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Slight adjustments

/ hsoi

I’m entering meso 2-3. I’m seeing what is working and what is not. It’s good to explore the new equipment: some is useful, some not as much, some is great.

Good

Love the hack squat. I suck at it, and only one way to not suck at it…

I like the Hammer Strength Iso-Lateral Row (plate-loaded) – good strong, stable, general row (I am using top-handles, pronated grip).

I do like how the HS calf machines have angled footrest because I don’t have to readjust my footing.

There’s something about the HS Iso-Lateral Leg Extension that is great – I think it’s where the weight is in the path/curve, especially at extension for the squeeze.

Bad

Some of the press machines don’t line up well for me. I keep playing around with placements and settings.

I don’t feel I’m getting much from the machine preacher curls.

Cable Y-raises don’t seem to be doing much for my delts.

Changes

I’m going to keep meso 2-3 as written, adding in some intensity techniques. Any changes will come in 3-1.

Upper A: Push emphasis. Keep HS IL Shoulder Press (so long as my shoulders are ok with it). Probably drop the HS Iso-Lateral Incline Press in favor of 30º barbell inclines. I want to get some chest work, but I have to remember I’m wanting to bias delts more in this macrocycle. Drop cable y’s in favor of the incline db y’s – those I seemed to respond to well. Then swap the heavy HS IL Row today for the HS selectorized row (from Upper B day) for 3×8-12.

Lower A: no real change, as I think it’s working well. Hacks are death. I love the leg extension machine.

Upper B: pull emphasis. Make the HS IL Row the opener heavy movement (instead of the selectorized, which is moved to Upper A as mentioned above). I wonder if I switch to a really light but squeezy db preacher curl if that might be fun (instead of the machine preacher). Iso-Lateral Wide Chest is fun.

Lower B: TBD based on how my body is feeling.

So, not huge changes really. I just am finding where things lie and how stuff works for me.

Also, finding allowances and flow for the new gym.

Wrist update

/ hsoi

My left wrist is improving. The issues have shifted, but I think I know what needs doing. The hard part will be doing it.

I can still do things. I mean, yesterday I incline benched 260×3@8 – which is a lifetime PR for me on inclines. If I wrap my wrists when it gets heavier it’s fine. In fact, what’s more bothering me now is the metacarpals due to typing.

I need to change my office/typing setup. I need to get off the laptop. Full keyboard, better monitors on swing-arms so they can be eye level and typing at a good level for head and eye position. I need better typing posture. I need better posture overall (the eternal struggle #IYKYK) yes, but posture while typing is especially needed. I think better equipment setup is an easy win. Having the UpLift helps too; happy purchase that was.

I need to stretch more, and stretch things you may not think – bending my fingers backwards to get more stretch in extended positions. My fingers are curled all the time, from lifting weights, shooting guns, typing all day every day. I have been working the extensor bands. I’ve noticed my fingers tripping over themselves more when I type these days. It’s in part due to the typing “style” due to the above setup issues, but I also feel my fingers getting stiffer. Could it be aging? Absolutely could. I don’t know what it is, but I certainly know my finger muscles themselves could use some stretching to help my fingers be less curled in relaxed positions. Just more “yoga”, more stretching and using my body.

It’s getting better. Injuries like this are an opportunity to find other ways to work, to solve, to continue progressing.

Stretching

I’m not happy, Bob

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

“I’m not happy, Bob”

Gilbert Huph (The Incredibles)

I injured my left wrist. Dumbbell bench pressing the other day, I felt something weird. In my dry fire, it doesn’t feel great. I incline benched 245×4 on Friday and no issues (stable movement, wraps, straight and strong wrists). Bending is the issue, especially wrist extension. Even keeping my fingers at home row cocks the wrist and doesn’t feel hot.

I am signed up to take Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions Oct 1-2 at KR Training. I needed to assess my capabilities, primarily interested in validating work I’ve been doing in dry practice, and now also seeing how my wrist would manage.

Not good, Bob. Well, good and bad. First the bad.

Since it’s prep for Gabe, I ran Bill Drills to explore (it served both my goals). I shot 150-ish rounds and had to stop. The way the wrist gets cocked, (esp. at positions 3 and 4) coupled with the percussive nature of recoil just started to hurt in the bad way. I remember when I won my Light Pin in 2019 how beat up and raw my hands were 3/4 way through the class. If that’s the level of abuse my hands can expect, my current situation doesn’t bode well.

I’m not giving up yet. I’m going to see what I can do. If nothing else, now I get to really work on my strong-hand-only shooting. 😂 

In other news, I shot Bill Drills because I wanted 1. DTFAH (Draw To First Acceptable Hit), 2. recoil management. In dry practice I noticed I have a tendency to slightly cant the gun, just enough to confound my presentation. When I get the gun vertical, it’s better. I still suck with the dot, but it’s getting better and I think a seed of confidence has been sown. I have also been applying stuff from Mike Seeklander on grip. I saw good results dry. Live I did my best to just watch the sight movie, focus on the grip experiment, and see what happened. Results were… good. I still suck at it, and practicing it will be difficult with my wrist situation, but I’m pleased and feel I’m getting a little further down the road.

