The Efficiency of Inefficiency for Fat Loss

This is something I’ve been thinking about recently as I begin a new phase of my strength and conditioning. Usually, in sport, we abide by the SAID principle when preparing for an event. The Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand principle says that if you want to get better at throwing, you should throw. If you have a power lifting meet, you should be practicing the three lifts. You will specifically adapt to the demands you place on your body. It’s a miracle of evolution and part of why we survive as a species.

This is why when you see a runner run, they look like a gazelle and have perfect control of their breathing and heart rate, but if you put them on a bike, they are uncomfortable and struggling to breath. Runners run, cyclists bike. That all makes sense.

But can it ever be a bad thing? I believe it can. Specifically in the realm of exercise for fat loss and cardiovascular health. If you’ve spent any time in commercial gyms, you have seen it. Think about the chronic cardio folks who endlessly do the elliptical machines and never make progress. They have decided which cardio equipment they prefer, and within about 90 days, their body adapts to the demand, becomes efficient at the motor pattern, and thus requires less metabolic output to maintain a given resistance or speed. This is not preferred for metabolic conditioning.

I notice this when I do a Maffetone LSD (long slow distance) block of training with a heartrate monitor. His protocol is for building a cardio base which will stretch the chambers of the heart and provides more stroke volume per beat of the heart. This will lower your resting heart rate and improve your health. Read more about that here. When doing this kind of training with one kind of cardio, I notice that within a few weeks I have to drastically increase my perceived output to keep my heartrate in the proper zone. This is an observable adaptation. It makes the work less pleasant, more monotonous, and more fatiguing. But there is an easier way!

The answer is inefficiency.

That is, select a novel stimulus every few weeks. Or even several in the same session. By having a long list of options available, you are avoiding adaptation and maintaining novelty. This is inefficient. This is what we want. We want to be the runner who is trying to swim or ride a bike. The person who is interested in general physical preparedness wants to be “bad” at the movement they use for cardio.

So if you feel yourself in a cardio rut, or notice that you aren’t moving towards your goal, might I recommend something you suck at?

Incomplete list of cardio options:

  • Heavy Hands Walks – Using 3-8lb dumbbells in your hands, and some 3-5lb ankle weights and just go for a walk. You might have heard the wisdom that “every pound on your feet is like 5 pounds on your back”. In this case, that’s what we want.
  • Ruck Marching – Put a 10-25lb plate in an old backpack, or get a weight vest and go for a walk.
  • Cycling
  • Walk/Jog/Run
  • Swimming
  • Jump Rope
  • Hitting a heavy bag
  • Kettlebell work/weighted carries
  • Stationary bike
  • Airdyne
  • Stair mill/Stepper
  • Treadmill
  • Elliptical
  • Rower
  • Shadow boxing/grappling
  • Ground work/ crawling
  • ETC.

This post is specifically about cardio, but the same goal of inefficiency can be extended to strength training too. By the end of completing Dan John’s 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge several years ago, completing the 500 daily swings became ‘easy’. SAID at work. I think that having access to many lifting implements, and rotating their use in a timely way (while avoiding chronic program hopping) will lead to better general conditioning over the long term. Coach Dan John agrees. I can’t recommend his work and programs enough for the generalist athlete. In a similar vein, Louis Simmons’ Conjugate/Concurrent method also leans heavily on this concept.

If you are just getting started in cardio or strength training, then everything you do will be inefficient. Enjoy those noob gains. Everything works, until it doesn’t. Understand your plateau is just a result of millions of years of evolution. Then find something efficiently inefficient to do.

If you need me, I’ll be training for The Fall.

Being inefficient with a 65# weight vest.

Yours in Inefficiency,
Mark

S&W Shield VS Sig P365XL – By the Numbers

I’ve owned a Smith Shield since they were released in 2012. The shield was a game changer and huge upgrade from the other single stack 9mm guns on the market. My Shield replaced the Kel Tec PF9 that I carried in my engineering job in some manner of deep concealment. In the subsequent years, the micro 9 class of guns exploded and many competitors were introduced. None of them really tickled my fancy enough to justify spending my own money on ‘upgrading’.

