Mindset; less guns, less fat, more time in the gym.

Preparation, Preparedness & Prevention Fitness and Nutrition
1

A forewarning to the easily butthurt, don’t read this. The literary work below isn’t meant to be condescending, degrading or insulting, it’s simply an honest observation with some general ideas of how to make oneself harder to kill, and therefore more likely to survive. If you find my opinions insulting, perhaps you should ask yourself why.

I’ve been involved in firearms and training most of my adult life and also worked at a large retail FFL for three years, which, somewhat unfortunately, got me intimately familiar with “the industry” and “gun culture.” I am now a career Firefighter at a large metropolitan fire department, which gives me an enormous amount of exposure to the general public, I also work part time at a local strength and conditioning gym.

First, I understand this is America and you can do whatever the hell you want. Nobody can force you to go to the gym, nobody can force you to not eat your self into a sweet, delicious sugar induced diabetic coma. However, if you’re going to prepare, then prepare the best you can. Most people are lying to them selves when they say they’re prepared. The vast majority of people I encounter on the street are at best, weeks away from death on any given day, much less in a natural disaster, and this applies to many gun owners.

In reality most people are preparing for some sort of civil unrest or self defense situation not because they’re serious about self defense, but rather because it’s fun, it’s a hobby for them. They may not realize this, but it’s the case, and I understand; guns are fun, shooting is fun, acquiring gear is fun.

Say what you want to make your self feel good but the reality is, most gun owners lack appropriate mindset, discipline and are in poor physical condition. If you’re a “training junky” and you’re not incorporating physical fitness into your routine, your doing it wrong. And I’m not talking about getting on the recumbent bike twice a week and cutting down on the McDonalds. I’m talking a serious program.

Gun owners spend hours upon hours upon hours researching gear, and tens of thousands of dollars buying firearms and equipment, most of which is unnecessary; they then go on to boast about how “prepared” they are for a set of potential situations that ultimately range from low to nearly non existent in their probability of actually happening. Yet they neglect their own health.

Now I’m all for preparing for these low probability situations. Why? Because even though they are low probability scenarios they have a very high potential penalty for failure (death). Therefore, we should prepare our selves the best we can.

A few people go a step further than just acquiring cool gear and theoretical knowledge. These few people actually get out on the range and run what they brung, fewer still actually follow some sort of regimented training program.

How many, though, actually spend any amount of time, effort and money on their own health? If I take a quick look around the local range on any given day, the local gun shop or even the monthly USPSA or CFDCC match, the answer is not too many.

At the end of the day, most people are infinitely more likely to die from chronic diseases that arise from a sloppy lifestyle than from having under armed them selves for the next civil war, Katrina or even a common street robbery, home invasion or car jacking. Most people are infinitely more likely to have their life seriously impacted or ended by Diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

What good is your $50,000 stash of firearms and ammunition if you can’t actually move with it? What value is all that tactical name brand awesomeness if you die at 50 from heart disease. How are you supposed to survive long term if you’re an insulin dependent diabetic?

How much money and time is spent on celebrity instructor taught classes? You make it to the range every week? That’s awesome. How many hours have you spent at the gym? What’s your diet look like? And I’m not just talking fat people, just because you don’t look like Rosie O’ Donnell doesn’t mean you aren’t unhealthy.

Take a step back and think for a second. Ask your self, am I really actually prepared? Do I have the stamina and conditioning to run a mile in my gear all out? What if I got into a physical confrontation? Can I physically over power someone?

The effects of physical fitness don’t just stop at being more desirable to look at, able to run faster and lift more. Being fit makes you harder to kill in every way. You’re less likely to develop chronic diseases, your joints will be in better shape, you’re less likely to develop heart disease, the list goes on and on.

So how are you preparing your self physically to survive? If you’re not you have no excuse, none. I work a full time job, run a business, work a part time job and go to school full time. I’ve not been without injury either. If I can do it anyone can.