I want to take Gabe’s class, not for the trinket but for the learning that will inevitably occur. 2019’s class was transformative, and I have no qualms about being the shittiest shooter in class so long as I’m learning. It’s just gonna come down to the physicality of it all. Gonna work and see what I can do.

You gotta know when to fold ’em

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

I accomplished a key task: migrating away from MacHighway.com/Deluxe.com to A2Hosting.com. Things are still settling down, but so far so good.

hsoi.com has a new look. Go check it out.

I feel weird with self-promotion like this, because it feels like it makes me come across larger than I really am. I’m a big fucking imposter. But, the website is good to do (as I look towards where I’m attempting to go with my life).

blog.hsoi.com is a wordpress.com site with a CNAME. I’ve now failed at a few attempts to migrate it to a wordpress.org install on hsoi.com. Migrating the subdomain is the tricky part. I’m open to suggestions.

I am bummed. For years I’ve wanted to self-host my blog, and now seemed like a good time. It was a good time, and that permitted me the bandwidth to try it a few times, and learn a few things (i.e. fail a bunch). So, it’s all good in the end.

I need to move on to other things. WordPress.com works well, and has really upped its game in offerings – I have no qualms with WordPress.com and in fact may recommend it (tho I am not happy with the breakage of posting to Facebook Pages that are “new style”). I just want to self-host. I’ll come back to this another time. I have other projects to attend to.

Is this thing on?

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Is blog.hsoi.com back? You tell me please… because DNS propagation is a thing.

I’m undertaking a long-overdue migration of my IT services (web, email, domain names, across numerous sites). It’s two-fold:

  1. Move away from MacHighway.com / Deluxe.com
  2. Clean up, refactor, discard or pay technical debt, start “fresh”.

Move

Many years ago I hosted with a provider: ItsAMac.com. I’ve loved Apple since the IIe. An ISP that groks Mac and even uses Xserves? Sweet! Plus they were small and had great customer service. Life was good. They rebranded to MacHighway.com, then started noticing the changes getting… generic. cPanel is life now. And then, hardware/server migrations… over and over. Eventually seeing that the company was sold to someone, then another. I don’t recall all the history, but the latest was to Deluxe.com, which has been the worst. They heavily botched a server migration (which I am to understand from the Twitterverse that they were putting servers on trucks and driving them to a new center). Handling was terrible, from a customer service perspective. It was the final straw, and I overcame inertia and moved.

I am now using A2 Hosting. Jury is still out if it was a good move or not, but after much digging around, compare/contrast vs. my needs, and they seemed right. Small incremental trials have proven good, including their customer service who have been responsive, patient, and helpful. Yes, the quality of answers can vary from service rep to rep, but overall it’s good. Best is they are responsive. It may take a couple back and forths, but it gets figured. So, on that alone I’m pleased with the move so far.

Oh and the site is fast is fast as fuck, boy. (meme)

Forward

This was a perfect opportunity to just discard, clean up, and move on. hsoi.com used to have some basic and crude .html files that I wrote probably in BBEdit. This was in the days before CSS and responsive and whatnot: just text, maybe using a table for layout. It was what it was for the time, but… it’s time to go. I am sad that the “MacOS MUD Zone” is no more – it was kinda fun being the Mac MUD dude, but the reality is those were Classic Mac apps and it’s just time to let it all go. WordPress is a thing now.

One thing I’ve long wanted to do is migrate the blog from wordpress.com to my own wordpress.org install. I figured this would be the right time.

I was… half right.

This is a good time, but I should have waited and done it in two phases: 1. get away from MacHighway/Deluxe, 2. do new modern stuff. I started to blend 2 into 1 because this project has been taking a while and with so many things that require “just wait” (e.g. DNS propagation), I thought I could overlap.

However, the migration from wordpress.com to wordpress.org hasn’t been so straightforward, especially because a subdomain is in place: which currently points to and is required really for the wordpress.com-based site to operate, but also needs to be the same subdomain for the wordpress.org install. So… this caused some “false starts” (including trying to use WordPress Multisite). Eventually I realized things weren’t working, needed to back out, but something got hosed with DNS. It took some time, but it looks like A2’s “advanced” support may have gotten things back on track.

I need to wrap up the “Move” portion of things, THEN once I know it’s clean, do the “Forward” part.

So I think I have things “back to how they were before”. I am going to complete my move away from MacHighway/Deluxe. Once that’s good, I’ll look at migration.

