Author: hsoi

2011-09-16 workout

/ hsoi

Set a PR today. Woot!

“Week 2” 3 reps

  • 5/3/1 – Press (working max: 120#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x50
    • 1x5x60
    • 1x3x75
    • 1x3x85 (work)
    • 1x3x95
    • 1x7x110
  • Asst. #1 – Press
    • 5 x 10 x 55
  • Asst. #2 – Wider-grip supinated pulldowns
    • 1x10x100
    • 4x10x110
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

A good day, mostly.

I set a PR on Press, doing 1x7x110. Never put that much weight over my head, and never for that many reps. So, that was pretty cool. I just felt strong today.

Assistance pressing was alright. I think it’s time to bump that to 60#.

On the pulldowns, I’ve been struggling with my shoulders here, finding a grip and position that works. Today, I went back to supinated grip with the hands just slightly wider than shoulder width apart. I noticed if I kept my hands supinated and didn’t let them start to rotate to neutral at the top of the motion, my shoulders were happier. So, there we go. I did one set at 100 trying to back off to be nice, but after noticing that little tweak I bumped to 110 to see how it would go and it felt alright so I kept going. Of course, the real key is ensuring at the top of the motion I do let my shoulders move up/forward and at the bottom of the motion that they’re down and back (feel those shoulder blades pinch) and the bar comes to touch my chest… chest is up, facing towards the ceiling, eyes looking back/up… just like a good chin-up should be.

You know how they say that pain is just weakness leaving the body? Well, jumping rope is just coordination leaving the body… or at least, that’s how it felt today. Just tripping up all over the place. Ugh.

Nevertheless, things felt good. I feel like I’m pushing myself a little harder, certainly striving for more and always trying to increase and do better than before.

Wildfire help from Hank Fleming

/ hsoi

Were you or someone you know directly affected by the recent Texas wildfires (Bastrop, Cedar Creek, Spicewood, Steiner Ranch, etc.)?

Hank Fleming, one of Austin’s finest gunsmiths, posted the following to the TXIPSC mailing list. I asked Hank if I could repost to spread the word, and he said yes. So, here I repost:

Hank Fleming, Gunsmith, Austin TX offers to the fire victims of the Bastrop
fires

New guns @ my cost plus 5% (the 5% will pay my expenses, not a profit)

Internet transfers…$10.00 per transfer.

Please allow me to help in this way.

Having a house burn when I was a teen ager, I understand your loss.

Regards,

Hank Fleming

Very kind of him, to help in the way that he can.

Please help spread the word.

A little rifle work

/ hsoi

Slipped away to the gun range this morning.

Hunting season is upon us. Whitetail deer season starts in November (gun), but with the weather cooling down if I wanted to go on a quick hog run I could do that too. Need to get things in order.

The Rifle

My rifle of choice is again my Wilson Combat 6.8 SPC. That’s actually just the upper, the lower is a RRA with their sweet 2-stage trigger; a few other odds and ends on the rifle too. But the key here really is that RRA trigger and the WC upper.

In the past I had shot Silver State Armory‘s 6.8 SPC, 85 grain Barnes TSX, “tac load” and had reasonable success with it. Then I started to hear about Barnes Bullets making a 95 grain TTSX, purpose-built for the 6.8 SPC (i.e. not just another .277″ bullet). Unfortunately, it was only available as a hand-load component, but the handloaders were having great success with it. I fully intended to hand-load for it, but life got in the way and I have been unable to sit at the reloading bench. Since I don’t expect life to let up any time soon, I was hoping someone would make factory loads of the 95 TTSX. Silver State tried it but results weren’t that great.

Then Wilson Combat made one. And the results were excellent.

I was finally able to put in an order for some, had to wait for the backorder to be filled, but a couple of weeks ago 4 boxes arrived. Huzzah! It’s my hope this will be THE round that I can use for all my hunting needs (deer, hog, etc.).

