Me

2012-08-27 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

Today I was really working not just on the eye-target line stuff, but really ensuring my grip was strong and consistent. That front sight isn’t allowed to move!

I did about my usual on the 2H, but on both SHO and WHO I did a lot better than usual. It’s there that I can really forget to clamp down on the grip, and it just shows me what I need to keep working on.

2012-08-27 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 13, Deadlift 2

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Ooof.

“Week 2”

  • 3 reps – Deadlift (working max: 355#)
    • 1x5x145 (warmup)
    • 1x5x185
    • 1x3x215
    • 1x3x250 (work)
    • 1x3x290
    • 1x6x325
  • Asst. #1 – Deadlift
    • 3 x 10/8/10 x 185/185/135
  • Asst. #2 – Pulldown Abs (kneeling)
    • 5 x 12 x 110
  • Foam Rolling

Oof…. that’s a lot of deadlifting.

The work sets went fine, but when I hit into assistance oo… that was a lot. I got through 1 set, hit the second set and knew it wasn’t going to happen. My lower back was rounding bad… just too much. So I dropped down the weight and then left it at the 3rd set. I want to get 5×10 so I think maybe I’ll try 5x10x145 and see how that goes. I cannot allow form to be sacrificed to make this work… .because it’s a LOT of work.

I’ve been working on my diet too, but I’ll write about that another time.

on the Eye-Target Line

/ hsoi

When we teach people how to shoot, one thing we talk about is this notion of the “eye-target line”.

The “eye-target line” is a (imaginary) line that connects your eye to the target. What should intersect that line are the sights of the gun. So what you have is eye, rear sight, front sight, target, all in a perfect line and all properly lined up in their respective manner (e.g. using your dominant eye, the sights are properly aligned). Kathy Jackson’s CorneredCat website has a great graphic to show this. In fact, Kathy’s article has a fine discussion about sight alignment and aiming in general — highly recommended read. I’m wanting to focus on some specifics about the “eye-target line”, especially as it’s come up in my dry fire practice.

While the above is a good general notion to introduce the concept, it really has to be more precise and specific. Your vision should be focused on a specific target, a precise point. Instead of focusing “on the bullseye”, how about that X in the center? Or even better, how about the spot where the 2 lines that make the X intersect? Or even better, how about the pin-point center of that spot, since the lines have some width? It’s the same problem with having aiming points like “center of mass” because all too often people envision COM as “torso”. Instead, get precise, like the top button on the shirt, or maybe if it’s a button with 4 holes in it, right in the center of those 4 holes. This is important to ensure you aim where you need to aim. That eye-target line needs to go somewhere specific.

From Karl I learned to imagine there’s a string going from my eye to the target. When pressing the gun out, bring the sights up to that string. Literally imagine a string and that the top of the sights comes up to touch the string, to ride the string like a rail.

While I’ve always known to do this, I haven’t been doing it. Or if I did do it, it was too general or I’d lose it somewhere along the press-out. I guess I could say I wasn’t as rigorous with it as I should be. Perhaps I didn’t realize, until now, just how increased rigor at adhering to “riding that rail” would improve my ability.

I’ve really worked to focus on this during my dry practice — to really “ride that rail” when I press out. And there’s a few things involved in this, that I’ve discovered in my practice.

First, you really have to ride that rail all the way. From the moment you start the press out, your eyes and brain have to think about “the rail”. You have to see the rail, it can’t leave your imagination, it can’t leave the “imaginary projection” into your visual field. When you press out, the gun needs to come up to it, and both the front and rear sights need to click into the track, stay in the track, and ride the rail all the way out. When I do this, when I have this sort of mental look and discipline about things, the gun goes right out to where I want it. Yes it’s a lot of thinking about it right now, but I figure a few thousand more reps and it should drill home and become unconscious.

