Savage Gentleman

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You can have all the fancy gear in the world, but what good is it if you haven’t trained with it or practiced with it? That’s where training comes into play. There is a big difference between training and practice. Training is conducted under the watchful eye of an experienced instructor. Practice is something you do after you’ve burned some good reps in a training course. I’ve been through several training courses outside of the Marine Corps and can vouch for the need to get training. Whether you’re wanting to carry concealed, learning how to survive in the wilderness, preparing to survive the next natural disaster or simply wanting to increase your survivability day-to-day, you need to seek out good quality training.

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Old Man Fitness: Superstition, fitness and the power of belief

The old adage, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” while maybe not universally true, speaks to the level of helplessness that’s inherent to our very being. No matter how hard you work, no matter how prepared you try to be, there comes a time when there’s nothing left to do but succeed or fail. There, in that moment, all you can do is try your best and pray that your best is enough.

In a recent appearance on SOFREP Radio, Jack Murphy, Ian Scotto and I were talking about the differences in our fitness mentalities. Ian thoroughly enjoys the fitness lifestyle. I lift for the same reasons I sharpen my knives, clean my guns, and change the oil in my car. Jack, however, mentioned that he has trouble differentiating between the act of working out and it’s ultimate use as a tool for violence.

“When I work out, I feel like I’m preparing for war,” he explained. Even as a kid, Jack Murphy took to exercise with the intrinsic understanding that eventually, the endeavor culminates in taking lives. He didn’t grow up drinking in dirt floor bars and trying to find excuses to turn rugby games into fist fights like I did, and as such, his appreciation for physical preparation took on a different flavor, but beyond that fundamental difference in our approach, our paths aren’t without common ground.

There are no atheists in foxholes.

For some, religion plays as significant a role in their lives as a loved one, and while I respect that in my spiritual brothers and sisters (and even in my spouse) I’ve always struggled with my own set of beliefs, and through that struggle, a number of superstitions have taken hold. Not everything I do comes with a rational explanation: I wrapped my right wrist for every football and rugby game I played in, from high school, to college, to the Marine Corps. The wrist does give me trouble from time to time, but that’s not why I did it. As a young man, I found that I could deliver a pretty damaging blow to the sides of opposing player’s helmets with a clubbed up wrist, and eventually, I came to feel naked without it. Finally, as I approached my first playoff game in the Marine Corps, our trainer asked why I wrapped my own wrist before every game.

“Because I wouldn’t be any good without it.” I explained, grabbing two roles of tape from his table and forgoing the line to receive professional help in the endeavor. I didn’t need a trainer to wrap my wrist the right way, I needed it wrapped the way I’d always done it.

My old college rugby team didn’t shy away from superstition or tradition — demanding terrible prices be paid from new ruggers that score their first Try (comparable to a touchdown in American football). Shooting the boot is undoubtedly a form of hazing that has likely been banned since, but in my day, your first Try meant your first date with the boot: a cleat, worn in the day’s game, filled with beer and passed around the team for additional … ingredients. Dirt, spit, and worse finds its way into the alcoholic elixir and there, surrounded by a few dozen of your closest friends, you chug the poison from the cleat to the cheers of the crowd. Soon, you find yourself buying ever shorter shorts despite Rugby jerseys sporting collars and, often, long sleeves. Tradition, superstition, holds that the shorter your shorts, the faster you run.

When your shorts are shorter than your underwear… then you really start moving.

In the gym, I lift by myself and have for years. Workout partners have come and gone, but the problem with the buddy system is that you come to rely on your buddy to justify your workout. When your buddy can’t make it, you give yourself a pass on skipping a day; after all, you’d have no spotter. Then your buddy takes a week off, then a month, and before you know it, you’ve both got Type 2 Diabetes together and you’ve got a buddy to help with insulin injections.

You’d think, then, that my workouts are free from cultural superstitions like one might find in a weight room occupied by a football or rugby team — after all, no one would shoot their own boot but as I thought about Jack’s comments, relating working out to his practical experiences in combat, I started to see the ways my own practical experiences continue to influence my methods. Many of the things I do in the gym are informed by old habits, born out of superstitions or practical applications now long behind me.

I walk circles around my makeshift gym between sets, keeping my heart rate elevated and often counting softly to myself — just as I did between rounds when training for a fight. I don’t put clips on the bar when under the bench, even when using weights I know I can manage because, when lifting alone, clips are an act of hubris. Securing the plates to the end of the bar means I’m certain I won’t fail — and if you ever find yourself certain of such a thing, you’re probably not working out right. I very rarely allow myself to fail so badly I have to tip myself over and let the plates fall on the concrete floor of my garage — though the cracks surrounding my bench will tell you it isn’t unheard of — but really, it’s my fear of bad luck that keeps the clips off the bar.

