I’m going into the week very excited — it’s my first 5/3/1 week since returning to the 5/3/1 program. This is the fun week. 🙂 I’ve been very curious how things were going to go, and things started off well.
You really need to make your warmups count. Even when it’s just the empty bar, set up tight, do every rep as if it was setting a new 1RM. Sure, those first reps will be a little rough because you aren’t warmed up, but do them with that approach so when you get up there, the groove is greased. I mean, when I put on the belt and put the 200 on my back, it felt lighter than the 160. Confidence building for sure.
I did the 1+ set with the mentality of to just keep doing consecutive sets of 1 rep. That resets and allows things to go smooth, instead of smearing one rep into the next. Sure that’s fine on curls or whatever, but I like approaching it that way on these sets. When I got to 8 reps I finally felt the bar speed was slowing down enough that I should rack it — certainly the 1-2 left in the tank. What surprised me tho was afterwards looking in RepCount and seeing that last week I did 8 reps at 240 — same reps, 10# more weight. That’s a good sign. 🙂
So yeah, very good time.
Everything else was pretty much as per the SST.
On hypers, I am starting to approach them differently. Instead of thinking about raising my back up, I’m thinking about thrusting my hips forward. That does cause the execution to be different, and it’s more what I need. Going to keep going that route.
Anyways, very happy with things so far. Looking forward to how the rest of this 5/3/1 week works out. And yes, I’m strongly contemplating just diving into the next cycle with no deload — take it after that cycle). I feel very much on-track that I’ll be breaking my all-time 1RM’s before the end of the year (and probably sooner).
Had an eye-opening practice session a couple days ago.
Karl’s trying to push me on some things (in a good way), and one is taking my performance up a notch. This was the first time I got to live-fire it, and it was full of learning.
Started off with my normal carry rig and shot the Rangemaster 3M Test, which I think is just a great, quick diagnostic. Shot it 3 times (first was totally cold), and times were in the high 8 seconds, which is about par for my performance. What I was happy about? Performing to my known level cold, instead of having to warm-up to it — which has been my norm for a while. What was I unhappy about? My time to first shot ran in the 1.6-1.8 range, which is slower than I want – I want to be consistent in IWB concealment draw from my normal carry rig (not like an IDPA gaming concealment rig) at 1.5 seconds (or less). I know what I need to do, I just need to get my body used to it. I think the thing I did at the end of this session may help me. The other thing was being slow on the reload: 2 seconds just sucks. I could really improve my 3M performance.
I then shot the 3 Seconds or Less drill one time just because. Did fine, until the final weak-hand and I dropped one. Ugh.
But that was the end of that. I just wanted to shoot these to see where I was with things.
The real work was taking off my carry rig and putting on the USPSAÂ production-class gaming rig.
Karl wants me to work on getting a 1.0 second draw. Start at 3 yards, don’t worry about scoring, just make 1.0 and get a hit somewhere (anywhere) on cardboard.
I spent a while working that at 3 yards, then moved to 4, then 5, then 7. I was mostly at 3 yards to get the handle on things, and only moved back as I felt comfortable. I didn’t spend a lot of time at the other distances because ammo and time, and mostly they were “to see” how it went.
It was eye opening.
I think my fastest period was like 0.88, and it was on cardboard but I think a Charlie or Delta (don’t recall). I could get in the 0.9’s and get on paper. If I wanted to get in the A-Zone I did have to get a bit more sight picture – didn’t have to be textbook perfect, but I had to get SOME sort of index. If I had everything right (didn’t muff the draw), got some sort of acceptable sight picture, etc. I was pretty consistent in the 0.95 – 1.05 range. If something muffed, then something would blow: the time, the target, something.
For sure, as distance increased I had to be a little more sure on the sight picture, but interestingly I found that if I had a good body index/alignment and the draw was right, I could still hit 1.0-ish at 7 yards and A-Zone just fine. That is, it felt really no different at 3 or 7 yards what I was doing or seeing, and the key was my body index and having a solid and repeatable “drawstroke and presentation”.
A few other things?
Getting VERY aggressive on the draw. When you hear that beep, MOVE!!! Like you’re on fire. This easily made a 0.1 to 0.3 second difference, and the difference between making the 1.0 par time or not.
To help with the draw, it’s all about consistency. Getting that movement pattern to be repeatable, efficient, etc.. Â So you can just “drop you hand” and boom, it’s all right there.
I found that if I was trying the proper 4-count drawstroke, it was slower. If I basically smeared/skipped through step 2, I was a lot faster — and still got my hits.
So what to do in dry work for this?
