Author: hsoi

2012-08-03 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 5, shooter’s choice.

I can do whatever I want today (other than nothing). Given my recent increase in shooting my BUG and seeing what I’m seeing there, I opted to do the basic routine but with my S&W 442.

  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

The main focus was getting on the trigger faster.

All in all, not hard to do… I think it’s a mental thing as to why I’m going slow. That I know it’s harder to press the trigger: heavier, longer trigger; lighter gun; smaller, harder to grip gun. So the press of that trigger is going to be harder to do, so go slower to ensure the sights aren’t disturbed and the trigger not slapped.  But even just letting myself go “at speed” today, I’m still not sure if It was good enough because the sights are bad enough and the grip angle is just slightly different (more downward cant needed). So… hard to tell. What might be good for me to try tomorrow is some live fire with the snub and just press it out fast and get on the trigger fast and see what I see. If what I see live matches what I see dry, and of course I’m getting acceptable hits, then I’ll know what to keep looking for in dry practice as acceptable visual feedback.

2012-08-02 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 12, Deadlift/Press 2

/ hsoi

Go in. Set PRs. Leave. And it’s only week 2.

“Week 2”

  • 3 reps – Deadlift (working max: 345#)
    • 1x5x140 (warmup)
    • 1x5x175
    • 1x3x210
    • 1x3x245 (work)
    • 1x3x280
    • 1x7x315 (rep PR)
  • 3 reps – Press (working max: 155#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x65
    • 1x5x80
    • 1x3x95
    • 1x3x110 (work)
    • 1x3x125
    • 1x7x140 (rep PR)

Today ended up being a jack-shit day. Why? Because.

I went in and hit my main lifts. I set rep PR’s, and it’s only week two.

I did try doing some pronated-grip pullups, but I did one, shoulder said “no”, and that was the end of that. I was hoping I could do 3 sets of pull-/chin-ups, but nope. Oh well.

2012-08-02 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 4 (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

This session went really well. I’m focusing on maintaining “the string” of the eye-target line and bringing the gun and sights right up into it. It’s a fine-tuned change that’s difficult to convey here, but I know what I’m after. Plus as always, working on getting on the trigger sooner, faster, and without slapping it. All strings were done “at speed”, and I can see some improvement… or maybe today was just a good day. 😉

For me the bottom line is having the discipline to do this every day. I don’t recall the exact statistic but it’s something like to just maintain your level of skill you have to practice a couple of times a week. If you want to improve, you have to practice more. If you practice less, expect your skills to degrade. I know I’ve been at a plateau for some time, so I expect with dry practice 5x a week and getting more regular range time (due to the structure of KRT classes this summer), I expect things should be well and in order.

Hey…. Tom Givens is coming back to the area in March 2013, and I want to be awesome.

2012-08-01 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 3, retention

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 10 reps draw and fire from retention, slow
  3. 10 reps draw and fire from retention, 3/4 speed
  4. 5 reps draw and fire from retention while stepping L, 3/4 speed
  5. 5 reps draw and fire from retention while stepping R, 3/4 speed
  6. 10 reps beginning at full extension, draw back to retention, and fire, 3/4 speed, 2H
  7. 10 reps wall drill from press-out 2H (not standard part of TLG’s routine)
  8. 10 reps wall drill from press-out 2H 3/4 speed (not standard part of TLG’s routine)

It was good to work retention. We do a retention drill at the end of Defensive Pistol Skills 1 and it’s good to get practice on that drill. #6 is a new one on me tho.

I added some more wall drills at the end because that’s a fundamental skill and I think one good to end on. I am trying to pick up my speed without sacrificing good hits… watch that front sight, no dipping! I’m really working on trying to work at faster speeds and not slapping the trigger… but I still get more front sight dips that I care for. It’s a combination of loose/inconsistent grip, and too much trigger finger. I’m also playing a bit with my finger placement, but I think that may be a red herring… that I’m trying to fine-tune something that isn’t a relevant part of the present equation. Hard to say at this point tho.

But they never malfunction, right?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

With all the gun-related and concealed-carry-related chatter going on recently, I’ve been seeing more of the old debate about revolver vs. semi-auto. And it’s the same old reasons dragged out to justify “my choice is superior”.

Some of the typical ones to justify the revolver have to do with the bulletproof (pardon the pun) reliability of a revolver.

O RLY?

