When the good lord thought to gift us legs, I reckon He had a twisted sense of humor. Why else would our road to hell or victory – often indistinguishable in the realms of endurance sports – pass through the torment of our feet?
The world of long distance is a treacherous journey, wilder than a Las Vegas night after having your drink spiked by Alan Garner. And at the heart of this chaos lies our feet, which, if neglected, can betray us quicker than a junkie with rent due.
"Beware the Shoe Myth"
We're living in an age where corporations spend billions to convince us that the solution to every foot problem is a shoe –enough cushion to coddle a baby elephant. But in this wild, raucous rodeo of endurance, it's not just about the shoe. It's about the hoof inside it.
Gone are the days of simply lacing up the old leather boot and running into the horizon. Now, athletes obsess over arch support, heel drop, cushioning and what not. But here's the unholy truth: No sneaker, no matter how advanced or expensive, can replace the raw, rugged strength of a well-conditioned foot.
The Savage Dance of Strengthening
Imagine heading into the Mojave Desert with nothing but a rusty pocket knife. That's the fate of many a runner, cyclist, or hiker who neglects their foot strength. Like a piano player’s fingers or a boxer’s fists, the foot muscles need their own kind of conditioning – and no, I'm not talking about pedicures.
Toe splay exercises, heel raises, walking barefoot, or even playing around with a resistance band – all this might seem as ludicrous as a Mormon frequenting the Spearmint Rhino, but the foot craves this wild dance. Such practices awaken the primal strength, giving your feet the firepower to fight off the dreaded plantar fasciitis or the achilles tendinitis, both of which lurk in the shadows, waiting to ambush the unprepared.
Endurance is a Trip, Man!
In the grand, chaotic circus of endurance events, your feet are the ticket holders. They bear the brunt of every stone, every incline, and every blister-inducing mile. Neglect them and they’ll turn from friends to foes, faster than you can say “Get in the truck”.
But why should we care? Why even dive into this mad world of endurance? Maybe, in this absurd, frenetic modern world, there's a perverse pleasure in pushing our limits. A strange, masochistic joy in discovering how far our feet can carry us, how much pain they can endure.
After all, what's life if not a wild, unpredictable marathon? We sprint, we stumble, we cruise, and sometimes, if God favors us, we soar. But through it all, our feet keep the rhythm, bearing the weight of our dreams, our fears, our madness.
In the grand scheme of things, that fancy neon shoe might disintegrate, but a foot, conditioned and cared for, will pound the ground, mile after mile, journey after journey. So here’s my two cents: In the mad, delirious game of endurance, treat your feet not as mere appendages, but as kings. After all, buy the ticket, take the ride. But make sure your feet are ready for it.
]]>In the gutters of every gritty city marathon, among the fallen leaves and scattered water cups, there's an untold story of our body’s desperate cry for something more than just air. Each foot pounding the pavement echoes an age-old tale of survival, strength, and the undying thirst for life. But what does a body really thirst for?
It's not just water. It's balance. It’s electrolytes. It's the alchemy of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride ions dancing together to keep the rhythm of your heart steady, the pulse of your muscles in check.
Before you embark on that marathon, that endless bike ride, or even that punishing Selection event, you'd better remember one thing: your body is a temple. A temple constructed from millions of cells working in tandem, and each one screaming for hydration. And no, drowning yourself in an ocean of water a minute before the starting whistle doesn't cut it. This is a game of strategy, planning, and giving your body what it needs, when it needs it.
Before the Event: Prime the Pump
We've all heard the cliche: by the time you feel thirsty, it's too late. In a world where tomorrow might never come, don't wait for the thirst. Begin hydrating the day before, sprinkling in those essential salts. Think of your cells as tiny sponges, ready to soak in all the hydration they'll need for the battle ahead.
However, don't be fooled by neon sports drinks. Sometimes they’re more sugar and less function. Look for the real thing. Sodium. Glucose helps with the uptake of electrolytes, but you’re dead wrong if you think it should be the primary. If your drink has more potassium then sodium, you’re going to be in for a bad time. Mix salt and a some of sugar and eat a banana to prepare. Get creative. Make a ritual out of it.
During the Endurance: Dance with the Devil
The race is on. The sweat's pouring down, taking away with it not just your tears but also those precious electrolytes. Now isn't the time to think about quenching thirst, now is the time to strategize. Intermittent sips of water spiked with electrolytes will keep you in the game.
But be wary. Chugging might feel felicitous, like being in a Prius with Dirty Mike and the Boys. But it won't end well. Over-hydration, or hyponatremia, is just as deadly as dehydration. Balance. It's all about balance.
Post Event: The Rebirth
The finish line is crossed. Your muscles ache, your throat feels like the Sahara, and the world spins in a haze of accomplishment and exhaustion. But your mission isn't over. Now, it's recovery time.
Post-event, your cells are like wounded animals, begging for sustenance. Hydrate gradually. Blend water and electrolytes like a maestro, listening to the whispers of your body, giving it time to adjust, rebuild, and rehydrate.
Endurance events are just like life. A series of challenges, with pitfalls and victories at every corner. And much like life, they require balance, planning, and a little bit of strategy. So, the next time you lace up, mount up, or square up for that punishing endeavor, remember, thirst isn’t just a feeling. It’s a call from the depths of your biology.
Don't lose your hydration. Be smart. Drink wisely. Hydrate like it's the last thing you'll ever do. Because it might just be.
]]>Find Danny on IG @SOFLETE_Hypeman and the SOFLETE CEO and Founder Brent @SOFLETEFish
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I’m not the most educated man in the room, but I’ve come to know that the rain generally falls downwards, a West Texas sunset over creaking pump jacks is moving and beautiful, and that the quality of an inch is perceived differently based on motivation and desire. I appreciate differing opinions on subjects that aren’t particularly rooted in quantifiable concrete outcomes, but when it comes to the length of an inch it doesn’t matter what you want to see: it’s still an inch. What most folks need–but very few actually want– is a way to clearly determine that measurement without any outside persuasion.
Critical thinking is the most valuable process you can teach your brain. Think of it as your yardstick for measuring bullshit. It isn’t innate, either. There is no “common sense.” It’s a skill that must be learned, developed, and honed. Social media and identity targeting have destroyed our ability to exercise this craft by removing or obscuring the yardsticks once used to determine the rules of the game. If nobody can agree to the size of the field or the shape of the ball, everything that comes after is immaterial. Let’s talk about how to bring that measuring device back into play.
First, we should strive to view all information as a simple and measurable input. Take the input you are evaluating and ask yourself if you WANT to believe it. Then, take away your own bias by asking “Does this statement make sense?” Usually we can stop at this point when our gut tells us it doesn’t. But, if you are still unsure, take that input and compare it to a body of information provided by a collection of experts who both agree and disagree with the input. Assess what the weight of differing opinions is and take into account what the motivations of these critics and advocates might be. If the issue still seems clouded by bias you should start looking at data, but apply the same level of emotional distance and criticism to whatever data and analysis you find. If the numbers support your original bias, assess what they could mean for the opposition. Put yourself in the counter argument and search for evidence to support that premise. In the end, no matter what outcome you arrive at, you will have crafted a well rounded argument for whatever your decision is. This is the stuff that gave Socrates a boner.
Another thing I know is that in Special Forces weapons guys aren’t medics, even if they have participated in medical cross training. Most of us (I’m a Special Forces Weapons NCO myself) are generalists… and exceptionally average across an incredible range of skills. Much like your Aunt Martha who became an expert in infectious disease right around the time she passed from health complications unrelated to the pandemic, you should be careful what information you take as gospel. People who tell you they are subject matter experts, rarely are. An argument stands on the merits of data and evidence. If someone is using their position of authority rather than evidence to add weight to their opinion, ignore them.
In the interest of fairness, people that are school taught are generally competent in execution only after a lot of time applying those lessons in real world scenarios. Those same practitioners, once competent, are generally incompetent at teaching those tasks or skills to a neophyte. Expertise comes from applied experience and has very little to do with the volume with which you tell others you are an expert. Trusting the word of select experts that appeal to your bias only reinforces the Dunning-Kreuger Effect shown in the image above. In fact, the probability somebody is good at something goes down each time you hear them talk about it… Yogi Berra notwithstanding.
I hire coaches who are Subject Matter Experts and look to experts for expert training. Me? I’m an expert at expressing ideas, disappointing women, good natured shit talking, and teaching double digit IQ partner forces to shed the fetters of oppression. Don’t ask for much more and expect anything of value. Misleading people is dishonest, so I don’t put that information in the fine print. You know what you’re getting.
In an era of unprecedented information availability, anyone can pretend to be an expert based on a respectable resume and a higher than average history of accomplishments. Snake oil salesmen bank on idolatrous hero worship and the general ignorance of their audience… do YOU want to be seen as ignorant or a sycophant? This pandering style of marketing has genuinely infected almost every facet of our modern lives, and it’s time we started to push back. There’s a sucker born every minute, so try not to be that sucker.
I’m not even sure most companies have the expertise to create products that aren’t influenced by pandering. I’m not saying every product is a tourniquet that can’t reliably stop bleeding, but if a company makes an unproven product it’s trivially easy to find a shill or “influencer” to promote it and provide a veneer of credibility. Even worse, companies are known to outright fabricate the professional certification of their products. Just because something exists doesn’t mean it works or is worth consideration, even if your folk heroes tell you that it’s the best thing since sliced bread (and I’m definitely not getting a handsome kickback when you use my discount code, cross my heart).
Be careful who you trust, and know that the errors you catch in your process are just the tip of the iceberg. The more you educate yourself, the less shiny Snake Oil salesmen will be, and the less their empty words will influence your purchases and beliefs. While credibility is built on experience, if you have none, it’s easy to be swayed by someone with very little who brags about theirs incessantly. Winnowing out the truth doesn’t require much work, but it does require an open mind… and a yardstick.
