Here are a few links to articles and videos I found interesting this week and want to share. Some are intellectual. Some are informative. Some are just fun. If you have some free time, check them out this weekend.
How Kelly Starrett’s Mobility Seminar Ruined Me
If you aren’t regularly doing the stretches and tissue mobilizations on MobilityWOD.com, you are wrong.
Active Shooters and Drugs
An interesting article compiling all of the data about the psychtropic drugs used by active shooters worldwide. One caution in interpreting the data…correlation does not imply causation. Just because the shooter was on the drugs doesn’t mean that the drugs caused the shooting. It’s certainly possible, but it isn’t evidence of proof. If your kid was so mentally deranged that you think he could shoot up a school, wouldn’t you want to put him on a drug in the hopes that it works? A lot of parents are in that spot.
While I think the psychotropic drugs ARE a factor in these shootings, they may not be. It could be that the shooter is screwed up, so he gets drugs. If the drugs don’t work, he’s still screwed up and he commits the crime.
Man injured in shooting at Vernon Hills police station
For my cop friends, PLEASE wear your vest and gun, even when on station.
VICE Battleground Footage in Mali
Some good video of unorganized and poorly trained fighters shooting it out in an urban battleground. Think about how you might defeat this type of opponent.
Part two is more violent and gruesome. It can be found HERE.
That’s Gotta Hurt
A phenomenal article about pain in training:
“People want things to be easy. They want something for nothing. I get that. But there are some subjects where it is not possible. Your body is not designed to improve under conditions of comfort. It improves under stress. With stress, muscles grow. Without stress, muscles atrophy. You don’t get better at running by sitting.
You can get to a certain level of knowledge without pain or exhaustion. You can get to a certain level of skill. But you can’t get good. You can convince yourself you’re good. As long as you hang with other people who have avoided the same things you have, you can be comparatively good. But you can’t get good. Not at fighting and not at competition level anything.
It’s gonna hurt. It has to. People want a magical method where they can learn to deal with shock, surprise, pain and exhaustion without feeling shock, surprise, pain and exhaustion. That’s not the way the world works, kids.”
Does it Hurt?
And speaking of pain, it’s different in a long term athletic pursuit. Feeling the pain of getting hit in the face (something that hurts, but just for a short time) is useful. Feeling pain every time you work out is not.
Boyle’s question is an important one:
“If you have an injury and are wondering whether or not a certain exercise is appropriate, ask yourself a simple question. “Does it hurt”? The key here is that the question ‘does it hurt?” can only be answered yes or no. If you answer yes, then you are not ready for that exercise, no matter how much you like it. Simple, right? Not really. I tell everyone I speak with about rehab that any equivocation is a yes. Things like “after I warm-up it goes away” etc. are all yes answers. It is amazing to me how many times I have asked people this simple question only to have them dance around it. The reason they dance around the question is that they don’t like my answer.”
The Top 10 Guns Used In Crime – BATF Statistics
Some good information about the types of weapons you may be dealing with on the street. This study is pretty similar to my own (with a much smaller sample size) published at Criminals and the Guns They Carry
Instructor Ethics 101
A great blog post by my friend Kathy that all instructors should read:
“In order to fulfill my most important responsibility to my students, I have to risk pushing them beyond their comfort levels. And I have to do it in a way that will cause them to work harder rather than to shut down. If I’m not willing to take that risk for the sake of my students’ lives, I have no right to call myself a self-defense instructor.”
Her book The Cornered Cat is an excellent resource as well. If you are a female shooter or work with female shooters, it’s a must read!