Work on reaction time to the beep, and getting a solid and consistent draw, that has some sort of sight picture/index (with further distances being more picture perfect). And in doing this, working on index. I recall some Duane Thomas article on this somewhere; I’ll have to go find it again.
I expect this should help with my concealment work too. 🙂
Oh and I need to do a little Dremel work on this gaming holster. It hits the mag release button just right. So when I get aggressive and really get after getting the gun out from the holster, I draw… and my mag goes flying. 🙂  Not good.
Anyways, eye opening for sure. I’ve got work to do.
Really, there’s not much to say here that was bad. On the PR set, at rep 2 I had a serious balance loss and it took a bit to recover and keep everything from crashing down; that cost me a rep or 2. But I still got 8 reps, which keeps me on track for things (tho I left at most 1 in the tank). Ah well.
Everything else continued to feel too light, but again that’s ok because I know it won’t be. I keep saying this because it’s my habit to want to bump things up, but I know that’s not going to be useful and long-term it’s better to just stay the course. So again, it’s all about the mentality shift.
And it’s a bigger one too because a few years ago I’d have gone ahead because I wanted every pound I could get. But now I know there’s no rush — it will come, and it’ll be better to just bide my time and keep putting in the work.
That said, I did think about 2 changes today.
First, I’m going to get shrugs in here somewhere. Still thinking of where, but probably bench day instead of pulldowns. Why? Because more direct trap work (vs. the lots of lat work I’m doing).
Second, I am strongly leaning towards doing a 6-week cycle this time around. I’m feeling great, and I know it’s in part because of the lighter weights. I’m not feeling a pressing need for a deload, so I may just forge ahead. Again, when the weights get heavier and things get more taxing, I may revert back to the normal 4-week cycles.
Anyways, good session.
Music was a bunch of Sunset Strip hair band stuff. 🙂
5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template
Press
bar x whatever
65 x 5 (warmup sets superset with band pull-aparts)
75 x 5
90 x 3
105 x 3 (work sets superset with chin-ups)
120 x 3
135 x 8 (which according to RepCount is an 8RM PR)
Had to make today a Wendler “jack shit” day — well, almost. I deadlifted, I front squatted, and that’s it. Just a matter of time.
Deadlifts went well. Again, since I’ve been away from conventional deadlifts for so long, technique is really rusty, but I’m getting it back. Today felt very in the groove. The 10 reps was pretty easy and I certainly left a few in the tank — if anything, my grip was just starting to fade so I went ahead and shut it down.
Front Squats I know are supposed to be a quad-emphasis movement, but man… I reall feel it in my glutes and hamstrings. Not sure if that’s a statement on my technique, or just weakness, or that I’m weird, or what. But there you go.
Anyways, things went just fine. In, out, gotta move on.
No music today. Something’s on my mind and I was thinking about it the whole time.
Shootings at schools are different. These events are acts of execution, not battles. They are no different from the guillotine, one lined up after another and sent to the next world.
And they are that way for one reason. Capacity.
The above comes from an article “I Am An AR-15 Owner And I’ve Had Enough“, written by Daniel Hayes. It was posted to Facebook by a friend of mine, and he found the article interesting and requested the opinions of gun-owner friends on it. While I commented on his FB posting, I wanted to post and expand upon my comments here.
Apparently, it’s a math problem
Mr. Hayes says “these events are acts of execution, not battles”. I agree. He says it’s because of capacity. I disagree.
He was able to push people away from him with long bursts of gunfire and barely give his victims a chance to take that split second, when he was reloading, to leap on him and tear him apart.
For those who haven’t fired an AR-15, you can’t underestimate the importance of this. Extended magazines are the reason the San Bernardino killers were so brash and confident in the attack they carried out. They knew that no one could get near them, that there would barely be a moment when they would be vulnerable to an unarmed person grabbing them and stopping them.
Give me three 100 round drum magazines and I could hold my whole block hostage for a day. Give me thirty 10 round magazines and someone will be able to stop me.
Mr. Hayes is saying capacity is the problem. If we could just force people to have to reload more often, we could stop these things from happening, because that would give us time.
Here’s a promotional and marketing video from SureFire, a manufacturer of 60-round and 100-round magazines for AR-patterned rifles. In this video, they take a fully automatic rifle (i.e. something highly regulated; that doesn’t get used in “mass shooting” despite media and politician hysterics and misinformation) and perform a demonstration; it’s useful to use a full-auto rifle for this demonstration because it takes the human-performance element out of the equation (no tired fingers). They use standard 30-round magazines and fire 200 rounds — it takes 37.51 seconds. They then use SureFire’s 100-round magazines to fire 200 rounds — it takes 18.50 seconds.