My superstitions have become so ingrained in my methodology, that I often have trouble rooting them out from the litany of practices and procedures I’ve adopted over the years. Some are easy to call out: a lucky shirt, a favorite song for max-days. Others are a little more nuanced: the order of my lifts when pursuing a new personal best is a good example. One might argue that I’ve developed a system that lets me maximize my potential when choosing to go really heavy, but the truth is, it’s more about building myself up with a series of lifts I feel good about than warming up. What began as an exercise in self confidence has become an exercise in superstition: I stick to what I know works on my max days, and fear reprisal from the lifting gods when breaking from tradition.

Much like my friends that attend church on Sunday mornings, the daily sermons echoing through my basement in the form of clanging plates and muffled grunts are physical manifestations of a combination of practical knowledge and unsubstantiated belief. Faith, my religious friends remind me, doesn’t rely on evidence to prove its worth. Ultimately, proof is faith’s undoing after all, because with proof, belief becomes nothing more than fact and there’s no room for magic in that.

These Old Man Fitness columns always place an emphasis on seeking a scientific grounding for your workout decisions, and with good reason. Most supplement companies are nothing more than modern day snake oil salesman and barely a week goes by without some new workout fad taking the internet by storm (and ultimately proving to be little better than the last one) but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for a little superstition — a little faith — in your regimen. If you need a scientific justification for the power of believe, I remind you of the placebo effect, wherein people manifest physical changes in their body through nothing more than the belief something is happening.

There doesn’t always have to be a logical explanation for the ways you prepare your body for the challenges you present it with, just as long as you find the balance between what helps you and what’s just predatory marketing. You’ll never catch me buying a laser to zap my love handles or rubbing crystals on my aching joints.

… But you’ll never catch with me clips on the end of my bar either.

About Alex Hollings

Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master’s degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

Old Man Fitness: How to keep making progress when lifting alone

For lots of people, fitness is a social endeavor. They go to the gym with the intention of both improving themselves and catching up with friends, and for many, it’s that social interaction (and peer pressure) that helps keep them coming back. The social element of fitness can be a powerful one, serving as the basis for long lasting friendships and offering a level of mutual support that can help you to achieve things you may not have thought you could otherwise.

I’m just not at all about that shit.

I’m one of the other kind of gym guys: the guys that have headphones in before they even walk in the door. In my personal and professional life, I strive to be more approachable than my admittedly gruff looking exterior lets on — but in the gym … there I get to be the real me: no polite welcoming of constructive criticism, no bright-eyed “networking” handshakes, no concern for how I look, just me and my objective.

My “lone wolf” approach to fitness was probably born from years of failed attempts at relying on a gym partner (or group). People have bad habits of making promises to themselves while drunk on motivation, then failing to follow through on those promises in the harsh glow of the morning sun. I’ve organized groups of lifters, fighters, runners and watched our numbers dwindle as progress came too slowly for some and the effort proved too much for others, until there I was again — alone on the mats getting my time in with the one teammate that always shows up, my punching bag.

The danger in relying on gym partners is that their motivation can directly affect yours. That’s really the point of a gym partner: to help motivate you into making progress and be your spotter along that route, but that symbiotic relationship can turn on its head with the wrong partner. Sometimes, that symbiosis can give way to a parasitic relationship, wherein you’re trying to stay motivated enough for the two of you, and your increasingly undedicated partner can start to be your own excuse for skipping days.

“Greg isn’t coming today, so I might as well take today off too.”

Lifting alone grants me full control over my fitness destiny, gifts me a reprieve from our social world, and gives me a chance to unwind while improving myself but it also makes progress a little tougher to come by. Having a spotter is about more than just safety, they allow you to push your limits in a way you simply can’t on your own. When you know someone can help the get bar back off of you, you pack a few more pounds on or go for a few more reps. When you know the only way this bar doesn’t end up embedded in your sternum is by getting it up under your own power, you have no choice but to play things a little safer.

That’s not to say that you can’t push yourself — I try my best to lift to failure every day, you just have to be a little creative in the endeavor.

Use dumbbells

Dumbbells represent the easiest way to push yourself to your limits without fear of failing in a dangerous way. If you reach a point where the weight has become too much, you can often drop them right where they are without too much risk of injury to yourself or others, offering you the chance to push for a few more pounds, a few more reps, or both in ways that you often can’t when lifting solo. Dumbbells have the added benefit of engaging your body in a way the barbell can’t — as both of your arms are forced to not only move the weight but to maintain your body alignment and balance the weights in a way you don’t have to under other circumstances.

