More on Guns
Rifles:
Make sure the weapon you are carrying has a battlefield zero of at least 300 meters. That means that the difference between point-of-aim and point-of-impact between will never be enough that it will cause you to miss. I can hold in the center of the chest on a coyote at any distance between the end of my muzzle and 300 meters away and know I’m going to hit him (assuming he’s not moving. While I can hit a mover, that’s an entirely different set of factors at play). I don’t need to do any “hold three inches high” Arkansas elevation bullshit.
Most infantry combat in the last sixty years has taken place inside of 200 meters. A large portion of THAT has taken place inside of 100 meters. For the urbanites and suburbanites (you poor bastards) amongst us, it might be a good idea to forgo the preceding and settle for a 100-150 meter zero. It’s not necessary though. Law Enforcement Agencies will generally have a 50-100 meter zero on their carbines, but they have an even greater need for precision in order to avoid hitting innocents. Post-SHTF, I’m not going to want to hit innocents, but that’s less a concern for me than being able to hit people as far away as I can.
On that note, even though the M16A2 sights are set up for the 250 meter zero (that sets up the 300 meter battlefield zero), they are adjustable for further. The doctrinal maximum effective range for an M4 carbine with the 14.5” barrel is 500 meters. It involves adjusting the rear sight, but can you do that? Can you put one through a human silhouette target at 500 meters? Even you guys that live in the timber and back east need to be able to do that. I’ve seen meadows in Northern Idaho that were in excess of 500 meters, not to mention roads. Same thing applies in the South and East.
Someone brought it up in a different thread, but I’m going to include it here too since the mods were flattering enough to believe that this deserved a sticky….Train with your weapons, even when it’s shitty out. Being able to hit an E-Type silhouette at 500 meters is okay. Being able to hit the same target at 150 meters, in the rain at 25 degrees, is better. Being able to hit it at 75 meters, when it’s -10F and you’ve just trekked twenty kilometers through the mountains on snowshoes is much more impressive!
Get a timer. Time yourself on your shooting drills. You don’t have the luxury of taking your time in a gunfight. While the old adage that, “You can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight,” is still true, you can damned sure shoot slow enough that it doesn’t matter. Get involved with the IDPA or IPSC. Get involved in some 3-Gun shooting in your area. If you can’t shoot fast on a clean range in competition with no one shooting at you, how are you going to shoot fast in combat when they are? The best shooters in USSOCOM shoot 3-Gun. Are you better than them?
Introduce malfunction drills into your training. In short, do everything you can to make training as challenging as you can. It’ll pay off when it’s for real.
Night Vision Goggles (NVG)
I refer to NVGs and NODs (Night Observation Devices) and NVDs (Night Vision Devices) as well as NVGs. I use the terms interchangeably. NVGs are a great force multiplier if you use them right.
I can make this really simple:
Buy the best you can get. Try to save for Generation III stuff, but at least get Generation II. While the Gen II stuff sucks (The A/N PVS-4 is Generation II), it’s light years beyond the Gen I. Don’t waste your time with the shitty Russian crap either. If you can’t afford the Gen III and don’t want to save, do without. NVGs are not fool-proof and it is possible to defeat them. Hell, Hajji does it to us all the time!
Body Armor
I’m not an expert on body armor. I know the differences between the NIJ levels just enough to tell you I want at least IIIA in a concealed vest and plates in a carrier. I’ve worn the old Ranger Body Armor (RBA) that preceded the IBA worn in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ve known guys that wore more current stuff and swear by it. I’ll swear by the IBA with SAPI plates that I was wearing when I got shot.
I’ve HEARD that the Dragonskin stuff sucks. That’s all I know about it. Flak jackets are not body armor. They don’t even stop pistol caliber ammunition. Don’t bother with them. You can get a complete vest with SAPI plates for less than the cost of a new AR15. It’ll be a lot more valuable to you than the extra rifle too.
If you carry a gun, you should be wearing body armor. I believe it really is that simple. There’s no excuse for not wearing it (unless you live somewhere stupid where it’s illegal. In that case you should move or I’ll consider you stupid too.), none at all.
Friday, December 18, 2009
As someone pointed out, you need to be doing PT and no, push-ups and sit-ups don't cut it. If you cannot score at least a 280 in the 17-22 year old category on the Army Physical Fitness Test, you are not in shape to be running paramilitary operations, regardless of how much Gucci gear you have. In my social circle, we expect a guy to bench at least 1.5X his body weight, squat 2.0X his body weight, and run a sub-7:00 minute mile. I still do ruck runs for P.T. I'll strap on my rucksack (I'm running a North Face now, but getting ready to transition to a Kifaru Extended Missions Ruck by the end of January), loaded with 80 pounds, and go do five to ten miles as fast as I can. I can do it faster than a lot of the yuppies I see "running" in tights and UnderArmor.
I understand that not everyone can do hardcore PT and that's okay, just don't have any illusions about your abilities in regards to running "missions." One of the best preparedness investments that a person can make is spending about $300 (new, it's cheaper used) to purchase a weight bench and 300-400 pounds of Olympic weightlifting iron.
As far as specific reading material, Jeez, dude, I read so much it's ridiculous. I'll throw a couple of quick titles out there but maybe later I'll sit down and add a post to this thread with a reading list and descriptions of why I suggest them.
I also suggest that people actually train with their weapons. Take a shooting course if you've never done so. For the guys that were 11B in the military, especially the ones who've done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, make sure you're teaching your people to shoot PROPERLY. Kentucky windage and Arkansas elevation don't count for shit when people are shooting back at you. If your weapon is not zeroed with a 300M battlefield zero, you're going to be too slow in a fight.
If you don't want to "waste" ammunition (WTFO? That's completely beyond me...) or are restricted as to how often you can go to the range, do some fucking dry-fire drills. Ten or twenty minutes a day dedicated to realistic dry-fire drills will improve your combat marksmanship exponentially. Do the work people.
Take a martial arts class! I suggest MMA, Judo, Brazilian Jiujitsu, Boxing, muay Thai, wrestling, or something along those lines (incidentally, I suggest them in that order of merit as well...), but even a class at your local strip mall karate dojo is better than nothing. If you can't manage that, go to the bookstore, buy one of the innumberable books on MMA that are now available, strap on an athletic cup and mouthguard, some boxing gloves, and start banging with your friends or group members. Combatives is less about "how to kill someone with unarmed combat skillz" than it is about building the will to close with the enemy. All of these will teach that--if you approach them with the proper mindset.
Start camping out on your vacations. Don't go to Disneyland or California's beaches. Go to the mountains or the woods and live out of your BOB.
Take up the sport of orienteering or geocaching. Take horseback riding lessons. Take a rock climbing class.
There is SO much available that you can do to prepare yourself, even if you were never in the military.
Really, in my mind, 99.999% of preparing for WTSHTF should be about mental preparation. All the Gucci military gear and stockpiled food in the world will not do you a lick of good if you can't wrap your mind around the fact that history just hiccupped! Having a Bushmaster M4gery tricked out with the latest 6.8mm upper and Leupold glass, plus 10,000 rounds of 5.56mmNATO will not save you if you are not able to wrap your brain around the fact that the police are NOT coming and if you don't shoot that skell with the Lorcin .380 RIGHT NOW, he's gonna kill you and rape your wife and daughter!
I think reading forums like WSHTF.com and Rawles' Survivalblog.com are great. Hell, obviously I do it. (I might recommend my blog too, if it's not verboten...) However, get OFF the internet and go practice shit too!
The moderator on here, "trooper dan" deserves a lot of respect as far as I'nm concerned. He's a young guy that is DOING what so many people talk about doing! Good on him!
I saw in his stickied thread about living out of his truck in Florida that a lot of people posted comments along the lines of "Man, if I could quit my job, I'd do what you are doing!" Horseshit! If you wanted to do it, you would do it. You don't want to do it because living in a house with central heat and air, having a regular 9-5 job and steady paycheck, even if small, is far more comfortable. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!!!!! Just don't live in a fantasy world about what you'll do WTSHTF. If you're sitting around eating Little Debbie Snacks (I LOVE them!) and watching some silly ass shit on television like "Dancing with the Stars," you're not going to suddenly start running direct action or strategic reconnaissance missions next week. That's okay too! Just be honest with yourself.
This post will not be anywhere near as ordered as my previous posts in this thread. I’ve got a lot of crap going on today and really, should wait to write this another day. Since I said it would be done today though, this is what you get. The salient points will be clear, if thrown together rather haphazardly.
Caliber: Is not anywhere near as big an issue as a lot of people make it out to be. When the 7.62X51mm NATO round was developed, it was a shortened .30-06. The Army demanded a round similar to the .30-06 of the M1 Garand, but wanted something that would work more efficiently in a box magazine. WW2 and Korean War veterans who were involved with the testing of the new round decried it as underpowered and insufficient when compared to the .30-06…Sound familiar?
The vast majority of the ranting online and in print about the weaknesses of the 5.56x45mm NATO round are hyperbole. More enemies of this country have been killed with that round than with the 7.62X51. I won’t speak of theory though. I’ll stick to what I’ve seen and experienced.
I’ve seen people shot with the 5.56mm NATO round (for brevity’s sake, I’m going to refer to it simply as the 5.56mm from here on out) and not die. That’s no surprise. What may surprise some is that I’ve seen people shot with the 7.62mm NATO (7.62mm) who were not killed either. I watched one of the guys on my ODA shoot a Hajji with a M14 at a distance of about 30 feet. The round punched right through the bad guy’s chest and he kept coming. Seconds later he died as four of us dumped 5.56mm rounds into him. Would he have died from the 7.62m round alone? Probably so. Would he have been able to get rounds off from his AKM before he died? Probably so. Would a single round of 5.56mm have killed him? Probably not.
Caliber is irrelevant, regardless of what we want to believe. There are no magic talisman calibers (Well, okay….50BMG is pretty fucking magical!). People get shot with .30-06 and survive.
I’ve never had a solidly shot bad guy not go down when I shot him with 5.56mm. Not one single time. I HAVE seen Hajji not go down when shot with 5.56 if he wasn’t hit solidly though. It really does boil down to shot placement.
I read a rant online recently from a guy who claimed that no one can be expected to shoot with surgical accuracy under battlefield conditions. He was right too. If you can shoot a two inch group at 10 feet with your carbine while standing on a flat range in sunny weather, in a firefight, you might be able to hit the bad guy in the chest with one round. Training overcomes that. Not just flat-range training though. Shoot under stress. Do force-on-force training with airsoft weapons that replicate your chosen weapon. Very quickly you will see that being able to handle your weapon under stress is far more important than the caliber of the weapon.
I despise the 7.62X39mm cartridge. It’s anemic. Not in the lack of stopping power aspect but in the range aspect. The doctrinal standards for the caliber are a maximum effective range on a point target of 200 meters. That’s a fucking .30-30! Now, the .30-30 has killed a shit-pile of deer in this country, no one is denying that. However, it’s not what I would consider a premiere combat cartridge!
The 7.62X39mm round is popular in this country solely because it’s the caliber of the AK-47 and the SKS. We have this image of the AK-47 as a tougher than boiled boot leather rifle. It is. It’s fucking idiot-proof. It’s idiot-proof because it was designed for idiots to operate it. The Kalashnikov developed his rifle so that the average Soviet soldier could operate it. The average Soviet soldier was an illiterate peasant whose concept of high-technology was a horse-drawn cart.
You can have your AK-47s. As an 18B, I had to fire the goddamned weapon at least once a year for qualification. In reality, I fired them constantly. We would do a Foreign Internal Defense (FID) mission, where we would go train the soldiers of some allied army in the third world. They would be armed with AK-47s. We would have to use the weapon in order to demonstrate it. When I was working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they had AK-47s. We had to educate them why holding it over their heads and holding the trigger down was not very effective…
I know a lot of people have AK-47s and love them. More power to you! If I wanted a .30-30, I’d go buy a goddamned Marlin!
If all you can afford is a piece of crap SKS, then buy one. It’s marginally better than throwing rocks at the enemy. Don’t expect me to “Ooh!” and “Aah!” over it though, because I won’t.
So, since this is my thread and people asked me to post my thoughts on weapons up here, I’m going to state my preferences in weapons.
7.62mm:
The M1A from Springfield Armory is my first choice in this caliber. It’s an inherently accurate design, evidenced by its use at Camp Perry for decades. It’s big and robust. I like the wooden stock because I can butt-stroke some bastard in the head and not worry about the thing breaking off. You can get their Scout version with an 18-inch barrel and it’s even pretty handy.
A lot of people are still stuck on the belief that a bolt-action is more accurate than a auto-loading rifle. They’re full of shit. Any good gunsmith can tune an M1A sub-minute of angle accuracy. So, you get the benefit of a sniper grade weapon, with a 20 round magazine. What’s not to like?
The HK G3s and the semi-auto only copies are cool. They’re as accurate as any German-made rifle (which is frighteningly accurate). The only problem I have with the G3s is the same problem I have with the M1A…They’re fucking huge! I used to laugh at the Guatemalans. These little Hispanic-Indians were running around between 5’ and 5’6” packing big old G3s that HK suckered their government into purchasing. The damned rifles were nearly as big as the soldiers. That being said, they are reliable, accurate weapons. Just don’t expect your dainty wife or teenage kid to run it well.
The FN/FAL enjoys a great deal of popularity among survivalists. I’m not entirely sure why, unless it’s because Rawles raves about them. They’re not bad weapons, don’t misunderstand me. They’re just not the orgasms that a lot of guys make them out to be. DSA does produce some really cool aftermarket stuff that makes them damned near the 7.62mm equivalent of the M16 in regards to modular adaptability. I haven’t messed with that stuff much, but it someone gave me a FN/FAL, I’d slap a 16-inch barrel on it, with a M1913 rail on top for optics and a folding paratrooper stock for it. It might be a cool toy.
5.56mm…
I love the AR15/M16 platform. I’m currently running a Bushmaster M4gery (I’m going to refer to M4geries as M4s for simplicity). It’s my third Bushmaster and I’ve loved every single one. I’ve also got a Rock River AR that I’ve got set up as a Designated Marksman’s Rifle. It’s got the standard 20-inch barrel with a free-floated, railed fore-end, flat-top receiver and a Leupold MKIII glass on top. It’s mostly a safe queen though since my Bushmaster is my truck gun.
You’re not going to go wrong with an AR15 from any of the major manufacturers. You’d be hard-pressed to go wrong with one from a no-name manufacturer either. Eugene Stoner’s design is pretty fool-proof that way.
My M4 is set up the same way it is because it works for me. YMMV.
I’ve got an EOTech 552 on top. I’ll probably end up switching to a 553 down the road, but I like the 552 I’ve got. I’ve got the LMT SOPMOD buttstock on it. It’s got a SureFire M900 mounted on the front end, so I’ve got light and a VFG. I’ve got BUIS on it. (I’ll have to look to see which set is on there right now…). I’m frighteningly prone to removing the EOTech and running straight irons. I do this a lot. I’d be completely comfortable with no glass at all on it.
The Mini-14 is a piece of shit. A friend of mine refers to it as “an 8MOA tack-driver.” I’ve heard that the new ones are better, but I won’t waste my money buying one to try them out.
7.62X39mm.
I won’t waste my time or yours talking about AK47s and SKS. It would simply turn into a rant-fest. I know a lot of guys, some of whom I have a great deal of respect for that love AK47s. I just don’t.
As an 18B, there were about 50 weapons I was required to qualify with annually. Some of them, that was the only time I ever fired them. Others I fired all the fucking time. The list was long and included everything from anti-tank weapons and mortars, to rifles, pistols, shotguns and sub-machineguns.
These are just my thoughts on my primary. I’ll go into sidearms at another time.
All of the above being said, I don’t think firearms are nearly as important a part of real preparedness as we like to think they are. Buy a rifle and train with it, but don’t turn it into a talisman to worship. It’s just a tool, and probably not the most important tool. Instead of stockpiling a dozen firearms, spend the extra money on food storage or a set of Craftsman tools or a new generator or solar panels, etc.
I understand that not everyone can do hardcore PT and that's okay, just don't have any illusions about your abilities in regards to running "missions." One of the best preparedness investments that a person can make is spending about $300 (new, it's cheaper used) to purchase a weight bench and 300-400 pounds of Olympic weightlifting iron.
As far as specific reading material, Jeez, dude, I read so much it's ridiculous. I'll throw a couple of quick titles out there but maybe later I'll sit down and add a post to this thread with a reading list and descriptions of why I suggest them.
I also suggest that people actually train with their weapons. Take a shooting course if you've never done so. For the guys that were 11B in the military, especially the ones who've done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, make sure you're teaching your people to shoot PROPERLY. Kentucky windage and Arkansas elevation don't count for shit when people are shooting back at you. If your weapon is not zeroed with a 300M battlefield zero, you're going to be too slow in a fight.
If you don't want to "waste" ammunition (WTFO? That's completely beyond me...) or are restricted as to how often you can go to the range, do some fucking dry-fire drills. Ten or twenty minutes a day dedicated to realistic dry-fire drills will improve your combat marksmanship exponentially. Do the work people.
Take a martial arts class! I suggest MMA, Judo, Brazilian Jiujitsu, Boxing, muay Thai, wrestling, or something along those lines (incidentally, I suggest them in that order of merit as well...), but even a class at your local strip mall karate dojo is better than nothing. If you can't manage that, go to the bookstore, buy one of the innumberable books on MMA that are now available, strap on an athletic cup and mouthguard, some boxing gloves, and start banging with your friends or group members. Combatives is less about "how to kill someone with unarmed combat skillz" than it is about building the will to close with the enemy. All of these will teach that--if you approach them with the proper mindset.
Start camping out on your vacations. Don't go to Disneyland or California's beaches. Go to the mountains or the woods and live out of your BOB.
Take up the sport of orienteering or geocaching. Take horseback riding lessons. Take a rock climbing class.
There is SO much available that you can do to prepare yourself, even if you were never in the military.
Really, in my mind, 99.999% of preparing for WTSHTF should be about mental preparation. All the Gucci military gear and stockpiled food in the world will not do you a lick of good if you can't wrap your mind around the fact that history just hiccupped! Having a Bushmaster M4gery tricked out with the latest 6.8mm upper and Leupold glass, plus 10,000 rounds of 5.56mmNATO will not save you if you are not able to wrap your brain around the fact that the police are NOT coming and if you don't shoot that skell with the Lorcin .380 RIGHT NOW, he's gonna kill you and rape your wife and daughter!
I think reading forums like WSHTF.com and Rawles' Survivalblog.com are great. Hell, obviously I do it. (I might recommend my blog too, if it's not verboten...) However, get OFF the internet and go practice shit too!
The moderator on here, "trooper dan" deserves a lot of respect as far as I'nm concerned. He's a young guy that is DOING what so many people talk about doing! Good on him!
I saw in his stickied thread about living out of his truck in Florida that a lot of people posted comments along the lines of "Man, if I could quit my job, I'd do what you are doing!" Horseshit! If you wanted to do it, you would do it. You don't want to do it because living in a house with central heat and air, having a regular 9-5 job and steady paycheck, even if small, is far more comfortable. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!!!!! Just don't live in a fantasy world about what you'll do WTSHTF. If you're sitting around eating Little Debbie Snacks (I LOVE them!) and watching some silly ass shit on television like "Dancing with the Stars," you're not going to suddenly start running direct action or strategic reconnaissance missions next week. That's okay too! Just be honest with yourself.