The numbers and performance speaks for itself. And SureFire is flat-out promoting that increased magazine capacity allows one to put more rounds downrange in less time.
One of my mentors and teachers, one of the best defensive handgun instructors in the world, Tom Givens of Rangemaster, stresses that the reason we prefer larger capacity firearms isn’t so we can shoot more – it’s so we can reload less. Why would we want to reload less? Because if you have to reload, that means you are out of the fight for however long it takes you to reload the gun. In a fight for your life, those seconds matter, so the less you have to reload, the less you’re out of the fight.
So, having to reload slows you down and takes you out of the fight – SureFire and Tom Givens both acknowledge it. Kinda sounds like Mr. Hayes has a point, eh?
However, I would assert Mr. Hayes is looking at the problem from one side. I’d further assert he’s failing to properly promote the solution he really seems to be putting forth.
Attitude
Mr. Hayes states a key factor in capacity is that the killer is able to walk around without fear — with safe knowledge that no one will fight back:
They knew that no one could get near them, that there would barely be a moment when they would be vulnerable to an unarmed person grabbing them and stopping them.
He continues saying the solution is to make these (would-be) killers fear:
There’s a saying that goes “when seconds count the police are only minutes away.” It’s meant to enforce the truism that we are all ultimately responsible for our own defense when the chips are down. But what it really reinforces is the importance of time. Time matters immensely when you’re defending yourself. You need time to do so. You need opportunity. Ban magazines over ten rounds. Give potential victims time and opportunity and in giving them that time we will deter murderers from attempting these mass shootings. They will fear that they won’t be able to kill enough to make their point before they are crushed by their chosen victims. They are cowards. Give them reason to fear.
Emphasis added.
Now let’s look at the whole of what Mr. Hayes is putting forth.
He’s saying if magazines had reduced capacity, that would necessitate more reloads, which would create more time-gaps, and in those time-gaps – people could fight back.
People could fight back.
Fight back.
So really, what Mr. Hayes is saying is fighting back is the best way to stop these things from happening.
Whodathunkit?
Well, it may seem obvious to me (and maybe you) that fighting back is the best solution, but we’ve become a society where “violence is never the answer” and where the response to rape is to pee on your attacker or just teach him not to rape. So there are people out there that cannot fathom fighting as a solution.
But time and time again, it’s been demonstrated that fighting back works – and is THE best solution.
So Mr. Hayes, I’ll agree with you there: we need to enable people to fight back.
Fighting Back
Enabling people to fight back starts by helping people overcome mentalities of helplessness. Thinking that someone else (you know, like a group of guys with guns — probably AR-15’s with 30-round magazines) will be your savior – or worse, that it’s someone else’s responsibility to save you, instead of your own. Because two big things our society suffers from these days are displaced responsibility and learned helplessness.
Mr. Hayes suggests that during a reload, people could jump on the shooter and tear him apart. Well, if you have no mindset of violence, of fighting, of “tearing people apart”; if you have no skills in unarmed combat; if you have no weapons on you or knowledge of how to use them… how in the world are you going to jump on someone and tear them apart? You will not suddenly rise to the occasion with the knowledge and skill of the War Gods; you will descend to your training. If you’ve never had any training, if you’ve never considered fighting, if you think “violence is never the answer” then it will continue to be your answer.
So the first thing we need to do is get people to realize that fighting back is key.
All the time-gaps in the world don’t matter if you don’t have the wherewithal to take advantage of them.
I’ll agree that rushing someone with a rifle could be a losing proposition. What would I prefer? My own tool, that can enable me to stay behind some sort of protection, while still “rushing” the attacker – you know, like my own gun. Ceasing restrictions and prohibitions on where I can carry it. Gun-free zones obviously aren’t; or at least, the only people that heed it are those who obey they law and aren’t a threat to your personal safety. These mass killers prefer gun-free zones because they know people won’t or can’t fight back.
And in fighting back, I want to ensure I can fight maximally. I don’t want to be out of the fight, so I want as much capacity as possible. Capacity works both ways: it helps us good guys too. Keep watching the SureFire video:
Q: Is that something you would have liked to have had on your last deployment?
A: Absolutely. To get that many rounds downrange on target is vital to winning the fight.
Last I looked at Tom Givens’ student incident data set, of the 65 cases there were no reloads, but a couple cases did end with an empty handgun. The range of shots fired goes from 1 to 12. Reducing capacity could have very well cost these innocent people their lives because you can’t fight with an empty gun; or if they could have reloaded it, those 3-4 seconds they were out of the fight for the reload could have been fatal. I mean, if Mr. Hayes thinks a reload is enough time to “leap on him and tear him apart”, again, that can work both ways and enable good people to be “torn apart”.