Enter the Sig P365XL in June of 2019. It offered features that no other micro 9 had been able to deliver on, and features that I qualitatively perceived as worthy of the upgrade. This post will be sort of an evaluation and comparison in features, performance, costs, and a discussion of the intangibles. I’m basically just trying to justify the purchase to myself and you’re along for the ride.

A day of shooting some tests quickly cuts through “feelings” about how a gun performs.

The Guns

The guns I’m comparing are different states of ‘upgraded’. The Sig P365XL is bone stock. The gen 1 Smith Shield has been incrementally upgraded over time and I’ll catalog those upgrades here.

The Sig comes with excellent 3-dot tritium night sights, good grip texture, a usable thumb safety (can be had without), a flared magwell (minimize pinching on mag insert), a flat faced trigger, a factory 15(!) round magazine, and has an optics mounting plate. I paid $525 for mine locally. Most of the online vendors have it for full retail of $575.

SIG SAUER P365XL 9MM OPTIC READY | Brownells

The shield has several upgrades that I have chosen over the years to make it more usable for me. The stock shield is currently $300 if you’re patient or $400 on any other given day. I added some Ameriglo Pro-Glo sights ($73 currently), APEX sear ($40), TALON grip panel ($20) to aid in the bar of soap feel of the gen 1s, Mag Guts +2 spring/follower upgrade gets me 10+1 in the gun ($32). I feel like all of these upgrades get the shield on par with the P365XL. I, of course, paid full MSRP when it came out in 2012, but I wanted to compare these two guns at current pricing. The grand total is $565 ($465 if you’re patient) in 2020. So we have a gun with similar features, a similar size, 68% of the ammo capacity with aftermarket spring and basepad, and costs $10 less ($110 if you find a deal) than the P365XL. So is it worth saving $10 once we look at performance, features, and ergonomics? Let’s see.

S&W M&P Shield 2.0 9mm Pistol With No Safety, Black – 11808

Performance

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that I put a lot of weight into numbers. That’s the mechanical engineer in me. It’s also what creates my disdain for most gun reviews. I wrote about that here. When I was doing my Hot-Rod J-frame project, I wanted a good way to quantify the performance improvements that various components would deliver in small revolvers. I wanted a way to compare the important attributes of defensive shooting, at realistic self-defense distances, with enough resolution to see trends.

I wanted to look at several aspects of ‘good shooting’ when it comes to my testing. I’m interested in pure accuracy, without the pressure of time. Pure speed, without a strict pressure of accuracy. Lastly, a blend of speed and accuracy/precision. I wanted to use targets that I could print on my printer. I also wanted to keep the total round count under 50 rounds because ammo is expensive and time is limited.

TEST 1: Pure Accuracy Test

10 shots at 15yds on a B8, no time limit

TEST 2: “5 yard Roundup”

four strings of fire, all at 5 yds, shot on B8, each with a time limit of 2.5 seconds.

Scoring is by the rings on the target for the ten shots, equaling a possible 100 points. Hits off of the ten-inch repair center minus ten each. Late hits are five points are deducted per late shot.

String 1: One Shot From the Holster (I used muzzle on table, support hand high on chest. Copying hand position of the draw since my range doesn’t allow holster work)

String 2: Four Shots From the Ready

String 3: Three Shots From Strong-Hand-Only Ready

String 4: Two Shots From Support-Hand-Only Ready

TEST 3: “HITS SUPER SNUB TEST” – B8 repair center, all shot from low ready

10 Yards – 5 shots in 8 seconds. Two hands

5 Yards – 5 shots in 5 seconds. Two hands

3 Yards – 5 shots in 3 seconds. Strong hand only.

TEST 4: As Fast As Possible – Snubbie Bill Drill

5 shots, 5 yards, on full piece of paper, take average split time.