#Dieliving
This is what most people do each December when they lay out a laundry list of resolutions for the new year, make wishes. To turn those wishes into actions, a plan is needed. It's like wishing to go to the mountains without any thought about how to get there, or without a map or supplies.
The most often made resolutions are to "get into shape" or "lose weight," and not surprisingly, these are the same wishes that are made by the same people year after year. It reminds me of the conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat when she asks, ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the cat.
‘I don’t much care where,’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the cat.
If we hope to achieve a different result than we have in the past, we can't continue to do the same things we have always done. The first step is to determine where you want to be. If instead of wishing to go to the mountains, I make the decision to go to Mt. Mitchell, I can locate it on the map. I can determine how far I am from Mt. Mitchell and develop a plan to get there, I can decide what I will need for the journey and how long it should take.
Arriving at the top of Mt. Mitchell is my ultimate goal. It is a concrete location. Instead of ‘running more,’ it is, ‘completing a marathon in under 4 hours during 2020. Instead of ‘losing weight,’ it is, ‘being able to comfortably wear size 34 waist pants without the button popping off. Instead of ‘start writing,’ it is complete a full-length manuscript, proofread, and ready to submit.
Once the ultimate goal is clarified and defined, it becomes easy to create checkpoints on a map between where you are and where you are headed. These checkpoints are intermediate goals. Intermediate goals allow us to break the journey down into manageable chunks. Without them, the idea of undertaking the trip can easily overwhelm. The most effective way to do this is to use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. and write the goals down on paper and post them where you will see them. Read them every day and recommit yourself to taking the actions necessary to achieve them.
Specific- What specifically do you want to do? Bench 300 lbs., play the guitar well enough to join a band, complete a 5k in under 30 minutes? Once you have decided what it is, not only can you plan, but you can begin to visualize yourself completing your goal, and visualization is an incredibly powerful tool. See yourself being successful.
Measurable- Benching 300 lbs. is pretty measurable. You can or you can't. Other goals, like learning a foreign language, can be a little harder to define. Maybe it is completing a language course, or learning a certain number of words, or being able to follow a news report in the language. You will need to determine your measuring stick in order to know when you’ve reached your destination.
Achievable- Goals should be a little scary. They need to push us farther than we are comfortable reaching. Otherwise, the payoff isn't worth it. But at the same time, we have to face facts. I can establish a goal to play in the NBA, but I'm five-foot-seven, fifty-years-old, and have the vertical leap of a toddler wearing ankle weights. It isn’t going to happen.
Achievable can also help identify other requirements that have to be met for us to begin pursuing the goal. If I want to start blacksmithing but don't have any of the necessary equipment, I may need to establish a money-saving goal to buy what I need and read all I can about blacksmithing in the meantime.
Relevant- Intermediate goals need to be aligned with the final goal, just like our checkpoints have to connect the dots from our location to our destination. This can also be an incredibly powerful tool in determining how we spend our time. You should be able to ask yourself at any moment, "Is what I'm doing now moving me closer to achieving my goal?" Not everything will, and that's ok. Burn out or overtraining are other reasons that people fail to reach goals. You need to have some kind of life outside of your goals. The trouble comes in when your life activities are moving you in the wrong direction. If you commit to working out every morning, but also like to stay out late with friends, you have to ask yourself, “Am I committed enough to do the things that will make me successful?”
Time-Bound- Establish a cutoff date. Mark it on the calendar. If your goal is fitness related, sign up for a race. Commit. If it is to read fifty books this year, determine to finish one each week by Sunday evening. Commit. If it is to speak French, plan a trip to Paris, or even to a French restaurant. Commit. Then begin. Take the first step.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is by William Hutchison Murray. “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy… Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too… Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”
Otherwise, we'll be back here next year with a hand full of shit and no horse.
John Dailey is a retired Marine Special Operator who still works for Uncle Sugar. He is the editor of ‘The Raider Patch’ magazine and enjoys running ultra-marathons and drinking beer—not in that order. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
[training-ad]Are they after six-pack abs? Chasing a 300-pound snatch? Looking for the ability to run faster and jump higher?
Most often, we’re met with the typical, “all of the above.”
As a coach for SOFLETE, it’s become obvious that tactical or hybrid athletes want to be good at everything. They’re the ones often in search of “all of the above,” which makes perfect sense when you think about it on a surface level.
Due to the uncertainty of your profession, you try and train for all the things all the time. Therefore, as I coach of tactical athletes, I am no longer surprised when they come to me hurt, stressed out and unable to achieve balance.
The question remains if you consider yourself a member of the "tactical" community, how best should you train?
Tactical Athletes Need to Be the Best Movers on the Planet
Fitness is not the job of a tactical athlete.
This slogan should be a mantra posted up in every military gym and police HQ fitness facility. Your job is your job, which has specific fitness requirements. Your six pack and biceps don't stop bullets. Your body armor does.
Tactical athletes have to be the best movers. As a baseline, if you want to prepare yourself for the genuine uncertainty of the battlefield, focus on a solid foundation of movement. If your training is geared at loading your frame with hundreds of pounds of excess muscle, not only are you restricting movement, but when your ass gets shot, it will take your whole team to move you. This makes you a liability, rather than an asset, despite your 500lb bench press.
What this means for your training is that you need to focus on a base of mobility and postural strength, not size. You need to be able to change directions, run, jump, sprint and most of all, not get hurt all the damn time. If you find yourself incapacitated for three weeks because you rolled your ankle walking through a furnished house with NVGs on, you're wrong.
As a tactical athlete, your joints take a beating. Between ruck marches, body armor and the effects of a solid PLF, your joints bear the brunt of your work. By increasing your range of motion combined with the proper stress of an external load to recondition the body, you can increase the longevity of your lethality.
After all, outlasting your enemy is the goal, right?
Tactical Athletes Need a Level of Unprecedented Balance of Mind and Body
It’s relatively simple to structure training plans based on energy system requirements. If you are a cop chasing a suspect through crowded city streets, I know that you are going to require a robust aerobic system that can facilitate the creation of ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate) so you can ultimately outlast the perp on foot.
But when that suspect draws a weapon, forcing you to draw yours and ultimately end his or her life, it induces a stress that sticks with you. And that stress takes a physiological toll that impacts your training. You are a fool to believe otherwise.
Situations like the one mentioned above are where we begin to see the benefits of mindset training. Put just, your brain can be trained just like your body, and as a tactical athlete, you need a firm grasp on your "why.”
Where mindset training differs from physical training though is in approach. Mindset isn't achieved through sets and reps like a back squat. This is done in those quiet moments that you have with yourself when you first wake up or before you go to bed, when you recite your personal mantra that keeps your head in the game when it matters most.
Your mindset is what brings you into the gym in the first place and gives you the drive you need to continue going. At SOFLETE, we don't preach the hippie shit because we care about the lives of trees. We teach it because it works. Each former member of the SOF employee base at SOFLETE, has personal experience with those dark moments that come from making the hardest decisions in the execution of their duties.
Soon, those stressful moments begin to manifest themselves in the form of actions and those actions have consequences that impact your ability to train. It’s why alcohol isn’t "on the meal plan." Tactical athletes need to understand that all physical training is is "controlled, acute physical stress designed to create a stress adaptation." Those stress adaptations can be positive or negative.
Tactical Athletes Have the Highest Stakes of All Athletes
Tactical athletes play for the highest of stakes. The consequences of failure make the need to train of the utmost importance to all those who partake in this sport. Like athletes in other sports, tactical athletes play team sports. If you train like a specialist, you're doing it wrong. This isn't to say that you can't have hobbies and things that you do on the outside to "supplement" your job performance, but when the "supplement" becomes the main focus, you've entered into the realm of specialty.
Type A people don't do well wrestling the concept of "not being the best" in anything they do. Which is all the more reason to understand what exactly it is you are trying to be the best at. As a tactical athlete, you are trying to be the best at your job. Rich Froning or Matt Fraser might be the fittest men on the planet, but they weren't Green Berets and therefore they are not in my arena.
As leaders in the tactical realm, this is a valuable lesson to let solidify in your brain. Just because someone can run a four-minute mile on the PT test doesn't make them the best soldier. Focused training to suit their needs and the needs of their team on the battlefield does. Tactical athletes are those who those who can run pretty well, lift pretty well and live pretty well, too.
[supplement-ad]
]]>Well, the good news is great writers are putting out great work every month. The bad news is neither my brain nor my wallet can keep up. Regardless, I decided to kick you some suggestions once in a while in what I hope the boys at HQ will allow me to turn into a semi-recurrent effort. So here’s five books you should read right now, why you ought to read them, and who will most like them.
The Heavenly Table is the most wholly enjoyable book I’ve read by Donald Ray Pollock, a guy who I sometimes think is daring me to keep reading just to see if I have the stones for it. Pollock is the kind of writer I most admire; a regular human with an amazing talent he had to fight to share with the world. Pollock was born in 1954 in Knockemstiff, Ohio, dropped out of high school, and subsequently lived his entire life in Chillicothe, Ohio. Like Larry Brown working as a full time fireman, Pollock worked as a laborer and truck driver at a paper mill for thirty-four years. He was fifty when he enrolled at Ohio State University in 2004, ultimately completing a Bachelor in English and a Master of Fine Arts. In 2008, he wrote a short story collection called Knockemstiff and then a novel called The Devil All the Time. They are both relentless in their violence and the varying levels of depravity and desperation of their characters. Frankly, at times, I had to put The Devil All the Time down and go find some sunshine. But there is art and a blood stained beauty in Pollock’s depiction of lawmen and criminals, prostitutes and preachers, killers and martyrs. It’s like the remnants of animal slaughter after a righteous hunt. It is messy and foul in some ways but it will feed your family and make you stronger. Pollock understands the essence of humanity at the visceral level of our instincts.