Second, shifting point of visual focus. When you start (no gun out), your eyes are going to be target focused. What has to happen during the press out is your eye focus switches to the front sight. I found I wasn’t doing this soon enough, or that I’d try to find the front sight early in the press out and keep my vision focused on it as I pressed out, “riding” the front sight with my eyes. But that usually wouldn’t work because the speeds would be different, I’d be visually chasing the sight or trying to find it, and losing time. What’s working better? Know the point in space where my front sight will end up when I’m at full extension and just shift my focus there. Thus, everything will converge. But I still have to be careful, because it’s still easy to lose focus and have my eyes just generally staring into space. This is where that precise target focus matters, because it makes me truly visualize the string from my eyeball to the target and “ride that rail”. My body then works to index the movement up to and along that string, really bringing everything to meet at the right spot.

Third, I have to ensure to set this all up before I start, else it’s a “false start”. For example, during my dry practice on reloads, I would click, bring the gun back, do the reload. If as soon as the magazine seated and my hand was back on the gun I started pressing out, I’d likely fumble things. If instead as soon as my hand was back on the gun I took a moment to set myself before starting the press-out, things worked better. Basically I had to force myself to make a distinct reset, both physically and mentally. To get the gun back out wasn’t a part of the reload; the reload ended when the mag seated. Once I finished the reload, then I needed to start the press-out again, and that required a moment of reset. I’d rather take that 0.1 second to reset and get things right, than to skip the 0.1 second and blow it. I believe in time this will consume less time to become almost unnoticed.

These are just my observations from my regular dry fire. It’d been a month and a half of dry firing once a day for 10-15 minutes, 5 times a week. In some respects I don’t feel actual improvement, but I know it’s there because I’m paying more attention to my technique, identifying problems, working to correct them. Next time I’m at the range I want to do some live fire experiments to see how this dry fire is progressing. One thought is to do something simple like the basic routine but from the holster, and time to see how long it takes to get the shot off. It’s a simple measure. My goal tho is to combat a problem I’ve also identified that I need to overcome: dry practicing one way and live practicing another. That dry should have just as much intensity as live, and live should be as laid back as dry. Fundamentally no disparity between the two sessions, but mentally I have to think to ramp up my dry and pull back on my live — to shoot each like the other. If I don’t, it means one needs to be fixed (probably that dry needs to pick things up).

Whey – (almost) final word

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I haven’t been making regular postings about my TrueNutrition.com whey experience.

I’ll just say this.

I cannot do the artificial flavored whey. The Luscious Peach, the Wild Berry, whatever… all the artificially flavored stuff is just way too sweet. Candy sweet, kid cereal sweet. It’s just hard for me to take. Part of me really loves it, and wants to keep loving it, but it’s just not doing it for me.

I just ordered 10# of unsweet chocolate whey isolate cold filtered. Yes, unsweet, and then I’ll add a teaspoon or two of raw sugar to it. It’s not enough to make it candy-sweet, but enough to take the edge off it. That should work for me.

I like it better too. I’m getting pure isolate (i.e. more agreeable with the digestive tract), and the price is quite competitive with other brands like say Optimum Nutrition’s 100%, which has a lot of whey concentrate and other things. I have noticed to keep costs down True Nutrition is pretty no-frills, but that’s fine… I’m not buying packaging or marketing.

So here’s where things end in my exploration… at least, for now. 🙂

2012-08-24 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 2, Day 5 (malfunction clearances)

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
  2. 10 reps of TRB, 3/4 speed, 2H
  3. 5 reps of LRW 3/4 speed 2H
  4. 10 reps of wall drill from press out, 2H

After yesterday’s bench press workout… I’m really sore, and working the press out is really hard. 🙂

2012-08-23 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 2, 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

Really working on the eye-target line and ensuring eye focus shifting to the front sight.

2012-08-23 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 13, bench press 2

/ hsoi

It was good.

“Week 2”

  • 3 reps – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x3x140
    • 1x3x165 (work)
    • 1x3x185
    • 1x7x210 (rep PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10/10/10/10/8 x 140
  • Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
    • 5 x 10 x 80/80/80/80/70

Yeah, I’m really happy for making this routine switch. I feel like I’m getting a fair amount of work but not overworking myself. Just felt good today. Of course, we’ll see about the long-term… the verdict is still out in that regard.

I especially like getting in and getting out of the gym. I cannot argue with the benefit of that time improvement.

