Thank you for coming by The Everyday Marksman. This site and its community are a labor of love. I hope you stick around for a while, and maybe even join us.
-Matt
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 strength program.
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.
Tackle the Kettlebell Mile Challenge
This Marksman Challenge is a test of strength and endurance. Like rucking, but with an added twist. The short version: pick up a kettlebell and carry it one handed for a mile. The devil is in the details.
Strength and Honor: Accountability Challenge
The theme for May is Strength and Honor, so I’d like to spend a little time talking about what I’m doing this month in support of it. It’s going to be a doozy, and I’m telling everyone so you can hold me accountable for doing it.
Level 2 Fitness Standards: Strength and Work Capacity
This is the second level of the Everyday Marksman fitness assessments, and it focuses on strength and work capacity. Caution, this is not for beginners.
Why a Fitness Test? Why now?
This is just a quick unedited rant about why I decided to launch a physical fitness test for The Everyday Marksman. In short, 2020 sucked, and 2021 might be worse: maybe it’s time to hold ourselves to some objective standards.