Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 12

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Rapid Fire Q and A with a 5 minute time cap to take you into the weekend:  1:  Managing expectations with CrossFit methodology (any methodology really). 2. Situational awareness and a nervous/irritated girlfriend 3. Discipline and life goals 4. Left-handed shooters, and why you should be suspicious of anyone who is left-handed. Enjoy

Okay, got to red smoke. Where's up a smoke? Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's dig into this and get into our weekend. Fallout on Friday, round 12. And pretty soon here I'm going to need to decide whether or not I'm using a high-capacity pistol mag with 15 rounds in it.

Or am I using a rifle magazine with 30? Not that I actually have a plan for either once I make that determination, but perhaps it'll help me out. Yeah, I'm in the studio for this. I know people prefer the green screen, but yeah, it didn't work out. I was going to do it in front of the green screen, but I couldn't get to where the green screen was. So just deal with the people. Four questions for today, and I'm doing my best to pick a variety. And let's dive right in.

Here we go. Question number one. Let me get the stopwatch ready. Question number one. Andy, I wanted to ask you about the new C word. CrossFit, not from the corporate perspective, but from your experience as a practitioner and coach. Here's the setup. I have done CrossFit for about two months, and it has changed my life. Prior to try and CrossFit, I had been running and lifting with modest results. Like you, I have lingering injuries from years of playing soccer and other activities to ACL MCL, Reconstrued. instructions, damn, rotator cuff repair, and bicep tendon tear. Dude, you play soccer like a savage, obviously. In the last two months of four to six days per week of CrossFit, I have lost 20 pounds and feel way great, have gotten stronger, more flexible, and increased endurance and stamina. And bust of reduced pain, especially in my knees, hips, and shoulder. That's awesome. However, I feel like my progress has not been moving as fast as it could. Now the question. So my question is, based on your experience, what should I do to accelerate my progress? Should I just focus on my form and being faster?

Question mark. Should I try to increase weight? Or is it just natural progression? I almost always have to scale down and in parentheses banded pull-ups, less weight, etc. And have been sore and tired every day. But my attitude has been, if you suck at something, the only way to stay. suck less is to suck more. I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying. I tend to get completely gassed from the compound, up-down movements like burpees, box jumps, and squats. But I am working on the mental aspect of continuing to push past what my body thinks is its limit and think I am improving in that regard. I gave CrossFit a try based on listening to your podcasts and am forever grateful.

Keep doing what you're doing. And I will try to. This is from Colin. First off, I'm glad you found it. And every time I have talked about CrossFit in the past, probably should start the stopwatch. Every time I've talked about it in the past, if I'm talking about CrossFit headquarters, that's one thing. But one thing I've never done is talk negatively about the programming, the efficacy and efficiency of the programming and actually how much I enjoy it. So I'm really glad that you found it. The results that you are finding, they don't surprise me. A lot of people do.

But your questions, what should I do to accelerate? accelerate my progress. My first piece of advice is to say, Colin, all right, you've been doing this for two months, like you said in the email. And let's, you know, go back into your email, speaking of it, playing soccer, you have a variety of injuries. So I'm going to assume one thing was not in here is your age, but I'm going to assume that you played soccer and other sports for a substantial amount of time to have the injuries that you listed. And the reason I say, take it easy is because when you first start playing soccer two months in you're not expecting to have these catastrophic leaps in your ability and exercise and conditioning it's exactly the same thing you're

adapting your body is going to adapt to this new style of conditioning but damn man you need to give this thing a little bit of time so i wouldn't worry about accelerating your process you've lost 20 pounds in two months. That's 10 pounds per month. That's awesome. You're having a reduction in pain, specifically your nips, your knees, hips and shoulder. Those things are awesome. So instead of worrying about accelerating your progress, let's focus a little bit on celebrating where you are in comparison to where you came from. The second part of your question, should I just focus on my form and being faster? There are ways where you can, faster in comparison to who would be my first question. And I hope the answer would be faster in comparison to only yourself, not other people in your class.

Because one of the number one ways people will find a decrease in time when starting CrossFit is through efficiency. You're going to learn to do the movements in a more efficient manner. And your stopwatch times, which, by the way, are completely and wholly irrelevant unless you're comparing them only to yourself, they don't matter. So work on that efficiency before you add weight because that was your next question. Should I try to increase weight? You should increase weight when your technique is at a place where you can handle the increased load. You said you're scaling down on band of pull-ups. You're using less weight, things like that.