I’ve also just dove in on the diet front. I used Scooby’s calorie calculator, plugged in my numbers, a 40/40/20 macro ratio (basically, wanting to ensure a little over 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight) and 5 meals a day. I found a fantastic food database at CalorieKing.com; not only a very expansive database, but I like their interface because you can calculate food and calories really easily. Basically works out to getting 55g of protein and 55g of carbs (and minimal fat) per meal, 5x a day. It’s proving to be interesting… we’ll see how it goes.

2012-08-22 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 2, Day 3, reloads

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 20 reps reload from slidelock, slow, 2H
  3. 20 reps reload from slidelock, 3/4 speed, 2H
  4. 10 reps reload from slidelock, slow, 2H
  5. 10 reps of wall drill form press-out, 2H

A few things came out of this session.

First, I was reloading too low. I didn’t realize I was holding the gun low when I was reloading. It wasn’t at my belly button, but it was low enough that when my eyes shifted to look at the magwell my peripheral vision no longer saw the target. Had to get and keep things up high. Basically, at the point where you start the press-out, also known as step 3 of the 4-step draw. I was just a bit too low and that’s just ineffective and wasted movement.

Second, I found it useful to make the reload and the (return) press-out 2 distinct movements. If I blur right from releasing the slide to getting my left hand back on the gun to pressing out, that ends up kinda smearing things and not having the best presentation. If instead I take a moment to finish the reload, have a conscious break/pause (even if it lasts only 0.1 seconds), then start the press-out, it’s much better. It’s not such a smear, it’s not as difficult for me to get the sights back on properly and so on. It’s so easy to screw up that first shot, so take that moment to ensure you do things right.

Third, gotta ensure when I do put my left hand back on the gun that I resume the strong crush grip. Too many times I came back on with less grip than I started with.

on dog training collars

/ hsoi / 13 Comments

Our Kuvasz, Sasha, is doing great. Big, beautiful puppy. Well ok… a 95# dog isn’t a puppy. 🙂

We took a lengthy hiatus from taking her on walks. She still got a lot of exercise playing with the kids, no worries there. But walks just didn’t happen for whatever reason. The main issue? Given her highly protective nature, it’s difficult to go walking at most times of the day. If too many other people are out, especially walking their own dogs, it just makes it difficult to get a successful walk in. Then it got hot, and between the hot pavement and too many lawns with burrs in the yard, walks just were not going to happen.

But a few weeks ago I started taking her on walks again. I’m up very early in the morning, so early morning walks are workable. Plus if I can get a good brisk walk in, that’s some amount of exercise for me… not huge by any means, but better than nothing and every bit counts right now. Yes, I’m trying to work this into my exercise strategy… like walk a bit as a warm-up, put her back inside, then drag the tire sled. We’ll see. I digress.

Plus, recently Sasha started to get a little too big for her britches, so doing some more rigorous training exercises helps her remember her place in the pecking order. Nothing bad, but again she’s got an alpha temperament and needs to remember that *I* am alpha, then comes the rest of the family, the cats, and so that puts her somewhere around lambda or maybe upsilon. 😉  So going on walks is good for that, especially since the walks aren’t just putting her on a leash and wandering around. No, there’s lots of commands, lots of leash control, lots of working on her self-restraint. BTW, she loves these Cloud Star Chewy Tricky Trainers Cheddar flavor. Excellent training treat.

In training, the collar is important. Not just so we can keep hold and control over her, but to provide Sasha with feedback. When we first got her, we took her to the Triple Crown Dog Academy. There they recommended we use their Pro-Training Collar (used to be called the StarMark, but I guess they recently changed the name). This was a tremendous help in Sasha’s early stages because we had to deal with a lot of her rehoming issues. She had to (re)learn her proper place in the pecking order. She had to learn what was appropriate and what was not. At the time, Triple Crown’s techniques were precisely what we needed — they were the “emergency” first aid to help get Sasha back where she should be. But long term, we needed someone who better understood and could take the time to work with her breed, her temperament, and her issues to best provide what we needed to operate in our environment and home.

The trainer we found and worked with (and I’ve covered elsewhere on my blog) was fantastic. If not for her we never would have made so much progress with Sasha, and Sasha wouldn’t be the happy pup she is. We are grateful for what we learned.

