Exercising for accuracy.

One of the greatest answers to this question can be found here:
http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/27/

That article changed the way I thought about strength and conditioning several years ago.

People have mentioned that you should work cardio, work the lower body as well as the upper, do bodyweight exercises, etc. Lots of good advice already, so I'll just relate one thing from my own experience.

I've done tree work, carpentry, grappling, boxing, rock climbing, and kettlebells for the last decade or so. I'd say 80% of what I do (maybe more) is pulling. It's actually fairly rare to have to push something heavy away from yourself. In grappling, to attack is to pull. When you brace your upper body against recoil, the pulling muscles of the posterior chain do a surprising amount of work to stabilize your arms and shoulders. Abs, too, of course.

The main pulling apparatus on your upper body is your lats. No matter how big your biceps ever get, they'll never come close to what your lats can pull. If you think of your upper body as a winch, then your arms are really just the cable to be reeled in by the winch itself: the lats. They run from the base of the spine up to the neck, and from the center of the spine out to the shoulder. It's a huge triangular sail of muscle on both sides of your back.

If I could only do one exercise to build functional strength, it would be the pull-up (or the chin-up). Wide grip, close grip, staggered grip, palms facing, palms away... the more variations the better. You can work your isometric strength (and your abs) by hanging out at the top or in the middle for a 10-count. There's a lot of ways to get the most out of a pull-ups workout.

Here's the text of the article I linked to above:

Rear Wheel Drive
Tom Furman, RKC


Today's media has glamorized the male torso in print, TV, and the film arena. Male models and actors exhibit physical development that represents a cosmetic Yin devoid of a practical, tactical yang. In fact, a physical comparison between a fitness mag cover boy and Sandow would reveal two extreme ends of the genetic keyboard. One would be a high-pitched tinkle, the other, a rumbling bass. This vast disparity is a product of misguided cosmetic training. A strength-oriented athlete trains to improve function and lets the visual aesthetics fall where they may. The difference between a cover boy and a strength athlete is a dramatic one, like the difference between tweezers and pliers.

Geographically speaking our eyes and mouth are on the front of our head. Humans recognize and interact to each other fact to face. Now, since print is one dimensional, and film is two dimensional, the focus on frontal, eye level muscularity is profound. The male fitness model look has the stamp of a health spa body. Overdeveloped pectorals, biceps, lateral delts, abdominals, combined with meager lats and some quadriceps. This is all wrong. Let an athlete/warrior/soldier work hard at their given function and the physical stimulus will be almost one hundred eighty degrees opposite. A functional human animal will have their engine in the rear. From posterior neck to Achilles tendons, the locomotion, climbing and lifting engines will be both functional and cosmetically symmetrical to the trained eye (and very few eyes are trained!). Think about it.

Enter a modern, co-ed, all age group fitness facility and notice what tools are being used. First and foremost is the bench press station. These are usually manned by three young men playing tag with an Ivanko barbell for well over an hour. Second, would be the curling machine and Scott benches. Third choice is the seated press or the pulldown machine. Now, throw and some crunches and a complimentary session on the leg extension or leg press machine and you have the workout of eighty to ninety percent of the commercial fitness lemmings. The funny thing is, these health junkies are the first to complain of bad backs, bad knees, and uncontrollable carbohydrate binges. So much for modern training methods.

The true strength athlete must train the posterior chain. These muscles are out of view, but require that one hundred ten percent solution to train with superhuman focus. You will put yourself in the upper crust of trainees if you can force your quadratus lumborum into multiple, heavy, reps. Hell, you will be one in a hundred if you can LOCATE you quadratus lumborum.

A carefully constructed training program would focus on that neurological gold mine, the deadlift. Any and all Kettlebell snatches, cleans, step ups, lunges, pistols and overhead work force muscles into effort that forever remain virgins in a machine dominated fitness scene. Weighted chins, grip work, and neck work should be a mainstay rather than a foreign language. Mention oblique work to a wasp waisted cardboard man, and he will run. Mention it to a discus thrower or Judo man and he will demonstrate his own variation. And remember, even the sissy exercises can be turned into functional ones with enough mental toughness. Remember football great Herschel Walker?? He did crunches, 3000 a day. They were interspersed with straight legged situps, one and two armed pushups, chinups, karate, and running his sprints chased by a pitbull pulling a tire (pitbulls like tough training too -look at their hindquarters!). How about Pat Casey, the first man to Bench Press 600 pounds? He fiddled with dumbells. He used two hundred forty pounders for incline presses. Arm wrestler Cleve Dean played around with light weights too. He dragged around one thousand pound boars in his pig farm with his own four hundred pound frame. I wonder if he has ever been in a room full of chrome weights?