If you’re serious about being prepared I strongly encourage you to begin a serious physical fitness regimen, especially so if you’re a first responder. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your current life situation is, it’s never too late to start.

If you have the money for multiple rifles and pistols, quality optics, suppressors, SBR’s and the tax stamps that accompany them, the training courses, the ammunition and time to shoot, then you have the money and time to get in the gym.

Here’s some straight forward suggestions:

  • Quit eating like shit, there’s no excuse. Eat real food. Want to avoid health problems? Cut out the processed stuff. Figure out what your body likes. Just becasue I eat 300g of carbs a day doesn’t mean that’s the right diet for you, it also doesn’t mean “low carb” is good.

  • Find and follow a real strength and conditioning program.

  • Focus on functional movements. Back squat, dead lift, overhead press, bench press, pull-ups, bent over rows, kettle bell work, sand bangs etc.

  • Follow a program with strength work as the foundation.

  • Push a sled at least 2-3 times a week.

  • Machines are the work of of Satan, avoid them like the plague. Why? Because they are they plague… the plague of the fitness industry.

  • Run, running is good. If you cant run, then walk, row, stationary bike etc, push the sled more.

I will end with what I feel (in my humble opinion) are some very basic minimum standards people should be able to meet:

  • Back Squat your own body weight for 10 reps.
  • Deadlift 1.5x your body weight for 10 reps.
  • Overhead Press your body weight
  • Bench Press your body weight for 10 reps.
  • 10 pull-ups (unbroken)
  • 50 push-ups (unbroken)
  • 50 Kettlebell Swings w/ 53lb kettlebell (unbroken)
  • Run 1 mile in street clothes in 7:00 without going into SVT.
  • Row a 5k in under 20:00 without going into SVT.
  • Be able to walk 10 miles with your “bug out bag” in your “bug out” gear.

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2

The M-m4c-GA resurrection is just going full tilt!

Rebellions are built on hope and change, we can believe in.

3

Truth here.

If two unarmed men could successfully sodomize you then you got some serious soul searching to do. Especially if they are smiling while they trying

4

Good stuff.
I’d add getting some combatives or other “non-ballistic” self defense training. We can debate what style is most relevant, reality-based, or in use by which nation’s armed forces, but in the end, any reputable system taught by a competent instructor is better than no training.

  1. Combatives is, imho, a good part of a fitness regimen, since most programs will have some sort of fitness component or you’ll break a sweat by doing it.
  2. I’d venture that you’re just as likely, if not more likely, to be put in a situation that you won’t be able to solve with a firearm, either due to constraints, restraints, or the dynamics of the situation.
5

Last weekend I was volunteering at a charity 5k and ended up running it on a dare/peer pressure in cargo pants, polo shirt, sneakers, and carrying a G19 and spare mag AIWB. Pockets full of phones, keys, etc.

I ended up winning the men’s 30-39 age bracket. I’ve never run any kind of race, but I usually run a mile on the treadmill as a warm up before lifting several times a week.

The point is, yes, always be prepared, and your body is your greatest weapon.

6

Shooting’s a hobby for me; but trying to stay healthy and exercising is part of my chosen lifestyle.

7

Absolutely. I agree on all points.

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8

Metal bro. Good work.

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And you know what, the pay offs are endless. All of the older people I know of who are in excellent shape exercise. And when I saw excellent shape, I don’t mean fitness, I mean they’re sixty and haven’t had double knee replacements and aren’t on 17 different meds that all end in “lol.”

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10

That’s embarrassing.

Not for you, but for every male in that race between 30-39.

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This is the only thing I really disagree with in this post. It’s an overly dogmatic statement, machine exercises can be a very useful addition to your training. However, I do agree that they should never be the cornerstones of your training.

I also think it’s a bit odd to consider benching bodyweight and pressing bodyweight overhead a single strength standard, because pressing your bodyweight overhead is about ten times harder than benching it.

Other than that this post is really something that most people on gun forums really need to read.