This post will not be anywhere near as ordered as my previous posts in this thread. I’ve got a lot of crap going on today and really, should wait to write this another day. Since I said it would be done today though, this is what you get. The salient points will be clear, if thrown together rather haphazardly.
Caliber: Is not anywhere near as big an issue as a lot of people make it out to be. When the 7.62X51mm NATO round was developed, it was a shortened .30-06. The Army demanded a round similar to the .30-06 of the M1 Garand, but wanted something that would work more efficiently in a box magazine. WW2 and Korean War veterans who were involved with the testing of the new round decried it as underpowered and insufficient when compared to the .30-06…Sound familiar?
The vast majority of the ranting online and in print about the weaknesses of the 5.56x45mm NATO round are hyperbole. More enemies of this country have been killed with that round than with the 7.62X51. I won’t speak of theory though. I’ll stick to what I’ve seen and experienced.
I’ve seen people shot with the 5.56mm NATO round (for brevity’s sake, I’m going to refer to it simply as the 5.56mm from here on out) and not die. That’s no surprise. What may surprise some is that I’ve seen people shot with the 7.62mm NATO (7.62mm) who were not killed either. I watched one of the guys on my ODA shoot a Hajji with a M14 at a distance of about 30 feet. The round punched right through the bad guy’s chest and he kept coming. Seconds later he died as four of us dumped 5.56mm rounds into him. Would he have died from the 7.62m round alone? Probably so. Would he have been able to get rounds off from his AKM before he died? Probably so. Would a single round of 5.56mm have killed him? Probably not.
Caliber is irrelevant, regardless of what we want to believe. There are no magic talisman calibers (Well, okay….50BMG is pretty fucking magical!). People get shot with .30-06 and survive.
I’ve never had a solidly shot bad guy not go down when I shot him with 5.56mm. Not one single time. I HAVE seen Hajji not go down when shot with 5.56 if he wasn’t hit solidly though. It really does boil down to shot placement.
I read a rant online recently from a guy who claimed that no one can be expected to shoot with surgical accuracy under battlefield conditions. He was right too. If you can shoot a two inch group at 10 feet with your carbine while standing on a flat range in sunny weather, in a firefight, you might be able to hit the bad guy in the chest with one round. Training overcomes that. Not just flat-range training though. Shoot under stress. Do force-on-force training with airsoft weapons that replicate your chosen weapon. Very quickly you will see that being able to handle your weapon under stress is far more important than the caliber of the weapon.
I despise the 7.62X39mm cartridge. It’s anemic. Not in the lack of stopping power aspect but in the range aspect. The doctrinal standards for the caliber are a maximum effective range on a point target of 200 meters. That’s a fucking .30-30! Now, the .30-30 has killed a shit-pile of deer in this country, no one is denying that. However, it’s not what I would consider a premiere combat cartridge!
The 7.62X39mm round is popular in this country solely because it’s the caliber of the AK-47 and the SKS. We have this image of the AK-47 as a tougher than boiled boot leather rifle. It is. It’s fucking idiot-proof. It’s idiot-proof because it was designed for idiots to operate it. The Kalashnikov developed his rifle so that the average Soviet soldier could operate it. The average Soviet soldier was an illiterate peasant whose concept of high-technology was a horse-drawn cart.
You can have your AK-47s. As an 18B, I had to fire the goddamned weapon at least once a year for qualification. In reality, I fired them constantly. We would do a Foreign Internal Defense (FID) mission, where we would go train the soldiers of some allied army in the third world. They would be armed with AK-47s. We would have to use the weapon in order to demonstrate it. When I was working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they had AK-47s. We had to educate them why holding it over their heads and holding the trigger down was not very effective…
I know a lot of people have AK-47s and love them. More power to you! If I wanted a .30-30, I’d go buy a goddamned Marlin!
If all you can afford is a piece of crap SKS, then buy one. It’s marginally better than throwing rocks at the enemy. Don’t expect me to “Ooh!” and “Aah!” over it though, because I won’t.
So, since this is my thread and people asked me to post my thoughts on weapons up here, I’m going to state my preferences in weapons.
7.62mm:
The M1A from Springfield Armory is my first choice in this caliber. It’s an inherently accurate design, evidenced by its use at Camp Perry for decades. It’s big and robust. I like the wooden stock because I can butt-stroke some bastard in the head and not worry about the thing breaking off. You can get their Scout version with an 18-inch barrel and it’s even pretty handy.
A lot of people are still stuck on the belief that a bolt-action is more accurate than a auto-loading rifle. They’re full of shit. Any good gunsmith can tune an M1A sub-minute of angle accuracy. So, you get the benefit of a sniper grade weapon, with a 20 round magazine. What’s not to like?
The HK G3s and the semi-auto only copies are cool. They’re as accurate as any German-made rifle (which is frighteningly accurate). The only problem I have with the G3s is the same problem I have with the M1A…They’re fucking huge! I used to laugh at the Guatemalans. These little Hispanic-Indians were running around between 5’ and 5’6” packing big old G3s that HK suckered their government into purchasing. The damned rifles were nearly as big as the soldiers. That being said, they are reliable, accurate weapons. Just don’t expect your dainty wife or teenage kid to run it well.
The FN/FAL enjoys a great deal of popularity among survivalists. I’m not entirely sure why, unless it’s because Rawles raves about them. They’re not bad weapons, don’t misunderstand me. They’re just not the orgasms that a lot of guys make them out to be. DSA does produce some really cool aftermarket stuff that makes them damned near the 7.62mm equivalent of the M16 in regards to modular adaptability. I haven’t messed with that stuff much, but it someone gave me a FN/FAL, I’d slap a 16-inch barrel on it, with a M1913 rail on top for optics and a folding paratrooper stock for it. It might be a cool toy.
5.56mm…
I love the AR15/M16 platform. I’m currently running a Bushmaster M4gery (I’m going to refer to M4geries as M4s for simplicity). It’s my third Bushmaster and I’ve loved every single one. I’ve also got a Rock River AR that I’ve got set up as a Designated Marksman’s Rifle. It’s got the standard 20-inch barrel with a free-floated, railed fore-end, flat-top receiver and a Leupold MKIII glass on top. It’s mostly a safe queen though since my Bushmaster is my truck gun.
You’re not going to go wrong with an AR15 from any of the major manufacturers. You’d be hard-pressed to go wrong with one from a no-name manufacturer either. Eugene Stoner’s design is pretty fool-proof that way.
My M4 is set up the same way it is because it works for me. YMMV.
I’ve got an EOTech 552 on top. I’ll probably end up switching to a 553 down the road, but I like the 552 I’ve got. I’ve got the LMT SOPMOD buttstock on it. It’s got a SureFire M900 mounted on the front end, so I’ve got light and a VFG. I’ve got BUIS on it. (I’ll have to look to see which set is on there right now…). I’m frighteningly prone to removing the EOTech and running straight irons. I do this a lot. I’d be completely comfortable with no glass at all on it.
The Mini-14 is a piece of shit. A friend of mine refers to it as “an 8MOA tack-driver.” I’ve heard that the new ones are better, but I won’t waste my money buying one to try them out.
7.62X39mm.
I won’t waste my time or yours talking about AK47s and SKS. It would simply turn into a rant-fest. I know a lot of guys, some of whom I have a great deal of respect for that love AK47s. I just don’t.
As an 18B, there were about 50 weapons I was required to qualify with annually. Some of them, that was the only time I ever fired them. Others I fired all the fucking time. The list was long and included everything from anti-tank weapons and mortars, to rifles, pistols, shotguns and sub-machineguns.
These are just my thoughts on my primary. I’ll go into sidearms at another time.
All of the above being said, I don’t think firearms are nearly as important a part of real preparedness as we like to think they are. Buy a rifle and train with it, but don’t turn it into a talisman to worship. It’s just a tool, and probably not the most important tool. Instead of stockpiling a dozen firearms, spend the extra money on food storage or a set of Craftsman tools or a new generator or solar panels, etc.
Someone asked me about how my military and combat experiences have impacted my planning and preparation regarding potential WSHTF scenarios. Here is a “brief” response.
Beginnings
To begin with, none of my military experience makes sense as it relates to this unless you know where I came from, so we’ll begin at the beginning.
I grew up in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas in the 1980s. My paternal grandfather moved the “clan” there in 1979 in preparation for the coming collapse. Thirty years later, I’m the only one of 29 grandkids who is still actively preparing, despite the grandparents still bringing the subject up in regular conversation.
Growing up where I did, when I did, was a good experience. My grandfather was an OSS agent during WW2 and later, a Detroit police officer, working a beat in the 1950s, then a plainclothes narcotics routine against the outlaw motorcycle gangs during their heights in the 1960s and 1970s.
My father was an SF soldier after Vietnam, from 1975-1980, and then served in a Reserve Component PSYOP unit until 1985.
Both of my parents are inveterate readers and the bibliophilia carried on to me. I read an average of six full-length books a week. As a kid of seven and eight, I was reading Soldier of Fortune, Gung-Ho, New Breed, Survive, and all the other “gun rag” magazines. I was reading about Army Rangers and Special Forces every month. By the time I was ten, I knew that in order to prepare for what my grandfather was telling me was coming, I needed the training that the Rangers and SF could provide for me. In the meantime, I would prepare as much as possible.
I started judo, at my grandfather’s insistence, when I was 9. I started boxing a couple of years later, also at his insistence. As the oldest of his grandkids, he wanted me prepared to teach the others when he was no longer around (He’s still alive today, of course…).
By eleven, I was spending several weeks each summer on solo backpacking trips. While I was never far from home in reality, at that age, sleeping alone in the woods, wrapped in an old surplus wool army blanket has a formative effect! I read books like Colin Fletcher’s “The Complete Walker.” I would throw some tuna fish and SPAM and some saltine crackers in my used Kelty brand external frame pack that someone gave to me used, along with a Vietnam-era surplus poncho and a couple of the old wool blankets. I would grab a cheap Zebco fishing pole and a Ruger 10/22 and head out for a week or more. My mother didn’t much like it, but my father approved wholeheartedly, even providing me used BDUs and combat boots to wear!
I enlisted in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) between my junior and senior years of high school, on a Ranger Contract. I shipped for Ft Benning, GA the same night I graduated from High School. I attended Infantry One-Station Unit Training (OSUT), the Basic Airborne Course, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) at Ft Benning, before shipping to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. I spent three years at 1st Ranger Battalion, before attending the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course at Camp Mackall, N.C. followed by the SF Q-Course and earning the 18Bravo MOS as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. I served in Special Forces Command until I ETSd from Active-Duty following a year in Afghanistan during OEF I (I was a stop-loss, although it was completely voluntary on my part ).
In the course of my military career, I attended a plethora of schools and training opportunities. These included, but were not limited to: Ranger School, SOT/SFAUC, Level C SERE, EMT-P certification, several civilian shooting schools, and several others.
I left the Army and moved to Alaska for several months, working as big-game guide 110 air miles from the nearest town, in a village in the Wrangell Mountains. I left Alaska at the end of the winter and moved to Portland, Oregon where I worked as a personal fitness trainer for almost a year before I got sick of spoiled rich fuckers telling me how hard it was to work out. My usual response was to call them a pussy and ask them if they thought going to war was easier…
1) Tactical Skills:
“FM7-8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad” is the bible of small unit tactics in the United States Army (prior to the publication of the current manual in 2003, and which I cannot recall the official pub number of…). Every infantry NCO in the Army is expected to know this manual inside and out. If you do not know it, you are a shitty NCO and don’t deserve your rank. As a Ranger NCO, I was expected to know this manual and I did. I could recite entire sections of the manual verbatim. I had that shit cold!
It works remarkably well in conventional warfare and it worked against the Hajjis in Afghanistan. Even if the enemy has read the manual, the doctrine works.
The manual is based on a doctrinally standard nine man rifle squad and a four squad platoon (three rifle squads and a weapons squad comprised of three machine gun crews of three men each). It is not predicated on a 12 man ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha). ODAs don’t use the textbook lessons of FM7-8 in the execution of direct action (DA) missions. ODAs have a different SOP for the conduct of DA missions. While I’m not about to get into specifics of ODA operational techniques, for OPSEC reasons, this is an important factor to remember for WSHTF…unless you have a rifle platoon, with crew-served weapons, rifle platoon tactics aren’t going to work. You have to adapt.
OTOH, every SF NCO knows 7-8. You can’t adapt something you don’t know. You have to know the basics before you can do the high-speed shit. If you don’t know FM7-8, start studying it.
You aren’t going to do a toe-to-toe fight with an organized military force with crew-served weapons and indirect fire weapons and survive if you fight according to 7-8, since you’re not going to have them. All the talk in the world about fighting off the Chinese or the UN, or even U.S. forces is hyperbole, pure and simple. You will die. However, you CAN survive a contact with a numerically superior force, which has indirect fire weapons, even if you don’t. It can be done. You just have to know how.
The biggest issue with most “survivalists” is the “good-ole boy syndrome.” Going to war is not going to deer camp. Too many Americans have never really lived in the hell that is a real war zone, and this includes many soldiers who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve slept in a water-filled rut dug into the mud by a passing tank track when it was ten degrees out…with only a poncho liner for warmth. I’ve tied myself to a tree with a sling-rope so I could sleep without falling over into the waist deep water and drowning. I’m not a bad-ass either, these are actually kind of pussy examples.
I hear and read a lot about guys talking about how they’re going to spend the weekend camping with their bug-out gear. Big-Fucking-Deal…Live out of your rucksack for a month, with only local foreign foods like goat meat and rice or hummus, then come talk to me. Give up your steak and potatoes and live on MREs for an entire month, then come talk to me.
Can you go three days with no sleep and still function somewhat normally? That nineteen year old neighbor kid who’s now serving in the 82d Airborne sure as hell can… Can you go six weeks without a shower or brushing your teeth because you’re on the run from hostiles and can’t compromise your position? There are SF, Rangers, Recon Marines and SEALs, all under the age of 30, who do it all the time. Think you’re more prepared for WSHTF than they are? I doubt it.
2) Non-Tactical Living Skills
Possibly the single most important lesson I learned as a SF NCO was this: it’s not combat skills that win wars. (WTF? Did I just say that? What about all the gun porn we love?)
Yes, killing the enemy is pretty important in winning a war. Yes, I believe that Total War is moral and critical. However, what really wins wars in the long run is the ability to win the populace over to your cause.
Help people rebuild schools and hospitals, then teach their kids to read and give them medications to keep them healthy and you will win the war faster. Improve the agriculture of the region so the locals can eat better. Improve the local ability to defend themselves and you will not have to stick around and protect them. They will develop confidence in themselves.
These things are more important than carpet-bombing. Having the ability to build a house or building, pour concrete, raise livestock or crops, maintain vehicles, doctor injuries; all of these are far more important WSHTF than what style of hand-to-gland training you participate in (Yes, I teach combatives and yes, I think it is a critical skill).
It is your ability in these areas that will help bring your community back together following SHTF. You will have much more authority and demand more respect from them when you show up at a town meeting if they know you as the carpenter or rancher than if you show up in multi-cam ACUs, Eagle Plate Carrier and MICH helmet with your M4gry festooned with all the latest tacticool bells and whistles.
3) Clothing
I see a lot of discussion on survival forums about BDUs and ACUs and camouflage. I’ve never understood it. One of the biggest benefits of going SF for me was that I didn’t have to wear BDUs in the field anymore. I’ll let you in on a secret…Camouflage clothing is for amateurs…
I wear blue jeans and I will WSHTF too. They’re comfortable and tough. I stick with Levi’s and Wranglers. I wear Carhartt jackets over North Face and Columbia Sportswear fleece clothing. The only “tacti-cool” clothing that I wear is a couple of pairs of 5.11 pants that were given to me by an SF friend who left the Army and did a couple of rotations as a contractor in Iraq. He’s got more of them than he can wear and I figured I’d try them out. They’re okay, but I’d damned sure not pay for them.
I wear simple mechanic’s style gloves from Home Depot, not the latest BlackHawk! offering. There’s just no point. Camouflage is not a pattern on clothing; camouflage is what you do when you get to where you are going. I wear a ski hat I got from REI and in the summer I wear a baseball cap, unless I’m horseback on the desert, when I’ll wear a felt cowboy hat.
I wear civilian hiking boots from Merrell or Vasque, or Ariat Ropers or Asics running shoes. I wouldn’t wear another pair of Government Issue combat boots if you gave them to me (well, maybe a pair of Danner Acadias, I always did like those!).
4) Tactical Equipment
While camouflage clothing is entirely too over-rated by many in the survivalist movement, load-bearing and tactical equipment is sadly under-rated. Too often I see guys fawning over their newest purchase of equipment that was obsolete when my father was a soldier.
One of the key issues I learned as a SOF soldier was that your gear is a lifeline that can keep you alive. It is a force multiplier for your skill sets. I understand that the Gucci stuff is expensive, but the adage that “you get what you pay for” is entirely true. When you’re betting your life on this stuff, you probably want the best you can get.
When I was at the Ranger Regiment, our TACSOP still mandated the use of ALICE LCE and the “big green tick” rucksacks. The Regiment didn’t start carrying the MOLLE compatible RACK (Ranger Assault Carrying Kit) until I as already at SF. We did have body armor called RBA (Ranger Body Armor) that was the precursor to the Interceptor Vest. We had M4A3s with Trijicon ACOGs. We had A/N PEQ-4s and SureFire lights all as early as 1994. We had some Gucci shit!
When I went to an ODA, suddenly, I could carry what I felt would get the job done in the most efficient manner possible and I could carry it however I wanted.
The first change I made was to buy a Dana Designs mountaineering backpack and quit carrying the big green tick. Then, I started wearing non-military issue boots and clothing on missions. By the time OEF I happened, I was wearing very little in the way of G.I. issue equipment other than my weapon and electronics. Today, I still have LBE and a rucksack and a plate carrier, etc.
I’ll provide generalities on what I carry, without specifics, and a brief explanation as to why I carry it.
a) Helmet…I still keep the 90s era hockey helmets we loved for CQB. I should probably upgrade to a MICH/ACH helmet, but I love my hockey helmet and I’m not as concerned about getting shot in the head as I should be.
b) Plate carrier…I have a MOLLE compatible carrier with PALS webbing all over it. I don’t carry anything attached to that webbing though. It has SAPI plates in it. I trust this vest. I’ve been shot in the plate of a vest and I KNOW it saves lives. If you stockpile combative firearms and don’t have body armor, you’re living in dreamland. Sell several guns and buy armor. Sell a kid and buy armor. Buy some fucking armor!
c) LBE…I carry an old-style three-color desert camouflage RACK harness with modern Coyote Brown MOLLE pouches and pockets on it. While the doctrine for infantry forces says that a basic load is 210 rounds of 5.56NATO, I discovered early on at SF that it wasn’t enough for the SF/Small Unit type of action. I started carrying 12 loaded magazines on my LBE plus one in my weapon. If I could carry more, I would. I still carry 12 magazines on my RACK. The M4 in my truck though has a twenty-round mag and a 30-round mag in a buttstock mounted magazine carrier. I keep an additional 3 magazines for my pistol on my RACK as well. I keep a Blow-Out Kit (BOK) med pouch on my RACK, marked with a large Red Cross patch sewn on. I have an additional medical pouch, sans patch, on the opposite side to hold “pogey-bait” and other assorted extra crap. Behind them, on the very edge of the chest “plate” of the RACK, I carry a Nalgene pound on each side. I have a Kabar knife mounted on the RACK as well. Next to the pistol mag pouches I have a small G.P. pouch that holds a Bruunton orienteering compass.
d) Pistol…I have carried a variety of sidearms over the years, ranging from the Beretta M9, Browning Hi-Power, 1911A1, Sig-SAUER P220 and P226, and a Gen. 1 Glock 17. Today, I’m back to the 1911A1. I carry it in a drop-leg holster attached it to my trouser belt, not my LBE. This way, if I have to dump my other gear, I’m not unarmed. These drop-leg holsters get a lot of flak in the reputable “survivalist” world. James Wesley, Rawles says to leave them to the “mall ninja” crowd. The problem is that people don’t set them up right.
