Today we continue on our Scenario-X series by touching on fitness. It’s a core pillar of The Everyday Marksman philosophy, and in this episode I’m giving three domains where it really makes a difference. Only one of them actually has to do with accomplishing the mission at hand.

Gear articles are among the most popular on the site, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I get a lot of questions about what chest rig to buy, how to set up belts, or whether or not someone really needs a set of plates and night vision. When just starting out, an aspiring prepared citizen is easily overwhelmed by the myriad of choices out there, not to mention the cost of actually acquiring it all.

To many, the simple answer is defaulting to how the military does it. That means dividing up your equipment into first line, second line, third line, and so on. While that makes sense for a military unit who has a primary mission of seeking, fixing, and destroying enemy combatants- it might not actually work for the average citizen just trying to protect their neighborhood during difficult times.

When we start talking about bad situations and what we think we’re going to do, most people in the shooting world immediately think of firefights and raids. But that’s not reality. There are far more mundane concerns that we’re going to spend our time worrying about. Int his post, I’m proposing a system for quickly communicating defensive posture to yourself and the world.