Don't be in a rush to add weight. Treat CrossFit. and this strength and conditioning program with a very low angle long-term trajectory. Don't try to be a hero inside of six months, please, because I've seen so many people come into the gym who are trying to be a hero and then they leave four to six months later. Why? Because they completely blasted themselves. And what started off with them feeling good, they got wrapped around a stopwatch and then their body stopped feeling good.

And by the way, your increases in efficiency and the decreases in your time are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller the longer that you've been doing this. So again, focus on the success that you've had and how your body feels. Don't increase weight yet. Focus on your efficiency. Focus on your technique. And don't worry about if you have to scale. When it comes to your attitude, you know, you've been sore and tired every day. That's awesome.

but also make sure you're managing your energy levels and your soreness. If you go really hard on Monday and you are so sore that you can't go hard until Thursday, I don't think you're actually doing yourself any favors, any favors at all, actually. So talk about your attitude. Your attitude has been, if you suck at something, the only way to suck less is to suck more. Okay, but just remember, okay? Nobody likes teeth. So suck better.

You don't need to necessarily suck more. So the attitude of pursuing a mental headspace that is challenging and painful, I support that. But again, don't take it too far. You're not just, don't go in there to martyr yourself. Put yourself on a long-term trajectory where you're tolerating a level of suck to use your terms that you can do over time. Again, so you're not a six-month hero who's in and out the door. and at the end, you're in a worse place than you were when you first came in the door. You said you tend to get completely gas from the compound, up, down movements like burpees

and box jumps and squats. Of course, there are movements that you're not going to be traditionally doing coming from a running and lifting background. So give it some time. Take maybe a longer-term approach. Give yourself, instead of two months and worrying about, you know, where you are in comparison into those 60 days, right? Because 60 days is an incredible amount of time. Give it six months. Give it 18 months. But what I would recommend doing is keeping a journal of your workouts, whether

it's on your phone or with pen and paper. And the reason you can do that is that you can slowly and incrementally track your progress. Progress against yourself. That is the only type of progress that matters. And Colin, I hope that that helps you out. I want to touch over. Question number two comes from Jordan. I live in Vancouver. Canada and frequently go through a part of town known as downtown east side, which if you search hashtag DTSE Delta Tango Sierra Echo, on Twitter, you will quickly find it is not a great area. It is very similar to what you experienced in L.A. when you said you saw lots of people taking concrete naps.

I consider myself a very situationally aware person. When traveling through this area, my girlfriend has sometimes got annoyed with me. for being too on edge or paranoid, as I will stray away from certain people I see or groups of sketchier crowds. I can't carry anything legally for self-defense, which is part of why I carry myself in this way. What can I do or how can I act to relax my girlfriend, but stay squared away? It's an excellent question, Jordan. And I actually don't know if I spoke about L.A. because I haven't seen Skid Row in L.A., but I have seen, and I'm sorry if it's not called,

well, it's called downtown east side. I think that's actually where I've been. I was up there doing some technical advising, and one of the actors took me to, I'm pretty sure, this area, and that's where I had the interaction of, I mean, I was watching people shoot up with heroin in plain sight of other people and also the police.

And I don't understand why it was that way, but that's also not germane to the question. So what can you do? You're a very situationally aware of person. That's a good thing. I think, you know, packing your brain is probably the most important thing you can do when it comes to situational awareness. You say, though, when traveling through this area, my girlfriend has sometimes become annoyed with you. My question to you would be, why are you going through this area?

Because if you're situationally aware, you're going to recognize the difference between areas that have an increased level of threat or danger and those that don't. So if you have any other options, and by that I mean any other single option that could take you away from this area, whether it be a five-minute delay in your plans or a 15-minute delay, both of which could easily be planned for in your schedule, my question to you is, what are you doing in this area? If it can truly be avoided, I would say the number one thing that you can do, which would avoid your girlfriend getting irritated with you, is to avoid it in general. you're talking about how you will stray away from certain people or groups of sketchier crowds that is good right manage and maintain distance from things that you could consider to be a threat but i would ask you what is your game plan in the event you get into a situation where you cannot manage and maintain that distance you've said yourself you can't carry anything legally for self-defense, which is part of why you carry yourself in this way. Well, that's awesome. But in real

life, your adversary or your enemy gets a vote as well. And if we're talking about the same area, it would be very easy for you to get into an environment where there are people in a 360-degree circle around you and your girlfriend. And that could get tighter and tighter until you were forced into a situation where you need to react. So what are you doing? to prepare yourself. When you get into, you know, you're situationally aware, you're paying attention to the danger and the threat, are you doing anything to prepare yourself for it? You know that you can't carry.

