There were a number of comments from last week’s articles that gave me good stuff to riff on for this week’s chats (as people who’ve been in classes with me will attest, I’m probably at my most comfortable discussing stuff that other people bring up anyway, so this works well.) 1)re: caffeine sourced from Monster, coffee, soda-pops [I’m a Physical Therapist specializing in geriatric nutrition. Thirty years experience, thousands of hours of teaching continuing education.] The term ‘energy drink’ is a lie. The human body recognizes caffeine as a poison. The reaction is an adrenaline dump to flush the poison. Repeating the infliction of poison results in repeated adrenaline dumps… resulting in adrenal fatigue. Although the effects vary, the adrenal glands may eventually collapse. Human adrenal glands sit atop our kidneys. Research shows kidney failure is directly relatable to adrenal overload. Avoid the potential for a lifetime of dialysis by eliminating adrenal stress. One way to accomplish this is avoiding the poison called ‘caffeine’. Our bodies use two sources of fuel == sugars and fats / oils. (Although we can use proteins for fuel, the vast majority must be converted into sugars prior to use. That conversion process burns fats or sugars, often resulting in a net loss.) This makes total sense to me, although I’d never really thought of it that way, re: the poison/adrenaline response. Thank you. 2) Great article. What ruck are you using with the battle belt? Are using a hip belt on the ruck? Currently, I’m using an assault pack, with a few pouches attached externally. My summer load here is light enough that I can carry it on my shoulders alone, without a hip belt, no problem, so I can get away with the war belt. If I need to go to a heavy enough ruck that I need the hip belt (probably anything over about 30# for me), I would use my OTHER war belt, that is set up with just a couple of mag pouches, and a chest rig, or just a chest rig. That would mostly be a winter thing in this area though, so the chest rig would work better anyway, because of coats and shit getting in the way of the belt. Also, I would be less concerned about overheating (not unconcerned, but less concerned, because I know how to moderate my activity levels and ventilation). 3) Training is pointless if half your training partners are out on injury leave at any given time. The heavy bag is where you work on your power. Sparring is for honing technique – offensive and defensive. Gospel. So, one of the things that tends to happen at both boxing and jiu-jitsu is interesting. Our coach (my kids train at the gym too) knows that a) I’m not there to build my own ego, and don’t have anything to prove to anyone (he knows a LITTLE about my background, but no specifics), b) I’m mostly there for my kids, and to keep myself tuned up, and c) I have a lot of knowledge about the fundamentals of boxing and jiu-jitsu, even though I’m not particularly great at either one (I don’t do jitz enough to be great at it, and I move like a fucking sloth in the boxing ring. Fortunately, in the latter case, I’ve also got a thick skull and a strong neck, so I can get hit without too much damage….) As a result of this, a lot of the time, he’ll put me with new people. If they’re older or female, he knows I’ll coach them through the learning process (and not try to sleep with the females), without either babying them, or beating the shit out of them (one of the things I’ve seen a lot is young guys will go a little harder than necessary when a female is holding mitts or pads, to try and impress them or some other troglodyte shit). If they’re young and/or male, I’ll do the same thing, but my survival game is good enough that I can typically avoid getting hurt. Last week, I ended up rolling with a young kid. Really great athlete, traditional martial arts background, and farm strong. “I don’t know anything about the ground game, sir.” “Alright, well, let’s see.” I gave him some openings, but made him work for them. He did okay. Like I said, really strong kid, and he was able to make up for his lack of technique with strength. I talked him into a couple of submissions, like Americana, when he had them, but didn’t see the openings. In all, being a good mentor to a young kid, new on the mats. Out of the blue, he hits me with an arm bar. I let him have it, and then worked on trying to work out of it, and he held it well, so eventually I tapped. No sweat. We reset and start rolling again. He’s trying to pass my guard. He’s standing. I’m on my back. I’m still not sure how it happened, but out of nowhere, he hit me with an arm bar, from standing. Well, instead of staying up and submitting me, he threw himself backwards….my elbow popped before I could tap. Fortunately, I don’t think he tore or broke anything, because I managed to roll into it just enough, but I was done for the night, and it’s still sore and tender, the better part of a week later. “I thought you didn’t know anything about the ground game?” “Only from messing around with my friends, sir.” “Alright. Well, next weekend, we’ll introduce you to some new stuff.” Don’t hurt your training partners. If you do, they might not train with you anymore. Or, they might come back and return the favor… (For the record, I’m not that petty. I am going to work with him on being a better training partner. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tell coach to put him in with one of the competition team purple belts for a couple of rounds.) 4) Craigslist can be your friend. Some good deals can be found just be cautious there are scammers too. * Get a credit union account and screw the banks. Service is better and rates are favorable. * Your LCD whatever breaks down? Fix it yourself. 80% of the value of the TV is in the glass. The rest are two or three circuit boards which you just swap out. The replacements are a fraction of the value of any decent LCD. I have made decent side money fixing these things and reselling. * If you have property, garden like your life depended on it, it just might. Doing so has a side benefit besides the food; mild exercise and rewires your mind away from the daily grind. Its also a great way to involve the kids if you have them. * See a printer or copier at the side of the road? Pick it up and tear it apart. If you tinker printers are a treasure trove of switches, rods, gears, stepper motors and the like. * Learn to fix shit and have a basic tool kit to do so. Professionals in the right situation is worth the money but they can drain you dry if you call them for every penny ante problem. * Straight gospel on Craigslist. You sometimes have to search, and sometimes you need to search outside your immediate area, but still gospel. We’ve got about $15,000 worth of gym equipment in our farm gym. We paid less than $3000 for it, over three years, because my wife worked CL so well. We’ve found a lot of farm stuff on there as well, and the best batch of laying hens we’ve had came from a CL ad. *I’m not handy enough to fix TVs and shit, but my mother has a 72” flat screen that her husband pulled out of an apartment complex dumpster. He ordered a $3 part off Ebay, put it in, and the TV works perfectly. So, a $800-1000 television for $3…. Now, if our TV shit the bed, I probably wouldn’t even try to fix it, because fuck television, but…I know the kids like to watch their classic cartoons, and I know their grandpa would be there in a jiffy to fix it for them…. *The Easter Bunny brings our kids garden tools and seeds. Guess what my kids spent today doing? Working in the garden with Mom, planting their own flowerbeds and veggies. *I don’t know how anyone over the age of about 12 doesn’t have a toolbox of basic tools, and the beginning of a knowledge base of how to fix the things in their lives that matter. 5) Have you ever considered doing a knife tactics book? I would love to see a pragmatic, no nonsense approach to knife skills. a)Learn how to get the knife out, even in a clinch or grappling situation. This is best learned by doing, using a training drone knife. b) Put the pointy part in the soft spots. Throat, side of the neck, armpit, and groin work best, but anywhere that the knife can be buried to the hilt, will work. c) Repeat Step B until they stop doing whatever they were doing that warranted stabbing them in the first place. You’re welcome. 6) “…from the standing, low ready, they need to be able to move into any given firing position, and engage a target of the above dimensions with at least one aimed shot, in less than three seconds…” If you’re practicing a snap shot from the standing position, would you start facing the target, then getting into the bladed stance with a chicken wing or by then getting into the more squared-up, c-clamp stance? If the available target is such that I can make the shot from the standing position, within one second or less, I use the aggressive, mod-iso derived posture, with the C-grip. If that is not the case, I move to a better position (usually, this means, a position of cover). For training purposes, I will still use the same position, for standing, out to about 150 yards, on C-Zone size steel, and out to 100 on 6” steel plates or head shots. I can usually hit either of those in less than three seconds. My goal at this point though is, anything I’m going to hit from the standing, I want to hit in less than one second, from a low-ready or patrol ready. 7) Since you specifically mentioned Steiner 10x binos, I would be interested in the “why Steiner” if you care to share and also like to know what specific model(s) you recommend, as there’s a wide variety of choices cost-wise. I dropped a pair of Steiners off a cliff in Utah once. They fell about fifty feet onto the rocks below. It was a really long way around to the bottom, and I didn’t have rappelling or climbing gear with me. I didn’t make it back to pick them up for a month. They were still laying there, intact. I like pretty much any of their Marine/Military models. I really, REALLY want a pair of their 10×40 ones that have the ranging reticle in them, but the last time I checked they were like $700, so….I’ve got a laser range finder and a pair of 10x basic Military binos. No long form article this week. I apologize, but we spent the holiday weekend with family and clan, so I didn’t get it written. If it makes you feel better, I’ve got a couple of good ones in the hopper for next week. Continue reading...
