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
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.
Too many people are looking for the easy out, as if finding the one perfect piece of gear, or just the right training technique, will take them to the next level of capability. But that’s not true. Success and failure are lagging indicators of our choice to make deposits or take withdrawals from our internal investment account.
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.
Like many enthusiast topics, we’ve got a problem with flex culture. What is that? Today we’re talking about it, how it manifests, why its a problem, and what you can do to combat it.
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.
The longer you’re in this community, the more you realize that there’s almost an overwhelming number of skills to learn. One of the biggest traps people fall into is trying to become a master of everything. Often that looks like learning infinite variations of each skill. I think this ultimately becomes a distraction, and prevents us from thinking about the bigger picture.
In this session of Marksman Live, I talked to Brent0331, Doc Larsen, and Les from Pegasus Tests about the structure and capability of your survival team in Scenario-X. We dug into posture, weapon selection, mindset, and more.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately about the right mixture of skills, equipment, communications, and other elements of a theoretical emergency situation. With that, it’s time to revisit Scenario-X, our fictional disaster first introduced in the load carriage series. In this post, I want to build out my thoughts a bit more and discuss some of the nuances and reasoning behind it. Why? Well, because it’s going underpin a lot of things coming up soon.
MLC, a long time reader and supporter, adds his thoughts on the idea of fun being allowed in the shooting sports. We often get too tied up in being too tactical, too serious, or too focused on winning the match. While firearms and competition are certainly serious pursuits, it’s easy to forget that we’re also the ambassadors of shooting for the next generation- and the best way to hook them is making it fun.
In session 005 of Marksman Live, Allison and I go through the mistakes I made in introducing her to shooting, and what lessons we can share with others about doing it better. There’s also the customary Q&A where we go on tangents about poor marketing to women and the zombie apocalypse.
In session 003, Allison and I talk about the underlying philosophy of The Everyday Marksman and why I believe in teaching tactical skills for all citizens is an important goal.
There’s been an idea rolling around in my head for a long time: fun is allowed. You see, in today’s short episode, I’m discussing what I hope becomes a recurring theme on the site for a while. Have you ever gotten the sense that we, the people of the gun, take things just a little too seriously?
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
COPYRIGHT © The Everyday Marksman