You’re not supposed to hang the damned thing down by your knee! It should be just low enough that it will clear your armor when you draw it. I don’t wear it super-tight when I am afoot. If I was clearing rooms again, I would cinch it up tighter for that purpose. Carrying a kydex holster, like my CCW holster, on the trouser belt, is a PITA when you’re wearing armor. It flat sucks.
I don’t believe in mounting a light on my sidearm. When I do that, I have to point my weapon at shit in order to light it up, even if it turns out to be something that I shouldn’t be pointing a weapon at…
e) Assault Packs and B.O.B/G.H.B…I love my 5.11 Tactical 3-Day pack! I keep the typical BOB crap in there, which will be the subject of a specific post later. Some of it will be familiar to survivalists everywhere, while other things are strictly based on my SOF experience.
Beginnings
To begin with, none of my military experience makes sense as it relates to this unless you know where I came from, so we’ll begin at the beginning.
I grew up in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas in the 1980s. My paternal grandfather moved the “clan” there in 1979 in preparation for the coming collapse. Thirty years later, I’m the only one of 29 grandkids who is still actively preparing, despite the grandparents still bringing the subject up in regular conversation.
Growing up where I did, when I did, was a good experience. My grandfather was an OSS agent during WW2 and later, a Detroit police officer, working a beat in the 1950s, then a plainclothes narcotics routine against the outlaw motorcycle gangs during their heights in the 1960s and 1970s.
My father was an SF soldier after Vietnam, from 1975-1980, and then served in a Reserve Component PSYOP unit until 1985.
Both of my parents are inveterate readers and the bibliophilia carried on to me. I read an average of six full-length books a week. As a kid of seven and eight, I was reading Soldier of Fortune, Gung-Ho, New Breed, Survive, and all the other “gun rag” magazines. I was reading about Army Rangers and Special Forces every month. By the time I was ten, I knew that in order to prepare for what my grandfather was telling me was coming, I needed the training that the Rangers and SF could provide for me. In the meantime, I would prepare as much as possible.
I started judo, at my grandfather’s insistence, when I was 9. I started boxing a couple of years later, also at his insistence. As the oldest of his grandkids, he wanted me prepared to teach the others when he was no longer around (He’s still alive today, of course…).
By eleven, I was spending several weeks each summer on solo backpacking trips. While I was never far from home in reality, at that age, sleeping alone in the woods, wrapped in an old surplus wool army blanket has a formative effect! I read books like Colin Fletcher’s “The Complete Walker.” I would throw some tuna fish and SPAM and some saltine crackers in my used Kelty brand external frame pack that someone gave to me used, along with a Vietnam-era surplus poncho and a couple of the old wool blankets. I would grab a cheap Zebco fishing pole and a Ruger 10/22 and head out for a week or more. My mother didn’t much like it, but my father approved wholeheartedly, even providing me used BDUs and combat boots to wear!
I enlisted in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) between my junior and senior years of high school, on a Ranger Contract. I shipped for Ft Benning, GA the same night I graduated from High School. I attended Infantry One-Station Unit Training (OSUT), the Basic Airborne Course, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) at Ft Benning, before shipping to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. I spent three years at 1st Ranger Battalion, before attending the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course at Camp Mackall, N.C. followed by the SF Q-Course and earning the 18Bravo MOS as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. I served in Special Forces Command until I ETSd from Active-Duty following a year in Afghanistan during OEF I (I was a stop-loss, although it was completely voluntary on my part ).
In the course of my military career, I attended a plethora of schools and training opportunities. These included, but were not limited to: Ranger School, SOT/SFAUC, Level C SERE, EMT-P certification, several civilian shooting schools, and several others.
I left the Army and moved to Alaska for several months, working as big-game guide 110 air miles from the nearest town, in a village in the Wrangell Mountains. I left Alaska at the end of the winter and moved to Portland, Oregon where I worked as a personal fitness trainer for almost a year before I got sick of spoiled rich fuckers telling me how hard it was to work out. My usual response was to call them a pussy and ask them if they thought going to war was easier…
1) Tactical Skills:
“FM7-8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad” is the bible of small unit tactics in the United States Army (prior to the publication of the current manual in 2003, and which I cannot recall the official pub number of…). Every infantry NCO in the Army is expected to know this manual inside and out. If you do not know it, you are a shitty NCO and don’t deserve your rank. As a Ranger NCO, I was expected to know this manual and I did. I could recite entire sections of the manual verbatim. I had that shit cold!
It works remarkably well in conventional warfare and it worked against the Hajjis in Afghanistan. Even if the enemy has read the manual, the doctrine works.
The manual is based on a doctrinally standard nine man rifle squad and a four squad platoon (three rifle squads and a weapons squad comprised of three machine gun crews of three men each). It is not predicated on a 12 man ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha). ODAs don’t use the textbook lessons of FM7-8 in the execution of direct action (DA) missions. ODAs have a different SOP for the conduct of DA missions. While I’m not about to get into specifics of ODA operational techniques, for OPSEC reasons, this is an important factor to remember for WSHTF…unless you have a rifle platoon, with crew-served weapons, rifle platoon tactics aren’t going to work. You have to adapt.
OTOH, every SF NCO knows 7-8. You can’t adapt something you don’t know. You have to know the basics before you can do the high-speed shit. If you don’t know FM7-8, start studying it.
You aren’t going to do a toe-to-toe fight with an organized military force with crew-served weapons and indirect fire weapons and survive if you fight according to 7-8, since you’re not going to have them. All the talk in the world about fighting off the Chinese or the UN, or even U.S. forces is hyperbole, pure and simple. You will die. However, you CAN survive a contact with a numerically superior force, which has indirect fire weapons, even if you don’t. It can be done. You just have to know how.
The biggest issue with most “survivalists” is the “good-ole boy syndrome.” Going to war is not going to deer camp. Too many Americans have never really lived in the hell that is a real war zone, and this includes many soldiers who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve slept in a water-filled rut dug into the mud by a passing tank track when it was ten degrees out…with only a poncho liner for warmth. I’ve tied myself to a tree with a sling-rope so I could sleep without falling over into the waist deep water and drowning. I’m not a bad-ass either, these are actually kind of pussy examples.
I hear and read a lot about guys talking about how they’re going to spend the weekend camping with their bug-out gear. Big-Fucking-Deal…Live out of your rucksack for a month, with only local foreign foods like goat meat and rice or hummus, then come talk to me. Give up your steak and potatoes and live on MREs for an entire month, then come talk to me.
Can you go three days with no sleep and still function somewhat normally? That nineteen year old neighbor kid who’s now serving in the 82d Airborne sure as hell can… Can you go six weeks without a shower or brushing your teeth because you’re on the run from hostiles and can’t compromise your position? There are SF, Rangers, Recon Marines and SEALs, all under the age of 30, who do it all the time. Think you’re more prepared for WSHTF than they are? I doubt it.
2) Non-Tactical Living Skills
Possibly the single most important lesson I learned as a SF NCO was this: it’s not combat skills that win wars. (WTF? Did I just say that? What about all the gun porn we love?)
Yes, killing the enemy is pretty important in winning a war. Yes, I believe that Total War is moral and critical. However, what really wins wars in the long run is the ability to win the populace over to your cause.
Help people rebuild schools and hospitals, then teach their kids to read and give them medications to keep them healthy and you will win the war faster. Improve the agriculture of the region so the locals can eat better. Improve the local ability to defend themselves and you will not have to stick around and protect them. They will develop confidence in themselves.
These things are more important than carpet-bombing. Having the ability to build a house or building, pour concrete, raise livestock or crops, maintain vehicles, doctor injuries; all of these are far more important WSHTF than what style of hand-to-gland training you participate in (Yes, I teach combatives and yes, I think it is a critical skill).
It is your ability in these areas that will help bring your community back together following SHTF. You will have much more authority and demand more respect from them when you show up at a town meeting if they know you as the carpenter or rancher than if you show up in multi-cam ACUs, Eagle Plate Carrier and MICH helmet with your M4gry festooned with all the latest tacticool bells and whistles.
3) Clothing
I see a lot of discussion on survival forums about BDUs and ACUs and camouflage. I’ve never understood it. One of the biggest benefits of going SF for me was that I didn’t have to wear BDUs in the field anymore. I’ll let you in on a secret…Camouflage clothing is for amateurs…
I wear blue jeans and I will WSHTF too. They’re comfortable and tough. I stick with Levi’s and Wranglers. I wear Carhartt jackets over North Face and Columbia Sportswear fleece clothing. The only “tacti-cool” clothing that I wear is a couple of pairs of 5.11 pants that were given to me by an SF friend who left the Army and did a couple of rotations as a contractor in Iraq. He’s got more of them than he can wear and I figured I’d try them out. They’re okay, but I’d damned sure not pay for them.
I wear simple mechanic’s style gloves from Home Depot, not the latest BlackHawk! offering. There’s just no point. Camouflage is not a pattern on clothing; camouflage is what you do when you get to where you are going. I wear a ski hat I got from REI and in the summer I wear a baseball cap, unless I’m horseback on the desert, when I’ll wear a felt cowboy hat.
I wear civilian hiking boots from Merrell or Vasque, or Ariat Ropers or Asics running shoes. I wouldn’t wear another pair of Government Issue combat boots if you gave them to me (well, maybe a pair of Danner Acadias, I always did like those!).
4) Tactical Equipment
While camouflage clothing is entirely too over-rated by many in the survivalist movement, load-bearing and tactical equipment is sadly under-rated. Too often I see guys fawning over their newest purchase of equipment that was obsolete when my father was a soldier.
One of the key issues I learned as a SOF soldier was that your gear is a lifeline that can keep you alive. It is a force multiplier for your skill sets. I understand that the Gucci stuff is expensive, but the adage that “you get what you pay for” is entirely true. When you’re betting your life on this stuff, you probably want the best you can get.
When I was at the Ranger Regiment, our TACSOP still mandated the use of ALICE LCE and the “big green tick” rucksacks. The Regiment didn’t start carrying the MOLLE compatible RACK (Ranger Assault Carrying Kit) until I as already at SF. We did have body armor called RBA (Ranger Body Armor) that was the precursor to the Interceptor Vest. We had M4A3s with Trijicon ACOGs. We had A/N PEQ-4s and SureFire lights all as early as 1994. We had some Gucci shit!
When I went to an ODA, suddenly, I could carry what I felt would get the job done in the most efficient manner possible and I could carry it however I wanted.
The first change I made was to buy a Dana Designs mountaineering backpack and quit carrying the big green tick. Then, I started wearing non-military issue boots and clothing on missions. By the time OEF I happened, I was wearing very little in the way of G.I. issue equipment other than my weapon and electronics. Today, I still have LBE and a rucksack and a plate carrier, etc.
I’ll provide generalities on what I carry, without specifics, and a brief explanation as to why I carry it.
a) Helmet…I still keep the 90s era hockey helmets we loved for CQB. I should probably upgrade to a MICH/ACH helmet, but I love my hockey helmet and I’m not as concerned about getting shot in the head as I should be.
b) Plate carrier…I have a MOLLE compatible carrier with PALS webbing all over it. I don’t carry anything attached to that webbing though. It has SAPI plates in it. I trust this vest. I’ve been shot in the plate of a vest and I KNOW it saves lives. If you stockpile combative firearms and don’t have body armor, you’re living in dreamland. Sell several guns and buy armor. Sell a kid and buy armor. Buy some fucking armor!
c) LBE…I carry an old-style three-color desert camouflage RACK harness with modern Coyote Brown MOLLE pouches and pockets on it. While the doctrine for infantry forces says that a basic load is 210 rounds of 5.56NATO, I discovered early on at SF that it wasn’t enough for the SF/Small Unit type of action. I started carrying 12 loaded magazines on my LBE plus one in my weapon. If I could carry more, I would. I still carry 12 magazines on my RACK. The M4 in my truck though has a twenty-round mag and a 30-round mag in a buttstock mounted magazine carrier. I keep an additional 3 magazines for my pistol on my RACK as well. I keep a Blow-Out Kit (BOK) med pouch on my RACK, marked with a large Red Cross patch sewn on. I have an additional medical pouch, sans patch, on the opposite side to hold “pogey-bait” and other assorted extra crap. Behind them, on the very edge of the chest “plate” of the RACK, I carry a Nalgene pound on each side. I have a Kabar knife mounted on the RACK as well. Next to the pistol mag pouches I have a small G.P. pouch that holds a Bruunton orienteering compass.
d) Pistol…I have carried a variety of sidearms over the years, ranging from the Beretta M9, Browning Hi-Power, 1911A1, Sig-SAUER P220 and P226, and a Gen. 1 Glock 17. Today, I’m back to the 1911A1. I carry it in a drop-leg holster attached it to my trouser belt, not my LBE. This way, if I have to dump my other gear, I’m not unarmed. These drop-leg holsters get a lot of flak in the reputable “survivalist” world. James Wesley, Rawles says to leave them to the “mall ninja” crowd. The problem is that people don’t set them up right.
You’re not supposed to hang the damned thing down by your knee! It should be just low enough that it will clear your armor when you draw it. I don’t wear it super-tight when I am afoot. If I was clearing rooms again, I would cinch it up tighter for that purpose. Carrying a kydex holster, like my CCW holster, on the trouser belt, is a PITA when you’re wearing armor. It flat sucks.
I don’t believe in mounting a light on my sidearm. When I do that, I have to point my weapon at shit in order to light it up, even if it turns out to be something that I shouldn’t be pointing a weapon at…
e) Assault Packs and B.O.B/G.H.B…I love my 5.11 Tactical 3-Day pack! I keep the typical BOB crap in there, which will be the subject of a specific post later. Some of it will be familiar to survivalists everywhere, while other things are strictly based on my SOF experience.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
My new AR project...
I bought a Bushmaster lower reciever the other day from a friend. It has the original factory-installed lower parts kit installed. Now, I just have to figure out what I'm going to do for the stock and the upper.
So, I've been searching old threads on AR15.com and some other forums to get ideas for what I wanted. In the past, I've always run my M4geries really basic...14.5" barrel with the Phantom suppressor pinned and welded, BUIS on the rear, with the standard fixed front sight group and an ACOG on top if I wanted glass. I've always kept the basic M4-style handguards with a Sure-Fire 6P clamped to the barrel the way we did it back in the day (BITD).
There's so much Gucci shit available for ARs now though, much of it combat-proven for reliability, that I'm gonna trick this one out a little. Since it looks more and more like it may be the last one I'll be able to buy if the powers that be get their way, I want to make it as close to perfect as I can get.
Basic requirements:
5.56mm NATO
14.5" barrel
collapsible stock
railed forend
SF light
BUIS
single point sling
Beyond that, I'm pretty open. I'll share with you what my current thoughts are, as ill-defined as they are.
I'm going with the 14.5" barrel again cause I like it. Period. I know the drawbacks and shit, but I like it, so fuck it.
I want 5.56mmNATO. I've heard the anecdotal stories about BGs not going down when hit, but I've never seen someone take a solid hit from a M4 and NOT go down. It's more a matter of piss-poor training.
I want the collapsible stock for convenience. I am horseback a lot. The shorter I can make my carbine, the easier it is to handle horseback, both from a storage and shooting point of view.
The light and sling should not need explanation.
BUIS are critical. I've never been found of the carrying handle on the M16 family. I can keep the front sight fixed or change it; it doesn't phase me either way. The rear iron will be a fold down though.
I'm thinking of putting optics on this one, but not the ACOG. My first thought was to go with an EOTech or Aimpoint M68CCO. I like the red-dot and I like the 1X concept for CQB. I've also considered the fact that I do a lot of shooting at coyotes that are WAY the fuck out there at the outside reach of the M4 for a point target. A magnified optic would be nice.
My next thought was maybe I could do the 3-Gun thing. A 3X or variable power optic on the top and a small Docter Optic type of thing at an angle. If I'm shooting close enough to use it, chances are a tilt to the side of my rifle probably ain't gonna cause me to miss. I really haven't decided yet though. Feedback and thoughts?
I've thought about the M900 for a SF light/vertical fore-grip (VFG)combination. In the past, I've always just used the mag well for a a VFG alternative. I never had a problem with it and I've always been plenty fast. If reaching way out towards the end of my forehand will make me FASTER though, I'd sure consider it! I don't like the 3-Gun C-grip though. It just feels weird as shit to me. But...if I put my VFG WAY out there at the end, I get the same benefit. So, what if I go with a low-profile gas block with a flip-down front sight? I can put longer railed forearms on and move the VFG closer to the muzzle. If the head of my SF light is below the flash suppressor, it shouldn't be a problem, as long as it's not PAST the end of the muzzle...I think.
So, I'm thinking along the lines of a less expensive VFG and a Scout-Light type set-up out past the end of the traditional forends...
The whole thing will be camouflaged. I'm looking at some of the different DuraCoat-type finishes, but I've always just used the Krylon treatment in the past. I'll probably stick with that, since I'm a cheap bastard at heart.
Of course, then I've got to find a way to carry more ammunition! I've always liked the real basic chest carriers for active shooter response like one I had from Eagle Industries at one time. I'll probably go with something like that, or buy a MOLLE compatible chest harness and add mag pouches where I want them. Then I can mount my Cold Steel Safemaker push-knife on it too and carry pistol mags as well. I might mount an additional BOK on it too.
Now, all I have to do is get the shit together before going back to the mountains! (Well...and find a new M1911A1 milspec!)
So, I've been searching old threads on AR15.com and some other forums to get ideas for what I wanted. In the past, I've always run my M4geries really basic...14.5" barrel with the Phantom suppressor pinned and welded, BUIS on the rear, with the standard fixed front sight group and an ACOG on top if I wanted glass. I've always kept the basic M4-style handguards with a Sure-Fire 6P clamped to the barrel the way we did it back in the day (BITD).
There's so much Gucci shit available for ARs now though, much of it combat-proven for reliability, that I'm gonna trick this one out a little. Since it looks more and more like it may be the last one I'll be able to buy if the powers that be get their way, I want to make it as close to perfect as I can get.
Basic requirements:
5.56mm NATO
14.5" barrel
collapsible stock
railed forend
SF light
BUIS
single point sling
Beyond that, I'm pretty open. I'll share with you what my current thoughts are, as ill-defined as they are.