At the recent Defensive Pistol Skills BUG class, Karl was shooting his Charter Arms snub. Karl bought the Charter a couple years ago for Claude Werner’s snub class. It was an experiment to see how well the inexpensive Charter would hold up. It’s not as good as a S&W, but it’s been a pretty good gun for the price. Karl uses it as a BUG, so naturally it was the gun he used for demos during the class. Karl was shooting some of my .38 reloads and at one point asked me what primers I was using because he was shooting and getting a click instead of a bang. This particular batch was made using Wolf SPP, and while a lot of people are down on Wolf quality I only opted to use Wolf because so many people on the Brian Enos forum highly recommended them. Plus, my snubs have all had work done and need slightly “softer/more sensitive” primers, and all the rounds go bang for me so it was curious why they wouldn’t go bang out of his stock gun. But it’s natural to suspect the ammo. Karl tried some factory Speer Lawman, but had similar results of too many clicks when there should have been bangs. Some rounds took 2-3 strikes before they would go off, and I think one didn’t go off at all.

As of this writing I’m not sure what exactly is wrong, but all signs point to the gun malfunctioning.

Of course some will say, this is precisely why the revolver is so great, because if you get a click, just press the trigger again. Yeah, but now your 5-shot snub has become a 4-shot-or-less snub. If you saw how this went down, it was a lot of clicks before we’d get a bang, and it was a lot of time wasted with nothing useful going on. Imagine you were in a life-or-death situation and only kept getting clicks? What if only 2 of the 5 rounds went off at all? Plus consider a natural response will be to press harder/faster, meaning when one finally does go off you likely will have yanked the trigger and won’t get an acceptable hit with what little functioning ammo you had! Is that really a comforting feeling? It was disconcerting enough on the practice range, I’m sure it would be horrifying if I needed the gun to fire right now and it didn’t.

Plus, “just press the trigger again” only works if you can press the trigger at all.

After a class like that, I like to dry fire to reinforce and remember what I need. So the day after class I pulled out my 442 to do some dry practice. I unloaded it, but something didn’t feel right as I tried to move the cylinder. I locked the cylinder back into the frame and tried pressing the trigger and it was like pulling against a rock… it would barely budge! I unlocked the cylinder and tried to manually rotate it. It was like someone left the parking brake on and it would barely budge. I got scared that attempting to use the gun would break some small part from pulling so darn hard on the thing. *sigh*

Ultimately what wasn’t working was the cylinder wasn’t spinning freely. I removed the crane retention screw, but couldn’t get the crane to easily remove from the frame. After some work it came out. Then I tried to remove the cylinder from the crane, and while that should normally just slide out, it wasn’t going to come so easily. After more work I managed to remove it… and all over the sleeve was this brown something or other. I couldn’t tell if it was rust? Was it dirt and crud (the soil in Lee County is sandy loam, emphasis on the sandy)? I couldn’t really tell, but I spent a good deal of time cleaning and scrubbing it clean, lubing things up, and back together it went. It functioned fine after that.

What surprised me was how the gun ran just fine the day before, no problems in class. But the first trigger press after class was a failure and wasn’t going to happen.  That wasn’t a comforting feeling.

What caused both of these? Some might say the guns needed more cleaning. That’s probably true, but I can ignore my semi-auto (my XD-9 or my M&P-9) for many many cleanings. Look at how much the pistol-training.com torture tests specifically avoid cleaning, and those guns run and run. But if a purported reason (myth?) for the superiority of revolvers is they “just work”, well… they didn’t. Two instances of revolver fail. Myth busted.

Realize, I’m not a semi-auto nor a revolver guy — I’m both. I’ll have an M&P 9 as a primary and the 442 as a BUG. I appreciate both systems for what they provide and offer. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages. The key is to remember that both are mechanical. Both designs have been around for over a century, but in the time since then improvements have been made to tweak the system. Modern semi-autos are extremely reliable. They can malfunction in simple ways that are easy to remedy, they can malfunction in ways that require you to see a gunsmith. Modern revolvers are extremely reliable. They can malfunction in simple ways, they can malfunction in ways that get Wife upset because you now have a gun disassembled on the bed. 🙂  Neither is without risk of failure, and when either fails they can fail in simple ways or fail in difficult ways. Let’s put those justification myths aside, shall we?