You understand the value of being situationally aware. What are you doing to physically prepare yourself? And if the answer to that is nothing, well, that's okay because you have a lot of work that you can do. And the first thing that I would recommend is find something, some way, that you can prepare yourself for some type of physical altercation. And I will let you decide what avenue you would like to pursue. But there should be a striking aspect to it and there should be a ground aspect to it. And I will let you off into the wilderness of the internet to figure that out for yourself.

What can you do to keep your girlfriend relaxed but more squared away? Why don't you have her come with you to whatever endeavor that you determine you would like to pursue? And also have a conversation. Have you explained to her what it is that you're looking for? Have you explained to her why you feel the way that you do around these individuals? If we're, again, talking about the same area, it shouldn't, it's not rocket surgery to explain to somebody why the behavior on display in front of everybody in this environment is concerning and why you would want to manage the distance in space. So if she has an understanding of why you are acting in a certain way, perhaps she may feel the same way too. And she also might want to pick a different route.

So situational awareness is great. Avoid, though. Avoid at all costs. Number one rule to a gunfight, don't get into gunfight. Number two rule to a gunfight. Win the fucking gunfight. Number one rule on walking through this area. Don't go through this area.

Number two rule when going into this area. If it's unavoidable and you have to be able to do something, you better come to the dance prepared and we'll leave it at that. So hopefully that helps you, Jordan, and your girlfriend. Question number three, two more to go. We're killing this full auto Friday. This is a long one. And this is from Jacob.

All my life, I've been average, hell of an opening to an email. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and was called by my overprotective parents. I skated through high school, having an average grades without putting in any effort, and only managed to get into averagely ranked colleges for mechanical engineering. Michigan State being the one I decided to go to. I can go on and on about how my parents reinforced in me a negative attitude towards learning and studying, causing me to fail and drop out while I was there. But I was incredibly undisciplined and the failure was all on me.

I am very glad that you made that realization, Jacob, and you did not attempt to put it on your parents because it was not their fault. From there, I went to a community college back in the suburbs where I spent two years, skating by with subpar grades again. I later reapplied to universities and was admitted to Iowa State University to study aerospace engineering. I don't know if it was because of stubbornness to continue pursuing engineering or if it was because I discovered podcasts and began developing a framework for my life that I never got from my parents, but I decided to tackle what is often perceived as the most challenging of engineering disciplines as a way of saying I would

not take the path of least resistance anymore. I've been at Iowa for a year now, and things have generally improved. But since I never learned discipline and have had and have residual feelings of inadequacy from leading a life of mediocrity, I still greatly struggle in attaining the things I want to reach beyond academia, such as getting a girlfriend or losing fat by improving my diet, even though I work out every day. I turned 22 recently with only 1.5 years left before graduation and decided that I would pursue a career as a military aviator after working in a standard engineering job after graduation for a couple of years. I have no misconceptions as to how challenging of a goal that may be, but I owe it to myself to try. My question, therefore, is how can I go about effectively

developing the necessary discipline that will allow me to achieve my goals after having none at all for so many years. Thanks for your time and definitely go with the perm. Fuck yeah, Jacob, I'm going to go with the perm. Here we go. First off, damn. Okay, you opened with all of my life, I have been average. And then near the bottom two thirds of your email, you said, I just turned 22. So take it easy, all right? Let us collectively, take a wrap off here. You have so much freeway open road in front of you. But what it seems like you're doing is driving your car while looking in the rear view mirror. This whole email, and I understand you're asking for advice, but this whole email was, you know, basically a negative

framing of both yourself and your past. You open it with saying that you've been average, which I understand, I consider myself the average too. I'm 43 years old. I am, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I think I'm 43. Yeah, I turned 44 later this year. I'll be double your age, all right? You have open road in front of you. And by the way, I'm getting into college for mechanical engineering. That's not average.