I'm going with the 14.5" barrel again cause I like it. Period. I know the drawbacks and shit, but I like it, so fuck it.
I want 5.56mmNATO. I've heard the anecdotal stories about BGs not going down when hit, but I've never seen someone take a solid hit from a M4 and NOT go down. It's more a matter of piss-poor training.
I want the collapsible stock for convenience. I am horseback a lot. The shorter I can make my carbine, the easier it is to handle horseback, both from a storage and shooting point of view.
The light and sling should not need explanation.
BUIS are critical. I've never been found of the carrying handle on the M16 family. I can keep the front sight fixed or change it; it doesn't phase me either way. The rear iron will be a fold down though.
I'm thinking of putting optics on this one, but not the ACOG. My first thought was to go with an EOTech or Aimpoint M68CCO. I like the red-dot and I like the 1X concept for CQB. I've also considered the fact that I do a lot of shooting at coyotes that are WAY the fuck out there at the outside reach of the M4 for a point target. A magnified optic would be nice.
My next thought was maybe I could do the 3-Gun thing. A 3X or variable power optic on the top and a small Docter Optic type of thing at an angle. If I'm shooting close enough to use it, chances are a tilt to the side of my rifle probably ain't gonna cause me to miss. I really haven't decided yet though. Feedback and thoughts?
I've thought about the M900 for a SF light/vertical fore-grip (VFG)combination. In the past, I've always just used the mag well for a a VFG alternative. I never had a problem with it and I've always been plenty fast. If reaching way out towards the end of my forehand will make me FASTER though, I'd sure consider it! I don't like the 3-Gun C-grip though. It just feels weird as shit to me. But...if I put my VFG WAY out there at the end, I get the same benefit. So, what if I go with a low-profile gas block with a flip-down front sight? I can put longer railed forearms on and move the VFG closer to the muzzle. If the head of my SF light is below the flash suppressor, it shouldn't be a problem, as long as it's not PAST the end of the muzzle...I think.
So, I'm thinking along the lines of a less expensive VFG and a Scout-Light type set-up out past the end of the traditional forends...
The whole thing will be camouflaged. I'm looking at some of the different DuraCoat-type finishes, but I've always just used the Krylon treatment in the past. I'll probably stick with that, since I'm a cheap bastard at heart.
Of course, then I've got to find a way to carry more ammunition! I've always liked the real basic chest carriers for active shooter response like one I had from Eagle Industries at one time. I'll probably go with something like that, or buy a MOLLE compatible chest harness and add mag pouches where I want them. Then I can mount my Cold Steel Safemaker push-knife on it too and carry pistol mags as well. I might mount an additional BOK on it too.
Now, all I have to do is get the shit together before going back to the mountains! (Well...and find a new M1911A1 milspec!)
Friday, December 11, 2009
"It's not what ya know, it's who ya know!"
So, I was kind of looking around at new rucksack ideas. I haven't owned on in a number of years and none of the ones I was seeing at the local REI and backpacking stores were in line with what I wanted.
I HATE one pocket rucksacks. I like lots of little exterior pockets to facilitate easier access to cool shit I might need, without tearing my whole ruck apart. I posted a thread looking for ideas on SOCNET, The Special Operations Forum.
Within two hours, I had an offer for a Kifaru Extended-Missions Ruck (EMR) G1. It is lightly used (sat in the safehouse for a year in Iraq, never went on a mission...) and he's letting me have it for $250 less than it retails for new...
It's the second time in two months that being a veteran has paid off for me. These are the first times in my entire post-military life that being a veteran has done me fuck all for good.
So, in case Dave the Australian Para reads this, "Thanks brother!"
I like big rucks. I'm a big guy and can hump a ruck like nobody's business. These are 7000 cubic inches in capacity, PLUS have MOLLE webbing all over so I can custom attach pouches/pockets all over it and increase the capacity even more!
I HATE one pocket rucksacks. I like lots of little exterior pockets to facilitate easier access to cool shit I might need, without tearing my whole ruck apart. I posted a thread looking for ideas on SOCNET, The Special Operations Forum.
Within two hours, I had an offer for a Kifaru Extended-Missions Ruck (EMR) G1. It is lightly used (sat in the safehouse for a year in Iraq, never went on a mission...) and he's letting me have it for $250 less than it retails for new...
It's the second time in two months that being a veteran has paid off for me. These are the first times in my entire post-military life that being a veteran has done me fuck all for good.
So, in case Dave the Australian Para reads this, "Thanks brother!"
I like big rucks. I'm a big guy and can hump a ruck like nobody's business. These are 7000 cubic inches in capacity, PLUS have MOLLE webbing all over so I can custom attach pouches/pockets all over it and increase the capacity even more!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Unemployment nation-wide is stated at something like 11%. That’s only counting people who are actually contacting their state employment agencies though…The real number may be as high as 16-18% according to some sources.
That’s damned near a quarter of the population of the United States! Of five people you know, one of them doesn’t have a fucking way to support his family…The total population of the United States as of June 2008 was 304,059,724 people…Let’s meet in the middle and call it 15% unemployment…That is 45,608,958 people who are of working age and are not producing. That’s un-fucking-believable! Holy Hell, NEW YORK CITY only has 8.5 million people! Los Angeles has 4 million. LA County has just shy of 10.5 million. So, the largest city in the country and the largest county in the country, population-wise, don’t even combine to form HALF the unemployed people in this country!
Fuck me! Let’s assume that the actual number really is 11%...That’s 30,405,972! Even THEN, it’s more than double the population of NYC and LA County combined!
Think about that for a minute….
Over 30 MILLION people don’t know how the fuck they’re going to pay the rent next month. Over 30 MILLION people don’t have a job, so they can’t buy Christmas presents for their kids…How the fuck can we NOT collapse under that load?
There is no sign that the economy is recovering either. It’s getting worse. What happens when the unemployment numbers hit 25%? Can the taxpayers who ARE working support that large of a load? The .gov sure as shit can’t, it’s already somewhere between 11 and 100 TRILLION in debt, depending on whether you only look at the “official” deficit or the REAL deficit that takes “unfunded” programs like Social Security and government pensions into account.
But let’s be “official” about it. According the U.S. National Debt Clock (remember, this only covers “funded” programs!), the national deficit as of my typing this is $12,096,640,766,200!
On the other hand, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States is 14.2%. So, at least we make a LITTLE bit more than we consume…Except the .gov can’t get ALL of that 14.2% or else we the People would have no food to fuel our bodies to continue producing for the State.
If I went to my bank today and said, “Hey Carlos (my banker’s name is Carlos. He’s the only one in the branch I will deal with.), my annual income is $140,000. I want your bank to loan me $120,000 a year. Whaddya think?” What the hell do you think he would do?
After he quit laughing at me, he’d probably tell me to go home and take my meds. Let’s say I’m bigger than him though and have more guns (I am and I do). I say, “No, you don’t get it Carlos, I NEED this money so you WILL give it to me!” He’s going to call someone with more guns than me, i.e. the police. Why wouldn’t he?
Well, newsflash for you boys and girls, that’s EXACTLY what we do everyday. The U.S. takes stuff from we the people by force. If you don’t pay your taxes, they come with the guns and escort you to prison.
Maybe instead of ANOTHER government program like “Cap and Trade” or “Universal Health Care,” our government should figure out a way to REDUCE government spending…Just a thought.
If the aforementioned conversation took place at my bank and I explained to Carlos that I NEEDED the money because, well, you know, my Aunt Jemima is needs her heart medication and my kids need school supplies and my wife needs a new boob job (I’m not married), he’d probably explain to me that my best option would be to reduce my spending and save some money. “Quit eating out every night Cowpuncher; don’t go to the movies every weekend. Sell your brand-new Dodge 3500 Dually Crew-Cab and buy an older model for cash…”
So, if my 22 year old banker can figure that out, why the Holy-Fuck-Me can’t the whiz-kid geniuses working for the government figure it out?
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are so goddamned smart, why can’t they figure it out? Why can’t the Messiah living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue figure it out?
I might be a simple-minded guy (I’m not really) and I might cling to my guns and individual liberty too much, but you know what? Fuck you very much; it was guys like me who founded this goddamned country!
That’s damned near a quarter of the population of the United States! Of five people you know, one of them doesn’t have a fucking way to support his family…The total population of the United States as of June 2008 was 304,059,724 people…Let’s meet in the middle and call it 15% unemployment…That is 45,608,958 people who are of working age and are not producing. That’s un-fucking-believable! Holy Hell, NEW YORK CITY only has 8.5 million people! Los Angeles has 4 million. LA County has just shy of 10.5 million. So, the largest city in the country and the largest county in the country, population-wise, don’t even combine to form HALF the unemployed people in this country!
Fuck me! Let’s assume that the actual number really is 11%...That’s 30,405,972! Even THEN, it’s more than double the population of NYC and LA County combined!
Think about that for a minute….
Over 30 MILLION people don’t know how the fuck they’re going to pay the rent next month. Over 30 MILLION people don’t have a job, so they can’t buy Christmas presents for their kids…How the fuck can we NOT collapse under that load?
There is no sign that the economy is recovering either. It’s getting worse. What happens when the unemployment numbers hit 25%? Can the taxpayers who ARE working support that large of a load? The .gov sure as shit can’t, it’s already somewhere between 11 and 100 TRILLION in debt, depending on whether you only look at the “official” deficit or the REAL deficit that takes “unfunded” programs like Social Security and government pensions into account.
But let’s be “official” about it. According the U.S. National Debt Clock (remember, this only covers “funded” programs!), the national deficit as of my typing this is $12,096,640,766,200!
On the other hand, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States is 14.2%. So, at least we make a LITTLE bit more than we consume…Except the .gov can’t get ALL of that 14.2% or else we the People would have no food to fuel our bodies to continue producing for the State.
If I went to my bank today and said, “Hey Carlos (my banker’s name is Carlos. He’s the only one in the branch I will deal with.), my annual income is $140,000. I want your bank to loan me $120,000 a year. Whaddya think?” What the hell do you think he would do?
After he quit laughing at me, he’d probably tell me to go home and take my meds. Let’s say I’m bigger than him though and have more guns (I am and I do). I say, “No, you don’t get it Carlos, I NEED this money so you WILL give it to me!” He’s going to call someone with more guns than me, i.e. the police. Why wouldn’t he?
Well, newsflash for you boys and girls, that’s EXACTLY what we do everyday. The U.S. takes stuff from we the people by force. If you don’t pay your taxes, they come with the guns and escort you to prison.
Maybe instead of ANOTHER government program like “Cap and Trade” or “Universal Health Care,” our government should figure out a way to REDUCE government spending…Just a thought.
If the aforementioned conversation took place at my bank and I explained to Carlos that I NEEDED the money because, well, you know, my Aunt Jemima is needs her heart medication and my kids need school supplies and my wife needs a new boob job (I’m not married), he’d probably explain to me that my best option would be to reduce my spending and save some money. “Quit eating out every night Cowpuncher; don’t go to the movies every weekend. Sell your brand-new Dodge 3500 Dually Crew-Cab and buy an older model for cash…”
So, if my 22 year old banker can figure that out, why the Holy-Fuck-Me can’t the whiz-kid geniuses working for the government figure it out?
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are so goddamned smart, why can’t they figure it out? Why can’t the Messiah living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue figure it out?
I might be a simple-minded guy (I’m not really) and I might cling to my guns and individual liberty too much, but you know what? Fuck you very much; it was guys like me who founded this goddamned country!
Thoughts on the .gov (federal type)
As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog, I am somewhat convinced that things cannot continue as they are and we are headed for the end of the world (or at least society) as we know it, aka TEOTWAWKI.
A recent thread on a forum that I frequent (www.totalprotectioninteractive.com) brought this into somewhat clearer focus for me, so I’m going to share some of the thoughts it sparked and clarify some things I said in that thread.
1)
I was and am opposed to the USA PATRIOT ACT. I think it’s a piece of crap legislation that provided too much power to the federal government. It was past in a time of fear in this country when the enemy (Al-Qaeda) had just struck successfully. They were successful on both the tactical and strategic fronts.
Tactically, they DID manage to slam airliners into the WTC and kill thousands of people, exactly as they had planned. Strategically, they managed to instill fear into the hearts of the west.
Our legislators acted out of fear, with the common defense first in their minds. Unfortunately, that’s not their fucking job!
While the federal government IS constitutionally-mandated to provide for the common defense of the Union, the specific role of legislators is to look out for the rights and needs of their constituency. Nancy Pelosi is supposed to look out for Californians and Harry Reid is supposed to look out for Nevadans. The problem is they don’t. (This is not to imply that the Republicans are looking out for their people either! Both parties are fucked up.) They’re more interested in solidifying the power of the federal government in the military district of Columbia.
In their fear of further attacks by third-world followers of a medieval faith, the legislators of the most powerful, technologically-advanced nation people in the history of mankind…gave in. Hell, they didn’t even blink about it. Sure, let’s give the feds even MORE unconstitutional power! We’ll make the government stronger and you don’t need to worry, because we’re looking out for you! (Tell that to the folks who died on 11 SEP 01; the .gov had the watch then too…)
I realize that the federal government has a long history of infringing on the liberties of the states and individuals. We’ve seen federal troops used for law enforcement applications within these borders. Shay’s Rebellion, Reconstruction in the South, Civil Rights in Little Rock, Arkansas…the list goes on…there were federal troops at Waco…the FBI snipers and assaulters were, on a fundamental level, federal military personnel. I don’t have a problem with the paramilitarization of local and state LE agencies. I realize that, to do their jobs in today’s world, they damned near HAVE to be paramilitary.
I do have a problem with the federal government turning the FBI and DEA into paramilitary organizations in a very transparent way of bypassing Posse Comitatus.
If a situation arises that demands military-type action inside the borders of one of the united states (lower case used intentionally, we are not referring to the political entity of the U.S. federal government), then the governor of that state has the legal and constitutional mandate to activate his state’s National Guard or militia forces. (The ARNG is NOT the constitutional militia, but that’s a conversation for another time…) I don’t even see a constitutional issue with using the NG to train local and state LEOs! Let the NG get the training from the Regular Army, and then let THEM train LEOs. Don’t use a bullshit federal agency that is designed solely for the enforcement of bullshit laws to train LEOs. It’s just fucking un-American.
It’s a lot like the so-called “Constitution-Free Zone.” No fucking such thing exists! EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PIECE OF REAL ESTATE PROTECTED BY THE UNITED STATES IS PROTECTED BY THE US CONSTITUTION! How the FUCK does anyone think its okay to say, “Oh well, you live ‘here’ so you don’t get that benefit?” George and Tom are rolling over in their graves! Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine are looking at us from whatever after-life they may be in and are going, “Dude, where’s my country?”
Without the US Constitution, we’re not the United States of America. If we’re going to wipe our collective asses with the document, let’s dissolve the fucking union! Let’s either rename it the “Federal People’s Republic if North America,” while we’re at it! Fuck that!
Every single person who has ever served in a position of public trust that required the taking of an oath- .mil, LEO, public official, etc- should be ready to start shooting motherfuckers already! We swore an oath to “protect” the Constitution, so what aren’t we? Because, it’s easier to sit by and watch other people get squished by the jack-boots of the current situation.
A lot of states are currently passing what is mostly meaningless “sovereignty” legislation. We need to let our state legislators know that we want those bills to have teeth. We need to either reconvene the Constitutional Convention and wrote a new constitution, or we need to dissolve the union and let the individual states develop new alliances with one another when their goals and beliefs coincide.
Unfortunately, too many people are content to sit back and wallow in their belief that .gov knows best. The people in power in D.C. are sure not going to disabuse us of that notion. Even the low-level staffers in D.C. have a vested interest in keeping that myth alive.
Maybe these people DO need to live under the steel-clad thumb of an oppressive, socialist regime that “knows best; one that stands by the belief that “if it interferes with the government prerogative, your rights can be taken from you.”
The Constitution doesn’t grant powers to anyone but the federal government. It was about LIMITING those powers. It PROTECTS the natural rights granted to us by virtue of our humanity, not by the fucking government.
Don’t mistake me for reactionary, knee-jerk conservative either though! I think the Gitmo detainees should have had trials or tribunals within a year of being captured. If they can be shown to be guilty, kill the fuckers. If not, let them go. Fly their happy asses back to Iraq or the ‘Stan, dump them off the aircraft with $50.00 and tell them to have a nice life. Let’s be done with robbing people of their natural rights though, regardless of where they are from!
The more often we let unconstitutional shit happen without the citizenry standing up and shouting to the .gov to “stick to doing the jobs we gave you,” the more it’s going to happen.
Here’s what I see happening with the current health bill…
“Oh, we’re going to impose a mandated tax to provide for health care for those that don’t have it.” If you don’t pay the taxes, you go to prison.
Then a few years from now, somebody decides that since “the government is paying for your health care,” they should be able to decide what healthy and un-healthy habits and hobbies you participate in.
“You can’t go rock-climbing, because you might fall and get hurt and the government would have to pay for the medical care.”
“You can’t have guns, because they’re dangerous.”
“You can’t smoke because it leads to lung cancer that the government has to provide for your health care to take care of.
“You can’t eat red meat, because a government study showed it to be high in cholesterol. That leads to health issues that the government will have to pay for the treating of.”
You can talk all you want about the “security” of universal, socialized health care. You can be willing to pay a few dollars more a month in taxes to support it. What are you going to do when they come to your house in six years and take your television “because it causes you to be sedentary, leading to debilitating obesity?” Why are you so upset? The government telling you what is healthy “has been happening for years!”
Fuck y0ur socialized health care! I’ll doctor myself assholes.
Personal liberty in the intellectual, emotional, religious, philosophical, and financial aspects are the foundations of this nation. We are not a nation, but a Union of States allied under the Constitution.
Part Deux
I don’t see a new constitutional convention being called. The fuck-stains in DC aren’t willing to give up any of the power. I see it the same way that another poster on the thread saw it; A collapse of certain economic powerhouses via the business sector running for their life and liberty, a la “Atlas Shrugged.” Look at the West Coast states…California, Oregon and Washington (to a lesser degree other than Sea-Tac.).
Unemployment is demonstrably higher than it is elsewhere (although it’s high everywhere). They are encouraging illegal immigration in California by offering illegals a cut of Social Security! Why the fuck would I stay in CA if I was a business man?
I’d move out of state, let the economy of California crash and start lobbying my new state legislators to secede from the Union in order to protect us from the moves by the feds to protect California.
The fact is, according the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, put in there BY the original signatories, AS A CONDITION OF RATIFICATION of the Constitution, any power not granted to the “States united” (i.e. the federal government) is reserved to the states respectively and the people. So, why is the federal .gov outlawing shit like pot and crack? If Californians want to snort blow, let them make it legal there and let them do it. When their state economy collapses because all the big shots are brain-dead from the coke rotting their brains, who the fuck cares? The illegals will be there, working hard anyway! If the people of Illinois want socialized health care, let the people of Illinois pay the bills for each other, not Montanans or Arizonans! That kind of shit SHOULD be at the discretion of the sovereign states (Chirst, now I sound like a “militia nutjob!”)
As a current example, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that says anything about a "right" to health care. I know a lot of statists are claiming that "the common welfare" covers it, but I call horseshit. It might be good for the fat slob who doesn't work for a living and collects taxpayer-funded healthcare, but it's sure as hell not for MY welfare to pay increased taxes to support someone else's kids.