So why read The Heavenly Table over his first two works? Frankly, because it is not as unrelentingly dark (though if unrelentingly dark is your thing, have at it). To be sure, as in his previous works, there are all manner of debauched humans. Set in 1917, as America prepares to enter The Great War, the main characters are three brothers. Cane, the oldest, is the gang leader; Cob is the middle brother, a basically kind brute who has some mental difficulties; and Chimney, the youngest who is decidedly the most morally conflicted character. When their father meets his end on their sharecropper farm “in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama”, they decide that a turn of the century, Quentin Tarantino style, rampage is their best way to move up in the world. Their travels, and travails, bring them into contact with a host of interesting characters and shed light on both the complexity and banality of the good and evil that make up mankind.
Who will like Donald Ray Pollock? Certainly Cormac McCarthy fans. If you liked Blood Meridian or The Road you’re a member of the target audience. If you like Coen Brother movies, or the aforementioned Quentin Tarantino, you’re in there. I suspect that even if you’re of a more literary bent, a fan of writers like Flannery O’Connor or Erskine Caldwell, this is for you. Regardless, this is the real world, illuminated by its extremes. Read it…if you have the stones.
I have found no indications that Mr. Romesha had a ghost writer assist him with this book, which is at least part of what makes this book so damned compelling to me. That Mr. Romesha has enough mastery of the use of language to craft what might be the best first person, tactical level, narrative I’ve ever read while also being the kind of soldier who performed at a level that results in an award of the Medal of Honor is incredibly unique. Red Platoon is, to my mind, the single best “there I was” book I have ever read. Then Staff Sergeant Romesha describes the battle of COP Keating, a tiny outpost in Nuristan, that should probably never have been built. From a military perspective, it was almost indefensible, literally and figuratively. But in 2009, population-centric Counterinsurgency theory (COIN) was still the flavor of the day and COP Keating afforded US forces a position from which to maintain some connection with the local populace and hopefully interdict insurgent movement in one of Afghanistan’s most remote provinces. Jake Tapper’s The Outpost, due out as a film next year, covered the battle of COP Keating pretty thoroughly but Red Platoon offers an incredibly detailed account that will be by turns sobering, depressing, and incredibly inspiring.
Eight soldiers died, two Medals of Honor were awarded, and aspects of national policy came into question as a result of one fourteen-hour firefight. Romesha recounts it all with humility, honesty, and a genuinely lyrical ability to use the language. He describes well the bonds and petty bickering that occur amongst men under stress and in close quarters. He describes the bravery and cowardice that are equally present under fire, sometimes in the same man. His combat descriptions are unrelenting and frankly, at times surprisingly graphic. I think that’s important for America to read while I simultaneously worry about the families of the fallen being exposed to the ugly reality of their loved one’s last moments. Combat isn’t clean and the deaths that accompany it are ugly and painful and often foul. Romesha gifts readers, and honors the fallen, with that truth.
Anyone considering military service, especially combat arms service, should read Red Platoon. Young service members, especially soldiers and Marines, will get a lot from it. Company grade officers and staff non-commissioned officers will get good insights into the men and women they lead. More senior officers should read Red Platoon as a reminder of realities that may have faded in the fullness of time. But more than that, average Americans should read this to understand what has been asked of, and done in their name by servicemembers since 2001.
This will be a weird thing to say in a book recommendation list: I didn’t love Frank Bill’s Donnybrook. But I liked it enough to recommend it (and will read the author’s other works) and I think it will quickly find fans in the Die Living community, especially with the February 2019 release of the film based upon it. I watched some YouTube interviews with Frank Bill. He likes to lift heavy, run ultra-marathons, is inspired by the same authors as I, and listens to the same bands I do. That was enough to grab my interest and convince me to read Donnybrook; Bill’s comment on masculinity, poverty, and desperation in parts of north Kentucky and south Indiana, a region he knows because he still lives and works as a forklift operator there (again, shades of Pollock and Brown). The characters in Donnybrook are consistently violent, profane, and perverse. They know their backs are against the wall and their outlooks are correspondingly bleak. One says,
“We got no jobs, no money, no power, no nothin', nothin' to live for 'cept vice and indulgence. That's how they control us. But it's falling apart. What we got is our land and our machines, our families and our ability to protect it all, to keep them alive. We got our hands. Ones who'll survive will be the ones can live from the land. Can wield a gun. Those folks'll fight for what little they've got. They'll surprise the criminals with their own savagery. Man, woman, and child will be tested. Others'll be too weak and scared. Uneducated in common sense. Won't know what's happened. But believe me, war is coming.”
The violence of Donnybrook is uncompromising. That should probably be expected in a novel about people en route to a three day long, bare knuckle, survivor takes all fight contest called “the Donnybrook” where rounds of twenty men pay $1000 to savagely beat each other until only one is left standing. On the third day the individual winners fight for a $100,000 purse.
The book is populated by characters fueled almost entirely by avarice, lust, revenge, and methamphetamine. The two main characters are Chainsaw Angus, a legendary brawler turned meth addict and dealer, so named because he is permanently scarred after he took a chainsaw to the face, and Jarhead Johnny Earl, a talented local fighter with decency hiding beneath his desperate need to take care of his wife and two children. The story moves fast. In way I felt like I was clinging to a log in a rushing river, with scenes of sometimes almost absurd levels of violence acting like the rocks in the river that a reader bumps against, gets turned around a few times, and pushed off to the next obstacle.
People looking for social commentary served with Chuck Palahniuk style mayhem will like it. People who appreciate an artistic turn of a phrase will appreciate Bill’s use of the language, though like Cormac McCarthy (who is obviously a huge influence on Frank Bill), I sometimes found myself re-reading a paragraph to make sure I understood who did what in order to leave a character with a crushed larynx or on fire. Donnybrook is so far out on the edge of literary normalcy that even someone who is just here for the violence will find what they’re looking for. Give it a shot.
James Webb exemplifies the Die Living ethos. Any one of his accomplishments would suffice for most people; US Naval Academy and Georgetown Law graduate, Marine Infantry Officer who commanded a company in Vietnam receiving the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart in the process, distinguished journalist and author, Secretary of the Navy, and a U.S. Senator from Virginia to name just some. Fields of Fire is the first book he wrote, while recovering from injuries received in combat and attending law school. I expect a lot of folks have already read Fields of Fire, but in a way I hope not so I can turn more people on to it. The book is about to experience it’s 40th Anniversary and anyone interested in combat and the nature of men within it will appreciate it. Though a novel vice a history, any student of the Vietnam War should read Fields of Fire.
Fields of Fire tells the tale of a Marine rifle platoon in the An Hoa basin through the eyes of its platoon commander, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee Hodges, a Harvard dropout called “Senator” Goodrich, and a squad leader called “Snake”. We know Snake’s first name is Ronnie but never learn his full name. I think that creates some of the psychological distance, driven by the individual personnel replacement cycle, that characterized infantry combat in Vietnam. We know Snake is the guy we need to follow to survive, but we don’t even know his full name. Fields of Fire gets flak for not being as literary as his later works, but as a twenty-four-year Marine, I say the brutal, simpler, perhaps more stripped-down prose is perfect for the subject matter; a group of young men trying to survive and do their duty in the particularly filthy and brutal existence offered by infantry combat.
If you’ve read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, you’ll find similarity because Marlantes owes a debt to Webb. Another similar book is Body Count by William Turner Huggett which actually preceded Fields of Fire by five years but gets a lot less attention. Regardless, if you want a solid novel, it works. If you want to understand platoon level combat in Vietnam, it works. If you want an examination of the way war twists morality and forces people in directions they never expected to go, it works. Like Red Platoon above, it is a good book for anyone interested in serving in the infantry or anyone interested in history of warfare. But ultimately, it works as a novel as well and that opens the audience pretty dramatically. I read it annually from ninth grade till I commissioned. I think it’s time to crack it open again.
Simply put, this is the best military history I’ve read in a long time. On Desperate Ground details events around the Chosin Reservoir from November 27 to December 13 December, in which 30,000 United Nations troops, primarily Marines of the 1st Marine Division, were encircled by 120,000 Chinese with orders to destroy them in detail. Commanded by Major General O.P Smith, UN forces broke out of the trap and made a fighting withdrawal to the port of Hungnam, killing piles of Chinese troops along the way.
Sides chooses to describe events at all levels of war to give a comprehensive understanding of the events. To me, it’s the book’s accessibility and readability that makes this book particularly valuable given the breadth of things already written about Chosin. He narrates the issues between nations as adeptly as he describes hand to hand combat in the frozen hills around the reservoir. There is enough of all kinds of writing to satisfy everyone from a serious student of military history to someone looking for a “there I was” story for and airplane ride. My only complaint is that I would have liked more Regimental Combat Team 31, the US Army unit that fought on the east side of the reservoir. RCT 31 has been scapegoated by some historians, but subsequent investigation reveals that the unit called Task Force Faith (after Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith who took command and was subsequently killed in action, receiving the Medal of Honor for his bravery) held off an enemy that vastly outnumbered them and was a major contributor to the ability of the 1st Marine Division to break out.
If you are a student of history, fascinated by human endurance, or just looking to learn something, On Dangerous Ground is a great read. It left me wanting to read more about Maj Gen Smith because Sides’ characterization of him made him fascinating to me. Any book that drives you to another is worth the time.
Reading is like doing deadlifts for your brain, it makes your intellectual core stronger. Timothy Bates and Stuart Ritchie, researchers at Edinburgh University, followed more than 17,000 people in England, Scotland and Wales over 50 years and empirically demonstrated that "Children with higher reading and maths skills ended up having higher incomes, better housing and more professional roles in adulthood." Reading is something you can do for you, purely to serve your own purposes. Read and grow strong.
#DIELIVING
Russell Worth Parker is a career Marine Corps Special Operations Officer. He likes barely making the cut-offs in ultra-marathon events, sport eating, and complaining about losing the genetic lottery. He is an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and graduate of the University of Colorado, the Florida State University College of Law and the Masters in Conflict Management and Resolution Program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
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Recently I saw an ad for a knife called “The Crusader" (from a company that shall go unnamed) touting religious war rhetoric and talking about killing people which prompted me to write this article. As a non-Christian member of a Western military (and someone who is married to a Christian), this topic is very important to me and I think people who dedicated themselves to upholding their modern Western democracies should do some thinking before they go down the Crusader rabbit hole.