B8 repair center for you to download:B-8 (1)Download

Results

“Virtually Identical” – Mike Goldberg

I couldn’t ask for a more evenly matched set of scores. For this to be more meaningful, I’d run the tests at least three times, and with at least three different shooters. But I’d wager that we’d see the scores fall very close to each other after all that. Besides, I don’t have any friends to ask to shoot the tests. So let’s just agree that they are *very* similar when it comes to performance. And it’s no wonder as they have a similar sight radius, similar sight picture, similar grip length, and similar trigger feel. They are similar enough that there isn’t much difference in the performance output.

  • Thickness is practically identical.
  • The Shield is wider, front to back, than the 365. Depending on hand size, this might make the 365 too small, or the shield too wide.
  • The XL has a *slightly* longer muzzle.
  • You can see the XL’s 15 round mag just peeking from under the MAG-GUTS enhanced shield mag.
  • The minimal, but actually usable thumb safety. This is my first striker gun w/ a manual safety I intend to use.
  • The Shield has this little dinky safety that is basically too small to use on the draw. I never intended to use it, but still swipe at it on the draw to be sure.
  • The texture on the 365 is excellent when compared to the gen 1 shield’s texture. Talon Grips are a huge improvement and worthy upgrade.
  • The slightly flared magwell prevents pinching and eases reloads a bit. Mostly the pinching.
  • The Excellent sights on the 365.
  • Ameriglo aftermarket sights are a needed upgrade on the shield.
  • The optics plate of the XL is what really pushed my purchase.

Optics Ready

I’ll be honest. I’ve been waiting to jump on a red dot equipped pistol for the last few years. I was stalling because of rich pricing on the RDS that were quality enough to trust, and because it seemed only full sized striker guns were coming equipped to accept them. I’m not really a striker guy anymore. Nor am I a full sized gun guy much anymore.

This 365XL is sort of a compromise. I’m not happy that it’s a striker gun. But at least it has a usable thumb safety. It is a slim 9 that can be carried in gym shorts. It is an optics ready gun which several companies are making custom slim footprint optics for. It does punch above its weight class in ammo capacity and ‘shootability’. It’s a bigger gun masquerading as a smaller gun. And for me, that was worth trying it out.

As an aside, did you guys hear that SCCY is releasing an optics equipped DAO small 9mm? I hate that I’m interested, but I’m interested.

This soon to be released HOLOSUN 507K is just brilliant and pushed my purchase.

New! Holosun HS507K Red Dot Sight , Color: Black, Battery Type: CR1632, 15% Off w/ Free S&H

Pistol Access – Building Grip Minutia

This is going to be a look inside my head at the stuff that keeps me interested in shooting techniques. I’m going to describe two general schools of thought (as I understand them) about building a self-defense grip on the gun in the holster. Then will have an argument with myself, attempting to make a case for one over the other and address each point of contention. First I’ll describe the general concepts.

The Two Angles of Attack.

The first is a ‘downward draw’/Full Firing Grip made in the holster before the gun moves. This is usually characterized by making a U shape out of your hand and funneling the backstrap/beavertail into the web of your hand until it rides as high as it can go and stops, and then curling the three fingers and flagged trigger finger into position. The thumb can do a number of things. It can be flagged straight, it can wrap to the otherside of the gun and form a one handed shooting grip, or it can be used to cover the hammer or rear of the slide to facilitate building a two-handed grip later on. Once this FFG is built, the gun starts its vertical path in the presentation. You can spot this draw by seeing the gun move down just before it starts moving up. This is, in my experience, a more robust grip build. Though it is not faster.

Here is Paul Gomez demonstrating the downward/hand web index

or

The second is an ‘upward draw’/’claw’ draw. Using the three little fingers to initiate building the grip and finalize the grip either simultaneously or once the gun is moving up and out of the holster. This type of draw requires very accurate finger placement and very repeatable gear setup and position. It can be spotted by looking for the gun to immediately lift once the grip is built. Usually the hand marries the gun fingers first with an upward or directly inward motion. The index point is often the distal joint of the middle finger finding a spot on the pistol frame, or the vertically flagged thumb looking for the inside edge of the rear sight.