Same thing with gay marriage. I don't have a problem with gays and lesbians. If the state of California or the state of Oregon wants to grant them the right to marry, so be it. If Utah, however, chooses not to recognize that marriage, then they don't need to move to Utah, simple as that. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say a word one about marriage or the right to marry anyone. Leave it to the states to decide. Noone should be allowed to interfere with their right to live a happy life. Unfortunately, too often in my experience (I'm working in a gym in Portland, remember...the experience is not inconsiderable) they don't want socio-political parity. They want extra liberties and a superior position for their belief system. Why should THEIR demands be more valuable to the common good than the view of a stauch Baptist (remember, I'm a commited atheist here) who abhors the "unGodly abomination" of their "sins?" Leave it to the states. If you live in a state that allows it, and you don't like it, move. If you live in a state that doesn't allow it and you want to marry your gay/lesbian lover, move somewhere that does allow it.
For those who would point out that sometimes jobs don't allow for you to move, I'd call horseshit on that too. Decide which is more important, the love of your partner or more economic security? If you're so poor that moving is absolutely out of the question, then you have bigger issues than who someone else is marrying to be worried about.
A recent thread on a forum that I frequent (www.totalprotectioninteractive.com) brought this into somewhat clearer focus for me, so I’m going to share some of the thoughts it sparked and clarify some things I said in that thread.
1)
I was and am opposed to the USA PATRIOT ACT. I think it’s a piece of crap legislation that provided too much power to the federal government. It was past in a time of fear in this country when the enemy (Al-Qaeda) had just struck successfully. They were successful on both the tactical and strategic fronts.
Tactically, they DID manage to slam airliners into the WTC and kill thousands of people, exactly as they had planned. Strategically, they managed to instill fear into the hearts of the west.
Our legislators acted out of fear, with the common defense first in their minds. Unfortunately, that’s not their fucking job!
While the federal government IS constitutionally-mandated to provide for the common defense of the Union, the specific role of legislators is to look out for the rights and needs of their constituency. Nancy Pelosi is supposed to look out for Californians and Harry Reid is supposed to look out for Nevadans. The problem is they don’t. (This is not to imply that the Republicans are looking out for their people either! Both parties are fucked up.) They’re more interested in solidifying the power of the federal government in the military district of Columbia.
In their fear of further attacks by third-world followers of a medieval faith, the legislators of the most powerful, technologically-advanced nation people in the history of mankind…gave in. Hell, they didn’t even blink about it. Sure, let’s give the feds even MORE unconstitutional power! We’ll make the government stronger and you don’t need to worry, because we’re looking out for you! (Tell that to the folks who died on 11 SEP 01; the .gov had the watch then too…)
I realize that the federal government has a long history of infringing on the liberties of the states and individuals. We’ve seen federal troops used for law enforcement applications within these borders. Shay’s Rebellion, Reconstruction in the South, Civil Rights in Little Rock, Arkansas…the list goes on…there were federal troops at Waco…the FBI snipers and assaulters were, on a fundamental level, federal military personnel. I don’t have a problem with the paramilitarization of local and state LE agencies. I realize that, to do their jobs in today’s world, they damned near HAVE to be paramilitary.
I do have a problem with the federal government turning the FBI and DEA into paramilitary organizations in a very transparent way of bypassing Posse Comitatus.
If a situation arises that demands military-type action inside the borders of one of the united states (lower case used intentionally, we are not referring to the political entity of the U.S. federal government), then the governor of that state has the legal and constitutional mandate to activate his state’s National Guard or militia forces. (The ARNG is NOT the constitutional militia, but that’s a conversation for another time…) I don’t even see a constitutional issue with using the NG to train local and state LEOs! Let the NG get the training from the Regular Army, and then let THEM train LEOs. Don’t use a bullshit federal agency that is designed solely for the enforcement of bullshit laws to train LEOs. It’s just fucking un-American.
It’s a lot like the so-called “Constitution-Free Zone.” No fucking such thing exists! EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PIECE OF REAL ESTATE PROTECTED BY THE UNITED STATES IS PROTECTED BY THE US CONSTITUTION! How the FUCK does anyone think its okay to say, “Oh well, you live ‘here’ so you don’t get that benefit?” George and Tom are rolling over in their graves! Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine are looking at us from whatever after-life they may be in and are going, “Dude, where’s my country?”
Without the US Constitution, we’re not the United States of America. If we’re going to wipe our collective asses with the document, let’s dissolve the fucking union! Let’s either rename it the “Federal People’s Republic if North America,” while we’re at it! Fuck that!
Every single person who has ever served in a position of public trust that required the taking of an oath- .mil, LEO, public official, etc- should be ready to start shooting motherfuckers already! We swore an oath to “protect” the Constitution, so what aren’t we? Because, it’s easier to sit by and watch other people get squished by the jack-boots of the current situation.
A lot of states are currently passing what is mostly meaningless “sovereignty” legislation. We need to let our state legislators know that we want those bills to have teeth. We need to either reconvene the Constitutional Convention and wrote a new constitution, or we need to dissolve the union and let the individual states develop new alliances with one another when their goals and beliefs coincide.
Unfortunately, too many people are content to sit back and wallow in their belief that .gov knows best. The people in power in D.C. are sure not going to disabuse us of that notion. Even the low-level staffers in D.C. have a vested interest in keeping that myth alive.
Maybe these people DO need to live under the steel-clad thumb of an oppressive, socialist regime that “knows best; one that stands by the belief that “if it interferes with the government prerogative, your rights can be taken from you.”
The Constitution doesn’t grant powers to anyone but the federal government. It was about LIMITING those powers. It PROTECTS the natural rights granted to us by virtue of our humanity, not by the fucking government.
Don’t mistake me for reactionary, knee-jerk conservative either though! I think the Gitmo detainees should have had trials or tribunals within a year of being captured. If they can be shown to be guilty, kill the fuckers. If not, let them go. Fly their happy asses back to Iraq or the ‘Stan, dump them off the aircraft with $50.00 and tell them to have a nice life. Let’s be done with robbing people of their natural rights though, regardless of where they are from!
The more often we let unconstitutional shit happen without the citizenry standing up and shouting to the .gov to “stick to doing the jobs we gave you,” the more it’s going to happen.
Here’s what I see happening with the current health bill…
“Oh, we’re going to impose a mandated tax to provide for health care for those that don’t have it.” If you don’t pay the taxes, you go to prison.
Then a few years from now, somebody decides that since “the government is paying for your health care,” they should be able to decide what healthy and un-healthy habits and hobbies you participate in.
“You can’t go rock-climbing, because you might fall and get hurt and the government would have to pay for the medical care.”
“You can’t have guns, because they’re dangerous.”
“You can’t smoke because it leads to lung cancer that the government has to provide for your health care to take care of.
“You can’t eat red meat, because a government study showed it to be high in cholesterol. That leads to health issues that the government will have to pay for the treating of.”
You can talk all you want about the “security” of universal, socialized health care. You can be willing to pay a few dollars more a month in taxes to support it. What are you going to do when they come to your house in six years and take your television “because it causes you to be sedentary, leading to debilitating obesity?” Why are you so upset? The government telling you what is healthy “has been happening for years!”
Fuck y0ur socialized health care! I’ll doctor myself assholes.
Personal liberty in the intellectual, emotional, religious, philosophical, and financial aspects are the foundations of this nation. We are not a nation, but a Union of States allied under the Constitution.
Part Deux
I don’t see a new constitutional convention being called. The fuck-stains in DC aren’t willing to give up any of the power. I see it the same way that another poster on the thread saw it; A collapse of certain economic powerhouses via the business sector running for their life and liberty, a la “Atlas Shrugged.” Look at the West Coast states…California, Oregon and Washington (to a lesser degree other than Sea-Tac.).
Unemployment is demonstrably higher than it is elsewhere (although it’s high everywhere). They are encouraging illegal immigration in California by offering illegals a cut of Social Security! Why the fuck would I stay in CA if I was a business man?
I’d move out of state, let the economy of California crash and start lobbying my new state legislators to secede from the Union in order to protect us from the moves by the feds to protect California.
The fact is, according the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, put in there BY the original signatories, AS A CONDITION OF RATIFICATION of the Constitution, any power not granted to the “States united” (i.e. the federal government) is reserved to the states respectively and the people. So, why is the federal .gov outlawing shit like pot and crack? If Californians want to snort blow, let them make it legal there and let them do it. When their state economy collapses because all the big shots are brain-dead from the coke rotting their brains, who the fuck cares? The illegals will be there, working hard anyway! If the people of Illinois want socialized health care, let the people of Illinois pay the bills for each other, not Montanans or Arizonans! That kind of shit SHOULD be at the discretion of the sovereign states (Chirst, now I sound like a “militia nutjob!”)
As a current example, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that says anything about a "right" to health care. I know a lot of statists are claiming that "the common welfare" covers it, but I call horseshit. It might be good for the fat slob who doesn't work for a living and collects taxpayer-funded healthcare, but it's sure as hell not for MY welfare to pay increased taxes to support someone else's kids.
Same thing with gay marriage. I don't have a problem with gays and lesbians. If the state of California or the state of Oregon wants to grant them the right to marry, so be it. If Utah, however, chooses not to recognize that marriage, then they don't need to move to Utah, simple as that. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say a word one about marriage or the right to marry anyone. Leave it to the states to decide. Noone should be allowed to interfere with their right to live a happy life. Unfortunately, too often in my experience (I'm working in a gym in Portland, remember...the experience is not inconsiderable) they don't want socio-political parity. They want extra liberties and a superior position for their belief system. Why should THEIR demands be more valuable to the common good than the view of a stauch Baptist (remember, I'm a commited atheist here) who abhors the "unGodly abomination" of their "sins?" Leave it to the states. If you live in a state that allows it, and you don't like it, move. If you live in a state that doesn't allow it and you want to marry your gay/lesbian lover, move somewhere that does allow it.
For those who would point out that sometimes jobs don't allow for you to move, I'd call horseshit on that too. Decide which is more important, the love of your partner or more economic security? If you're so poor that moving is absolutely out of the question, then you have bigger issues than who someone else is marrying to be worried about.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Why I miss Montana...
Honesty. That's what I miss about Montana. People might not like you, or vice versa, but at least you will know where you stand.
I work in a gym. In Portland, Oregon. Both are known for homosexual populations. I don't give a shit if you are gay or lesbian. I just don't care. I don't have a problem training gay or lesbian clients. I teach a MMA-centric combatives class. I don't have a problem rolling with a gay man.
What I do have a problem with is people who say they are uncomfortable when 3/4 of the clientele in this gym are gay or lesbian, but choose to do ALL of their marketing in the gay and lesbian community. Dishonesty blows.
What I also have a problem with is gays and lesbians who claim they only want equal rights with straights, but don't. What they REALLY want is socio-political superiority. They can crack jokes about straight people's sexuality, but if I happen to use the term "sissy," as a motivational tool to make a straight male client push a little harder, I'm a fucking homo-phobe? Try this one on Tinkerbell..."Blow me!"
So, Montana is looking awful nice again.
I work in a gym. In Portland, Oregon. Both are known for homosexual populations. I don't give a shit if you are gay or lesbian. I just don't care. I don't have a problem training gay or lesbian clients. I teach a MMA-centric combatives class. I don't have a problem rolling with a gay man.
What I do have a problem with is people who say they are uncomfortable when 3/4 of the clientele in this gym are gay or lesbian, but choose to do ALL of their marketing in the gay and lesbian community. Dishonesty blows.
What I also have a problem with is gays and lesbians who claim they only want equal rights with straights, but don't. What they REALLY want is socio-political superiority. They can crack jokes about straight people's sexuality, but if I happen to use the term "sissy," as a motivational tool to make a straight male client push a little harder, I'm a fucking homo-phobe? Try this one on Tinkerbell..."Blow me!"
So, Montana is looking awful nice again.
Monday, November 9, 2009
The House Health Care Bill, aka The Cause of the 2d American Revolution
On Friday, November 06, 2009, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”
Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:
“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.”
[page 1]
- - - - - - - - - -
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…”
[page 2]
- - - - - - - - - -
“Criminal penalties. Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:
• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.”
[page 3]
When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.
“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, suddenly, I am a felon if I decide that I know better than the government does what my family and I need for health care?
It's not about care, it's about control.
I BELIEVE that it really is all about a new method to control us. Think about it...
Now, they can hit their gun control goals. Since the government controls the health care industry, and we've already determined that the AMA considers firearms a healthcare issue, the government can simply claim that since firearms raise health care costs, they are going to ban them. We all know where THAT particular slippery slope leads...
If we have government-mandated and controlled health care, suddenly we have ANOTHER form of federal identification number. I'm just a little paranoid, but I'm not at all okay with the government having ANOTHER fucking method to track me....
So, boys and girls, what is the message in all of this? Pile some more ammunition into your storage, cause we're gonna be having to shoot the bastards next. They are welcome to come arrest me because of my "willful evasion." But, whoever gets sent, better come muzzle first, and firing.
Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:
“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.”
[page 1]
- - - - - - - - - -
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…”
[page 2]
- - - - - - - - - -
“Criminal penalties. Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:
• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.”
[page 3]
When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.
“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, suddenly, I am a felon if I decide that I know better than the government does what my family and I need for health care?
It's not about care, it's about control.
I BELIEVE that it really is all about a new method to control us. Think about it...
Now, they can hit their gun control goals. Since the government controls the health care industry, and we've already determined that the AMA considers firearms a healthcare issue, the government can simply claim that since firearms raise health care costs, they are going to ban them. We all know where THAT particular slippery slope leads...
If we have government-mandated and controlled health care, suddenly we have ANOTHER form of federal identification number. I'm just a little paranoid, but I'm not at all okay with the government having ANOTHER fucking method to track me....
So, boys and girls, what is the message in all of this? Pile some more ammunition into your storage, cause we're gonna be having to shoot the bastards next. They are welcome to come arrest me because of my "willful evasion." But, whoever gets sent, better come muzzle first, and firing.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Top Ten Guns for TEOTWAWKI
I read an article with this title on someone’s blog the other day. The dude was an idiot, and was doing nothing more than parroting what he read off someone else’s blog. He didn’t even write it well.
I’ll make an attempt to do better, scout’s honour!
He had a list of lettered attributes that I won’t worry about. I’m not even going to bother with his list, since it had ridiculous shit like a Barrett .50BMG on there. (I LOVE the Barrett as an Anti-Material weapon, but for a survivalist? Maybe not so much, all things considered.)
1.) A semi-automatic, magazine-fed, rifle or carbine.
I don’t care if you pick the AK, or an AR, or an M1A, or the FN-FAL or HKs G3. It really doesn’t matter. Caliber is pretty well irrelevant too, despite the retro-philes who long for the days of the M14 and 7.63mmNATO.
You need something that will put a lot of controlled fire down range, in a relative hurry. Of course, you can never miss fast enough, but good training, coupled with a good weapon, will serve you well.
I think the 7.62x51mmNATO round is over-rated as a regular infantry caliber. Too many old guys remember it well from “back when it was hard!” That’s cool. I wouldn’t tell them to trade it in on a 5.56mmNATO “mouse gun.” Carry what you trust. Just don’t tell me to change what I am comfortable with.
I carried 5.56 the whole seven years I was a soldier, either as an M16A2, and M4A2, or the FN Minimi M249 SAW. I love, and TRUST, the caliber. I’ve never seen it not work when the shooter put the rounds where they needed to be.
Most of the anecdotal evidence of failures-to-stop come from shitty marksmanship. Yes, it happens, even in the U.S. military, because we no longer really train riflemen. Quit worrying about cool optics, and teach the fundamentals of marksmanship, out to the limit of the weapon, EXPECT your subordinates to shoot to the limit of the weapon, and you’ll see a lot fewer failures-to-stop.
The round is inherently accurate. Granted, barrel twist-to-bullet weight have to be factored in, but anytime a shooter can get 1000M match shots out of a 20-inch barrel, you’ve got an accurate weapon. The stated maximum range for a point target, of the M4 series, according to the army, is 500M. That’s pretty fucking good. I’ve seen guys do it too. Hell, I’ve done it, and I’m sure as shit no Gunny Hathcock!
The AK on the other hand, is running neck and neck with the old .308s as the most overrated weapon in the history of firearms! Yes, it’s tougher than boiled owl shit! Yes, it’s so simple the village retard can use it. Yes, it’s a relatively hard-hitting caliber. So, is the .30-30, and no one is shouting that we should issue Winchester 94s to our troops! Ballistically, that’s all the 7.62x39mm is, a .30-30 in a smaller package.
So, grab your AK-47 copy boys! It’s a semi-auto .30-30. Whoo-Hoo! Nope, make mine an AR in 5.56mmNATO.
Regardless of YOUR choice, it’s way more important that you practice with your weapon. Instead of typing inane bullshit about what gun is most effective for TEOTWAWKI, these yahoos should be getting some quality instruction and putting lots of rounds downrange. My apologies to the Michigan Militia guys too, but minute-of-paper plate, at 100 meters, is NOT battlefield accuracy (seriously, I saw it on their webpage once, that was the “standard” for these yahoos!), it’s “I’m an ignorant redneck wannabe Army Ranger” accuracy. Even under stress, with an M4, you should be able to make head shots at 50M. It’s done all the time.
2.) A semi-automatic, magazine-fed handgun.
I know there are a lot of guys out there, with serious combat handgun skills who will give me shit for not putting a revolver on here. Too bad. It’s my fucking list, and I think double-action revolvers are a poor choice for combative applications, outside of a snubby for EDC. Pistols have better ergonomics, making them more accurate, with the same amount of training, higher capacity (cause it’s probably not going to be a one-on-one fight, even post-apocalypse), and are, with the exception of single-action revolvers, more reliable, as well as quicker to clear in the event of a malfunction.
Caliber is even more irrelevant than in the rifle. Granted, a .32 ACP is probably a shitty choice if you are over the age of 8, but 9mm to .45ACP, are all proven man-stoppers, with accurate shot placement. Without it, a .44 Auto-Mag isn’t going to stop a determined attacker.
As with your rifle, get instruction in how to use it well, under combative conditions. Don’t be a gun store commando who talks about all the cool shit he has, but still thinks the sun rises and sets with point-shooting or the Weaver stance! Don’t be a dumbass!
3) a single-action revolver in .22caliber.
The workingman’s outdoor, do-anything gun. Killing pests, teaching the kids to shoot, it does pretty well everything, and they are so light that you can throw it in a rucksack and be done with it. I’ve had to put horses down with one, as well as cattle.
4) a .22LR semi-auto or lever-action carbine
I like the Ruger 10/22. It’s the only firearm they make, that I’ve had positive experiences with. I’ve shot sage rats (ground squirrels), birds, rabbits, squirrels, and (no shit!) a mountain lion. I shot a badger once too, but I don’t recommend that experience, at all! Like the revolver, it’s a do anything gun.
5) a .357 single-action revolver.
Fire .38 caliber rounds, or .357. I don’t think it’s the super-caliber that a lot of people seem to, but I think it’s a good one, and the ability to downgrade to .38 has been handy for me.