But let us talk about discipline and also perhaps goals. The one thing that concerns me about your email is when you said I decided to tackle what is often perceived as the most challenging of engineering disciplines as a way of saying I would not take the path of least resistance anymore. I have a question for you based on that statement. And the question is, are you making that decision to prove something to yourself? Or are you making that decision to prove something to somebody else? Specifically, your parents, your peers, or people whose opinion you hold in a high regard.

Because if it's the latter, I think you're very likely or more than likely, statistically, to fail then succeed. When it comes to you setting a goal, what I would hope for you is that you are setting a goal for yourself. And if that is the case with this academic goal, then awesome. Two thumbs up. When it comes to the things that you are, well, you're only asking about one thing, specifically, discipline. I would start you with the smallest of steps. What you need and I, what I need and what everybody needs to a degree is momentum. Momentum when it comes to discipline is, is gained, gathered, and accelerated at the microscopic level. So you already talked about diet.

You talked about working out. Start with either of those things. You know, if you have room to improve in your diet, make the changes that you need to make. And the number one reason that I see people fail when they, and I hate the word diet, I prefer to call it an eating strategy, because diets seem to have like this connotation of timeline associated with it.

They make a massive macro change that is unsustainable, as opposed to small incremental steps that get them towards where they want to be. And I would do that with both your diet and your exercise. And maybe I would do that with your goals. You have, like I said, so much road in front of you. And you've already decided you're going to do the most difficult academic approach. Then you're going to work in that career field. field, a standard engineering job after graduation for a couple of years.

And then you're going to pursue a career in the military as an aviator. Those are macro goals, and I would never talk you out of those. What I want you to do is get out a piece of paper and write at the far end of that, because it seems to come at the end, military aviator. And then halfway through the page, I want you to write down the engineering job. And then before that, I want you to write down your graduation with your degree. And then before that, we're going to have four little tick marks. Where you are right now, graduation with degree, working for four years in the engineering job,

and then pursuing the goal as a military aviator. Those are your massive wickets, and I love those. And I tell people when they set their goals, you know you are approaching a goal that is appropriate for you when you start getting scared about whether or not you can successfully complete it. If you know it's going to be a walk in the park that's a dog shit goal, get rid of that and pick something that scares you. So you have those wickets. Now what I want you to do is figure out the steps that you need to take to get from where you are first to a successful graduation and inside of that put in there your diet and your exercise, your girlfriend, all those things. Graduation to working at your job, working at your job to military aviation.

You've got the macro. Now you need to get into the micro. Why do I say you need to get into the micro? Because that's where you're going to build your momentum. You can put your feet in front of each other until you develop a pattern of doing so. because the thing about momentum and discipline is that it works in both directions. Habits are built over time as are bad habits. And it seems like bad habits have more gravity than good.

You can have a great habit for 60 days and then three days off the reservation and you're just Fuxville. So lay out those micro steps and start putting one foot in front of the other. You're going to build up some efficiency. You're going to build up some repetition. You're going to build up some speed and momentum, which is going to help you get there. And it allows you to have a failure from time to time. what you don't want to do is fail on those massive macro goals. Those are the ones that we want to see fall over if they're dominoes.

Everything in between all those little steps, you can navigate the up and down as long as you are moving in the right direction. And it sounds like to me, you know, you ended with asking about discipline, but you've already set goals for yourself. You're already working your way through school. Maybe just take a smaller bite. I'm sure you've heard the, what it be,

analogy. I don't know what the correct phraseology or terminology would be, but how do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. That's how you're going to get to your goals too. One bite at a time. Get out of the micro, get out of the macro, sorry, the large term, and get into the micro. It sounds to me like you have the discipline. Now it's about applying that discipline to very small steps. Easiest way to make those more efficient for you and have them fall into a pattern or routine is give them a framework. Write out the steps, right out of framework,

right out of a roadmap, get on the road behind the wheel, and stop looking in the rearview mirror. And hopefully that helps, Jacob. Last question for today comes from Edward. How do the teams, or other military groups and organizations, deal with left-handed shooters?

I can imagine it'd be a pain for a southpaw to deal with stuff like casings jumping across their field of view, reaching across to work a right-handed shooters. rifles, bolt, et cetera. Also, you should do a tactical asshole for The Rock, starring Nick Cage and Sean Connery. We'll work this question in reverse, because that's not a bad suggestion, actually.