The point I am making, like a hot metal spike, is to manipulate heavy objects against gravity, and let your body accommodate, adapt, and strengthen. Don't think of body parts, but of gross motor movements. Leg thrust, lower body flexion, upper body pushing, upper body pulling, and torso extension. Tack on grip, neck and real world abdominal training, and let the myofibrils do their thing. Make arm day, leg day, and chest day go the way of big hair and Miami Vice. Those Chippendale clones with tanned torsos and licorice stick legs should only exist in comic strips and comedy skits. Train Hard.

My consistency has improved drastically since I've started running again. Having a good cardiovascular system that make more efficient use of your oxygen really helps keep your muscles from getting tired.

A recommendation given to me when I first started shooting bullseye (one handed shooting) was to sit in front of the TV and hold a gallon of water out at arms length for as long as you can and repeat. I haven't had to do that in years, but I did notice this year that my triceps and the muscles in my back are significantly larger on my right than my left from all the one-handed shooting.

SCMtns, that's pretty intense stuff in that article. It seems like great reading for people who are already in decent shape. However, the vast majority of people would be well-served by a routine that's much simpler. A person who is severely out-of-shape would be well served by walking/jogging briskly for a half hour EVERYDAY for awhile. This does wonders for the body. I had to do this simple routine when I was recovering from a recent surgery. After building a base with simply walking, I was able to incorporate the gnarly exercises without injuries. Most regular folks over 35 years old need to ease into the exercises described in that article. Otherwise, they'll get severely injured and will quit working out forever.

You should practice shooting while fatigued because regardless of your alert condition there are situations that can happen to cause you extreme fatigue before firing your gun.

One scenario is; You are walking down the street and are physically attacked by one or more assailants. You find yourself in a wrestling/punching match as you try to free yourself from their grasp.

Anyone who has ever been in a one on one combat situation knows that during this type of struggle you will expend great amounts of energy and fatigue is a very real issue even for those of us who are in great shape.

There are some training schools that put their students through large amounts of physical stress and then making them draw and fire for this very reason.

You should incorporate some type of exercises like running, push ups, etc. to fatigue yourself and then practice presenting and firing your weapon to try a simulate these conditions.

It's better to practice now and learn your bodies limitations and learn to deal with them than to find them out in a real life situation that may cost you your life.

Practice makes perfect but we shouldn't practice the same way over and over. Learn to expect the unexpected and then train for the many different situations that can and do occur.

Hi jakemccoy-

Yeah, I agree, that article's pretty hardcore. I didn't mean to encourage anybody to jump into deadlifting and bent pressing right off the couch. I didn't caution against full implementation of the article's ideas for the same reason I don't go around discouraging people from running ultra-marathons: nobody I know wants to anyway. You probably couldn't get 'em to if you tried.

I like that article because it does a good job of differentiating functional fitness from appearance-based fitness, and it encourages you to focus on the backside of your body, where most of your power comes from.

Doing alot of push ups, sit ups, pull ups and those grib exercise, squeeze thingies help alot.

Hard to imagine being in a situation where you draw your weapon over and over and over and over and over.

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I do that every Saturday morning.

















Pin shooting.

Racking the slide exercises?

Can’t really add much to what’s been said, however, I’ve seen several seemingly well-conditioned individuals who don’t seem to possess the grip strength to rack the slide on a stiff 1911. Yes, there’s a lot of technique involved, but to some degree it seems to require muscle-specific strength in the weak hand. Can anyone suggest muscle-specific exercise regimens for this?

Can’t really add much to what’s been said, however, I’ve seen several seemingly well-conditioned individuals who don’t seem to possess the grip strength to rack the slide on a stiff 1911. Yes, there’s a lot of technique involved, but to some degree it seems to require muscle-specific strength in the weak hand. Can anyone suggest muscle-specific exercise regimens for this?

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Um Ehr,

I'm not touching that one!


Anyone?