6) a .30-caliber bolt-action rifle with telescopic optics
The “sniper” rifle, isn’t. It’s just a good, all-around big-game gun. A .30 caliber bolt-action is capable of extreme accuracy, and heavy enough to put down anything on this continent. I’ve seen guys put down Alaska moose with a .30-06, and I guided a fella who put down an Alaskan brown bear with one round from a .30-06.
The caveat on this rifle is, if you have a .308 for your primary gun, it’s not necessary to have this one. Modern gunsmiths are more than capable of making a super-accurate semi-auto. Hell, the match-grade M1As from Springfield Armory are capable of sub-MOA out of the box!
Well, shit, that’s only six, and I’m done. See, there’s really no reason to own ten fucking guns. As the old adage goes, I’m more scared of the guy with one, really well-used gun than I am of the retard with 10!
With these six weapons, and adequate ammunition and magazines, a person is going to be able to make it through anything that would require a firearm, post-SHTF.
Granted, a shotgun would be nice. I own a Mossberg 500 in 12-gauge, and it’s comforting to know that I have an “alley-broom” that I can also use to hunt our little feathered friends with. Necessary though? Not really.
I’ll make an attempt to do better, scout’s honour!
He had a list of lettered attributes that I won’t worry about. I’m not even going to bother with his list, since it had ridiculous shit like a Barrett .50BMG on there. (I LOVE the Barrett as an Anti-Material weapon, but for a survivalist? Maybe not so much, all things considered.)
1.) A semi-automatic, magazine-fed, rifle or carbine.
I don’t care if you pick the AK, or an AR, or an M1A, or the FN-FAL or HKs G3. It really doesn’t matter. Caliber is pretty well irrelevant too, despite the retro-philes who long for the days of the M14 and 7.63mmNATO.
You need something that will put a lot of controlled fire down range, in a relative hurry. Of course, you can never miss fast enough, but good training, coupled with a good weapon, will serve you well.
I think the 7.62x51mmNATO round is over-rated as a regular infantry caliber. Too many old guys remember it well from “back when it was hard!” That’s cool. I wouldn’t tell them to trade it in on a 5.56mmNATO “mouse gun.” Carry what you trust. Just don’t tell me to change what I am comfortable with.
I carried 5.56 the whole seven years I was a soldier, either as an M16A2, and M4A2, or the FN Minimi M249 SAW. I love, and TRUST, the caliber. I’ve never seen it not work when the shooter put the rounds where they needed to be.
Most of the anecdotal evidence of failures-to-stop come from shitty marksmanship. Yes, it happens, even in the U.S. military, because we no longer really train riflemen. Quit worrying about cool optics, and teach the fundamentals of marksmanship, out to the limit of the weapon, EXPECT your subordinates to shoot to the limit of the weapon, and you’ll see a lot fewer failures-to-stop.
The round is inherently accurate. Granted, barrel twist-to-bullet weight have to be factored in, but anytime a shooter can get 1000M match shots out of a 20-inch barrel, you’ve got an accurate weapon. The stated maximum range for a point target, of the M4 series, according to the army, is 500M. That’s pretty fucking good. I’ve seen guys do it too. Hell, I’ve done it, and I’m sure as shit no Gunny Hathcock!
The AK on the other hand, is running neck and neck with the old .308s as the most overrated weapon in the history of firearms! Yes, it’s tougher than boiled owl shit! Yes, it’s so simple the village retard can use it. Yes, it’s a relatively hard-hitting caliber. So, is the .30-30, and no one is shouting that we should issue Winchester 94s to our troops! Ballistically, that’s all the 7.62x39mm is, a .30-30 in a smaller package.
So, grab your AK-47 copy boys! It’s a semi-auto .30-30. Whoo-Hoo! Nope, make mine an AR in 5.56mmNATO.
Regardless of YOUR choice, it’s way more important that you practice with your weapon. Instead of typing inane bullshit about what gun is most effective for TEOTWAWKI, these yahoos should be getting some quality instruction and putting lots of rounds downrange. My apologies to the Michigan Militia guys too, but minute-of-paper plate, at 100 meters, is NOT battlefield accuracy (seriously, I saw it on their webpage once, that was the “standard” for these yahoos!), it’s “I’m an ignorant redneck wannabe Army Ranger” accuracy. Even under stress, with an M4, you should be able to make head shots at 50M. It’s done all the time.
2.) A semi-automatic, magazine-fed handgun.
I know there are a lot of guys out there, with serious combat handgun skills who will give me shit for not putting a revolver on here. Too bad. It’s my fucking list, and I think double-action revolvers are a poor choice for combative applications, outside of a snubby for EDC. Pistols have better ergonomics, making them more accurate, with the same amount of training, higher capacity (cause it’s probably not going to be a one-on-one fight, even post-apocalypse), and are, with the exception of single-action revolvers, more reliable, as well as quicker to clear in the event of a malfunction.
Caliber is even more irrelevant than in the rifle. Granted, a .32 ACP is probably a shitty choice if you are over the age of 8, but 9mm to .45ACP, are all proven man-stoppers, with accurate shot placement. Without it, a .44 Auto-Mag isn’t going to stop a determined attacker.
As with your rifle, get instruction in how to use it well, under combative conditions. Don’t be a gun store commando who talks about all the cool shit he has, but still thinks the sun rises and sets with point-shooting or the Weaver stance! Don’t be a dumbass!
3) a single-action revolver in .22caliber.
The workingman’s outdoor, do-anything gun. Killing pests, teaching the kids to shoot, it does pretty well everything, and they are so light that you can throw it in a rucksack and be done with it. I’ve had to put horses down with one, as well as cattle.
4) a .22LR semi-auto or lever-action carbine
I like the Ruger 10/22. It’s the only firearm they make, that I’ve had positive experiences with. I’ve shot sage rats (ground squirrels), birds, rabbits, squirrels, and (no shit!) a mountain lion. I shot a badger once too, but I don’t recommend that experience, at all! Like the revolver, it’s a do anything gun.
5) a .357 single-action revolver.
Fire .38 caliber rounds, or .357. I don’t think it’s the super-caliber that a lot of people seem to, but I think it’s a good one, and the ability to downgrade to .38 has been handy for me.
6) a .30-caliber bolt-action rifle with telescopic optics
The “sniper” rifle, isn’t. It’s just a good, all-around big-game gun. A .30 caliber bolt-action is capable of extreme accuracy, and heavy enough to put down anything on this continent. I’ve seen guys put down Alaska moose with a .30-06, and I guided a fella who put down an Alaskan brown bear with one round from a .30-06.
The caveat on this rifle is, if you have a .308 for your primary gun, it’s not necessary to have this one. Modern gunsmiths are more than capable of making a super-accurate semi-auto. Hell, the match-grade M1As from Springfield Armory are capable of sub-MOA out of the box!
Well, shit, that’s only six, and I’m done. See, there’s really no reason to own ten fucking guns. As the old adage goes, I’m more scared of the guy with one, really well-used gun than I am of the retard with 10!
With these six weapons, and adequate ammunition and magazines, a person is going to be able to make it through anything that would require a firearm, post-SHTF.
Granted, a shotgun would be nice. I own a Mossberg 500 in 12-gauge, and it’s comforting to know that I have an “alley-broom” that I can also use to hunt our little feathered friends with. Necessary though? Not really.
Those wacky survivalist-types!
I grew up in the Ozark “mountains” of northern Arkansas, in the 1980s. Think “Shepherd of the Hills.” It was a lot like I imagine growing up in Northern Idaho during the same timeframe was. It was a cultural “mish-mash” of people on the fringes of politics, both hard-right and hard-left. Both sides however, seemed to share a pretty common theme of anti-government, live-and-let-live self-reliant living as an underlying philosophy.
As a result of that (as well as having a paternal grandfather who was/is a “doomsday prophet” type), I have always been a bit of a “closet survivalist.” I do believe that things have gotten progressively worse in a socio-economic and political sense. I don’t think it’s gonna get better any time soon either.
Too many people have gotten too comfortable with a life of ease, waiting for the government to give them shit for “free.” Even our sense of right and wrong has been warped. As an atheist, I certainly don’t believe that the Ten Commandments are the “Word of God,” but I think they are a pretty decent set of social survival rules, and were shared by most of mankind. Now, we make excuses for people who do horrible, evil shit. Fuck that.
It’s gonna get hell-for-worse before it gets better though. At the rate that our economy is plummeting, with only moderate hiccups of recovery, and the media making excuses for acts of terrorism within our own borders, in an attempt to keep people from righteous anger, I don’t see how it can’t. People just don’t give a shit. Half of them only care if they have their internet and satellite television services uninterrupted, while the other half are too busy struggling to feed their kids to give a shit.
About every three or four months, as a result of all this, I go into my “closet survivalist” mode, and start trying to make sure I’ve got my shit together, just in case it all goes to hell in a hurry. It’s sort of a WTSHTF or TEOTWAWKI cramming session. I always come up short on the materials list, though I’m typically pretty confident in my skills sets.
I’ll recognize that I don’t have enough food stored (sometime no food stored! EEK!), or I don’t have enough medical equipment and supplies, or enough ammunition stockpiled to last through one serious Katrina-type situation. My vehicle isn’t adequate, etc. There is always something…
Then, I look at the skills sets side of the coin and realize that I’m really better off than 99.9% of the population, including most “survivalists,” (or “preppers” which is, apparently the term du jour of the “movement.”
I believe there are some key areas that you need to be pretty well-rounded in, in order to have a chance at survival. Food procurement and production (including animal husbandry and gardening), water procurement, shelter construction (clothing falls into the shelter zone in so many ways), fire (construction and –fighting), security and protection (including medical skills, which are as important, if not more so, than pure fighting ability and force protection issues), navigation and travel (including map and compass work, methods of travel, etc), and a few more. I’ve got a solid background in most of these; at least as much as one guy can hope to have. I’ve taken Heinlein serious, at least in that regard.
I grew up on several small places that any “survivalist” would recognize as “retreat homesteads.” We built our own structures, raised most of our own food, and cleared a lot of the land as well. My mother’s ex-husband was a stone mason (remarkably enough, considering his status as a waste of oxygen in all other regards, he was a damned fine stonemason as well), and we learned a great deal of that trade. I learned to run a backhoe at around age 12.
I attended the Level C SERE Course at Ft. Bragg/Camp Mackall, North Carolina. I won’t go into details about it, like a good little soldier, but it is more of a “survival” school than BOSS or some of the “Rabbitstick” type courses ever dreamed of being, even though it doesn’t go much for “let’s play bushman” type primitive-living stuff like they do.
I later taught primitive living skills and wilderness survival (Yep, the “let’s play bushman” type!) in the mountains and deserts of Southern Utah. I taught young people how to track and trap game, how to read a map and compass, how to build fires and prepare food over them, how to build expedient shelters (and how to repair them in 50mph winds, during a blizzard in one instance, while everyone else stayed huddled in their sleeping bags.), and more.
I worked as a ranch cowboy and a horse trainer for several years. I’ve started more than 500 colts under saddle and to harness. I’ve roped thousands of cattle on pasture and in the pens. I’ve been bucked off a pile of horses too. I can shoe a horse better than most school-trained farriers, and can doctor a horse or a cow better than the vet. I’m a decent shade-tree mechanic, whether the work needs to be done on a tractor, backhoe, or a pickup truck (in a pinch, I can work on the engines of irrigation pivots. I can build and repair fence, whether it’s wood, iron pipe, or barbed wire. I can even weld!
I spent a significant amount of time as a framing carpenter, and have actually framed and finished a half-dozen small houses by myself, with just one apprentice/helper. I can run a chainsaw and an axe like an old-time lumberjack (plus, I can use a team of workhorses to drag it out of the woods!)
I can sew and cook. I can paddle a canoe, row a boat, or travel on snowshoes. I can speak Spanish (important even for a “survivalist” in today’s world!).
All in all, I feel pretty confident in my abilities with regards to TEOTWAWKI. I’d like to have more in the way of material preparations, but I’ve spent too much time learning new skills to really procure and store as much as a lot of folks have.
In regards to this post, some of the future Primitive Power posts will probably be about “preparedness” and “survivalism.” I’ve got a few notes already put together, that I’m going to go ahead and post shortly.
As a result of that (as well as having a paternal grandfather who was/is a “doomsday prophet” type), I have always been a bit of a “closet survivalist.” I do believe that things have gotten progressively worse in a socio-economic and political sense. I don’t think it’s gonna get better any time soon either.
Too many people have gotten too comfortable with a life of ease, waiting for the government to give them shit for “free.” Even our sense of right and wrong has been warped. As an atheist, I certainly don’t believe that the Ten Commandments are the “Word of God,” but I think they are a pretty decent set of social survival rules, and were shared by most of mankind. Now, we make excuses for people who do horrible, evil shit. Fuck that.
It’s gonna get hell-for-worse before it gets better though. At the rate that our economy is plummeting, with only moderate hiccups of recovery, and the media making excuses for acts of terrorism within our own borders, in an attempt to keep people from righteous anger, I don’t see how it can’t. People just don’t give a shit. Half of them only care if they have their internet and satellite television services uninterrupted, while the other half are too busy struggling to feed their kids to give a shit.
About every three or four months, as a result of all this, I go into my “closet survivalist” mode, and start trying to make sure I’ve got my shit together, just in case it all goes to hell in a hurry. It’s sort of a WTSHTF or TEOTWAWKI cramming session. I always come up short on the materials list, though I’m typically pretty confident in my skills sets.
I’ll recognize that I don’t have enough food stored (sometime no food stored! EEK!), or I don’t have enough medical equipment and supplies, or enough ammunition stockpiled to last through one serious Katrina-type situation. My vehicle isn’t adequate, etc. There is always something…
Then, I look at the skills sets side of the coin and realize that I’m really better off than 99.9% of the population, including most “survivalists,” (or “preppers” which is, apparently the term du jour of the “movement.”
I believe there are some key areas that you need to be pretty well-rounded in, in order to have a chance at survival. Food procurement and production (including animal husbandry and gardening), water procurement, shelter construction (clothing falls into the shelter zone in so many ways), fire (construction and –fighting), security and protection (including medical skills, which are as important, if not more so, than pure fighting ability and force protection issues), navigation and travel (including map and compass work, methods of travel, etc), and a few more. I’ve got a solid background in most of these; at least as much as one guy can hope to have. I’ve taken Heinlein serious, at least in that regard.
I grew up on several small places that any “survivalist” would recognize as “retreat homesteads.” We built our own structures, raised most of our own food, and cleared a lot of the land as well. My mother’s ex-husband was a stone mason (remarkably enough, considering his status as a waste of oxygen in all other regards, he was a damned fine stonemason as well), and we learned a great deal of that trade. I learned to run a backhoe at around age 12.
I attended the Level C SERE Course at Ft. Bragg/Camp Mackall, North Carolina. I won’t go into details about it, like a good little soldier, but it is more of a “survival” school than BOSS or some of the “Rabbitstick” type courses ever dreamed of being, even though it doesn’t go much for “let’s play bushman” type primitive-living stuff like they do.
I later taught primitive living skills and wilderness survival (Yep, the “let’s play bushman” type!) in the mountains and deserts of Southern Utah. I taught young people how to track and trap game, how to read a map and compass, how to build fires and prepare food over them, how to build expedient shelters (and how to repair them in 50mph winds, during a blizzard in one instance, while everyone else stayed huddled in their sleeping bags.), and more.
I worked as a ranch cowboy and a horse trainer for several years. I’ve started more than 500 colts under saddle and to harness. I’ve roped thousands of cattle on pasture and in the pens. I’ve been bucked off a pile of horses too. I can shoe a horse better than most school-trained farriers, and can doctor a horse or a cow better than the vet. I’m a decent shade-tree mechanic, whether the work needs to be done on a tractor, backhoe, or a pickup truck (in a pinch, I can work on the engines of irrigation pivots. I can build and repair fence, whether it’s wood, iron pipe, or barbed wire. I can even weld!
I spent a significant amount of time as a framing carpenter, and have actually framed and finished a half-dozen small houses by myself, with just one apprentice/helper. I can run a chainsaw and an axe like an old-time lumberjack (plus, I can use a team of workhorses to drag it out of the woods!)
I can sew and cook. I can paddle a canoe, row a boat, or travel on snowshoes. I can speak Spanish (important even for a “survivalist” in today’s world!).
All in all, I feel pretty confident in my abilities with regards to TEOTWAWKI. I’d like to have more in the way of material preparations, but I’ve spent too much time learning new skills to really procure and store as much as a lot of folks have.
In regards to this post, some of the future Primitive Power posts will probably be about “preparedness” and “survivalism.” I’ve got a few notes already put together, that I’m going to go ahead and post shortly.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
You roll too much!
Traditional combat sports like boxing, wrestling, and judo as well as more recent evolutions such as Brazilian Jiujitsu, are far more successful in real fights than "martial arts" like karate and taekwondo. There is a reason for this...
It's not really the techniques of these arts, since there is only a finite number of ways to move four limbs through space in relation to another body that allow you to cause damage. On an important level, the punches of taekwondo really aren't that different from the punches of western boxing. They both strike with the knuckles and they both travel along similar paths through space. Nevertheless, there is a statistically significant difference between the success levels of, let's say, Brazilian Jiujitsu and...Wally Jay's Small-Circle Jiujitsu. Both rely on submission holds and are grappling. Hell, both are Jiujitsu! Yet, they are drastically different.
Of course, most people interested in the subject are aware that the real difference is in the training method. That difference is that modern martial arts and combat sports allow practitioners the ability to practice the techniques at full-speed, full-force, against a resisting opponent.
The "jumping-spinning-reverse-outside-crescent-butterfly-kick" of "Who-Flung-Poo-Kung-Fu" falls apart as a viable fighting technique as soon as the opponent resists. It looks pretty, but it just doesn't work! It requires too much cooperation of the opponent. As soon as a bigger, faster, or stronger opponent jams the kick, the kicker ends up going ass-over-teakettle and being on the recieving end of a "Berkeley Stomp." (Think the beginning of American History X, when Edward Norton's character makes the black gangbanger place his open mouth against the curb before stomping on the back of his head!)
I have a student that we'll call "Suzie." Suzie is an 18 year old college freshman. She's 5'2" tall and weighs about 110 pounds....in jeans, shoes, and a heavy hoodie sweatshirt. She has no athletic background.
I have another student that we'll call "Collin." He is also an 18 year old college freshman (they went to HS together actually....). Collin though, is 6'2" and 240+ pounds. He played HS football, on the offensive line, and wrestled his sophomore year.
"Traditional martial arts" like taekwondo will tell you that, using their patented, secret techniques, Suzie can defeat Collin. They tell her that using a reverse punch, if she focuses her "chi" will allow her to punch or kick hard enough to injure Collin. They never allow the two of them to spar full-contact though, because they know, down deep, that it just doesn't work. It's bullshit!
I've watched Suzie use the hip heist sweep and the elevator sweep from the guard to reverse the bottom position consistently, while rolling against Collin, going full-speed. She KNOWS that this shit works, because she uses it successfully every time she trains. She can pull off a kimura lock against someone as big as Collin, and she knows it...because she's done it.
2) The second benefit of rolling as a training tool is that it develops genuine confidence in the fighter's ability. Suzie KNOWS that she can fight someone who weighs twice her bodyweight. She does it regularly. If she was studying taekwondo, she'd go years without sparring full-force, if she ever got the opportunity to do so...