12

Solid intel. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think. From a probability standpoint, in the US, you’re far more likely to save your own life or that of another if you’re in shape to run from some event (natural or otherwise), drag or carry a person to safety, etc, you’re not really “prepared” for shit if you can’t. Anyone who is way out of shape, overweight, etc, but has major collection of stuff to be prepared, is not prepared for a damn thing really* which is a separate issue from the obvious health benefits and such.

  • With (hopefully) obvious caveat for those with injuries, medical conditions, age, etc.
13

I think that’s mostly being a wise ass. I don’t agree with it either, and machines can have their place in a well rounded program, depending on goals and other variables. I agree totally that given the choice with say limited time, etc, choosing what he listed is better time spent for effort and outcomes, and people often gravitate to machines because they are easier to use, etc. Most people most of the time can and probably should skip the machines.

I didn’t catch that but I agree. Few can do a strict overhead press with their BW, that are in excellent shape and can easily BP their BW, probably multiple times easily. I saw a similar rec that said people should be able to do 10 strict push ups and 10 strict pulls ups, and that too is something not in line with typical strength metrics.

14

Just a data point for you young studs… The two statements above are heavily linked, and maybe not the way you think. (Apologies in advance for the long post)

Get into your mid-fifties and many of us find out that that the popular press and even American Heart Association and other dietician inputs, etcetera have largely been wrong.

I know you said “low carb may not be good” and there may be some truth to that. But we know for sure now that high carb is bad and it is a direct correlating factor to cardiac heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and is linked in with high blood pressure.

Multiple friends who followed the low-fat high-carb popular press and even to a certain extent medical advice in the 90s and 2000’s are now hitting heart disease.

Genetics is still the number one factor on whether you’ll produce plaque or not. But the second largest factor is excess blood sugar turning into triglycerides and such that create plaque.

So guess what, that excess blood sugar comes directly from eating more carbs than your body’s immediate energy requirements. Any that your body doesn’t use gets turned into fat and us impacts cholesterol and triglycerides.

You might as well be mainlining milkshakes and candy bars, it’ll have the same effect.

I’ve got multiple doctors and also friends doctors saying that the popular press conventional wisdom, dieticians, and some of the advisory agencies are 15 years behind the medical research and five to ten years behind the current medical practice.

It’s pretty simple:

  • carbs create blood sugar. (Especially simple carbs)

  • excess blood sugar to your body’s current energy requirements drives cholesterol and triglyceride problems by putting fatty molecules into your bloodstream. This is where the raw materials for plaque come from. The idea that specific foods can be low cholesterol is silly and angers the cardiologist because that’s not where chlorestoral that causes people’s problems comes from.

  • excess blood sugar is one of the few things that sticks to artery walls, and is corrosive, etching the walls and making them more likely to allow plaque to form

  • long periods of excess blood sugar causes your body to respond less to the insulin you produce. This is type 2 diabetes. The problem compounds.

  • high blood pressure also creates micro fissures in the artery walls, which also gives sugar and the plaque a toehold

Exercise can only change the equations above in the sense that you do use more of your blood sugar. But it’s hard to exercise away the blood sugar and a lot of the high carb diets. Unless you are running marathons are similar you’re probably not.

My cardiologists and other doctors are telling me that exercise does help obviously, but it is not going to override plaque generation if your carb / blood sugar is higher than what your body needs.

I have multiple friends, fellow cardiac rehab members, Etc who learned this the hard way.

So when I was in my thirties I thought just like you guys are talking. Once in my late 50s we find out, we were sold a bill of goods, and the same inaccurate sources are still spreading the same stuff.

My dad is killed religiously following the “heart healthy diet” even though it’s one of the worst things he can do with his heart condition.

To be clear I’m not advocating super low carb ketosis. But a high carbs are the enemy. Look at your A1C every year starting in your thirties maybe before. Do the fasting blood sugar tests. I think we wait too late to start doing treadmill EKGs, I would start no later than 50 and personally glad I started at 45.