What is a Crusade?
Scholars have differing opinions on the exact characteristics of Crusades. However, some elements seem to be agreed upon. A Crusade is a military undertaking or expedition (not exclusively to a faraway country) that has often the characteristics or feel of a pilgrimage, with an element of penance to it. This means that, according to Medieval thought, Crusaders would be absolved of all confessed sins. According to Crusading and the Crusader States by Andrew Jotischky, the blueprint for a Crusade was set by the First Crusade:
“The First Crusade has usually been seen as the blueprint for a successive series of wars following more or less the same pattern: the preaching of a holy war authorised by the pope and accompanied by the offer of spiritual rewards, followed by a military expedition undertaken by the nobility, sometimes including royal princes, against territory held by the Turks or any other enemy considered equally threatening to the stability of Christendom." [emphasis mine]
It is implied here that Crusades never had a national/patriotic character, they were about protecting (Catholic) Christendom.
Jotischky (2013) further states that a Crusading Vow, an essential prerequisite, “...was made to a cleric and formed a contract with God." This means that Crusades were either initiated, supported or directed by the Catholic Church, i.e. they were an exclusively Catholic thing. Orthodox and breakaway factions from Catholicism did not go on Crusades. Crusades were conducted against all kinds of non-Catholics, not exclusively against Muslims, including pagans (Norse and Slavic) as well as heretics, i.e. those that broke away from the Catholic Church. Infighting and rivalry between Catholic lords prevented the organization of a Crusade against Protestants in the 16th century.
Who were the Crusaders and where did they go?
Crusaders came from all walks of life. What seems to be surprising is that the “official" Crusades to the Middle East were dominated by nobility, men-at-arms and knights as well as princes and many kings. For example, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany participated in the Second Crusade, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I „Barbarossa" took part in the Third Crusade (and drowned in a river in modern-day Turkey), as well as Richard I „Lionheart" of England and Philip II of France. The motivation for crusading changed from „the recovery of territory that ought by rights to belong to Christendom to the more general threat posed by the existence of Islam[,]" (Jotischky (2013)). This was a classic “us against them,” in which “them” included everybody (children, women, elderly, not just males of military age).
However, these were not the only ones to go on Crusades. As fallout from the First Crusade, poor Christians led by the French priest Peter the Hermit embarked on the People's Crusade, where they rampaged through Europe and massacred Jews (see Slavin (2010) and Kedar (1998)).
According to Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips, the First Crusade started as a confluence of events that took on a dynamic of their own. The Byzantine Empire had had trouble with Muslim states on its borders for a long time and there was a tradition of the Byzantine asking for help from Western Europeans and receiving help in the form of Western mercenaries. In March 1095 envoys from Constantinople arrived in Rome, again asking for help against the Muslims. Phillips further states that Pope Urban II used this request to push his agenda. First of all, he wanted to enhance relations between Rome and Constantinople, as there had been a split, the Church Schism, between the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church on the grounds of who was senior to who (the Roman Catholic Pope or the Orthodox Patriarch). Furthermore, he wanted to stop Christians fighting other Christians in Western Europe and guide their Martial energy to a more „worthy" goal (see Jotischky (2013) and Phillips (2010)). There was the Peace and Truce of God movement that tried to stop the fighting in Europe and there were several efforts from the Catholic Church to stop the bloodshed. They had not been successful, though. To do so, Pope Urban II had to rile up the Christians of Western Europe to leave their homes and embark on this great pilgrimage to save their souls and reconquer what they thought belonged to them as Christians. Christians at that time were very pious and there had been spontaneous outbreaks of piety and religiosity in the past (see Slavin (2010) for a further inquiry into why). Pope Urban II used this piety by greatly exaggerating the situation in the Middle East. According to Phillips (2010), “[…] while it is true that pilgrims were occasionally maltreated, it was also the case that there had been no systematic persecution of Christians by Muslims of the Holy Land for decades." But the Muslims alleged mistreatment of Christian pilgrims was used to motivate the masses.
Jerusalem was conquered in July 1099 by the Crusaders. What followed is described as “savagery and slaughter on an appalling scale" (Phillips (2010)):
“They had liberated the holy city, now they sought to purge it of unbelievers. […] Women and children were not spared in this brutal orgy of destruction. The crusaders ‚seized infants by the soles of their feet from their mothers' laps or their cradles and dashed them against walls or broke their necks; they were slaughtering some with weapons [others] with stones; they were sparing absolutely no gentile of any place or kind.' The horrors of these events has left an indelible stain on Muslim-Christian relations down the centuries."
How anybody could aspire to this is beyond me.
The First Crusade was followed by another five Crusades into the Middle East with differing degrees of success. What is interesting is that the Catholic Crusaders sacked and pillaged Constantinople (a fellow Christian city...just not the right kind of Christian) and murdered many of its inhabitants.
There were also lesser-known Crusades. The Reconquista, the re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula from Arabs and Berbers (and the subsequent destruction of a multicultural society) was considered a Crusade, as well as several campaigns against break-away factions from the Catholic Church. Infighting between Catholic noblemen prevented another Crusade against Luther and his Protestants; being Protestant was not okay with Crusaders.
There were also the Northern Crusades, campaigns into the Baltics with the pretext of Christianizing or killing the pagans but with the actual goal of securing trade routes and opportunities and snatching the fur trade from them (Interestingly enough the Northern Crusades became the domain of the Teutonic Order, which founded the State of the Teutonic Order, which became Prussia…) (see The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen).
This goes to show that Crusaders were also not cool with pagans. So if you are someone who is really into Crusaders but also into Valhalla, I am not sure those two go together.
The Meaning of Words and the Pillars of Western Liberal Democracies
Words have meanings and how we use them directly reflects how we think of ourselves and others. That's why many news outlets and governments in the West prefer the term Daesh to refer to the most recent death cult in the Middle East.
How we refer to ourselves and how we look at our own past...those are important signals we send to the outside world. Western nations have often fought side by side with Muslim nations in the Middle East. Many Western nations have significant Muslim populations, who often seem themselves as part of these nations. Muslims everywhere still remember the atrocities committed by the Crusaders. How can we proselytize democracy and human rights when we aspire to what was even then considered criminal and barbaric? What message do we send to the world when we criticize others, go to war with them for not upholding democratic ideals and human rights and then turn around and worship those who were okay slapping infants into walls?
Furthermore, modern liberal democracy, as expressed in the US Constitution, my own Germany's Basic Law or any other Western nation's constitution, does not permit the kind of religious war and barbarism for which the Crusades (or any other type of religiously motivated war regardless of which religion) stand for.
Summary
You probably think that some aspects of Pagan and Norse culture are cool. You are probably not into killing people who don't exactly believe the same as you. You might not even be Catholic. You are definitely not into killing infants, children and women. And you probably think that the US Constitution or in case you are not American, the Western democratic system of your own country, is pretty cool.
So why don't we drop the silly Crusader rhetoric already?
Ilhan Akcay is a German infantry officer with a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in aerospace engineering, currently pursuing a B.A. in history. He writes about training and readiness on his blog School of War. He loves Germany, America, and travelling. All opinions expressed are his own and his own only.
Photo Sources:
https://www.historyhit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2560px-La_Rendición_de_Granada_-_Pradilla.jpg
]]>Die Living. What does that mean to you? You see our guys jumping off mountains with wing suits, fighting in armed conflicts, hunting the unspoiled corners of the world, and generally being larger than life. But, what if none of those things interest you? What if your life feels smaller than you want, but you don't think it should be a pursuit of quiet desperation? We all have different limits and desires, our message is that you should find the ragged edge of those desires and push the limit.
]]>Die Living. What does that mean to you? You see our guys jumping off mountains with wing suits, fighting in armed conflicts, hunting the unspoiled corners of the world, and generally being larger than life. But, what if none of those things interest you? What if your life feels smaller than you want, but you don't think it should be a pursuit of quiet desperation? We all have different limits and desires, our message is that you should find the ragged edge of those desires and push the limit. Recently we took a trip to the Western Slope of Colorado and our friend "Mike" had this to say about it:
"I don’t like being out of my comfort zone. This is one of my major “character defects.” I’ve become acutely aware of it over the past couple of years, and have taken baby steps to address it. However, a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a post in the SOFlete Team Room that would be a perfect opportunity to aggressively address this defect: A four-day trip to Colorado to hike Mt. Sneffels with strangers from the internet.
A little background: I have not flown on an airplane since I was about 12 years old, I have never been to Colorado, I’ve never been up in the mountains, I have a slight fear of heights, and I have huge anxiety about meeting new people and wanting their acceptance.
I reached out to Doug from SOFLETE, explained my situation and after a bit of reassuring, I booked the trip. The next thing I knew I had flown to Colorado and we were in Ouray, Colorado and the adventuring was on.
We rented a Jeep and went up and down Black Bear Pass (there are no guard rails and the path is just wide enough for the jeep in some places), we rented mountain bikes and went down Prospect Trail (where I had a little too much fun and ate my shit pretty bad. I have the road rash as a souvenir), we went to a “clothing optional” hot springs (no, we didn’t partake in the optional part), and we climbed Mt. Sneffels (I made it to 14,000 ft but sadly, not the actual summit. I made the mistake of looking to my left when I was attempting to climb through the notch that accesses the summit and it was about a 100 foot fall with nothing to stop me. That and a vicious sleet storm rolled in which made the decision easier).
I am skipping a tremendous amount of details, but to say I had an amazing time would be an understatement. I did things I never thought I’d actually do and met amazing people. They were as friendly as could be and extremely supportive. Each of them are extremely impressive individuals and whether they know it or not, they introduced me to a whole different level of living life and I am indebted to them. Doug, Ben, Ryan, Allen, Katie, Robert, Mike and Holly, Thank you."