On top of that, the old Burris Fulfield II 3-9×40 I had well… I’ve long been suspecting the scope is broken. I’m no Marine Sniper with my rifle, but I can shoot and hit things, but any time I’d shoot with this scope I’d have problems, but not consistent problems. I loosely poked at it a few times to see, but results were always inconclusive. Still, being convinced that it’s broken I bought a new scope: a Leupold VX-R 3-9×50, and mounted it with a LaRue QD LT-104. While this gun doesn’t (yet) have iron sights on it, I want to get some because well… while it’s still just a hunting rifle, it would suck to have my weekend go kaput because of a failed scope.

I’ve been itching to get her zeroed in and finally was able to do so this morning.

The Performance

Since it’s my hope for the 95 to be my go-to round, but I still had a bunch of 85 around, I figured to start off with the 85 to get the scope roughly dialed in. I was happy to see that windage was centered and elevation wasn’t off by much. A few clicks of the knobs, recheck it at 100 yards and it was good enough to switch to the 95.

Here’s a sample of the Wilson Combat 6.8 SPC 95 grain Barnes TTSX ammo. 3 shots, 100 yards, out of my Wilson upper:

And I’m sure a better rifleman could do better. I’ll take that tho. 3 shots, under an inch at 100 yards. And technically these Barnes bullets aren’t “match” bullets, they are hunting rounds. So, good enough.

I did a little more shooting with the Wilson ammo to check point of impact at 25 and 50 yards, and they were about the places expected. All seems good. AND, everything shot consistently and as expected.

But then….

The Other Scope

I put the Burris onto a 5.56 upper. My feeling was I could at least use that for some plinking… to help the kiddos get used to the form factor of the rifle, the trigger, and so on, with just a simple upper swap.

The ammo was just some Georgia Arms .223 55 grain plinking stuff, so not the best, but it’s not unreasonable.

However, everything was all over the map.

I started at 25 yards for a rough zero, was a couple of inches off zero, so I dialed it to zero and it seemed good. In fact, I figured I should crank it about an inch low at 25 yards to try to have more of a zero impact at 100 yards. Whatever I adjusted it to tho, the point was that I adjusted the elevation so the point of impact would go down.

When I shot at 100 yards? The point of impact was about 4-5 inches high! Eh? And rather a wide spread too. I cranked the elevation down more and shot, and it seemed spot on. I then tried shooting the bottom-right diamond and was shooting a little low right. Then I cranked the magnification up to 9x (from 5x) and shot the bottom-left diamond… and those shots were about 2″ low and made a nice horizontal “line” about 4-5″ wide along the bottom of the target.

WTF?

Now sure, this isn’t match grade ammo, but it shouldn’t perform like that. And this barrel is a nice stainless 1:8 Wylde barrel that every other time I’ve shot it, even with this ammo, has performed excellent. So this?? This makes no sense to me, but it’s continuing to reinforce my feeling that the scope is fubar. I’d really need to sit down and do more scientific-like testing to be sure, but I’m getting more convinced it’s screwed up.

I’m not going to blame Burris or swear off their products because I have no solid knowledge yet if it is a messed up scope and then if it is, what caused it to get messed up. But I am going to go back and look at their warranty again….

And so…

Anyways, I feel the 6.8 is in shape and ready for action. Next up, taking the Kiddos to the range to let them try it out.

And yes… I’d love to see about a quick little harvest/hunt to see how she does in the field. 🙂

Addendum

I posted, then I realized I didn’t mention a few things I wanted to say.

The Leupold scope. The more I look through it, the more I love it. Compared to the Burris? No question, the Leupold is better. Crisper picture, brighter picture. Sure the Burris isn’t bad in this areas, but the Leupold was obviously a step up. Very happy there.

The Wilson ammo… I still need to do some work with it, like I’d love to run it over a chronograph. Wilson reports 2850 fps out of a 16″ barrel. Well, I have a 16″ barrel, and it just so happens I have a Wilson barrel so… I would expect to get 2850 fps, but it’d be nice to know what was really happening. I will say, shooting the SSA 85 grain tac load then shooting the Wilson load? The Wilson load felt like there was a little more oomph at the beginning… I certainly recall hearing more rattle in the buffer spring. It’d also be cool to see some gel performance of this particular load, but I don’t expect to do that myself nor see it any time soon.

Why squat?