I’m not a big fan of taking medicine, but I have to. But what I found out is the majority of people who are in this business take statins proactively. Even if not clinically diagnosed with cardiac heart disease. Same for aspirin, and some of the anti platelet, though that does have some side effects (bruising, slow clotting)

One last thing, it’s become popular to do cat scans or similar to try to clear yourself off whether you have plaque or not. Cardiologist hate that, because it’s misleading. Those tests will only detect calcified plaque, they do not detect soft plaque which can be causing blockages. I know multiple people including myself that looked clean on those tests because it was not calcified.

Apologies if it sounds like I’m lecturing, that’s not my intent. Just sharing learnings from someone in the mid fifties who thought just like you guys do when in my mid-thirties

The other thing that happens (time sucks) is that each decade later it gets harder and harder to exercise your way out of this stuff. Joints are having issues, etc. You find out that the free weights helped contribute to your joint problem. And you find that machines like ellipticals and Rowing are one of the few ways that you can get your cardio work in without aggravating your joints. I can work far harder and longer on a commercial / medical grade elliptical then I can on an arm and leg bicycle type ergometer, and even that is significantly more than what I can do on a treadmill.

So I wouldn’t get too condescending about the machines, because your perspective on them will change.

This doesn’t mean to ignore strength training, far from it. It just means that if you don’t protect your joints and don’t proactively deal with cardio stuff through exercise and diet, you may find that you’re very fit in your 50s but with cardiac heart disease. And potentially permanent heart muscle damage, which is virtually impossible to recover from.

I’m fitter than I used to be, but still very overweight, and fighting my way back into fitness. What used to be trivial in my thirties to recover is very very hard in my 50s. Due to the things I discussed above.

I’m watching people in their seventies and eighties die of congestive heart failure who were fitter than I am in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. (Including my dad). There is a glideslope, and drugs can change the angle slightly but they don’t change the glideslope to death. You die of pneumonia, congestive heart failure is what causes it, but the root cause is low heart function, usually due to undiagnosed cardiac heart disease or other similar conditions in their 40s and 50s, leading to heart muscle death.

Apologies for the long post, I just want you guys to learn from the experience of your elders :slight_smile:

Not a doctor, so find a good cardiologist and work with them. Proactively, if in your 40s. I will tell you that you need to do the annual blood sugar screenings and cholesterol screenings and pay attention to them. It’s a loaded gun, with the safety off!

15

Should also mention, regular cardio exercise does help reduce high blood pressure. So that you can exercise your way into Improvement, and it does not take much to do so. My blood pressure can drop 20 points after 30 minutes of cardio, even when taken with an elevated heart rate. And will stay lower the rest of the day.

Stress, sleep, and other things factor in. Hard to do, but I’m shooting for 8 hours of sleep daily. And if I get less than 7 I try to take corrective action.

They are finding that sitting at a desk all day like many of us do / did and then exercising for 30 minutes hard is not potentially as good as shorter, regular physical movement throughout the day. In other words take short breaks and you don’t have to work out, just move things.

My learning: desk work is the new smoking

16

No discussion on this topic is of value nor relevant without defining “low carb.” A % of total cals? Total grams per day? Other? It’s like “high protein” or “low fat” or “really strong” and so forth, of no value. I don’t believe there’s a sci/med def for it at this time and the ex phys researchers and such I know would respond “it depends.”

17

Truedat. Carbs are only bad when when they are creating more blood sugar than your body needs. So A1C and fasting blood sugar becomes the proxy for that. And ketosis setting the extreme lower bound you want to stay above unless it is part of a carefully (medically) managed Diet

For inactive people, or those showing blood sugar issues, a reasonable range could be as low as 25 to 30 grams a day. Especially of obese, could be lower.

Fit and high muscle density? Probably higher.

Fit, active and doing marathons or other high calorie activities, you will need much more.

So for me, it’s high enough to stay out of ketosis, but just slightly above. And low enough to keep the A1C numbers and fasting blood sugar in alignment.