Mike could have stayed at home and never met the best eight new friends anyone could ask for, but he didn't and he got to see a side of himself and nature that very few get to experience in person. You don't have to be a Special Forces guy or Redbull athlete to hang out with us, you just have to have a good attitude and the desire to step outside your comfort zone. Take a lesson from "Mike" and put yourself out there, I bet you'll like what you find.
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Alcohol + Performance and Recovery
Consuming alcohol after a workout delays the recovery process by decreasing protein synthesis and hindering glycogen restoration. In other words, preventing gains. If you’re thinking, “oh, I’ll just have some protein with my beer”, think again! Research has shown that even when alcohol is consumed with a protein source after exercise, alcohol still prevents those gains by decreasing protein synthesis.
Alcohol is a powerful diuretic which can cause dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. You’re probably already dehydrated or at risk for becoming dehydrated after a long training session or competition. So, adding alcohol to mix is probably not the best idea. If you want your recovery from sore muscles to be as fast as possible then you should probably be mindful about how many drinks you have after an intense workout or make sure you rehydrate with water and/or an electrolyte solution.
Alcohol + Nutrient Absorption
Alcohol itself has no nutritional value but it also prevents your body from absorbing some key nutrients.
Alcohol + Sleep
Alcohol disrupts the quality of sleep by reducing REM sleep. If your REM sleep (AKA restorative sleep) is habitually disrupted, you may be at risk for injury and/or increased fatigue thereby affecting the quality of your workouts.
Chronic, daily consumption of alcohol has been shown to increase the stress hormone cortisol which can reduce levels of growth hormone. Growth hormone helps build and repair muscle. Growth hormone is predominately secreted during sleep and if sleep is disrupted, can decrease the amount of growth hormone released – preventing muscle gains.
Alcohol + Hormones
Whereas cortisol fuels protein breakdown, testosterone increases protein synthesis. Research has indicated that 2-3 alcoholic beverages per day impairs testosterone levels by decreasing secretion of testosterone. This can impair protein synthesis (building protein, AKA muscle gains) and hinder the results of strength training over time.
There is some good news…a study concluded that male athletes will not see a negative impact on performance and recovery if they stick to 0-1 drinks per day.
The Final Verdict
There is no need to think that you should abstain from drinking alcohol; however, it might be a good idea to hold off on that post-workout beer until you have some time to rehydrate and digest your post-workout snack.
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Resources:
Vella, L. D., & Cameron-Smith. Alcohol, athletic performance and recovery. Nutrients, 2(8), 781–789. 2010.
Barnes, M. Alcohol: Impact on sports performance and recovery in male athletes. Sports Med 44(7): 909-919, 2014.
Duplanty, A, Budnar R, Luk H, Levitt D, Hill D, McFarlin B, et al. Effect of acute alcohol ingestion on resistance exercise induced mTORC1 signaling in human muscle. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research Published Ahead of Print, 2016.
Koziris, L. Alcohol and athletic performance. American College of Sports Medicine Current Comment. April, 2000.
Volpe, S. Alcohol and athletic performance. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal 14(3): 28-30, 2010.
Parr EB, Camera DM, Areta JL, Burke LM, Phillips SM, et al. Alcohol Ingestion Impairs Maximal Post-Exercise Rates of Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis following a Single Bout of Concurrent Training. 2014.
]]>This is the first time I haven’t felt numb.
I sit at the finish line of the 50 mile race I have just completed.
I’ve been here before. In this space.
But never have I felt every emotion and every ache within my body as I feel now. For the first time, I allow it. I welcome it.
When I started running ultras I was in it for the end result.
The accomplishment.
The way I thought it would change how others thought of me.
The way I hoped it would change how I felt about myself.
I wanted to go further, run harder.
I dove in, head first and didn’t look back.
My first 100-mile attempt ended in a Did Not Finish.
It crushed me on every level. I had failed.
There was a different way to approach this.
I found guidance. Someone who knew the endurance realm better than I did. I opened myself to the vulnerability of someone witnessing my weaknesses. The places that I was attempting to hide under my accomplishments.
This was the beginning of a massive mental shift.
I dug into the physical pain of training.
I found mountains to climb. Up to the top. Back down. Repeat.
I found myself diving into a depth where quitting could not exist. This corner of the universe is absolutely necessary when you’re 60 miles deep, everything hurts, you’re hallucinating and a dense fog has settled into your mental landscape.
No ounce of quitting can be allowed in this mental box.
Long endurance efforts and races gave me a space to evaluate myself. The universe continued to open doorways that required me to walk a painful path of growth. I would pause at each doorway, take a deep breath and cross the threshold. I still found myself burnt out, in survival mode and seeking a better way to do life. I took a step back from running. I gave myself space. In this I found that my identity is not defined by ultra running. I am simply living inside this body that I have been graced with. Running is a way to celebrate my fitness.
This was step one of metamorphosis.
I found myself in a space within life where everything I thought I knew, was no longer true. I imagine it’s what Neo felt like when he was unplugged from the Matrix. I remember the threshold of that doorway. I remember the pause. I remember telling myself to face what life had just put in front of me.
That moment of choosing to deal and to work through life and feel every level of the pain that comes to the surface would change the course of my life.
I learned to sit with myself through the emotional pain. And to simply allow it. I have taught myself to feel what is being presented. Where is it coming from? What is it trying to tell me right now? Is this the truth or is this an old story playing out?
So I sit at the finish line of my 4th 50-mile race. And I feel everything.
I feel the last 11 hours of movement. The last 11 hours of mental gymnastics. The awareness and acceptance of my lows. The confidence in the highs.
I no longer want to move blindly through these spaces. I want to feel them. Learn to exist within them.
One thing life has taught me, I adapt well to existing within the suffering. This is where I thrive.
This is no longer about what is handed to me at the finish line or what others will think when they see what I’ve accomplished.
I’m doing this for who I will become in the process.
The growth that occurs in the training process of becoming the athlete that can finish such a daunting task.
Despite the space I am moving through in the background of my life.
Despite the pain.
I feel that I have unlocked a door to my potential. There is no longer fear in failing. When I enter these spaces of mental and physical discomfort, I remind myself that I have been here before. I have felt this before.
The next race will test me like no other. The climbs. The altitude. The distance. In the ultra universe, there will be highs and there will be dreadful low’s.
Same as life.
No one saves us from the dark spaces. From the lows.
There won’t be a knight that lights the way and rescues us. We save ourselves. We sit with our demons, with our darkness. We allow it. We lean into it, we learn, we make space. And we feel. We feel all of it.
There will be dark, and there will be light.
In the darkness, remember the light.
In the light, prepare for the darkness.
Written by Heather Griffith
The holiday season is here! Unless this corresponds with your bulking season, you might be ready to throw your hands up in frustration and dive into a pool of mashed potatoes and gravy. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the average American gains one to two pounds during the holidays. All those healthy habits you’ve worked so hard to develop don’t have to be totally lost, and you can still enjoy your holiday season.
Although sometimes this can be lost in the chaotic hustle and bustle of the holidays, the point of the season is to celebrate, give thanks and enjoy our family and friends. The food is just a delicious bonus. Once you take the focus off of the food and place it on what really matters, applying these concepts can help to avoid any setbacks to your goals.
He glanced around at the patrons. Mostly drunk people grabbing a cheap snack or more booze. The occasional trucker grabbing caffeine. That was exactly what Scott was going for, to get himself and George through their shift. The go-to was something in the fridge, even at this hour it was too damn hot outside for coffee.
As he rolled up to the counter to pay, he could feel the eyes of the others on him. Came with the territory, people stared when he was around.
“Four dollars even.” The cashier even looked a little uncomfortable ringing up the drinks.
Scott threw a five on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said with a smile, then strolled back to the driver side door.
George looked like he was about to pass out. “Tell me you got coffee?”
“Better,” and he held up the energy drinks.
“Thank God.” He popped the top and took a few gulps. His eyes widened from the chilled, artificially sweetened elixir. “Any suspicious characters in there tonight?”
“Nah man, just the normal crowd. Mostly drunk. If any were high I couldn’t tell.”
“Fine by me. Well, let’s get back on the road then.” Scott could tell, George was too exhausted to care if they made an arrest tonight.
And they rolled out on patrol. They got a few more glances from the people at the pumps as the black-and-white police cruiser pulled onto the road and headed for a busier street in the neighborhood.
Scott had only been out of the academy for a few months, but he had the basic parts of routine patrols down pretty well. Drive around, find a problem or wait for a call, and go fix it. That was why he had joined the police department to begin with. Because he was good at solving problems. He had enjoyed working in the school automotive shop as a teenager, jumping at opportunities to fix the cars of other students. He was excellent at finding ways to pin the enemy down with fire or isolation, and then snatch them up or put them down during his time in the Corps. Now, he was good at it as a cop.
And he liked this better than the military. It felt like he was really serving his community, rather than the one he was deployed to in whatever part of the world the government had been interested in. And he did his job more often. In the military, he had only done his actual job about 10% of the time, if that. And while combat had given him the greatest rush of his life, for him, at the tail end of the war, the experiences had come too few and far-between. The rest was just busy work. As a cop, most of his time on the job was spent doing the job. He got to take action more often, respond to the changing situation. Whether it was chasing a drug dealer or getting a kid out of an abusive home, he didn’t care. It was better than patrolling some piece of desert that the government told him belonged to terrorists.
He drove the car into a neighborhood that was usually quiet, and thought back to the academy. He had heard that the quality of the candidates wasn’t the highest in the department, but he had expected a little bit more than what he saw. Many of the people there had clearly not been in a life or death situation before. Most of them certainly didn’t have enough training with firearms to be carrying one. A few people were one cheeseburger away from a heart attack. But, if they met the all-too-low standards, they got on with the force. The department didn’t have much of a choice these days. They were well below the quota they needed for officers on patrol, and nobody wanted to be a cop anymore.