In some instances, just using a curl bar rather than the full bar can give you a higher degree of control.

Use machines

Admittedly, I don’t use any machines in my normal workouts because, well, I don’t have any. Machines do rob you of some of that stability work I touted in favor of dumbbells, engaging only the muscle groups they’re designed to engage and often leaving subsidiary muscle groups ignored, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still get a hell of a workout in using machines.

If you go to a gym with a decent collection of equipment, you can often work your way through a circuit of machines and come out the other side with a pretty well-rounded workout under your belt. Throw some dumbbells in when and where you feel comfortable, and your machine based regimen can yield some pretty significant results. You will find websites that argue working out with machines is so inferior to free weights that you shouldn’t bother and those websites are wrong. Doing something is always better than doing nothing, and if machines represent the safest and most comfortable way for you to work without a partner, don’t let some dude’s blog convince you that it’s a bad idea. It is true that a well-designed regimen that uses free weights might be the fastestor most effective route to gaining muscle, but it’s certainly not the only one.

Leave those clips off the bar

If you’ve been reading OMF for a while, you probably already know my position on clips. They’re there to keep the weights from moving on or falling off the bar as you go through the movements of your lift, but they’re also a great way to get yourself hurt when you lift alone. I have two dumbbells in my home gym (both 40 pounds) which means they’re good for little more than some shoulder lifts and high-rep curl work, that means most of my work comes in the form of bar-based compound movements like the bench press and squats. Admittedly, I often have to leave the clips on the bar for squats, but in that instance, you can drop the whole bar straight back — something you can’t do on the incline bench.

When you find yourself failing in a no-clips situation, getting out from under the weight is the easy part, doing it without destroying half the gym is harder. Simply tilt the bar until the plates fall off of one side, and hang on tight to prevent the newly lopsided bar from becoming a medieval trebuchet. It’s loud, it’s embarrassing, and it can damage your floor — but it can also stop you from dropping 300 pounds on your neck.

After three knee surgeries and two ankle surgeries, even just coming off the pull-up bar is a calculated risk.

Use your head

I received a comment after a recent OMF column that said the way I workout is “too dangerous.” They were referring to my method of going heavy, going hard, and counting on my ability to push myself (and my lack of clips) to get me out of a jam if I find myself in one. The element of my routine that doesn’t translate as easily into words is the mental aspect: my understanding of what I’m capable of, my experience informing how I go about my workout, and my internal discussion as I put more weight on a bar I’m already struggling with. Yeah, I guess there’s potential for injury, but it’s sort of like carrying your firearm at condition one (with a round in the chamber). Technically speaking, that’s a more dangerous thing to do than carrying at condition three (empty chamber). It’s training, not hardware, which makes having a round in the chamber a reasonable and manageable risk.

Approach your lone workouts in the same way: listen to yourself, trust your better judgment, and mitigate risks in appropriate ways. For instance, I never lift for single-rep maxes when I’m by myself — it’s just too dangerous to be worth it — but I regularly push myself to failure on lower weights that I know I can get myself out from under if I need to.

Make good choices, keep your safety in mind, and don’t tie your motivation to the dwindling motivation of others and you’ll find yourself continuing to kick ass alone or in a group for years to come.

Images courtesy of the author.

Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master’s degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

My everyday carry for life in the United States

My everyday carry has changed over time, and will most likely continue to change. I hope that by sharing this I can give an idea to people new to the concept on how they may want to set theirs up. I’m going to touch on each individual item and some of the benefits they have to being carried. The principle idea behind the “loadout” (for lack of a better term) is to equip yourself with the best possible assortment of tools for your situation. As an individual moving around a “civilized” society I carry what I prefer.

The firearm I choose changes with the times and with my personal growth; presently it is a Sig Sauer P320 compact 9mm with an Inforce APLC light. I find this pistol to be just small enough for my day-to-day dealings. However, on occasion I carry a single stack 9mm pistol if I feel something more concealable is warranted. The Sig P320 has a 17 round capacity and is equipped with tritium night sights; I was drawn to it for the ergonomics and exceptional trigger too. I carry one spare magazine for it in my pocket. My holster is a small-time company made Kydex AIWB.

My knife is a Kershaw Injection 3.5, a medium-sized folding blade that cost around $14. It can be used as a defensive tool if no other choice is afforded, but mostly I use it to open boxes and cut miscellaneous stuff. It’s extremely inexpensive and easy to sharpen so if I lose it or break it I don’t really care. In fact, because of its price point I don’t mind using it as much given the cost of some of the more expensive knives out there.