So you see, increased capacity works for preserving life as well. It very much enables us to stay in the fight, and go home to our loved ones. Just ask the police that you count on to come save you, if they’d prefer a 10-round magazine or a 30-round magazine. You want them to preserve your life, don’t you?
High-capacity magazines are not the problem, and banning or reducing magazine capacity will not solve the problem.
Mr. Hayes suggests we should crush these evil people and give them reason to fear. I would agree – so let us work towards that end. Abridging the law-abiding does not achieve this; enabling the law-abiding does.  Work to enable the law-abiding.
The set/rep scheme… doing pull-ups between the presses… not going to failure. It takes some getting used to because when you’re working you’re just thinking about that current rep, then you rack and think about the next set, so I’ve got to remind myself the flow is different. 🙂
It does feel weird, but good, to just be doing things like 3-reps. And then to stop 1-2 reps short of failure — get the work, but don’t push it all the way. I think that’s the hardest part. Like on my first set of pull-ups, I cranked it. Last week I did probably closer to what I should do, out of trying to keep it light and ease into the program. So today I pushed a little harder, because it’s hard to incrementally load bodyweight exercises. But I took it to a point of failure on that first set, and then every pull-up set thereafter was tougher. Stands to reason, but it really shows some things. So the rest of the session’s assistance work was a push to get work, but ensuring to leave 1-2 in the tank no matter what on every set. I know I will still progress, and I know I’ll last longer if I do this. It’s just a big mental shift.
That said, the PR set of benches is one of those “5-8” types of things, but I went to 10 because 8 just felt too far from done. 10 still left 1-2 in the tank. Things seem on track, so no real complaints.
Everything else continues to feel light, but again start too light because it will get heavier.
I’m trying to speed up the sessions too. I’m taking about 2-3 minutes between all the heavy work, and that’s consuming a lot of time. So when I get to assistance stuff, I still want to take more rest because I’m finding that’s helpful to me, but not too much. I want to get things squeezed in better. So say on the 10’s of the DB rows, I can take less rest. On the extensions and curls, I superset. Little things add up.
All in all tho, felt I got good work today but didn’t walk out trashed. In a way, I’m already looking forward to the end of next week and start of the next cycle to see how things are dialing in and progressing. I’m getting pretty excited for being back on 5/3/1 and feeling like I’m making progress again. I know it’s only been 1.5 weeks, but still… can’t deny happy.
Music today: The Pretty Reckless
5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template
Bench Press
bar x whatever
95 x 5 (warmup sets superset with band pull-aparts)
115 x 5
140 x 3
160 x 3 (work sets superset with neutral-grip pull-ups)
185 x 3
205 x 10
Incline Press
125 x 8 (sets superset with neutral-grip pull-ups)
Things continue to move along. It’s good, but still not used to it.
So this starts my first “3’s week” back on 5/3/1. Everything went as I would expect it to. I worked up to 8 reps, which is about where it should be. A couple were left in the tank, and 8’s about the cutoff (if one wants to) for the 3’s week. So I do believe I’m where I should be, a little lighter, so good deal. Things all seem on track.
I’m getting used to the stiffs, and am thinking they’re doing me good. I’ve been having some weird lower-back issues and this sort of bending over and rounding my lower back has been really good. I was doing it before, just as a stretch, and so now under a little load should be alright for me. Things aren’t to heavy here, but enough to give me some work. Again, these will just get heavier over time, so no big.
Hypers are kinda fun for me right now, which is weird to say. 🙂 I’m really working on just contracting muscles here, like my hams and glutes — trying to minimally involve the lower back. I know you can’t totally take it out of the equation, but I can shift my mental focus. And yeah, it’s working out alright. Kinda interesting.
And again, no hanging raises — just did crunches. It’s simpler. I’ve been away from dedicated ab work for ages, so I think just sticking with simple crunches for a while until I work myself back up should be good. Then I’ll hit things like raises or even ab wheel. I’m starting to think that ab work each week may be “whatever I feel like, just do something”.
Anyways, feeling good. Not feeling too beat up, and even started to have feelings where I might actually try the 6-week cycles here… might. Depends how I feel when I get there, and I also expect that it may only be feeling good/possible right now because things are generally light. After a few cycles and upping the weights, it may be a little more on my body and I may revert back to the normal 4-week cycle. We’ll see.
We will make better progress if we start from where we agree and work with open minds and open hearts, than to start from where we disagree and drive the wedge even further.
Stuff From Hsoi 