Even many of the older guys were retiring, or quitting outright with only a few years left to get a pension. A disgruntled attitude had gripped the department in the wake of the attitude that the country had adopted. It didn’t seem like anyone cared about doing the job.
Then there was George. Scott had gotten lucky with his training officer. George didn’t have a bad attitude. He rarely got political, he was just there to do a job and help a few people if he could. And he genuinely meant that. George cared when they were at a domestic call, or if they had to give medical aid to a suspect even. He was a little overweight, but Scott let that one go, since he was many years senior to him.
George always gave him a little crap for being a Jarhead. Said he was wound too tight. The truth was Scott had actually cooled off significantly since leaving the service, before entering the academy. Scott always just fired back that the Army must not have been as tough on George as the Corps was on Scott. George just laughed it off, he was always too laid back.
Until it was time not to be. They had chased down a drug dealer Scott’s second week on patrol. George moved fast for an older guy, and hadn’t held back with the tackle. George said it was because the asshole had been dealing to kids. He had two of his own, and somebody screwing up someone else’s children was a thought he didn’t take lightly.
Scott was jerked out of his reminiscence by a call on the radio. There was an officer in distress in an apartment complex about five minutes away. Lights and siren on, Scott floored it as George called them en route.
They arrived on the scene and saw the patrol car of the other officer. Scott read the unit number and realized right away that it was Sergeant Kennewick. An intense guy, but he had seemed alright so far. Wasn’t particularly fond of rookies, and Scott didn’t have the urge to force a friendship with the guy.
As they got out, they could hear raised voices coming from a lawn between two buildings in the complex. Things sounded heated, so they sprinted the distance, and observed the scene unfolding before them.
Sergeant Kennewick had his gun drawn, and was facing the situation in front of him. In the orange glow of a street light, Scott could see that his face was stern, maybe even strained. His shoulders shrugged forward, arms locked out, and eyes unblinking, because in front of him was a large African American man, gripping a kitchen knife firmly in one hand.
The suspect had long dreadlocks, a beard that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in a while, and the slight build of a wide-receiver, with a bit of a gut. He glared at Kennewick, whom he was postured toward as if he was trying to block his path to something. His muscles were strained, jaw clenched shut. His eyes moved to Scott and George as they ran onto the scene, stopping short of the line between the sergeant and the suspect.
Behind the man, there were two bodies on the ground, another African American man, and a Caucasian woman. The man was slightly larger than the one standing, with short hair and a clean shaven face. But he was unconscious. The woman had a slight build, as if she had been a flyer for a cheer team. She had long blonde hair, and a gray sweatshirt, both of which were covered in blood that was pooling around the two of them. Whether it was just from one of them or both, Scott couldn’t tell from so far away. She was crying, and her eyes met Scott’s, pleading for some kind of help.
“Put the knife down now!!” Kennewick shouted. He said it with all the authority of a veteran of the profession, making it clear he was not going to tolerate any deviation from the order. Judging from his hoarse voice, it was clearly not the first time tonight.
The man with the blade said nothing. He made no move toward us, but he didn’t let go of the knife either. His eyes moved from the weapon in his hand to the officers in front of him, brow furrowed.
There wasn’t enough room to get by the suspect to give aid to the victims. He had to be dealt with first.
George did what he knew to do. He drew his pistol, and he and Sergeant Kennewick began to separate, putting space between them. Two targets are harder for the human eye to track than one. You don’t want to circle behind someone this panicky, just get enough space between you and your partner that if he is going to go after one of you, he has to choose which one. Let him see both of you.
With both their guns drawn, Scott figured it was best that he do the talking, as the least threatening person in uniform. He trusted the other two enough to cover him if necessary, and with the angle he had, his weapon wouldn’t just be pointed at the suspect, but at the victims behind him as well.
“Hey man, look at me. I don’t care what happened here. But we need you to drop that knife so we can get by and help those people.” That was bullshit. Of course he cared, this piece of shit had butchered these people, and he wanted nothing more than to beat the hell out of him. Scott’s heart was pounding and it was everything he could do to keep himself from lunging at this butcher.
“Fuck that, I ain’t dropping shit. She fucking deserved it, they both did. I told her if she left me I’d kill her!”
And that’s when it became clear what had happened. This guy had come home, and found his girl with another guy. And grabbed a knife to gut them both. Completely understandable really. Scott knew guys that had happened to in the Corps. The difference was they hadn’t acted on that urge.
Scott raised his hands, in a gesture of trust. He was comfortable, there were two guns on the guy if anything went wrong. “I get it man, shit, I probably would’ve done the same thing. But we need to help them now. So put the knife down, and let us by. They don’t have much time, and I don’t want to see this get any worse.” As he said it, he could once again hear the woman sobbing.
The man peaked over his shoulder at the woman and man behind him, then at George’s pistol. Then down at his knife. Seconds passed that felt like millennia to Scott. He didn’t want this to go south, he just wanted to go help those victims. He was praying the suspect would listen to him. But when he raised his head, his eyes showed resolve, and it was clear he had made a decision. It wasn’t a good one.
“Fuck that. I’m not rotting in a cell.” Now there was something different in his eyes. Whatever reason he had left was gone. He stepped off with the speed of a running back and ran right at George.
Kennewick had the better angle, but was also firing at a moving target. His first round passed behind the man, and impacted with a trash can along a foot path. After that, he fired six more shots, and Scott couldn’t keep track. He was the only one without a weapon drawn in the middle of the confrontation, he needed to get the fuck out of the way. Scott turned, away from the suspect and George, behind Kennewick. He wanted to avoid getting in the line of fire, and the best way to clear that was to get behind the sergeant. As he did, he heard a few shots fired from George’s direction, but he couldn’t keep track of how many. The first few gunshots had rendered him all but deaf.
He turned back to the scene. The man was on the ground, about five feet from George, with the knife still in his hand. George’s gun was still smoking.
“George? George, can you hear me?” Sergeant Kennewick was trying to get control of the situation. It had been a while since Scott was near a gunshot that wasn’t fired on a range, and he was still recovering.
“Y-yeah. I can hear you sarge.”
“Alright, I’ll cover the body, move the knife away from him. Rookie, go help those people on the ground!” He said it with authority. As draining as it was, this was not the first time Kennewick had been to a call like this, as far as Scott could tell.
Scott had nearly forgotten. He looked up: the woman looked pale and her eyes were beginning to glaze over. He realized he could no longer hear her crying. He ran over, glancing and the man. There was no chest rise and fall there, and his shirt and the ground were soaked with blood. It didn’t look like much could be done. But maybe he could save her.
“Hey, hey, talk to me. What’s your name, can you hear me?”
“Carol, m-my name is Carol,” she said. She looked pale and was showing signs of slipping into shock, but her eyes opened as she responded to the question.
“I need you to keep talking to me Carol. As long as you’re talking to me you’re gonna be alright, okay?” And he began his assessment. Miraculously, none of her arteries were cut. Most of the lacerations were on her arms, they were deep but she hadn’t lost a lot of blood. Her clothes had been covered in it, but as Scott patched her up with the first aid kit and a couple of tourniquets, he understood that most of the blood had been the man’s. Carol told Scott his name was Reggie.
“Rook, ambulance is three minutes out!” Kennewick said.
Scott kept her talking, but felt that she was well enough that he could check on Reggie. But he already knew. The body was pale, and he hadn’t seen that much blood in a while. He checked the neck for a pulse. Nothing.
“Oh God, these pigs are out here, they killed more people! They killed three of em!”
Scott turned and saw that a small crowd was starting to form around the scene. After hearing the gunshots, people had begun to peek outside to see what was going on, and now there were about ten gathering in the area. A man in front had the camera light on his phone on.
“Stay back!!!” George shouted, swinging around with his sidearm raised. He looked pale and was shaking. Not a good sign. The crowd held their breath and took a half-step back, but all camera lenses now aimed at him.
“George! Holster your weapon!!” shouted Kennewick. To Scott, the situation was looking tense. He could tell that if Kennewick didn’t get through to George, the latter was likely to do something that would end badly for all involved.
“George!” This time, the tone was different, firm, but more like a plea to a friend contemplating jumping off of a bridge. Kennewick was begging George not to do it, and that seemed to reach him somehow. He looked at the sergeant, then at his firearm. “Holster your weapon, brother.” Realizing what was going on, he finally put his gun away. He still didn’t look so good, but he at least seemed to be aware of what was happening now.
“Now get back to the squad car so that you can rendezvous with medical. Let Scott and I handle this.” That was the first time Scott had heard the sergeant say his actual name. Before that, he assumed he didn’t know it.
George ran to the cars, still shaking. Getting him out of there was probably the right call. “How are those casualties?” the sergeant asked.
“The girl’s wounds look superficial, and I’m monitoring her. But I think this guy is gone, sergeant.”
“Well, do what you can, let me handle this.” With that, he addressed the crowd, attempting to control what seemed like an impossible situation. But he was making do. At some point, he called for more backup, just to get a few more hands on scene in case this crowd changed its attitude. They clearly didn’t like cops, but they were doing as Kennewick asked for the time being. He was just severely outnumbered, and this scene was definitely ending up on YouTube.
The medics got there, and relieved Scott. He moved to help Kennewick control the crowd, which seemed like the best move. The medics agreed that the male was beyond helping, but the tourniquets may have saved the woman’s life. They quickly got them on gurneys, including the assailant, and moved them to the ambulance. About that time, backup arrived.
They swiftly got control of the crowd, who lost interest as the ambulance drove away. The backup officers began to tape off the scene for the CSIs and the sergeant and Scott moved back to their cars.
When he got there, he saw George sitting on the hood of the patrol car. He looked up and saw Scott. “I can’t get my hands to stop shaking, man,” he said. “That...that was the first time I’ve ever had to pull the trigger. I killed that guy, man.”