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My flashlight is a 5.11 TMT PLx light I got at SHOT show for free (they cost like $20), it runs on two AAA batteries and is perfect for simple lighting tasks after dark. It’s small as heck so I don’t mind carrying it in my pocket all the time which is a big thing for me. If any one item is too cumbersome then I probably won’t carry it nearly as much. It’s also relatively inexpensive but sturdy enough to be a serious impact weapon.

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My Tourniquet is a RATS and only cost me about $10; let me stop you there because if you think I’m going to run around with a CAT TQ in my back pocket daily, you’re crazy. It’s small and can be worn around my belt/waist line securely making it something I have no problem keeping on me daily. I strongly believe in carrying, at the bare minimum when it comes to medical equipment, a TQ of some kind.

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Of course I have a cell phone, RFID protected wallet, a metal pen, and other random items, but the above are the main components. Hopefully you carry something too because being prepared can save a life. I hope I gave you some ideas and at the very least demonstrated that you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg on a suitable EDC. Use what you have and above all train routinely with it because there is no buying or substituting for skill.

Dynamis Alliance Low Pro 1.5″ Minimalist Belt

Your belt is the foundation of everyday carry, especially if you are carrying concealed. The belt needs to be rigid enough to keep your gear where it needs to be without having to constantly adjust it, but not too rigid to where it’s uncomfortable to wear and difficult to run through your belt loops.

Over the years I’ve been through several iterations of belts from various manufacturers. It’s hard to tell whether a belt will suit your needs by looking at pictures online; you need to actually try it on to know. When I’m looking for a belt to support my everyday carry loadout and my firearm it needs to meet a few requirements:

The belt has to be 1.5” in order to be worn with standard blue jeans or other pants. I’m not always going to be wearing high-speed tactical ninja pants that support a 1.75” riggers belt.
The belt needs to be low profile in the front to reduce printing when wearing a t-shirt. Personally, I just don’t like any belt with a large belt buckle that bulges out in the front.
Typically any piece of kit I carry for my daily loadout needs to fill at least two purposes, if not three (that goes for the belt too). Some may think of using it as a tourniquet, but I’m not an advocate of using a belt for that (that’s why I carry a SWAT-T with me every day). I prefer a belt that can be removed quickly to be used as either a weapon or to wrap around an overhead opening mechanism for doors (this prevents someone from opening the door if you have barricaded yourself in a room). These are usually found in hotels and other commercial buildings.
I prefer a belt made in the United States (personal preference).

The belt I found that meets all the above criteria was designed by Dom Raso over at Dynamis Alliance. The belt is a low profile (1.5”) belt which closes via hook and loop (Velcro), that’s it. Before we get into the exact specs of the belt take a look at the product video by Dynamis Alliance.

This belt is as simple as it gets. It’s a single piece of heavy-duty nylon webbing with hook and loop velcro on the end (no buckles to deal with). The belt is extremely easy to thread through standard belt loops and is rigid enough to support my concealed carry gun, inside the waistband knife and whatever you choose to carry in your pockets.

MSRP is $59 direct from Dynamis Alliance

*Photos courtesy of Dynamis Alliance

A Superheroes Workout, The Arrow

We’re going to take a slightly different approach to this workout article. Instead of highlighting one of the Loadout Room writers routines, we’re going to look at what Stephan Amell did to prepare for his role as Oliver Queen in The Arrow. Now I’m not one to get all into the superheroes like I was as a kid, but there is something different about Arrow. In the show, Arrow, Oliver Queen plays a role that many of us could see as being a legitimate modern day thing. Now I know we’re not going to have masked archers swinging through our cities taking out the scum that walks the streets, although that would be pretty cool to witness. But think about it for a moment, in the show Arrow, he is considered a vigilante. Here is the definition of a vigilante.

“a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice” – Merriam Webster

Now I don’t know about you, but I could see people stepping into a vigilante role if they reach their threshold of waiting for local authorities or the government to handle things. It’s not really too far-fetched when you think about it.

Back to the fitness and workout piece. One of the obvious traits needed by a vigilante if they’re going to be going toe to toe with multiple bad guys is fitness and a will to fight. Similar to the Violent Nomad workout, they need to be able to run, fight, run. If you’ve watched and followed the show, you’ve seen the scenes where Oliver Queen is working out. Check out the following video.

The following video is actual footage of Stephan Amell going through a workout in preparation for the show.

After watching the two above videos, you should be pretty damn motivated to get outside and work up a sweat. No fancy equipment is needed to get a killer circuit workout going. Need some ideas? Check out our Workout section.

Get out there, better yourself and stay badass.

*Photo courtesy of Green Arrow TV Series Facebook page