This confidence allows her to use her training successfully in self-defense. She can stay calm and think her way through a situation, because she knows her skill level, and she knows that it really works. She's not forced to overcompensate by being "too" brutal or going ballistic before there is a genuine threat.
These are just two of the most important benefits that I've noticed after 20 years in this game. From judo and boxing to the last fifteen years of BJJ training, I've seen the value of rolling, or sparring, as a training tool.
There is a drawback to it though...too many coaches use it too much.
HOLY SHIT! DID I JUST SAY THAT COACHES HAVE THEIR FIGHTERS ROLL TOO MUCH?
You're goddamned right I did.
I don't know if it's laziness, or ignorance of better coaching methods, or just a desire to "train the way the teacher did." I don't really care either. It's a shitty method. Throwing brand-new beginners into the mix, rolling, is fucking stupid.
Contemporary sports science tells us that it takes several thousand repetitions of a specific skill in order to program it into the neural pathways for proprioceptive comprehension. Yet, coaches have their students, who might have drilled any given technique less than 50 times, jump in and try to use it while rolling. Then they expect them to succeed.
It doesn't work that way. What happens is they get pummeled by more advanced, or just bigger students, and what techniques they do try to apply fall apart completely. It's even harder to reprogram poorly programmed techniques than it is to program new techniques, but that's essentially what happens in gyms throughout the world daily. No fucking wonder it takes people ten years to earn a black belt. They use piss-poor teaching methods.
At Triumph Martial Arts, even though I've been taught BJJ the same way, we use a more modern training method. New students don't roll. They drill the fundamental techniques over and over. For the first month or two..sometimes three, they don't do anything but drill specific techniques, with little resistance from their partner.
Then, they'll slowly start being introduced to resistance through positional sparring drills. The "Guard Game" is one example. It is a pretty basic Jits drill, yet one I don't see used often enough. The guy on the bottom has to try and sweep or submit the fighter on top. The fighter on top, at the same time, has to try and pass guard. As soon as one or the other succeeds, they switch positions and start again. Basic positional sparring drills like this might make up the remainder of the first six months of training in some cases. (Usually it only takes about a month of this though.)
Once the student has demonstrated the ability to consistently use proper technique against a resisting opponent, under these controlled circumstances, then they will graduate to free-sparring, or what most people think of when they think of "rolling."
Even with advanced students though, only 5-10 minutes, at the end of a class period, will be spent free-sparring. Instead, most of a given class will be spent drilling basic techniques, with maybe one new technique introduced each week. Complete and total mastery of a few techniques is far more important than a passing familiarity with a whole slew of techniques.
I've found it to be a pretty efficient teaching and learning model. Let me know what YOU think though!
It's not really the techniques of these arts, since there is only a finite number of ways to move four limbs through space in relation to another body that allow you to cause damage. On an important level, the punches of taekwondo really aren't that different from the punches of western boxing. They both strike with the knuckles and they both travel along similar paths through space. Nevertheless, there is a statistically significant difference between the success levels of, let's say, Brazilian Jiujitsu and...Wally Jay's Small-Circle Jiujitsu. Both rely on submission holds and are grappling. Hell, both are Jiujitsu! Yet, they are drastically different.
Of course, most people interested in the subject are aware that the real difference is in the training method. That difference is that modern martial arts and combat sports allow practitioners the ability to practice the techniques at full-speed, full-force, against a resisting opponent.
The "jumping-spinning-reverse-outside-crescent-butterfly-kick" of "Who-Flung-Poo-Kung-Fu" falls apart as a viable fighting technique as soon as the opponent resists. It looks pretty, but it just doesn't work! It requires too much cooperation of the opponent. As soon as a bigger, faster, or stronger opponent jams the kick, the kicker ends up going ass-over-teakettle and being on the recieving end of a "Berkeley Stomp." (Think the beginning of American History X, when Edward Norton's character makes the black gangbanger place his open mouth against the curb before stomping on the back of his head!)
I have a student that we'll call "Suzie." Suzie is an 18 year old college freshman. She's 5'2" tall and weighs about 110 pounds....in jeans, shoes, and a heavy hoodie sweatshirt. She has no athletic background.
I have another student that we'll call "Collin." He is also an 18 year old college freshman (they went to HS together actually....). Collin though, is 6'2" and 240+ pounds. He played HS football, on the offensive line, and wrestled his sophomore year.
"Traditional martial arts" like taekwondo will tell you that, using their patented, secret techniques, Suzie can defeat Collin. They tell her that using a reverse punch, if she focuses her "chi" will allow her to punch or kick hard enough to injure Collin. They never allow the two of them to spar full-contact though, because they know, down deep, that it just doesn't work. It's bullshit!
I've watched Suzie use the hip heist sweep and the elevator sweep from the guard to reverse the bottom position consistently, while rolling against Collin, going full-speed. She KNOWS that this shit works, because she uses it successfully every time she trains. She can pull off a kimura lock against someone as big as Collin, and she knows it...because she's done it.
2) The second benefit of rolling as a training tool is that it develops genuine confidence in the fighter's ability. Suzie KNOWS that she can fight someone who weighs twice her bodyweight. She does it regularly. If she was studying taekwondo, she'd go years without sparring full-force, if she ever got the opportunity to do so...
This confidence allows her to use her training successfully in self-defense. She can stay calm and think her way through a situation, because she knows her skill level, and she knows that it really works. She's not forced to overcompensate by being "too" brutal or going ballistic before there is a genuine threat.
These are just two of the most important benefits that I've noticed after 20 years in this game. From judo and boxing to the last fifteen years of BJJ training, I've seen the value of rolling, or sparring, as a training tool.
There is a drawback to it though...too many coaches use it too much.
HOLY SHIT! DID I JUST SAY THAT COACHES HAVE THEIR FIGHTERS ROLL TOO MUCH?
You're goddamned right I did.
I don't know if it's laziness, or ignorance of better coaching methods, or just a desire to "train the way the teacher did." I don't really care either. It's a shitty method. Throwing brand-new beginners into the mix, rolling, is fucking stupid.
Contemporary sports science tells us that it takes several thousand repetitions of a specific skill in order to program it into the neural pathways for proprioceptive comprehension. Yet, coaches have their students, who might have drilled any given technique less than 50 times, jump in and try to use it while rolling. Then they expect them to succeed.
It doesn't work that way. What happens is they get pummeled by more advanced, or just bigger students, and what techniques they do try to apply fall apart completely. It's even harder to reprogram poorly programmed techniques than it is to program new techniques, but that's essentially what happens in gyms throughout the world daily. No fucking wonder it takes people ten years to earn a black belt. They use piss-poor teaching methods.
At Triumph Martial Arts, even though I've been taught BJJ the same way, we use a more modern training method. New students don't roll. They drill the fundamental techniques over and over. For the first month or two..sometimes three, they don't do anything but drill specific techniques, with little resistance from their partner.
Then, they'll slowly start being introduced to resistance through positional sparring drills. The "Guard Game" is one example. It is a pretty basic Jits drill, yet one I don't see used often enough. The guy on the bottom has to try and sweep or submit the fighter on top. The fighter on top, at the same time, has to try and pass guard. As soon as one or the other succeeds, they switch positions and start again. Basic positional sparring drills like this might make up the remainder of the first six months of training in some cases. (Usually it only takes about a month of this though.)
Once the student has demonstrated the ability to consistently use proper technique against a resisting opponent, under these controlled circumstances, then they will graduate to free-sparring, or what most people think of when they think of "rolling."
Even with advanced students though, only 5-10 minutes, at the end of a class period, will be spent free-sparring. Instead, most of a given class will be spent drilling basic techniques, with maybe one new technique introduced each week. Complete and total mastery of a few techniques is far more important than a passing familiarity with a whole slew of techniques.
I've found it to be a pretty efficient teaching and learning model. Let me know what YOU think though!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Accountability
I am a strength and conditioning coach (plus teaching a boxing class and an MMA/unarmed combatives class) here in Portlnd, Oregon. Other than my supposed expertise regarding nutrition, training methods and supplementation (which basically anyone can acquire with a little effort and study), one of the biggest services I provide my clientele is accountability.
They know they have someone who is keeping track of how often they are in the gym training and how much effort they are putting into it. It keeps them driven, because most of us don't want to let someone down. We'll work harder to appease someone else's image of us than we will to achieve our own goals.
Today was the first time all week that I've worked out. For the last three weeks, I've averaged one strength training session per week. That's not anywhere near enough to maintain my strength, let alone continue to improve it. My squat weight remained the same, but my push-press dropped from 205lbx5 to 155lbx5. Ouch.
So, I'm going to start putting my workouts up here, in the hope that somehow it will help me to remain accountable. So, if you happen to read this and realize that I haven't posted a training session in a while, drop me a line and chew my ass!
I'm lifting 5 days a week (3x/week primary lifts- BB Back Squats, BB Deadlifts, BB PowerCleans, and BB Push-Press/Overhead Press, plus weighted sit-ups, weighted dips, and chin-ups. 2x/week auxiliary strength training- neck work, forearm work, extra ab/core work).
I'm doing Jitz on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm working on my Crazy Monkey Defense Boxing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
My cardio is pretty well limited to Guerrilla Cardio/Tabata Intervals. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'm doing 3x sets of Tabata Intervals on the treadmill. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I'm doing 3x sets of Tabata Intervals of kettlebell swings.
If that doesn't get me back to elite status again in a hurry, it's because I'm overtraining. I don't believe in overtraining. I believe in not eating or sleeping enough! We'll see.
Keep me accountable!
They know they have someone who is keeping track of how often they are in the gym training and how much effort they are putting into it. It keeps them driven, because most of us don't want to let someone down. We'll work harder to appease someone else's image of us than we will to achieve our own goals.
Today was the first time all week that I've worked out. For the last three weeks, I've averaged one strength training session per week. That's not anywhere near enough to maintain my strength, let alone continue to improve it. My squat weight remained the same, but my push-press dropped from 205lbx5 to 155lbx5. Ouch.
So, I'm going to start putting my workouts up here, in the hope that somehow it will help me to remain accountable. So, if you happen to read this and realize that I haven't posted a training session in a while, drop me a line and chew my ass!
I'm lifting 5 days a week (3x/week primary lifts- BB Back Squats, BB Deadlifts, BB PowerCleans, and BB Push-Press/Overhead Press, plus weighted sit-ups, weighted dips, and chin-ups. 2x/week auxiliary strength training- neck work, forearm work, extra ab/core work).
I'm doing Jitz on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm working on my Crazy Monkey Defense Boxing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
My cardio is pretty well limited to Guerrilla Cardio/Tabata Intervals. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'm doing 3x sets of Tabata Intervals on the treadmill. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I'm doing 3x sets of Tabata Intervals of kettlebell swings.
If that doesn't get me back to elite status again in a hurry, it's because I'm overtraining. I don't believe in overtraining. I believe in not eating or sleeping enough! We'll see.
Keep me accountable!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Abbreviated Periodization
I read an interesting article from Charles Staley today. http://www.staleytrainingprograms.com/reprintable-articles/strength/direct/structural-vs-random.htm
There's quite a bit I disagree with about what he wrote, but there is also some I have to nod my head yes to.
Considering the popularity of Crossfit and related methods in the media and online right now, it seems that the vast majority of people really, really like the randomized approach. As Charles points out in his article, there are two major benefits to this approach:
1) the new-car smell
2) specificity to randomized and/or varied professional or athletic needs.
"The new-car smell" is, of course, the big seller for shit like Crossfit.
People have short attention spans today.
Seriously, ask a guy in his mid-twenties to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. He'll take one look at it, frown, and ask if there is a movie. (Yes, and it's good, but it's not the book.)
MTV and shitty half-assed articles on the internet are responsible for this shit. What's new is good, what's old is bad?
The use and throw-away mindset is appalling. Just because it worked for dad doesn't mean it won't work for you.
Hell, it's MORE likely to work for you! Call it genetics.
A total and complete lack of self-discipline leads to Crossfit. It gets people into "shape" but it doesn't make them elite. It sure doesn't make them a T-Rex.
"Specificity to randomized and/or varied, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum..."
Let's look at this one from the .mil approach. I was a Ranger, I've got a pretty good grasp on this one, even this late in the day.
Let's take a Ranger private in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion. One morning, after PT and breakfast, they get an OpOrder to do a raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda safehouse in Kirkuk. They run the mission and Joe Snuffy is tasked with grabbing the suspected terrorist and flex-cuffing him. Cool. He's gonna need a few different fitness factors to accomplish that...
1) He's gonna need anaerobic power and endurance. Why? He's got to sprint off the helicopter, and to the target building. He's gonna stack on the door with his team for a couple of seconds, then go barrelling through the door weapon up. This is gonna take a total of less than 60 seconds. IF he's been trained and conditioned right, he's still in the anaerobic threshold zone. Then, he's got to wrestle the suspect to the ground. That calls for anaerobic power and
2) Muscular Strength and Power. He's got to be stronger than the suspect, as well as able to use that strength FASTER than the opponent. Let's say he shoots a double leg, smashes Harry Hajji to the floor, and swarms up into the mount. So far so good. He flips the suspect onto his belly, grabs a wrist and wrenches an arm around to flex-cuff. Now he needs to have...
3) aerobic endurance, because he has to slow his heart rate WAY THE FUCK DOWN in order to manage the fine motor skills task of putting the cuffs on. Cool.
4) Now, he's got to carry the suspect to the exfil bird, because the recalcitrant bastard refuses to walk. Joe Snuffy needs muscular strength and endurance now, cause he's got to walk all the way to the HLZ with his equipment load, PLUS the weight of the suspect.
Obviously, there is a variety of energy demands on the tactical athlete at this point. What is the best method of training them? Is it Crossfit, with its random amalgamation of methods and techniques? Or, is there a better way? I believe there is a better way.
It's called periodization.Now, for the tactical athlete T-Rex, whether a Ranger, police officer, or armed citizen, a classical seasonal-based periodization scheme is going to fall short. He doesn't know WHEN his season is. He needs to be conditioned as tight as possible, all year round.
The method to this is abbreviated periodization (I made that term up-I think- that's why it's a fucking mouthful to spit out. I have a talent with words that way....). Instead of eight or ten weeks for a meso-cycle, and a year for a macro-cycle, we abbreviate it. The entire macro-cycle might take a total of two months, and mesocycles are combined.
"How the fuck do you combine meso-cycles?" You ask. (I know, I asked myself the same question when I was devising this strategy!)
Really though, it's pretty simple, especially if you use the T-Rex Strength Training approach. I lift 5X5s doing a whole body routine with ground-based, multi-joint, compound movement exercises. My strength training workout, with a partner and lengthy rest periods, takes no more than 45 minutes. I do short-duration, high-intensity cardio intervals, in the form of Tabata drills on the treadmill or exercise bike earlier in the day on those three days. On the off-days I do long, steady-duration (LSD) training for 30-60 minutes, trying to keep my heart rate right around 120-140 beats per minute (BPM).
That's for my general conditioning/strength phase. It lasts about four weeks.
Next comes a two week power phase. I do the same 5X5 program, but the first lift is varied each day. One day I'll do the barbell back squats first, then on wednesdays, I'll do overhead push-presses first, and on friday, I'll do power cleans first.
JUST FOR THE POWER PHASE, when I do these exercises first, instead of doing 5X5, I'll do 5 sets of heavy singles, with ascending weight until my 5th heavy single is really my 1-Rep max, or damned close to it. My goal is to get it up as FAST as humanly possible. See, I've already got pretty good rate of power production because I do power cleans and push-presses heavy during my strength phase. This just maximizes it.
My cardio stays the same.
The third phase is actually pretty similar to what Crossfit does. It's the metabolic conditioning phase, and like the power phase, is very abbreviated. No more than two weeks, and usually just a week of three workouts. I mix high intensity intervals with multi-joint, compound movement exercises, from kettleball swings to sub-maximal squats and push-ups. By doing these combined, and then resting only long enough to let my HR drop TO 120 bpm, I'm training my energy systems to work harder, under more stress, with less of a rest interval.
So, in the course of two months, I've managed to increase my strength, power, and energy production, without letting any one factor go long enough, without training, for it to weaken. It's the perfect system for tactical fitness.
Of course, some would ask, "What about skills development?"
What about it? There is nothing in this conditioning program that says you can't keep rolling or sparring, or shooting, or all of the above combined.
For the soldier, the LSD work can be roadmarching. For the BJJ guy, LSD might be rolling, or it might be a run and rolling might be a separate activity.
The key is that the whole program is STRUCTURED. This means that, as long as you follow the structure, you don't miss anything in training your attributes. Too often in the randomized protocol, weaknesses get ignored because training them is not as "fun." Additionally, once a quarter I believe in a total fitness assessment, from blood pressure and resting heart rate, to strength, power, and endurance tests. If you discover a weakness in one area, the structured program allows you to modify the structure to address that weakness.
There's quite a bit I disagree with about what he wrote, but there is also some I have to nod my head yes to.
Considering the popularity of Crossfit and related methods in the media and online right now, it seems that the vast majority of people really, really like the randomized approach. As Charles points out in his article, there are two major benefits to this approach:
1) the new-car smell
2) specificity to randomized and/or varied professional or athletic needs.
"The new-car smell" is, of course, the big seller for shit like Crossfit.
People have short attention spans today.
Seriously, ask a guy in his mid-twenties to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. He'll take one look at it, frown, and ask if there is a movie. (Yes, and it's good, but it's not the book.)
MTV and shitty half-assed articles on the internet are responsible for this shit. What's new is good, what's old is bad?
The use and throw-away mindset is appalling. Just because it worked for dad doesn't mean it won't work for you.
Hell, it's MORE likely to work for you! Call it genetics.
A total and complete lack of self-discipline leads to Crossfit. It gets people into "shape" but it doesn't make them elite. It sure doesn't make them a T-Rex.
"Specificity to randomized and/or varied, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum..."
Let's look at this one from the .mil approach. I was a Ranger, I've got a pretty good grasp on this one, even this late in the day.
Let's take a Ranger private in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion. One morning, after PT and breakfast, they get an OpOrder to do a raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda safehouse in Kirkuk. They run the mission and Joe Snuffy is tasked with grabbing the suspected terrorist and flex-cuffing him. Cool. He's gonna need a few different fitness factors to accomplish that...
1) He's gonna need anaerobic power and endurance. Why? He's got to sprint off the helicopter, and to the target building. He's gonna stack on the door with his team for a couple of seconds, then go barrelling through the door weapon up. This is gonna take a total of less than 60 seconds. IF he's been trained and conditioned right, he's still in the anaerobic threshold zone. Then, he's got to wrestle the suspect to the ground. That calls for anaerobic power and
2) Muscular Strength and Power. He's got to be stronger than the suspect, as well as able to use that strength FASTER than the opponent. Let's say he shoots a double leg, smashes Harry Hajji to the floor, and swarms up into the mount. So far so good. He flips the suspect onto his belly, grabs a wrist and wrenches an arm around to flex-cuff. Now he needs to have...
3) aerobic endurance, because he has to slow his heart rate WAY THE FUCK DOWN in order to manage the fine motor skills task of putting the cuffs on. Cool.