This project has taken way too long and caused me enough grief; but I’ve learned a lot.

“Be a Bridge”

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

This. This right here. Thank you, Dr. Yamane for posting that.

Gun Curious

Graduation ceremonies always lift my spirits, so after a tough weekend confronting the reality of white supremacist hate in America, I was glad to be able to set that aside and recognize the achievements of over 1,000 Wake Forest University undergraduates (including my youngest son) who completed their final two years of college under extraordinary circumstances.

As I told my own students on the final day of class this semester, I hope that the challenges they face make them stronger, more resilient, more creative, and more compassionate people.

Wake Forest 2022 Commencement. Photo by David Yamane

The commencement speaker this year was Van Jones, who is best known as a CNN political commentator. His address hit all the right notes for me. Here I want to highlight just a couple, but you can watch the entire address on YouTube or read it at the Wake Forest University commencement site.

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Discussing Outcome vs Process Goals with Kari Grayson

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I joined the License2Kari podcast to discuss “Outcome vs. Process Goals” (listen here). While I may be an outcome and goal-oriented person, I’ve really learned to embrace process-focus as the way to achieve my goals. I’m far from a master at it, but I’ve failed a lot and so I’ve learned a lot. I hope you find something useful in the episode.

Fall 2019 was a pivotal educational moment for me regarding goals, outcomes, and focus.

October 2019 I earned a Light Pin from Gabe White. That was peak shooting – lifetime PR. I got there because I stopped worrying about the outcome and focused on the process. There were some “zen” moments in there. Sunday afternoon, resting at the kitchen table, speaking with another student – he was close to a Light Pin too. I spoke about “being in the moment of this shot now”. The shot you just made? It doesn’t matter if it was a bad shot or a good shot – it’s a past shot, so let it go. Yes, let it wash through you as a shot moves from future to present and into the past as you perform the motions necessary to make it happen. But still, you must let it pass through you and let it go, for a new moment is about to flow in and you must give it your full attention. Both he and I earned Light Pins.

November 2019 I was in the inaugural Rangemaster Master Instructor class. I didn’t want to fuck this up. And there was my focus: Daub, don’t fuck this up. Well… what does your brain hear? “Don’t fuck this up.” So what do you think you’re at risk of doing? Fucking this up. So… I almost did. On revolver day, Michael Labonte, Lee Weems, and myself all scored 100% on the qual; Michael won the shootoff. What happened? How did I perform so well despite the fact I don’t shoot revolvers much? I was very focused on the process of shooting the revolver well, and so I did. When we went back to our normal carry equipment, I also went (fell) back to being outcome focused. Every drill, every qual, every time Tom stood behind me with his clipboard, timer, and whistle… I shot terribly. I mean, I passed, met the standard, but I’m disappointed in my performance. However, it’s not really about the shooting – it’s about the focus. I was SO outcome focused, and it nearly cost me.

These two events really drove home to me the power of where you focus (especially my “failure”). There is power in focusing on the outcome, but I’ve found it difficult to succeed there. Yes, our ultimate goal is to achieve a particular outcome, but it’s how you go about the achieving and upon what you focus that makes the difference. Focus on the process has brought me more success; I still fail, but eventually I do succeed and am better off in the end. And that has made all the difference.

Tour the Federal Factory

/ hsoi

Take a tour of the Federal ammunition factory. Yeah the gun part is cool. But I’m also a nerd for shows like “How It’s Made”, so the factory engineering aspects are interesting to me as well.

I love their underground facility.

h/t Hogel

Why I Like to Measure Things

/ hsoi

“How would we know whether we’re “good shooters” unless we measure our own level of competency?”

tacticalprofessor

#measurementmonday

Why do I like to measure things? Because until I do, I don’t really know what’s inside.

I dislike soupy oatmeal. Although I followed the package instructions, it still turned out like soup. When I used the package measurement, it didn’t. Measuring the actual amount of water from the package’s marker doesn’t hold as much water as it says and which the directions specify. One half a cup is quite a bit less than two-thirds of a cup.

What does soupy oatmeal have to do with personal protection? How would we know whether we’re “good shooters” https://youtu.be/qB7NKXEKewM?t=599unless we measure our own level of competency?

There has been debate within the training community for a long time about standards of competency. Those arguments will probably never be settled. One possible starting point could be the level of marksmanship necessary to pass the NRA Basics of Pistol Shooting Course. To…

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Live a life worth remembering

/ hsoi

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Bruce Lee (not really)

Apparently Bruce Lee didn’t actually say that; regardless of who said it, the statement rings true.

If you should die today, how would you be remembered?

Are you OK with that?

If so, carry on.

If not, what can you do to change? Start now.

It’s not about building your immortality or cementing your legacy – this isn’t about after you die. It’s about guiding your life now, while you are living; to help you live a meaningful life now.

Live a life worthy of remembrance.