Front Toward Enemy

First face the problem.

This is the human paradox of altitude: that it both exalts the individual mind and erases it. Those who travel to mountain tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

- Robert Macfarlane

Reflecting

The solution to any problem starts with a correct diagnosis.  You have to start by facing up to the problem before fixing it.  Euphemisms don’t help anything.  Poor?  Weak?  Slow?  Fat?  Dumb?  Afraid?  Name it.  Face it.  Your subconscious knows.  It probably torments you.  You probably even know what to do next – lift, run, diet, sleep.  Face the front towards enemy then squeeze the clacker three times.

Claymores can be a good literal as well as figurative solution, depending on the problem.  SOG Codename Dynamite: A MACV-SOG 1-0's Personal Journal is a fun read for anyone curious about how they’re used in practice for ambushes and quick perimeter defenses for temporary posts. 

Training

Need a new challenge?  I use RE Factor Tactical cards for fun programming.  They have a deck for general fitness, squats, pull-ups, pistol, and rifle. 

Fueling

Iron pan, steel knife, and rare tomahawk steak:

It is a great way to break an 18 hour fast.  Intermittent fasting benefits:

Supplementing

My eyes are basically working perfectly after a few days of anti-inflammatory/antibiotics.  If you can avoid using medicated eye drops, avoid them.  Their ingredients tend to make your eyes reliant on them for hydration.  Optimally, use nothing or just unmedicated artificial tears.  The only thing I needed was non-prescription sunglasses.  I got a ton of advice from my Tactical Games Training Group.  My second favorite at the Wiley Valors but my favorites are the Gatorz Wraptor with ballistics lenses.

While I’m trying to curtail supplements, this study is convincing on benefits of bovine colostrum.

Measuring

Whatever the right solutions are to health, it is clear that there’s a health crisis in the US:

Recovering

I recovered almost instantly from eye surgery.  It was a total win.  $100 off of the eye surgery I just did. 

Closing

Program for the best; scale for the rest.  Training is supposed to be hard.  Not everyone can do some things.  That’s okay.  If you try to make it easy and comfortable for everyone, its utility goes to zero.  Easy training is self-defeating.  Everything should be oriented towards the full expression of a movement such as a muscle up.  Then anyone incapable makes temporary compromises.

We have a beautiful nearby park with some fixed equipment but it is all goofy cardio stuff with essentially no resistance.  You’d have to spend twenty hours there for any real fitness benefit.  Clearly, it was a committee-led process where any objection about the universality and ease was met by dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator. 

Now we have a new budget for a new fitness area, but my concern is that the same committee-led lowest common denominator ethos will lead to more goofy equipment.  If you go to BUD/S, the grinder has pull-up and dips bars.  If you murder someone and get sent to Sing Sing, you get access to a worldclass exercise yard.  If you are the taxpayer paying for inmates’ workouts, you get weird useless equipment.