Your health account, your bank account, they’re the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen. Together you have a kingdom.
I truly feel that one of the biggest shortcomings in the gun-owning world is a lack of focus on physical capability. When you look at it, though, our physical fitness underpins nearly every activity we do. Strength helps you carry heavy loads for hunting and hiking. Cardiovascular health helps you be more accurate and recover quicker from exertion during a hunt or match stage.
Muscle mass helps you survive longer when the situation grows dire.
Since the Everyday Marksman community emphasizes taking action, I want to make sure you have the resources and tools to own your physical fitness and improve upon it. Here you will find all of my articles, podcasts, and challenges related to your physical capabilities.
If you haven’t tested yourself against a Marksman Challenge, be sure to check one of them out and lets us know how you did over in the community forum.
/// Test Yourself
We all need objective standards to hold ourselves to, it gives us a direction to train for and a yardstick to measure our progress. And as part of promoting a more capable type of citizen, I thought it was important to develop a set of standards for the community. So here they are! Think of them as a progression as you improve and develop your personal capabilities.
/// Fitness Archive
Introducing the Rifleman Pentathlon: A Game for Martial Marksmen
For a while, I've been kicking around an idea for a new type of competition. I enjoy all the various disciplines I've played in, but also think that each of them in isolation is missing something. Today, I'd like to tell you about my vision for a "complete" type of match that I think covers all of the foundations of Everyday Marksmen, and it does so in a way that lets all of us have an objective to train for. Let's talk about the Rifleman Pentathlon.
Radically Simple Strength Development: Consistency, Not Variety
This is both my review of a new book on strength training as well as an interview with the author. Over the last year, I've built up a library of strength and conditioning books, and I think I've settled on the one to suggest to just about everyone who wants to get started. Let's dig in.
The 2023 West Virginia Gun Run: The Retrospective
Months of prep time, new gear configurations, and a lot of articles. I finally ran the West Virginia Gun Run this past Saturday. Here's some notes on how it went and what I'd do differently in the future.
The Four Corners Approach to Unlocking Peak Performance
Today I'm discussing a concept that's been brewing in the the back of my brain. While working on the book, I've needed a way to illustrate how different things we do relate to improving the whole and take use to new levels of performance. I think I've figured it out, and this is my first go at explaining it.
The Road to Victory: My Tactical Biathlon Training Blueprint
So I did it, I got my ticket for the April 2023 West Virginia Gun Run. On the request of a community member, I want to tell you a bit about how I'm structuring my training for it, and how it's going now that I'm about half way through it. If you're interested, you can also join up to use my full program for yourself.
WTF: You Just Have to Experience It
I sat down with a few of our community members who recently competed in events put on by Waco Tactical Fitness. I'll be doing a similar tactical biathlon event later next month, and I was curious about equipment, training, and lessons learned from the events.
What Bench Are You Sitting On?
While reading through some of Coach Dan John's work, I came across a philosophy for breaking your annual training cycles. It's impossible to do everything well all of the time- something must give. Instead, we should think of our training, all of our training, from two perspectives: the bus bench, and the park bench.
The Devil’s Mile Sandbag Challenge
This marksman challenge is about grit. It's about pushing through pain, discomfort, and exhaustion to reach a goal. Our tool of choice? The humble sandbag and a pair of shoes.
Chasing Optimum and Other Marketing Failures
Everyone loves talking about optimization. Entire industries spend huge amounts of money convincing you that their new whiz bang gadget or service will take you to the next level with no additional skill required. Today I'm putting a stake in the ground to tell you that optimum is a myth, and our constant pursuit of it only detracts us from focusing on what's actually important for our success.
VO2 Max, Aerobic Energy, and Why it Matters to You
You might not have noticed, but I recently updated the Level 1 fitness standards to include a 1.5 mile run instead of the 1 mile that I originally used. I did this based on a lot of learning I've done over 2022 concerning conditioning, metabolism, and how your body recovers from stress. In this post, I want to touch on the key measurement used for aerobic conditioning, how I'm using it for the fitness test, and some tips on how you can improve it for yourself.
Level 3 Fitness Standards: Tactical Excellence
This is the last of the Everyday Marksman fitness standards. Level 1 was about general health and fitness and Level 2 focused on strength and work capacity. Level 3 combines everything into a few events to test all aspects of combat fitness.
How to Use Math to Master Your Physical Strength
I'm nerding a bit today. After many months, if not years, of reading various exercise programs and following many of them, I started to notice several similarities between them. I thought there must be some kind of forbidden knowledge that a non-trainer like me must be missing about how how these experts were selecting the given weights, sets, and repetitions. Then I stumbled onto the work of some Cold War-era Soviet researchers and it put it all together for me. So now I'm going to share what I've learned about the math, and how to use it for your own ...
Three Reasons Fitness Matters in Scenario-X
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.
Fit or Fat? It’s Time to be Honest With Yourself
Earlier in 2022, I told you about some of the goals I was working on. Two of them dealt with fitness and nutrition, and now that I'm about done with the six-week nutrition plan I thought it was time to have an honest discussion about where I'm at, where you might be, and where we should all be striving to go.
Five Things I’m Focusing on in 2022- You Probably Should, Too
I dislike the whole New Year's resolution ritual, but that doesn't mean I don't do some self evaluation and pick some new things to focus on. In this episode, Allison and I discuss my primary focus areas for 2022, how they will affect the site, and why you should probably consider focusing on these things too.
How to Prepare for the Tactical Games with Mike and Pascale Green
The Tactical Games are part of a growing trend with combining physical fitness with marksmanship in competition. I've seen them talked about quite a bit over time, and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Green and his wife Pascale to talk about how the games started and what to look out four while you prepare.