/ hsoi

Regular readers know I don’t like doing squats. But that’s before I squat. After I squat, I’m always happy I did. In fact, due to yesterday’s squat workout my legs are sore this morning, and I’m sure will be even more sore tomorrow. Yes, I do think the PPNP Novice program had me squatting so much it 1. jacked my squat over 100# in 2 months, which is awesome, 2. overloaded my system so much I was worn out and came to hate squatting.

But I’m coming back around. I guess time and distance away is making the heart grow fonder. 😉

Like soup, squatting is good for you. There’s nothing else that will do for you what squatting will do.

“There is simply no other exercise (and certainly no machine) that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.” –Mark Rippetoe

And so like it or not, I keep squatting. I work to overcome my dislikes and fears, because the only way to really make your fear go away is to face it, permit it to pass over me and through me.

So why should you squat? Here’s 50 reasons from guys that know.

(aside: the article is titled 100 reasons, but it only contains 50… can’t do math unless it’s in increments of 45?) 😉

Of all the quotes, I think this is the best:

“Very few movements require the same degree of dedication, desire and determination as heavy squats. Squats are more than a physical strength builder and may be the only movement that builds a person’s character. Life is about standing up AFTER a heavy load takes you down.” – Dave Tate

Emphasis mine.

 

Contrasts, in martial arts

/ hsoi

I was flipping through a bunch of pictures on the Mu Sool Won of South Austin Facebook page. It was a few hundred pictures from “seminar”. But there was something different about this seminar. Something about Byung In Lee. It’s too much for  a “comment”, so here I write.

Let me back up and give a little history.

I have a black belt in a martial art known as Kuk Sool. When I received it, I was part of an organization known as the World Kuk Sool Association, which is the original/founding organization of the art, created and run by Kuk Sool’s creator, In Hyuk Suh. In my time in the organization I found the art itself to be a wonderful and practical art, but I grew to discover the art was not for me. I think there was too much “art” and not enough “martial” and I struggled to find people I could work with that wanted more “martial”… demos, spin kicks, acrobatics, all nice, but I’m more concerned with fighting and self-defense. I think Kuk Sool can be very solid in this area, it’s just not really stressed because… there’s not as much money in it. And that’s what ultimately drove me away from Kuk Sool, was the business practices and how so much was kinda cult-like-driven towards isolation and feeding of the parent organization. I’m not saying Kuk Sool nor WKSA are a cult — it’s not; just that things were so driven towards feeding the parent organization, especially money-wise. The last “seminar” I attended was particularly bothersome because they spent every moment they could pimping merch and not really teaching anything of value (exception, the segment with Master Sung Jin on dan bong was worthwhile).

And you see, whenever we had seminars, In Hyuk Suh never taught. He’d come out and speak for a little bit, which sometimes was useful, many times not, and frequently arrogant, then go back and sit in the office and let everyone else teach, like his sons Sung Jin and Alex, or  Barry Harmon. Now, Masters Sung Jin, Alex, and Barry are fantastic teachers and people to learn from, don’t get me wrong there either. But come on… why can’t the founder teach us something? Some say it’s his age, but geez… if all the stuff spouted about the age-defying effects of martial arts practice are to be true, then he should be able to show us just fine. I’ve seen older men and women throwing around 20-somethings — hell, Keiko Fukuda is older and in arguably worse health than In Hyuk Suh but she still gets on the mat!

Anyways, a couple of years ago there was yet another schism within WKSA and many people broke off because of a b.s. “franchise” agreement. WKSA lost a lot of good people, including Byung In Lee. But frankly, WKSA’s loss is the gain for the rest of the world because now Master Lee can do as he wishes, and we’ll all be better off for it.

This is what struck me about those photos.

What do I see in the photos? Well, of course I see Master Lee, with his big smile. The first time I met the man he was smiling and joking with me. In fact, now that I think about it, the very first time I met him I came to visit his school when I lived in north Austin to research it. I recall some other student was warming up the class, but only because he was taking care of business including talking to me. Then he got out on the floor, limbered up a bit, then went right into teaching the class. I’m not sure what his rank was at the time, probably 8th degree? And many times people of such high rank don’t teach the colored belts but have their lower-ranked black belts do so. But not Master Lee.