4) Now, he's got to carry the suspect to the exfil bird, because the recalcitrant bastard refuses to walk. Joe Snuffy needs muscular strength and endurance now, cause he's got to walk all the way to the HLZ with his equipment load, PLUS the weight of the suspect.
Obviously, there is a variety of energy demands on the tactical athlete at this point. What is the best method of training them? Is it Crossfit, with its random amalgamation of methods and techniques? Or, is there a better way? I believe there is a better way.
It's called periodization.Now, for the tactical athlete T-Rex, whether a Ranger, police officer, or armed citizen, a classical seasonal-based periodization scheme is going to fall short. He doesn't know WHEN his season is. He needs to be conditioned as tight as possible, all year round.
The method to this is abbreviated periodization (I made that term up-I think- that's why it's a fucking mouthful to spit out. I have a talent with words that way....). Instead of eight or ten weeks for a meso-cycle, and a year for a macro-cycle, we abbreviate it. The entire macro-cycle might take a total of two months, and mesocycles are combined.
"How the fuck do you combine meso-cycles?" You ask. (I know, I asked myself the same question when I was devising this strategy!)
Really though, it's pretty simple, especially if you use the T-Rex Strength Training approach. I lift 5X5s doing a whole body routine with ground-based, multi-joint, compound movement exercises. My strength training workout, with a partner and lengthy rest periods, takes no more than 45 minutes. I do short-duration, high-intensity cardio intervals, in the form of Tabata drills on the treadmill or exercise bike earlier in the day on those three days. On the off-days I do long, steady-duration (LSD) training for 30-60 minutes, trying to keep my heart rate right around 120-140 beats per minute (BPM).
That's for my general conditioning/strength phase. It lasts about four weeks.
Next comes a two week power phase. I do the same 5X5 program, but the first lift is varied each day. One day I'll do the barbell back squats first, then on wednesdays, I'll do overhead push-presses first, and on friday, I'll do power cleans first.
JUST FOR THE POWER PHASE, when I do these exercises first, instead of doing 5X5, I'll do 5 sets of heavy singles, with ascending weight until my 5th heavy single is really my 1-Rep max, or damned close to it. My goal is to get it up as FAST as humanly possible. See, I've already got pretty good rate of power production because I do power cleans and push-presses heavy during my strength phase. This just maximizes it.
My cardio stays the same.
The third phase is actually pretty similar to what Crossfit does. It's the metabolic conditioning phase, and like the power phase, is very abbreviated. No more than two weeks, and usually just a week of three workouts. I mix high intensity intervals with multi-joint, compound movement exercises, from kettleball swings to sub-maximal squats and push-ups. By doing these combined, and then resting only long enough to let my HR drop TO 120 bpm, I'm training my energy systems to work harder, under more stress, with less of a rest interval.
So, in the course of two months, I've managed to increase my strength, power, and energy production, without letting any one factor go long enough, without training, for it to weaken. It's the perfect system for tactical fitness.
Of course, some would ask, "What about skills development?"
What about it? There is nothing in this conditioning program that says you can't keep rolling or sparring, or shooting, or all of the above combined.
For the soldier, the LSD work can be roadmarching. For the BJJ guy, LSD might be rolling, or it might be a run and rolling might be a separate activity.
The key is that the whole program is STRUCTURED. This means that, as long as you follow the structure, you don't miss anything in training your attributes. Too often in the randomized protocol, weaknesses get ignored because training them is not as "fun." Additionally, once a quarter I believe in a total fitness assessment, from blood pressure and resting heart rate, to strength, power, and endurance tests. If you discover a weakness in one area, the structured program allows you to modify the structure to address that weakness.
Attribution
There is an issue on-going on Total Protection Interactive.com (TPI) with outsiders failing to attribute their work to the original developers.
I'm a big fan of TPI and guys like "Southnarc," "KIT," etc...I believe that what TPI has developed is the current and future of cutting-edge tactical application and theory.
Hell, I don't even really blame guys like Gabe Suarez and Richard Nance for "borrowing" the concepts and re-working them to fit their paradigm (as long as the paradigm isn't in conflict with reality).
What I have an issue with is outright theft. I didn't create any of the concepts I use in my training of clients, from strength training to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Crazy Monkey Defense. I feel like I'm pretty good about attributing the concepts to the guys that I borrowed them from. The idea of theft appalls me.
Especially from Gabe. Hell, I respected the shit out of Gabe for a long time. Granted, his Bible-thumping kind of annoyed the shit out of me, but I can respect a man's religious beliefs without agreeing with him.
Now though?
I know he's a hypocrite and a liar. He goes on and on about "Hajji-this and "Hajji-that" (I'm opposed to Muslim extremists too, don't get me wrong!), but I think his real problem is their brand of justice.
According to Sharia law, you steal something, you get your fucking hand cut off.
So, Gabe is maybe afraid they'd cut his goddamned hand off because of his intellectual property theft? Maybe?
I don't know Richard Nance from Adam, but I know he tried, unsuccessfully, to use the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) developed within the TPI community. I've seen clips of the video...dude failed, big time.
I've seen first month white belts in BJJ and Junior High wrestlers with better applications than that. I'm relatively certain that very few people read this blog, and I'm okay with that for the time being. If any of them read this though, I'd just say one thing...
"GROW THE FUCK UP AND DO THE WORK!"
I'm a big fan of TPI and guys like "Southnarc," "KIT," etc...I believe that what TPI has developed is the current and future of cutting-edge tactical application and theory.
Hell, I don't even really blame guys like Gabe Suarez and Richard Nance for "borrowing" the concepts and re-working them to fit their paradigm (as long as the paradigm isn't in conflict with reality).
What I have an issue with is outright theft. I didn't create any of the concepts I use in my training of clients, from strength training to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Crazy Monkey Defense. I feel like I'm pretty good about attributing the concepts to the guys that I borrowed them from. The idea of theft appalls me.
Especially from Gabe. Hell, I respected the shit out of Gabe for a long time. Granted, his Bible-thumping kind of annoyed the shit out of me, but I can respect a man's religious beliefs without agreeing with him.
Now though?
I know he's a hypocrite and a liar. He goes on and on about "Hajji-this and "Hajji-that" (I'm opposed to Muslim extremists too, don't get me wrong!), but I think his real problem is their brand of justice.
According to Sharia law, you steal something, you get your fucking hand cut off.
So, Gabe is maybe afraid they'd cut his goddamned hand off because of his intellectual property theft? Maybe?
I don't know Richard Nance from Adam, but I know he tried, unsuccessfully, to use the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) developed within the TPI community. I've seen clips of the video...dude failed, big time.
I've seen first month white belts in BJJ and Junior High wrestlers with better applications than that. I'm relatively certain that very few people read this blog, and I'm okay with that for the time being. If any of them read this though, I'd just say one thing...
"GROW THE FUCK UP AND DO THE WORK!"
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Ideal Strength Gym
Here is my concept of the ultimate, T-Rex Gym. We'll call it T-Rex Training, for the sake of argument.
At T-Rex Training, the goal is to get stronger and more fit. Simple as that. It's not a social club, it's not a dating hook-up, it's not a psychiatrist's office. We come to get strong.
It's not the cheapest membership in town, but it's still the best deal. There are no fancy carpets, the paint is peeling, the television (yes, just one in the whole place) is turned to FoxNews. Nothing else, unless it's fight night or there happens to be a really good football game on!
You get all that ambience for $150 a month...
But wait! There's more! (I'm like a late-night television pitchman, huh?).
You don't get to just come in and do whatever workout you feel like doing. Every-single-fucking-training session that you do is planned. Each quarter, you sit down with a coach and discuss what your fitness goals are for the quarter. Then, the coach goes and plans your program for you. Then, every single time you come into train, the coach is there, coaching you. Granted, you're not alone. There'll be three or four other guys being coached at the same time, all of whom are on the same basic plan as you are.
So, if you're on a four-a-week program, you're getting each training session for less than $10.00 each! If you're on a three-a-week program, you're getting it for just slightly more...
Considering that a Globo-Gym like 24Hour Fitness will charge you $25.00 a month (if you pay for the entire year, up front), and $75-80/hour for personal training, how can you go wrong with T-Rex Training? Oh, that's right, you won't be impressing the blonde bimbo on the treadmill with the fake ta-tas by doing dumbbell curls with the 10-pounders...
What you will get is training by a coach that knows what the fuck he is doing, instead of some 19 year-old kid that was flipping burgers at McDonald's last year, until he decided he could make more money by teaching you how to do something he learned in a one-day training certification...
At T-Rex Training, the goal is to get stronger and more fit. Simple as that. It's not a social club, it's not a dating hook-up, it's not a psychiatrist's office. We come to get strong.
It's not the cheapest membership in town, but it's still the best deal. There are no fancy carpets, the paint is peeling, the television (yes, just one in the whole place) is turned to FoxNews. Nothing else, unless it's fight night or there happens to be a really good football game on!
You get all that ambience for $150 a month...
But wait! There's more! (I'm like a late-night television pitchman, huh?).
You don't get to just come in and do whatever workout you feel like doing. Every-single-fucking-training session that you do is planned. Each quarter, you sit down with a coach and discuss what your fitness goals are for the quarter. Then, the coach goes and plans your program for you. Then, every single time you come into train, the coach is there, coaching you. Granted, you're not alone. There'll be three or four other guys being coached at the same time, all of whom are on the same basic plan as you are.
So, if you're on a four-a-week program, you're getting each training session for less than $10.00 each! If you're on a three-a-week program, you're getting it for just slightly more...
Considering that a Globo-Gym like 24Hour Fitness will charge you $25.00 a month (if you pay for the entire year, up front), and $75-80/hour for personal training, how can you go wrong with T-Rex Training? Oh, that's right, you won't be impressing the blonde bimbo on the treadmill with the fake ta-tas by doing dumbbell curls with the 10-pounders...
What you will get is training by a coach that knows what the fuck he is doing, instead of some 19 year-old kid that was flipping burgers at McDonald's last year, until he decided he could make more money by teaching you how to do something he learned in a one-day training certification...
The Power of 5X5
Anyone who has been involved in strength training for any appreciable amount of time has probably heard of the 5X5 protocols. It's an old-ass method supposedly developed by legendary bodybuilder Reg Park in the 1940s. Many of the strength and physique athletes of the '60s and '70s used it to build the size and strength they are renowned for. The Governator used it, so did Lou "The Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno, and many, many others.
Legendary strength coach Bill Starr used it. He was the first professional, full-time strength and conditioning coach in the NCAA. All these guys used it and got results because it fucking works. Where did we get this idea that 3X10-12 was the key to hypertrophy? From lab studies on out-of-shape doughnut munchers that were strength training for the first time. Of fucking course it worked on them. ANY STRENGTH TRAINING would have worked, they were out of shape genius!
The 5X5 works for a couple of reasons. Most notably because, if you're doing it right, you're doing it heavy. Lifting heavy shit will make you strong. Lifting heavy shit and eating enough will make you big. It's really that simple. If your goal is to get big and strong in a hurry, you need to do two things- (1) you need to eat a lot. Unless you are already a fat body, that means you are goning to need to eat more than you already do. Don't whine at me that you will get fat. What you are eating now is not enough or you would get bigger. If you are maintaining weight now, at your current activity level and are strength training....add 3500 calories a week (that's 500 calories a day for the mathematically challenged!), and you will gain one pound a week. If you eat adequate protein and carbs, and lift heavy shit regularly, that pound will be muscle. That's the only way to get bigger and more muscular. Pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?
If you add one pound of muscle per week, you will get stronger. Again, pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?
So, how do you do the 5X5? One method is to start by lifting the first four sets as gradually increasing amounts of weight, until you do a maximum-effort 5-rep max on the last set. It works. You'll get stronger.
Another method is to do the first two sets as warm-ups, then do the last 3 sets as a 5-rep max effort, with adequate recovery time between sets.
The final method is "sets-across." This involves doing a couple of warm-up sets, then all 5 sets are as a 5-rep max loading effort. This is probably the best all-around method. It WILL make you big and strong, while also offering some level of stamina.
Rest intervals? Between set rest intervals are dependent on two factors, your recovery time and how much weight you are lifting. If you limit yourself to 30 seconds of rest between sets, your 5-rep max is going to be considerably less than if you rest of 2-3 minutes between sets.
If you rest for 5-10 minutes between sets though, you lose any sort of benefit at all in regards to stamina development. My rule, and the one I consider the most sensible and useful, is to wait as long as it takes...sort of...
I wait a minimum of 2 minutes, or 120 seconds. The intra-cellular supply of ATP has largely been replenished in that period of time. Your nervous system should be largely re-set by then as well. If I feel like I need a little more rest, I'll take it. I will not, however, let my rest interval go longer than 5 minutes. That's just kind of ridiculous I think. If I was training to be a competitive O-Lifter or Powerlifter, I'd take more time, for certain. For sports-conditioning strength training though, less than 5 minutes is pretty well the cake!
So, we're doing 5X5, sets across, with a 2-3 minute rest interval in between. What other details are important?
Exercise selection and training frequency.
For sports applications, from football to wrestling; from baseball, basketball, and rugby, to mixed-martial arts and self-defense, isolation exercises are, with a few VERY specific exceptions, a flat-stupid, fucking waste of time.
Let me put it this way...If you are doing bicep curls and can't do twenty chin-ups, you're a douchebag! I believe in whole-body movements as much as possible. Don't even try and throw the whole, "Ooh, but I'm so important, I don't have TIME to do a whole body workout." argument at me either. I can smoke your ass on a whole body program that works in less time than you can do a solid, bodypart-isolation workout.
So, what kind of exercises? Multi-joint, compound movement exercises, as absolutely much as possible. Your workout should be based around the T-Rex Five: Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, Overhead Press, and Power Cleans. If you don't know how to do power cleans, and are too scared or too stupid to ask for coaching, you COULD replace them with bent-over barbell rows, or even something like high pulls. It'll be less effective, but hey, you're too much of a pussy to do power cleans anyway, so who cares, right?
Supplemental exercises should be used also...pull-ups/chin-ups, parallel dips, push-ups, and ab/core work, like the fucking ab wheel that I go on about.
Three workouts a week is the norm, but you COULD go to a four a week if you split them up into an upper-body/lower-body split, and just did deadlifts on the last workout day of the week. It's really not worth the effort though.
Just do a 3-a-week, split like I do mine. I do my powerlifts- squat, bench, and deadlift one workout, then my O-lift variations and the supplemental exercises the next workout, contintually alternating them. Each time you do a workout on your mid-day (making it the only time you'll do the workout that week), add 5 pounds to every exercise. This even gives you a lower-intensity (not LOW) workout regularly, cause the third time you do an exercise at a given weight it's going to be easier than it was when you added the weight.
It's a simple program, but one that has been proven over and over and over and over to work. Try it. Give it one month and see if you don't get bigger and stronger. You will. Then, you can come back and thank me.
Legendary strength coach Bill Starr used it. He was the first professional, full-time strength and conditioning coach in the NCAA. All these guys used it and got results because it fucking works. Where did we get this idea that 3X10-12 was the key to hypertrophy? From lab studies on out-of-shape doughnut munchers that were strength training for the first time. Of fucking course it worked on them. ANY STRENGTH TRAINING would have worked, they were out of shape genius!
The 5X5 works for a couple of reasons. Most notably because, if you're doing it right, you're doing it heavy. Lifting heavy shit will make you strong. Lifting heavy shit and eating enough will make you big. It's really that simple. If your goal is to get big and strong in a hurry, you need to do two things- (1) you need to eat a lot. Unless you are already a fat body, that means you are goning to need to eat more than you already do. Don't whine at me that you will get fat. What you are eating now is not enough or you would get bigger. If you are maintaining weight now, at your current activity level and are strength training....add 3500 calories a week (that's 500 calories a day for the mathematically challenged!), and you will gain one pound a week. If you eat adequate protein and carbs, and lift heavy shit regularly, that pound will be muscle. That's the only way to get bigger and more muscular. Pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?
If you add one pound of muscle per week, you will get stronger. Again, pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?
So, how do you do the 5X5? One method is to start by lifting the first four sets as gradually increasing amounts of weight, until you do a maximum-effort 5-rep max on the last set. It works. You'll get stronger.
Another method is to do the first two sets as warm-ups, then do the last 3 sets as a 5-rep max effort, with adequate recovery time between sets.
The final method is "sets-across." This involves doing a couple of warm-up sets, then all 5 sets are as a 5-rep max loading effort. This is probably the best all-around method. It WILL make you big and strong, while also offering some level of stamina.
Rest intervals? Between set rest intervals are dependent on two factors, your recovery time and how much weight you are lifting. If you limit yourself to 30 seconds of rest between sets, your 5-rep max is going to be considerably less than if you rest of 2-3 minutes between sets.
If you rest for 5-10 minutes between sets though, you lose any sort of benefit at all in regards to stamina development. My rule, and the one I consider the most sensible and useful, is to wait as long as it takes...sort of...
I wait a minimum of 2 minutes, or 120 seconds. The intra-cellular supply of ATP has largely been replenished in that period of time. Your nervous system should be largely re-set by then as well. If I feel like I need a little more rest, I'll take it. I will not, however, let my rest interval go longer than 5 minutes. That's just kind of ridiculous I think. If I was training to be a competitive O-Lifter or Powerlifter, I'd take more time, for certain. For sports-conditioning strength training though, less than 5 minutes is pretty well the cake!
So, we're doing 5X5, sets across, with a 2-3 minute rest interval in between. What other details are important?
Exercise selection and training frequency.
For sports applications, from football to wrestling; from baseball, basketball, and rugby, to mixed-martial arts and self-defense, isolation exercises are, with a few VERY specific exceptions, a flat-stupid, fucking waste of time.
Let me put it this way...If you are doing bicep curls and can't do twenty chin-ups, you're a douchebag! I believe in whole-body movements as much as possible. Don't even try and throw the whole, "Ooh, but I'm so important, I don't have TIME to do a whole body workout." argument at me either. I can smoke your ass on a whole body program that works in less time than you can do a solid, bodypart-isolation workout.
So, what kind of exercises? Multi-joint, compound movement exercises, as absolutely much as possible. Your workout should be based around the T-Rex Five: Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, Overhead Press, and Power Cleans. If you don't know how to do power cleans, and are too scared or too stupid to ask for coaching, you COULD replace them with bent-over barbell rows, or even something like high pulls. It'll be less effective, but hey, you're too much of a pussy to do power cleans anyway, so who cares, right?
Supplemental exercises should be used also...pull-ups/chin-ups, parallel dips, push-ups, and ab/core work, like the fucking ab wheel that I go on about.
Three workouts a week is the norm, but you COULD go to a four a week if you split them up into an upper-body/lower-body split, and just did deadlifts on the last workout day of the week. It's really not worth the effort though.
Just do a 3-a-week, split like I do mine. I do my powerlifts- squat, bench, and deadlift one workout, then my O-lift variations and the supplemental exercises the next workout, contintually alternating them. Each time you do a workout on your mid-day (making it the only time you'll do the workout that week), add 5 pounds to every exercise. This even gives you a lower-intensity (not LOW) workout regularly, cause the third time you do an exercise at a given weight it's going to be easier than it was when you added the weight.
It's a simple program, but one that has been proven over and over and over and over to work. Try it. Give it one month and see if you don't get bigger and stronger. You will. Then, you can come back and thank me.
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