Given I’m overweight, I’d like to try to target low enough carbs that I could run the ragged edge and slightly into ketosis during heavy exercise, but only then.

That’s essentially what my cardiologists and friend’s cardiologists are telling us.

But don’t listen to me, find cardiologists, GPs and similar, who are in touch with the current research and developments.

Otherwise, you may find yourself in for a surprise in your 50s. Or maybe not, some people don’t produce plaque others do it’s kind of like plaque on teeth. That’s the genetics Factor.

18

That is my lane and AO, so I can assure you, I’m often the guy those people come to for answers to some Qs and I manage some docs fitness/health/HRT protocols now. Your other info above is solid enough, even if I might have a slightly different POV on the topic. If the approach you’re taking is working for you and your goals, vis the proxy metrics you listed, etc, then drive on sir.

19

That’s the core issue, there are so many widely varying opinions, and even varying research that this issue is very muddy.

Especially if it gets to “what’s the right value”, people always want an analytic answer. When the reality is probably a behavioral answer, entangled with “don’t eat more calories than your body can use or metabolize”. I understand there are valid reasons for high calorie diets when doing significant strength training, Etc. But physics are physics, any calories you don’t use get stored somewhere. Your behavior and chemistry dictates whether that’s fat or something else.

There are huge debates on the impact of particular carbohydrates, and even I have come to learn that certain carbs are not a problem. Example: if it has a significant percentage of fiber relative to the carb, it’s probably not going to hurt you. And may help in general.

I’ll let you guys argue about whey and similar. Meat versus vegetable protein.

Some things are crystal clear and not currently in dispute:

  • ignore blood sugar and cholesterol levels at your own risk. It’s the largest correlating factor for cardiac heart disease
    -the carb / blood sugar / fatty lipids /cholesterol / triglycerides / plaque cycle is not in dispute.
  • the fact that very little cholesterol, triglycerides, or fat in the bloodstream comes from direct dietary fat intake is not in dispute. It’s converted by the fatty lipid cycle. They know that xact chemical process and cells, is accepted as medical fact, with very strong research to support it. Not saying it’s good to eat fat, just that the fat in your blood stream is not directly proportional to the fat that went in your mouth.

There are still big arguments on the impact (or not) saturated fat in the diet. Also some evidence starting to show that whatever the source, high fat levels in the blood, pancreas, or liver may contribute to insulin resistance. So may be bad for other reasons. All things in moderation.

The sole point for me wading in here is to make sure everyone is aware that you could do all the things the original poster commented on and still end up with type 2 diabetes, cardiac heart disease, Etc in your 40s and 50s.

I work out and exercise regularly with people caught by surprise like this who are a marathoners, cut, bulked-up, whatever. Some as young as their mid forties. Many with perfect BMI and very desirable physique / muscle structure. No two people exhibit cardiac symptoms the same way, and some people never exhibit symptoms even at the same time that they are starving critical heart muscle of oxygen and creating long-term damage that they can never recover from. Talk about a sad day for marathoner/Spartan, or similar!

Likewise I’m not advocating to be a gazelle, just understand the risk factors and look out for them.

One last thing: I’ve got a good friend and co-worker in Canada who is almost 60 and still waiting in line to get his first treadmill EKG. Been waiting almost 10 years. Scared me to death, because that’s the only way I found out about my blockage early enough to sidestep permanent damage. No other symptoms, resting EKG, echocardiogram, etc. looked great, etc.

Same situation with my current boss’s Dad, he died at my age due to undiagnosed cardiac heart disease in England. They just don’t do the proactive testing.

I want no part of socialized medicine. For this reason alone.

I am no fan or defender of our current medical environment other than I still believe we get better Healthcare than just about any of the other countries outside of places like Switzerland and other very wealthy countries.

20

I remember many years ago I went to an Arfcom Tard shoot for AZ guys. I was wildly disappointed in the amount of fat fukking slobs who were part of the “tactical” community.