And so that remains.

What was in the pictures? Master Lee out on the mat. He’s doing everything with the students. He’s directly teaching the students, be it some 3rd degree school owner or some white belt child. Doesn’t matter to him, he’s teaching those who wish to learn.

It was such a study in contrasts to look at how Master Lee carries himself vs. how others carry themselves. I have the highest respect for Master Lee because of the person he is. He’s fun loving, a family man, a bad-ass martial artist, humble, always smiling and joking. If there’s any ego about this man, I’ve never seen it. He’s a good man, in every true sense of the word.

Looking at those pictures just spoke so well about the sort of man he is. I don’t see myself going back to Kuk Sool, but so long as he’s teaching the art and producing good students willing to carry on, the art will recover and do alright.

2011-09-14 workout

/ hsoi

The only way to get good at the things you hate is to keep doing them until you don’t hate them any more. So with that, today was squat day. 🙂

“Week 1” 5 reps

  • 5/3/1 – Squats (working max: 230#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x5x140
    • 1x5x150 (work)
    • 1x5x175
    • 1x7x200
  • Asst. #1 – Squats
    • 5 x 10 x 85
  • Asst. #2 – Leg Curls
    • 5 x 10 x 40
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

I don’t look forward to squat days, but I’m always appreciative of them when I’m done. Certainly of the 4 big lifts, it’s my least favorite, but I know it’s the #1 at making you overall bigger and stronger. So, you do it.

I’m happy I was able to crank out 7 with 200#, since that’s 1 more than the last time I did 200#, which would have been on “week 2” of the previous cycle. So, that’s alright. Form continues to improve, giving myself the cues of “chest up” and “torso tight”. Unfortunately I then realize I lose shoulder tightness, so I have to work on that. I also have been working more on keeping my eyes at a “higher plane”. The issue is, most of the equipment in the gym is up against walls so trying to look at a spot on the ground 6′-8′ in front of you doesn’t really happen, so I’ve been looking further down than I should. When I pick a spot on the wall that’s not as far down, my head still stays down but not as much, and that appears to be helping. Helps with the “chest up”.

I get a good burn (I hate that term) on my assistance squats, and while 85 is pushing me I think it’s time to bump that up. I’ll likely go to 90 next workout. 1 minute in between sets here really gets my heart pumping.

I’m also glad I made the on-the-spot choice to take leg curls up to 40# because that worked me nicely. I do think 45# next time, along with the squat assistance weight bump, should leave my hamstrings good and sore. 😉

On the jump rope… I realized, I don’t need to add a second set. I need to make my 1 set more intense. I worked to jump faster today, averaging about 2 hops per second, which was hard to do after killing my legs on the squats and curls. But that’s what I need. I also think that perhaps I should start to change technique from hops to “running in place”, which will likely require me to back off while I learn the skill, but that’s alright because I reckon that’ll be a better workout in the long run. I may try starting on that next workout.

Anyways, today was alright. Need more red meat tho. 🙂

Parenting: you’re doing it wrong, tale #85992592968290

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Dear Parent of the whiny child at the music store last night:

When your husband went into the cymbal room and the door closed behind him, then myself and the clerk heard this shriek of a small child, we both wheeled around thinking the child got its fingers caught in the closing door.

That was not the case. No… the child was just upset that it wasn’t allowed to go into the cymbal room. Sure, you tried to explain to the 2-3 year old that it was in their best interest to not go into that room, and for their sensitive ears that’s a good decision.

If you had stuck to your guns, if you had remained the parent — you know, the one in control of the situation — things would have been better.

Alas, you did as too many “parents” today do, you gave into the child. In fact, you said something like “Well, if you’re just going to keep whining about it, then ok, you can go in.” And proceeded to open the door for the child and let her/him into the cymbal room.

And now the child knows… if I am not getting what I want, whine and cry, pitch a fit, and eventually they will give in. It doesn’t matter if the thing is bad for me or not, and chances are I, being a small child, don’t know that it’s bad for me… but my “parents” will give it to me anyways.

*sigh*