Scott tried to find comforting words. “You did what you had to do,” he said. “That guy made the decision that cost his life, not you, and by acting, you protected me, sarge, and that girl on the ground. If you hadn’t, she might be dead.” George nodded, but looked unconvinced. Only time could help him process the night’s events.
Kennewick made the call that for the rest of shift, George and Scott needed to go back to the precinct. Scott drove back, and the two of them debriefed the incident with the lieutenant. George asked if they could grab a coffee from the break room. They passed the time there, and soon the shift ended. Kennewick returned, and Scott managed to catch him in the hallway, coming out of his own debrief. He figured George would be fine waiting in the break room for a couple of minutes.
“That’s not gonna go over well on the news.”
“Probably not. But that’s not our problem. The three of us are on administrative leave following the shooting. Don’t worry, this is the standard while they conduct an investigation, don’t sweat it.” Kennewick glanced inside the break room and stepped further from the doorway. Scott followed. “Listen, George was pretty rocked by that shooting. Check on him in the coming days, using your sidearm is never easy.” He sounded like he was worried about a younger brother who had just broken his arm. “And Scott...you did a good thing tonight. You helped save that woman’s life. Let the news say what they want. We help people on their worst days, and everyone else gets to criticize it. Keep doing the job.” With that final statement, a stoic sense of professionalism returned to his demeanor.
And he turned and walked down the hallway, back to whatever life he had when he was out of uniform. It occurred to Scott that he had no idea if the sergeant even had a life outside of peacekeeping.
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Frank Gonzales is a Marine Corps infantry veteran, who served in Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, and in the Marine Security Company at Camp David. As such, he tries to embody the Marine slogan by being a “Jack of all trades and a master of none.” His love for literature and writing began in a high school English class, and has followed him into adulthood. He is currently piecing together a BA in English between traveling for work and his other hobby, jiu jitsu. He resides in his home state of Arizona, where you can regularly find him crashing on a mountain bike trail.
“Night Shift” is the culmination of Frank Gonzales’ hard work in the Fall 2021 Literary Fiction Workshop hosted by Dead Reckoning Collective and generously sponsored by SOFLETE. DRC is a veteran owned and operated publishing company, producing literature exclusively from military veterans.
The police academy got you all skinny, now the streets are going to get you fat. Ever heard of “the Freshman 15” phenomenon in college? It occurs in the police world as well, and for the exact same reasons.
How will this happen? Let’s break it down. During your first year or so on the job, there is one word that describes what you will be attempting to achieve over all else if you are normal… Acceptance. It will become very important to you to be accepted by your peers and much more importantly by the senior officers.
How will this happen? Let’s break it down. During your first year or so on the job, there is one word that describes what you will be attempting to achieve over all else if you are normal… Acceptance. It will become very important to you to be accepted by your peers and much more importantly by the senior officers.
In the quest for acceptance, young officers, especially those on probation, basically eat and drink when and where the older ones do. This obligation, coupled with your new schedule including overtime, can have a detrimental effect on your fitness during your first years on the job.
Law enforcement subcultures can be inclusive and secular. If you are looking to be accepted quickly when you are new, you will need to learn to “go with the flow”; if you don’t, you will never really gain the follow-on to acceptance…Trust. Trust from your peers is the gold-standard in police work. It is what matters most. It basically says that your co-workers believe that you will hold your own in a violent situation or in the administrative meat-grinder that can follow it. Trust in police work means that your colleagues believe that you will make sure that they get home to their families at night.
So, what does this have to do with police fitness? Does it seem tangential? It’s not actually. I’ll give you an example. Young officers will typically eat at the same spots as their senior mentors during their meal break (if they even have a choice) maybe even only just to “fit in”. These establishments may not serve the healthiest food.
If you are a brand new officer reading this, one who brings all their paleo/vegan/low-carb/GF foods (in neatly labeled and weighed Tupperware) into the radio car and eats that stuff when their FTO goes to the pizza shop…guess what? You just eroded away a little bit of that elusive “acceptance”.
You don’t think you did, because all the people at your Crossfit Box pack a healthy lunch for work, but alas, they aren’t cops. Your friends at the box or gym probably do not work in a highly judgmental (and a bit backwards thinking) shark tank, where every little character trait is being watched and analyzed for weakness. The senior people (mostly the males) are observing you. They are watching.
They want you to assimilate and be like them, so they can what? trust you.
What is the first step to trust?
Acceptance.
So, what did most of us cops do in past generations? We just went along to get along… we just ate a slice of pizza like everyone else. Then, after a couple of years of this, in conjunction with terrible hours and overtime or court on our days off we realized we had put on 10-15 lbs.
Is the above scenario avoidable during your first years? Sure. When it comes to your on-duty diet, be a little flexible and be a little diplomatic.
DO NOT sip from a mixer bottle of protein in between calls all day in front of your 43 yr old training officer who has a beer gut and 6 kids. You will not gain acceptance doing that.
DO be diplomatic, do your protein drinking in the locker or admin rooms. When the old guys/girls stop at the pizza shop, just order a chicken salad or say you aren’t hungry. You might get a little teasing but they will forget about in 2 minutes when their 4000 cal meal gets delivered to the table. You will not lose any of those important acceptance points for this. Afterwards, go out and put handcuffs on a criminal.
While you are doing the arrest paperwork, you can bust out all your fancy Tupperware and $70/ounce protein powders etc. This can also be done any time you are stuck inside the station house doing admin stuff, which, as a new boot, will be often. If you want to be “one of the guys”, pick a day when you had a particularly hard workout before the shift, and at meal break, go crazy and eat a slice of pizza or a burrito with the guys and girls…it won’t kill you and it will gain you a little bit of that acceptance.
The more “fattening” dilemma during an officers early career is the pressure to go out to the bars with your buddies after the shift. You will probably be in your early 20’s so this activity will not be new for you. Previously, it most likely would have occurred only on weekends. In your new police job it may happen every night...or morning. (That's right, overnight-shift officers go to bars and drink at 7:30 am.) An aside, you will know you are in one of those “late-shift cop” type bars because
I can pretty much guarantee that if the senior cop on your shift finally asks you and your buddies to “meet us over at the bar after the shift”, you are going to go. Trust me. Even the most steadfast, health-conscious rookies will go. Even the “work, church, home” guys will go. You will go. Why? Because you want that acceptance. The senior cops are asking you to go for a couple reasons, first, they want to see how you act under the influence of alcohol, and two, they want to interrogate you a bit to see if you can eventually be trusted.
This first trip to the bar is the step-off point to where you, if you don’t have a plan…will start the path to becoming out of shape. See below for some ways to avoid having that familiar chubby face in your first “officer of the month” photo.
Have a Plan. Go back to the old “be diplomatic” rule. Some cops, both young and old will go out after every work night. Some will go to the above described cop bars, and some will go out to traditional places where you can actually interact with civilians.
Police Fitness Tip: Resist the urge to go out every night. Even if you are single with no one waiting for you at home, take a pass periodically. The others won’t notice that. It won't hurt your acceptance level. It will however help you maintain your fitness. They will only notice if you NEVER go out with them. Then they will not accept you fully.
When I was new, our rookie crew literally went out 6 nights a week. We weren’t doing it because we were alcoholics or even solely to meet girls/guys, we went out because we loved that feeling of social bonding with the other off-duty cops. This activity was the “other half” of the professional bonding that occurred at work. We had 8 or 10 of us at the bar, with full size service pistols, extra mags and expensive folding knives under our shirts (don’t do this) and we were telling stories of what we did during our shift, either to each other or to other patrons whom we found physically attractive.
During all this fun, you will become a “routine drinker”. You could conceivably drink as many as 6 beers a night with your cop buddies just sitting there telling stories, and more than that on weekends when the “normal” people start inhabiting the bars. All that alcohol will put pounds on even the most active young officer.
And, guess what you won’t feel like doing before work the next day?
That's right… You won’t want to work out. You especially won't want to work out if you are tired, hungover and know you are headed to your regular gig plus maybe that 12 hour overtime shift you signed up for.
Police Fitness Tip: Don’t try and burn the candle at both ends. If you know you have a heavy workout the next day, just go home. Make up some excuse. Save your carousing for the weekend nights like a normal person, skip the Mondays and Tuesdays. Your metabolism will thank you. If you are were too “weak” to make that sensible decision see below for Plan B.
Plan B: Master something called the “Irish exit”, it's the single best weight loss technique going. It's also an art. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the Irish Exist is when you slip out of a bar early without saying goodbye to your friends. Get out of there! You did your duty, you showed up, but you need to hit the gym tomorrow, and the longer you stay out, the lower quality your workout will be the next day (if you make it at all).
You will be sleep deprived in your first years as a cop just from the work schedule, don’t add heavy drinking to that if you can avoid it. We all know how lack of sleep deteriorates workout quality and overall fitness. So, do some Irish exits once in awhile. Wait for a diversion, like while one of your buddies is puking into his jacket, then slide out the door. Don’t worry, even if you do miss something fun, tomorrow night they all will be out after the shift again for more shenanigans.
Ok, back at work. Most of your physical confrontations as a cop are going to require raw, functional strength, because you can’t just gouge a suspect's eyes out or break both their wrists because they won’t, for example, leave the local convenience store or get off a subway car. Using moderate physical force will become routine for you as a cop. You will need to project physical force that does not cause any injury, but still encourages people to do as you say. You will benefit just from the appearance of being fit and strong because street criminals usually think twice about confronting and officer with an ostensibly strong appearance It’s always better to be the strong cop than the weak one, period.
I mention this in the “early years” article because that is the period in your career when you are going to first realize this (probably very dramatically). Read more about your fitness early in your law enforcement career here.
Remember, the veteran cops like it when their probationers are fit and strong: it makes their job easier and eliminates the need for them to chase people and climb fences. It will impress them when you display fitness on duty effectively. What they don’t like is when you constantly show them how fit you in comparison to them by asking to stop at Vitamin Shoppe every shift or showing up to work each day dressed entirely in CrossFit gear.