Here is Jedi from Modern Samurai Project showing his version of the hook.

Origins of the downward draw/hand web index

I don’t know exactly who/where it came from (can someone like Karl Rehn help me out?), but here are Col. Cooper and Louis Awerbuck demonstrating pistol handling and you can see the web meet the back-strap downward every time they draw. This is a great historical video and still very informative.

Origins of the upward draw/claw/lifting index

Without a doubt, this lineage of grip has its roots in competitive shooting. You can see Rob Leatham and a host of early IPSC competitors using this in this clip. It also is where you see the ‘straight line’ presentation where the muzzle moves on an escalator from holster to eye line and stops as the shot breaks. Efficiency and complete rounding of all the corners and wasted movement. This is pure speed. A whole lot of competitive shooting technique has come over to the defensive world and that’s a really good thing.

Gear placement, Stance (Stupid Human Tricks)

If you want to go as fast as possible, the crucible of competition has shown us that this lifting or claw style draw is faster. Bar none. John Johnston of Citizens Defense Research calls these blazingly fast techniques ‘Stupid Human Tricks’ in his class Tests and Standards (which is a fun and competitive class that I found productive to attend). He shows the class some of these ‘hacks’ for more rapid gun access. It’s a non-contextual purely mechanical shooting class. Here’s a clip.

Here is a competitive shooter demonstrating his draw on the timer. Note how his feet and hips are indexed exactly towards the target so he’s not fighting his body alignment for the shot. Also note how he touch-checks the pistol just before the timer goes off to build a kinesthetic reference point so his hand knows just where to go. You often see really fast self defense guys bumping their forearm on their gun before the timer for a similar purpose. It’s a small rehearsal.

So being fast doesn’t matter? So you think competition skills are not useful for the streets?

No, I’m not saying either of those things. I use a timer literally every time I go to the range and in nearly every dry-fire session. There is a timer in every gunfight, you just don’t know when it beeps. I also love competing and working out kinks with gear and to have some time and peer pressure to increase performance anxiety. If you have the mechanical ability to shoot .15 second splits, then shooting .3 second splits will feel slow. If you can do stupid human tricks and break your first shot from concealment in .80 seconds, then taking 2 seconds will feel like an eternity. The nagging thing in my mind are the little intangibles that a downward draw affords you that a lifting draw doesn’t. Those things, though not easily quantifiable, are important enough to make me personally stick with a downward draw.

The Intangibles

  • Training time and skill maintenance. I’d bet that all of the guys who advocate the hook/lifting draw would also tell you it takes a lot of upkeep to maintain their ability to do it quickly and without bobbles. All of those folks LOVE shooting and as a result they do it a lot. I don’t LOVE shooting. I shoot because I know it’s a skill that I need to have. I treat it like taking medicine. Shooting is only one of several skill sets I’m pursuing simultaneously. I don’t have time to keep shooting as sharp as I’d wish it. Given the smaller amount of time I have, I am forced to lean away from speed, and more towards foolproof. I believe the downward grip is more foolproof.
  • Gear shifts around. The draw’s reference points might move around by over an inch depending on whether you’re standing, running, sitting, driving, etc. I’d argue that it’s easier to miss your claw’s reference point (rear of slide or under trigger guard) with a lifting draw. If, conversely, you make a funnel out of your thumb and trigger finger, that wide V can find the backstrap and slide high behind the slide and the other fingers are now indexed to wrap the front strap. I find this more repeatable under pressure.
  • The downward draw works on basically all pistol sizes, shapes, and mode of carry. My carry gun changes depending on what I’m doing. Some days it’s a clipdraw J-frame in some gym shorts. Another day it’s a Beretta in some jeans. It also might be an LCP in a fanny pack. The wildly varying grip size and shape differences create an issue for reliable access if I try to hook it out. You’ll also notice that the people who advocate the lifting draw usually carry bigger (G19 and up) sized guns and have very rigid holster/belt setups. That’s not an option for everyone. For my modes of carry, I find downward to be pistol universal.
  • Finalizing the FFG once the gun is moving increases the chance of a bobble and makes it harder to recover. I would like to see more high speed video, but I’d wager that some of the super fast guys are simultaneously finalizing the grip and moving the gun. If you miss a downward draw, you can fish around with your hand funnel and find the backstrap. I’ve seen video of competitors slinging their guns out of their holsters at the beginning of a stage, and I believe there’s a larger chance of this in a lifting/claw grip. So the trade off seems to be speed for probability of success. Though we’re talking small degrees of each.
  • The entangled problem. Having watched and participated in a whole lot of force-on-force with T-guns, I’ve seen a whole lot of guns dropped or the drawstroke fouled as the gun was being drawn. Usually this is the result of a panicked draw and failing to acquire a FFG before the gun starts to move out of the holster. The gun can be easily stripped by the wearer’s T-Shirt if the grip isn’t fully built. Again, I prefer robustness over speed, even if the differences are marginal.

