criminal wants to get paid. They want what you’ve got: your money, your sexuality, your dignity, whatever… and they will stick a gun in your face to force you to give it up. The criminal wants what they want, and then they want to be able to enjoy what they get, and then be able to do it again. They want to get your wallet, get the money, buy some drugs or booze, consume the drugs or booze, then do it again. Notice that “getting shot or injured or killed” is not part of their equation? Don’t you think empowering Joe Citizen to fight back, to have it be publicly known that the citizenry is armed, that if you mug Joe you may get killed… don’t you think that’s going to have an effect upon reducing crime? If criminal doesn’t want to get shot, he’s going to be more careful or reluctant or just flat out decide to do something else (e.g. just break into a business in the middle of the night to see what he can steal… still not great he committed a crime, but at least people aren’t getting hurt, right?).

Isn’t that what is desired? To reduce the crime? to reduce the violence?

Well, the BJS’s data has shown it’s declined, despite what media hype and politician opinions lead you to believe. So when the facts and data speak, maybe you should listen.

2013-05-08 training log

/ hsoi

That’s more like it.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 19, week 3

  • Work Set – Deadlift (working max: 385#)
    • 1x5x155 (warmup)
    • 1x5x195
    • 1x3x235
    • 1x5x290 (work)
    • 1x3x330
    • 1x4x370 (PR)
  • Assistance – Hyperextensions
    • 4 x 12/12/12/10 x WT
  • Assistance – Side Bends
    • 2 x 25 x 40
  • Foam Rolling… a lot of it

This is more like it. Solid PR of 370 for 4. The pull felt very good. I worked on a different setup. Instead of worrying about keeping my head clear of “not lifting” during the whole time, I just let my mind go where it did, tho I never let it get too deep into something that might take me down some rabbit hole. But then when it was time to lift, I set up, and just took a moment to really focus. That thing I see a lot of deadlifters do, with the arms straight out in front, then into the lift? Yeah, I tried it… I don’t know why they do it and really it doesn’t matter to me because the act of doing it helped me put my head where it needed to be. So instead of all this constant energy on a clear head, it was just intense energy on “the clear moment, right now” for the lift.

Made a big difference.

But the 4 took enough out of me, so I opted to do hypers instead, then the side bends. But I tell you, after all the hypers then 2 sets of side bends? my lower back was crying. That was all it was going to be. But that’s fine. 50 reps (per side) I can live with today.

And then yes… tons of foam rolling. 🙂

Prepping – because stuff happens

/ hsoi

Local Austin news channel KEYE just did a story on Austin-Area Preppers. Featured in the story? Paul Martin, also known as The Suburban Dad Survivalist and a fellow KR Training assistant instructor.

What I appreciated about the piece was it was taken seriously. Sure, they had to tie in the “whacko survivalist” angle, but they did seem to appreciate and emphasize Paul’s practical approach — that it’s not really about zombie apocalypse:

Prepping became a passion for Paul after hurricane Andrew hit in August of 1992.

“For the next 17-days I had no electricity in my apartment in Miami in August, so it was really hot and we had to boil the water in order to drink it. From that point forward I said I’m never going to put myself or my family in that type of situation again,” says Martin.

And one thing people may not realize? That 1 year worth of stored items Paul has? It’s not necessarily just for his consumption:

“When someone is prepared that is one less person that has to rely on the government or charitable organizations to make it through the crisis and one more person who can assist others,” Martin says.

Assisting others.

Nice spot, Paul!

2013-05-06 training log

/ hsoi

I may have PR’d, but it was less than satisfying.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 19, week 3

  • Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 240#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x120
    • 1x3x145
    • 1x5x180 (work)
    • 1x3x210
    • 1x1x230 (PR)
  • Assistance – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10/10/10/10/10-5-4 x 135
  • Assistance – DB Rows
    • 4 x 25 x 40
  • 100 rep work – JM Presses, Face Pulls
  • Foam Rolling

Sure, technically it’s a PR, but I’m not happy with it. I missed what I wanted. I wanted at least 3.

Why didn’t it happen? 2 things, both with my head: 1 mental, 1 physical.

Mental – I’ve got some heavy shit weighing on my mind. It’s dominated my thoughts the past some days and has me very unhappy and stressed. Try as I might to clear my head of it, it’s just so dominating that I couldn’t be fully in the moment of the lift.

Physical – I have this problem from time to time where I get under the bar, I inhale and tense up to lift off, and my head swims. That happened. I felt it coming so I didn’t lift off, waited a few, breathed a bit more, then tried again, but even then my head was too far gone. As soon as the bar descended, I could tell things were not good. It was … uh… not so much a physical struggle in terms of say arm and chest muscles to get it up there, and not a mental struggle in terms of mind… but a “physical head” struggle because my head was physically swimming. After I got the 1 rep, my body felt like it could do more, easily. But my head said no way, that if I tried another rep it’d be dangerous. So I racked it and relegated myself to staying at this weight for the next cycle and going for a rep PR. Oh well.

I’m not happy with it, but it’s how it goes. It does show the power of the head and mind in lifting.