2012-07-31 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 2, SHO (all drills SHO)

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out
  2. 10 reps draw & fire, slow
  3. 10 reps draw & fire 3/4 speed
  4. 5 reps reload from slidelock, slow
  5. 5 reps reload from slidelock 3/4 speed
  6. 5 reps TRB
  7. 5 reps LRW
  8. 10 reps wall drill from press-out

All drills are strong-hand-only. So I reckon that means the weak-hand is 100% not involved. So all those reloads, all those malfunction clearances, one hand only. This is where a good rear sight like a Dawson Precision Charger is quite useful.

This is also illustration that while these skills are unlikely to be something you generally need, there’s merit in knowing and practicing them but with perspective. Note the skill is only worked once in the 4-week session (well, twice technically since you’ll do it again WHO next week), and when it is worked, it’s not worked for many reps. This way you don’t ignore the skill completely, but you also don’t spend more time than is warranted, instead spending that finite time on highly important skills like the press-out.

But of course, this is just a generalized routine. Your goals may necessitate a different approach. I think it’s a good template to start with, and eventually I’ll refine and change it to suit my needs.

Run, Hide Fight

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Produced by the City of Houston with funds from the DHS, a video entitled “Run, Hide, Fight”. The purpose of this video is to help the public learn how to deal with an active shooter situation.

Watch it now. It’s not long, and it’s a good video.

The main failing most people have is they do not have a plan. Something bad happens, they don’t know what to do, they freeze, they panic, they risk being harmed. This video gives you a plan: run, hide, fight. It’s a simple plan, easy to remember. Run. Hide. Fight. It doesn’t put too many specific details in place because every situation will be different, but this is a solid general plan. Run. Hide. Fight.

It is a proper ordering of what to do. Your first priority should be to get out of there. If you cannot, hiding is the best option; may seem obvious, but if you lack a plan and freeze from fear, you will sit out in the open. And I appreciate they promote the option of fighting. For far too long in this country the notion of fighting was looked down upon, and all that leads to is victims. I think this is proper ordering because the goal is to survive the event, and these give you your best chance of survival. Run. Hide. Fight.

I thought the production quality was good. They avoided politics. They focused on the message, providing elaboration but focusing on the mantra. The visuals reinforced the message. There’s no emotion or fear involved in the presentation, just a straight presentation. While a subject matter most wouldn’t want to deal with, it’s a video able to be shown to all. In fact, it’s the sort of video the HR department would want to show to everyone.

A few specific observations:

  • When the people were running up stairs, that confused me. “Why are they running up to the roof, instead of down to the street?!?” It appeared they were just trapping themselves. It appears that’s just how that building was, maybe these people were in the basement, because it did show them exiting the building on the street. But it was a little confusing and I know I’m not the only one that observed this and thought as such. Going “down” is just more your (stereo)typical “exiting the building” direction.
  • Running wound up next to the building, huddled by the dumpster. Why? Why are you not trying to get further away from the building? Maybe a production artifact, but I sure wouldn’t stick around… I’d get far far away.

Did you notice the subtle thing they did around 0:56 to 1:00 in the video? Go back and watch that portion.

What you see is the man walking in the door. Written on the door is something called a “30.06 sign”, named after the section of the Texas Penal Code, “TRESPASS BY HOLDER OF LICENSE TO CARRY CONCEALED HANDGUN“. Basically, posting that sign gives legal force to prohibit law-abiding citizens carrying concealed handguns from entering that premesis.

Did you notice the person bent on inflicting harm and evil was not stopped by this sign? Granted, the sign only applies to folks legally carrying a concealed handgun, and obviously this man was neither legally carrying nor carrying a handgun. But regardless, laws and signs did not stop him from inflicting his evil upon the innocent. One could also say this is what prevented the innocents from fighting back with little more than a fire extinguisher and a chair. I’m not sure why the producers of the video opted to include this subtle tidbit, because they certainly did not have to use a building with a 30.06 sign, they didn’t have to include a shot of the door in the video… but they did.

Overall I find this video to be a quality product with a worthwhile message. Run. Hide. Fight.

True Nutrition Whey Flavor – Conclusion

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack and ran through all 38 flavors. My experience with each is documented across 38 individual postings, made after I tried each flavor.

Overall I was impressed. The flavors are of course going to be artificial in nature, some lending towards being reminiscent of kid cereal or candy. That’s not a bad thing, just a question of your palate. For me, that made a lot of the flavors not to my liking. The kid in me wanted to like them, and I could see perhaps having one or two drinks of them, but buying 10# of whey isolate in bulk and having to go through 90 servings well… it needs to be a flavor I can handle. But that said, given the structure of TrueNutrition’s business, I see no reason why I can’t buy 10# of a staple flavor and a few 1#’s of fun flavors for some variety. In fact, I plan on doing just that.