I think the allure of the timer and having numbers is very important for tracking progress and meeting standards. I also think that choosing techniques on time alone might be missing some of the picture. Defensive gun uses are almost always task loaded events. That is, your attention and processing power are divided among many tasks simultaneously. Therefore, I feel obligated to choose the method I feel has the highest probability of success over the greatest range of circumstances. I don’t have the time to refine a drawstroke for every circumstance and frankly I don’t think I could decide quickly enough in the moment. I’m just not that good.

How do I practice?

The same way as the fast guys, just on a different technique. I use par timers, shot timers, or sometimes no timer. Sometimes I go as fast as I can until the wheels fall off and I bobble, then I work on reliably learning to draw in that time. Other timers I work for perfect reps with no timer. I work from a variety of positions and postures, with my hands in several places (in pockets, at waist, surrender position, in the ‘fence’). Sometimes I just get a grip, other times I draw to a shot, other times I draw to a low ready. I spend about 5 minutes a day in dry-fire and I concentrate on draw in most of those sessions. I just accept that my draw will never get faster than it would be if I did a deep dive on mastering the claw/lifting draw. Then I get on with my life.

If you made it this far, congrats. You’re a nerd too. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. How do you do it?

Some of my fast fast friends and people I know.

What Does Average Joe Need In A Trigger? 5 Years Later

In 2015, I wrote a blog post that addressed some thoughts I was having about what type of pistol best fit my life. I was processing exactly what I needed a pistol to do for me, in my life, for my situation. That post was my way of getting through the inertia of over ten years of Glock 19s and heavy indoctrination into having to find the perfect, easy to shoot fast, competition/carry trigger. Shortly after that post, I believed my own idea and started investing in and learning (and attempting to master) Double Action and Traditional Double Action pistols in various size envelopes. This post will highlight my mental map that led me to where I am today.

Current Underwear Gun and gym shorts options: smith 640, LCR, and LCP

Full Circle

I find myself going full circle on a lot of things in my life. I could write a post about this, but I’ll give a relevant example here. I started my firearms training under instructors that were trying to build a strong foundation of self-defense in a two day class. As a result of the scope of those classes, there isn’t much time to talk about, much less use, shot timers and discuss progressive improvement in shooting skills or competition. So I left those early classes with too much confidence and not knowing what I didn’t know regarding time pressure.

Then I fell into circles who were skilled competitors and instructors who taught me that time matters and being faster than the other guy wins fights. So I mocked the no-timer-guys and was on a mission to go fast(er). I got really wrapped up in the timer and achieving what I now view as “meaningless degrees of precision” in score and time. It is really easy to get wrapped up in the timer once you discover it.

Now, after thinking about this a lot for the last few years, and listening to people who have been thinking about this for entire careers, I am somewhere in the middle. Speed matters, to a point and at certain times. (Meaningful) Precision is my primary performance goal with enough speed to ride the edge of assessment of my shooting. This fact leaves a lot of room for DA guns in my life.