That movie is dog shit. So maybe one day, there will be a, you know what? There is going to be. The next time I sit down with Callan, Tactical Asshole, Volume 5, we're going to do The Rock. Write it down somewhere, people. That's what's going to happen.

But to your question, How do they deal with it? They deal with it. You know, let's go with the platform that I use the most often, even though they've shifted them around a little bit. It's an M4. It's basically an ARR platform with some modifications. Standard M4 has a bolt carrier group that cycles.

The casings always eject on the right-hand side. Actually, we'll get to rifle here in a minute. For a pistol, you're asking about casings jumping across their field of view. For a pistol, it's not even really. really an issue. And actually, maybe this is a learning point too. So if you're watching this on YouTube, a lot of people, there's issues here with eye dominance and then hand dominance. And some people don't even know which one of their eyes is dominant. So I'm going to point my fingers. I'm going to make a triangle. I'm going to connect my thumbs and connect my index fingers. And it looks like a

triangle in front of me. And what I'm doing is I'm putting the lens of the camera directly in the middle of that triangle with both of my eyes open. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to close my left eye and the camera is still clearly in view and then I open my left eye then I close my right eye and the camera has shifted off to the left the reason that the camera has shifted and if you need it you know make the triangle as small as you possibly can so if you're unsure the item that you're looking at can completely disappear whatever eye if you are looking at it through the triangle and you close your left eye in the in the camera or whatever you're looking at stays in place your right eye is your dominant eye. If you close your right eye and the camera jumps out of frame, again, that is

indicating that it is your right eye that is the dominant eye. So it's important to identify. With a pistol, not so much because a pistol you use both hands, you drive them out in front of you, and if you're left eye dominant, you literally move the pistol over to your left eye. You can align the sights because it's not attached to your shoulder, so it's not that big of a deal. where it can become an issue is where you are left-eye dominant or right-handed or left-handed and right-eye dominant because getting your eye the correct focal plane behind the optic to line them up can be a bitch but let's assume in this situation it's a left-handed shooter who is left-eye dominant we shoot the same rifles the rounds are going to eject on the right-hand side but there's

actually some really easy things that you can do you can get ambidextrious selector switches so you could use either side of the pistol grip when it comes to the fire selection. There are attachments that you can add on there that allow you to send the bolt forward from an ambidextrous position, actually not even taking your left hand off. So there's a ton of ways that you can work yourself around this. But worst case scenario, let's say that you don't have any of those accessories. that you could put on your rifle. What you end up doing, if you are left-eye dominant and left-handed,

as you learn to manipulate the weapon system in a manner that works for you. So, you know, it says you're reaching across to work a rifle's bolt. You actually don't need, you know, you're going to have to do that right-handed or left-handed. It's going to come underneath you, and you can get charging handles that have left or right or both. So they are also ambidextrous. You can't get access to any of that stuff. What you're going to have to do is develop a little bit of you. a workflow that allows you to manipulate the weapon in a manner with which it is designed.

And they are designed. Like I said, they ejects the casings from the right-hand side. I have been shooting two eyes open for as long as I can remember. And I can see the right-hand side of the rifle. I never pay attention to the brass, nor do I think that somebody who was shooting with its shouldered on their left shoulder. And by the way, switching shoulders is not something that's uncommon. So I shoot rifle both left and right-handed with right-eye and left-eye.

If I'm coming around a corner as a right-handed shooter and I need to make a right-hand turn, I am exposing a lot more of my body by keeping the rifle on my right shoulder, as opposed to punching it out, re-centering into my left shoulder, and then pying the corner with my left eye looking down the sides of the rifle, getting ready to shoot left-handed. I've shot left-handed a ton. I can't think of a single time where the ejection of the brass bother me at all. So more than anything, I guess, Edward, is that you learn to manage the equipment with a workflow that keeps the equipment up and running.

And if it's not designed specifically for your personal setup or setting, you just work around it. And then also research online, a bunch of accessories that will make it easier of something, let's say the bolt release, which is on the left hand side for an M4 platform. Most of the time you're going to smack it with your left hand. You know, there's ways that you can come around underneath and you can do it with your right hand, and I'm sure there's an accessory that you could push that would allow that bolt to come forward as well. So there's technical solutions, but at the grossest of levels, it is a workflow issue. And that's how we handle those problems. And also, we try to get rid of lefties because they are inherently untrustworthy and weird.

But that's a total side note. And that is it for this week.