Certainly tho, the trainer didn’t like the Pro-Training Collar. Instead, she wanted us to get a martingale collar, pure nylon as one with a chain would just bind up in Sasha’s long fur. Of course, we did as she requested, but we always had reserve. The main reason? Choking. Sure they appear more humane than the “star” or a prong/pinch collar, but I’ve been around the block enough to know that appearances/cosmetics don’t correlate to utility or humaneness. I hated how we might have to snap the leash for reinforcement, and hearing Sasha gag and choke. Or we’d take her on a walk and she’d go a little too far and get gagged and cough. I just didn’t see that as being better. Think about it… what does the collar do? It constricts. Put your hands around someone’s neck… now sharply constrict and tell me that’s pleasant. Well sure, it’s supposed to be unpleasant, but let’s compare. Instead of using the flats of your hands around the neck, curl your fingers so just your fingertips are against the neck; now constrict your fingers. To me, that’s preferable. First, since the force is now directed to a few small points instead of flattened out across the entire length, the specific pain is sharper and more acute. But because of that, you need less total force to get your point across. Furthermore, now there’s no constricting against the windpipe. To me, that’s the big thing. I live in fear of crushing or collapsing her windpipe or causing some other damage to it — that’s going to be fatal, and it’s totally preventable.

And yes, I’ve put both collars on myself. I’ve felt them. I know what’s happening and what it feels like. I’d rather get the StarMark collar because well… I guess I don’t like the feeling of strangulation.

It doesn’t really matter to me the philosophy behind the “prong” collar. Some say it’s replicating the bite from a mother dog or the alpha dog to remind the other dog of their place. Some say it’s merely because it’s an uncomfortable or undesirable sensation that they just will learn to avoid. Even read this article from AKC advocating the prong collar. But whatever the reason, I just always thought the “star” collar was better: it was less problematic, and more effective.

Here’s the real testimony.

When I started walking Sasha again, of course I used the martingale. The one we have is about 1″ wide and pure nylon. It acts as her normal everyday collar… we never take it off, no reason to. I would use it, walk her, but management could be challenging at times. This is not atypical. She listens, the commands register, but sometimes her genetic programming takes over and she’s like “Yes, Dad, I hear you, but this thing is a threat and I need to let it know I mean business — stay away!”  Sometimes I have to work the collar hard, but it doesn’t matter. Basically it winds up choking the dog and being a massive tug-of-war. It only serves to hurt the dog, and it’s not providing the necessary feedback. What good is that?

So about a week ago I pulled the StarMark collar back out. Instantly I saw a difference. Sure she got a few reminders at first, but after that wow… she knew. Whereas all of my “walks” were little more than going up and down our road, working on commands, keeping her “at my side” and working on basic leash stuff again… suddenly I was able to go around the block. In fact, this morning we did two laps around the block with almost no stopping nor correction, loose leash. It was fantastic.

Note that I don’t leave the collar on all the time. It’s only used when we go on walks or need to ensure proper reception of feedback. We’ll keep her martingale collar as her normal collar with her tags and everything, and we’ll still use that in a pinch if we need it.

I will say, a prong is not a panacea and is only a tool. Like any tool, it can be misused and abused. There’s no question some people do not know how to use such a collar in proper context. And I would also say that not every dog needs such a collar. So again, it’s all about proper tool selection, proper tool use. I cannot make a blanket statement of “use this collar” because it just depends upon each dog and each situation. But I can say at least for me and my dog and my situation? Oh yes.

2012-08-21 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 1, Day 2, draws.

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 20 reps of wall drill from holster 2H
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from holster, SHO
  4. 5 reps of wall drill from holster, WHO
  5. 10 reps draw & fire at 3/4 speed, 2H
  6. 10 reps draw & fire slow 2H

Posted this a bit late, but I took care of this in the morning as usual.

I wasn’t very “on” in this session. I need to tell myself, at times like this, stop trying to keep the speed of before. If I go slower but every motion is correct, every sight picture is perfect, every press-out is right… well, that’s better than going at normal speed and reinforcing less than optimal habits.

Another thing is working on the “eye-target line”. I actually want to elaborate on that in a solo article, which I’ll try to get to soon.