Training time is another factor. Dry fire is free. I can practice the most important shooting skills for free at home. I can learn a new trigger style at home for free. The Pareto principle applies. For me to squeak out a .02 second split time improvement below say .25 seconds would take an inordinate amount of time and money. It also might be counterproductive to self defense, as I mention below. As a multi-disciplinary practitioner, that time is better spent getting my 80/20 under the bar, on the mats, or meal prepping. You have to dive deep enough into each facet of this thing, but not too deep or you’ll neglect something else. But that might be another post.

The Discontinued P250 (sadly), and a Beretta 92a1 with some Wilson goodies.

What does a defensive gun need to do?

Since we have to live with and around our guns a whole lot more than we have to shoot them, some weight should be given to ‘margin of safety’ in our pistol’s function. Those little mechanical assists that cover for us when we have a lapse in concentration or are otherwise overwhelmed my the situation unfolding before us. It’s worth considering that the most dangerous thing we do with our guns, statistically speaking, is administrative handling. Specifically holstering. Keep in mind that 98-100% (by time) of our interactions with a gun will be administrative.

In order of importance, a self defense gun should facilitate:
1- Not shooting ourselves
2- Not shooting people we don’t want to shoot
3-Shooting what we want to shoot

Then I took to heart Darryl Bolke’s requirements of a handgun that only ask for, “Sights I can see, a trigger I can manage, in a reliable package.” This isn’t a big ask and leaves a lot of options available, including DA guns and revolvers.

Timers and Scoring still play a role. You have to know where you are.

…But your split times are slower!

Then I learned about assessment speed (and reaction times via Bill Rogers) and how it’s possible to “out-drive your headlights” and shoot faster than you can process the impact of your shots on your target. I learned that LAPD SWAT trains to .5 second splits to allow good hits and proper assessment. This made me less anxious about moving away from striker guns and towards double action guns.

Since I can’t think and react faster than about .25 seconds (and nor can you), why should I seek a defensive gun that I can shoot faster just for faster’s sake. It didn’t make sense for me. Detractors say, “If you can shoot .17 splits, then shooting .3 second splits becomes easier”. This of course is true. Moving the ultimate ceiling of your speed higher will make all slower cadences easier. To paraphrase Darryl Bolke again, once you can shoot .25 splits at self-defense ranges on a grapefruit sized target reliably, you have all the speed you “need”. I’m content to trust his experience and not worry about finding a gun that allows me .19 second splits and trade away a ‘safer’ trigger.

The Barami Hipgrip (which I textured). While designed for behind the hip, this does pretty well Appendix. Note that there’s enough grip sticking up to get a firing grip. Pairs well with a Tyler T-Grip.

…But you’re NoT AS aCcUrAtE

Consider The Most Important Shot in defensive shooting. This, of course, is the draw to first shot. After this, things get much more hectic. So I strove to build and hone my draw and first shot on my DA guns. I learned to Fear Not The Double Action Shot, as Ernest Langdon explained. Just knowing that people can be highly competitive and winning with DA/SA guns showed me that if I would make the transition I could become competent with some practice. So that’s not a concern.

HK P30sk V1 LEM – 1lb 9.0oz empty mag

Tactical Implications and fudge factor

At about the same time, I was thinking about Zen and the Art of Not Shooting. Prior to this time, I was almost always practicing my draw to a shot. Then I realized that most defensive gun uses are non-shooting events. So it might be worth having another neural pathway set that ends in a strong low ready and an indexed finger, ready to issue commands. This lesson was driven home by my training with Claude Werner, as well as Shivworks AMIS course. A double action gun allows us a margin of safety here if our finger gets confused during the presentation.

Closing

This post is already long enough so I’ll wrap here. If anyone is interested, I’ll do another post to list of the guns I’ve tried and experimented with over the last few years. I have pretty much settled on my favorites for different applications, and I can also outline why I sold the ones I did. It’s been a revolving door, but I’m happy where I am.

I think the TL;DR of this whole post is: It’s not just about the shooting, and those things are more important anyway.