I reckon many are flavored with artificial sweeteners, due to 1. the aftertaste in my mouth, 2. given this is sold for “health reasons” a lot of those folks aren’t going to want the calories a natural sweetener would bring. I should note these are 100% of the flavors offered by TrueNutrition, because when you look at say the whey protein isolate and hit the menu for flavors, there’s a lot more than 38. Some of those are specifically listed as unsweetened, and I might be curious to try some of those because I honestly do not like artificial sweeteners and would prefer to avoid them. I’d be curious if the unsweetened mixed in milk would be alright, because the milk might be sweet enough. Or if not, adding a pinch of raw sugar is just fine with me. Besides, adding any flavors adds to the price, and I reckon a pinch of sugar is going to be a LOT cheaper.

Ah, I knew they had this on their website somewhere. From their FAQ section:

What are the ingredients in your Premium Flavor systems?

The Premium Flavor line will contain the following list of ingredients:

Ingredients: Natural and artificial coloring and flavoring, Acesulfame Potassium, Sucralose, Modified Food Starch, Silicon Dioxide, Maltodextrin.

These flavor systems will not contain any lactose, soy, wheat gluten, or animal byproducts whatsoever.

What are the ingredients in your Natural Premium flavor systems?

The Natural Premium Flavor line will contain the following list of ingredients:

Ingredients: Natural coloring and flavoring, Stevia natural herbal sweetener, Maltodextrin.

These flavor systems will not contain any lactose, soy, wheat gluten, or animal byproducts whatsoever.

What are the ingredients in your standard Unsweetened flavoring options?

The standard Unsweetened flavoring options will be left completely unsweetened unless you select a sweetener in the Sweeteners drop down menu that appears below the Flavoring drop down menu. The ingredients for the Unsweetened flavors are:

Natural and Artificial flavoring, Modified Food Starch, Silicon Dioxide, Maltodextrin.

So there you go. I’ve never tried Stevia so I might give that a shot just to experiment. I am kinda curious what the flavoring is in the unsweetened stuff….

Anyways, my current plan is to buy a few more options in 1# tubs and try the flavor over time. One taste isn’t always enough to judge, plus it will let me try the flavor in different bases like water or milk or a shake with other ingredients.

I’m going to try:

  • Plain – just because. I’ve only ever been able to get flavored whey before, and it’d be nice to see what plain “non-enhanced” tastes like and how that could factor into cooking.
  • Chocolate – unsweetened. Try it straight up. Try it with a little sugar. Try it with other things.
  • Chocolate – natural premium sweetener, because I’d like to try this Stevia stuff.
  • Dutch Chocolate Fudge – premium. This was a favorite.
  • Strawberry – unsweetened. So I can have another unsweetened taste point.
  • Strawberries N Cream – premium flavoring, for comparison to the unsweetened strawberry, tho it won’t be a straight-up comparison. But I recall liking this one.
  • Luscious Peach – premium. I liked this too.
  • Wild Berry Blast – premium, because Daughter liked it.

So that’s a bunch more for me to try, but hopefully will give me a little more depth of exploration and firmer idea of what flavor I’d ultimately like to have as a staple. If nothing else, it’s fun and takes some of the boring routine out of whey consumption. 🙂

 

True Nutrition Whey Flavor #38 – Chocolate Banana

/ hsoi

I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.

Chocolate Banana

Wife said this reminded her of childhood. Had a lot of that sort of “takes you back” feeling with these flavors, because they do have that sort of candy-like taste to them.

This was alright, but again the banana flavor is that “Now and Later” candy flavor, which just isn’t my favorite (maybe sour apple instead?? well, at least of Now and Later… not sure how well that’d work as a whey flavoring). Wife didn’t like the aftertaste, but she’s even less a fan of artificial sweetener than I am. Really, this isn’t bad, just yet another on the list of not to our personal preference.

But… that was #38. Last packet. Stay tuned for my final assessment.

 

2012-07-30 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, 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

After my performance on Saturday I wanted to work on speed of the press out and getting on the trigger faster. Sure enough I got on the trigger faster, but I see the sights dip. Ugh. I can tell part of it is not having a consistent “crush grip”… a common problem I have when I dry fire because my brain knows I’m dry firing.

So… more things for me to work on. There’s always a list of stuff.