Again, remember, the goals are acceptance...then trust.
Thomas Longa retired after 22 years in law-enforcement, the last 15 of which were as a member of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit’s Apprehension Team (A-Team) He currently works training SWAT teams nationwide.
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Rock climbing is an inherently dangerous activity, no member of the community will attempt to change your mind about that. But what’s life without risk? The fun of adrenaline “on rails” is dwarfed by real adventures.
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Rock climbing is an inherently dangerous activity, no member of the community will attempt to change your mind about that. But what’s life without risk? The fun of adrenaline “on rails” is dwarfed by real adventures. Rock Climbing’s American heritage dates back to the Yosemite Valley in California, where rebels and hippies fled from the safety of the suburbs to seek their own adventures. Notable early climbers include Royal Robbins, who completed the first ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome (the face of “The North Face” fame), and Yvon Chouinard, founder of the equipment company that became Black Diamond, and later founder of Patagonia. These men had a strong belief in climbing as a way to commune with nature and saw a first ascent of a wall or mountain as artistic expression comparable to a painting or song.
While the Yosemite Valley is 3,000 miles away, there's fantastic climbing opportunities all across the country. Along the scenic Susquehanna River, only 2 hours outside of the heart of Philadelphia, lies the Safe Harbor climbing area. This area offers more routes than I could possibly handle over Winter break away from school. I used Safe Harbor as the hangout for break, due to it having the highest concentration of sport climbing in this part of Pennsylvania. Some classics for beginners on the North area, where I climbed, include Crack-a-lackin’ (5.8), a short route with a wide variety of different moves, It’s a Fine Line (5.9), a very slabby run, and Catfish Cleft (5.8), a fun route with a crux (the hardest move in the route) that includes a long reach with a high potential for an exhilarating but generally safe, short “whipper”, or fall while sport climbing.
You won’t see the rocks when you first arrive at Safe Harbor. Parking is available for the North area at the Turkey Hill Nature Trail, and the South Area at a tunnel next to an unmarked climber’s trail. Dirtbags rejoice! The park is far enough out that you shouldn’t expect to experience any interruption if you spend the night in the parking lot. Ambitious campers could probably set up tents in the forest above the rocks, although I’ve been unable to find any regulations on it, leading me to believe it is prohibited. Bring a bike with you, it will make the several mile walk-up much quicker.
The summers in South Central Pennsylvania can bring incredibly humid heat, and winters can bring bitter cold, so late Spring and early Fall are the ideal times to visit. The rock quality is low, and high rainfall levels combined with freezing temperatures have caused 3 major rock slides in the last few months, so high awareness is a must while navigating these walls. It should be noted that climbing wet rocks is dangerous for several reasons. Not only does the water make it significantly harder to grip the rock, but the rock is considerably more likely to break while wet, as it soaks in and can exacerbate already existing cracks and imperfections. Be courteous to other climbers, don’t potentially destroy routes by climbing less than 24 hours after rain.
Between the North and South areas, Safe Harbor’s walls hold over 270 routes, well documented on Mountain Project, a website for climbing and mountaineering routes. Safe Harbor climbs range from 5.4 to 5.13a. In the meantime, however, cell service should be sufficient to access the internet to make sure you have the right climbing route. The two areas are separated by a 15-minute drive, or a 6-mile bike ride, with routes split evenly between them. Sport climbing, the hefty majority of the climbing at Safe Harbor, involves what is called leading: tying the rope to your harness and climbing upwards, following the route. The climber then clips quickdraws, two carabiners attached with a strip of nylon, one carabiner through bolts mounted in the wall, and rope through the other side.
Without a climbing outfitter nearby, you’ll have to ensure that you have all necessary equipment before you arrive. Black Diamond, Mammut, and Petzl are some safe options for top-quality equipment. The essentials for sport climbing are climbing shoes, a rope, a harness, a belay device, and quickdraws. All of these can be bought online, but try on shoes first to ensure a proper fit. The rope should be one specifically made for climbing, your life isn’t worth saving a few bucks by buying other, less expensive ropes.
If you’re looking to enjoy the local culture when the sun goes down and it’s too dark to climb, Lancaster offers more urban activities. With an active local music scene, Lancaster is the perfect place to relax after a long day at the crag. Local music venues include the Chameleon Club, the area’s premiere metal and punk venue that’s recently branched into other genres, Tellus360, an Irish Pub with everything from Irish bands to hip-hop, and the American Music Theater, an orchestra house.
Climbing has become more than a hobby in the past few months. It isn’t just something I do on the weekends, it’s become what I look forward to, what I talk about with old friends, and where I’ve made new friends. As I learn more about myself and improve my skills, I can only imagine I’ll be doing more of it. The more I climb and improve my skills, the more I learn about myself and the way I interact with the world. That alone is enough to bring me back to the crags.
Ryan Mitchell is a Pennsylvania native and naturalized Texan who prioritizes life in the fast lane and will be interning for SOFLETE in the summer of 2019. Email Help@soflete.com with ideas on how to apply his talents and better torture him.
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]]>Thinking of leaving the military? Already took the exit door and wondering if you had fully thought out your decision? I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you it’s an easy process, but most service members aren’t doing themselves any favors as they navigate this life change. Let’s have a talk about what to be looking for, where to start, and most importantly, how to build realistic expectations.
]]>First, let’s talk about the various toxic caricatures of “veterans” that are promoted by the community itself: You are a high functioning alcoholic, likely sexist and potentially racist, riddled by social anxiety and/or PTSD, incapable of calm interaction, physically broken from so many service related injuries, and likely to be poorly groomed in response to years of “standards.” Read that again and tell me if that’s what you want your future employer and friends to see about you. Is it true? If ANY of it is true, you should be working to fix these things or minimizing them in order to be successful, not wallowing in them.
Second, it seems that a lot of folks can’t stop talking about how their service made them an expert at foreign and domestic policy, social issues, and relationships in general. My grandmother once told me that you should never talk about sex, religion, or politics in polite society. Your opinions are just opinions, made no more or less valid by your experiences. It should be no surprise that you come across as polarizing to people you interact with professionally when you sound like a cross between Wolf Blitzer and Alex Jones. Stop that shit!
Also, here’s the biggest question: “What are you doing for me right now?” As a fellow vet, I know that your service was likely honorable and worthy of respect. It is also in the past. Society doesn’t owe you any thanks or obligation for that “service.” It was service. Take your entitlement mindset, crumple it up, and throw it away. Start asking yourself what YOU are bringing to the table. Start defining new goals for yourself. Work to accomplish those goals.
Vets, for all their complaining about safe spaces, have become institutional snowflakes. Oh, you fought in Korengal and lived to tell about it? Let’s bring that up in every irrelevant conversation... forever. Disagree with someone about a social issue that doesn't really effect you on Facebook? Let's melt down while invoking our veteran status as proof that our opinion is valid and informed. Being a successful adult in the civilian sector is about being confronted with opinions and views that differ from your own and processing them without blowing a gasket, then working shoulder to shoulder with the person whose worldviews are fundamentally different than our own.
Our Veteran community may seem like a melting pot of America, but we were typically heavily internally segregated by race and gender during our service. Even aside from those visible classifications, specific career fields attract and develop similar worldviews through shared suffering and hardship. Having those worldviews challenged by outsiders is difficult, but you HAVE to process dissent differently in the civilian sector. Service Members can take their frustrations out on “The System” and often develop the “us vs. them” mentality. That isn’t an effective coping mechanism in the civilian world. I’m always shocked by how resilient people are to major physical trauma but how quickly they have a meltdown over interpersonal, leadership, and logistical setbacks. When things don’t go your way, you can’t just get angry and drink yourself into your next government funded shift. If you aren’t working to find a solution, you are becoming part of the problem. Be an adult and find a socially acceptable solution that doesn’t involve demanding people listen to you by virtue of your experiences.
It’s worth noting that Esprit De Corps and direct leadership techniques work well in the military, but they develop a single language of communication that doesn’t necessarily translate well into a civilian job search or career. When you are transitioning, start thinking about it as learning a new language. Frame your service as valuable experience in leadership, discipline, and adaptability. Don’t wow your potential employers and peers with your (admittedly impressive) martial skills. Limit discussion of your technical abilities. Instead, discuss your ability to direct teams to mission success, your commitment to achieving your commander’s guidance, and your ability to learn new and complex systems.
The military has many elements of a total institution. Leaving the military is much more like being released from prison than simply choosing to be free at your discretion and move to a civilian career. The desocialization process that was endured in Basic Training doesn’t need to be repeated as a Service Member re-integrates to the civilian sector. Success after departing this system requires planning and active preparation. There are a lot of resources available to those in transition, but they can easily be squandered.
The GI Bill is actually something you ARE owed as a service member who meets the criteria to receive these benefits. But just like signing up for a Special Forces contract and quitting in Airborne School, college isn’t for everyone. Think about the trades… for most military members it’s a language they probably already speak. In the college saturated civilian world there are a plethora of high paying trade jobs that involve technical training and certification that companies are desperate to fill. Hate all those weak-gened college kids and can’t stand the idea of answering to some hippie puke that voted for “Killary”? Maybe you should go to welding school. Glad to finally not have monthly urinalysis and can’t wait to wake and bake? Maybe Information Technology Systems Management work is the right choice for you. Hell, a lot of flight schools have figured out how to get you from street to seat on 100% government funding. The best part is that with so many Global War On Terror Vets leaving the service, those educational/certification opportunities are generally covered by the GI Bill.
Also, have realistic expectations on your salary. You are leaving a job where your healthcare is free, your housing and food are subsidized and tax free, and you are incentivized with a variety of social and monetary perks. Your base salary may FEEL small, but your spending power in the .MIL is pretty large. Unless you are staying in the government sector, you should also realize that you will be starting doing low level work and compensated accordingly. Even if you have a high paying contract gig, because of taxes on 1099 employment, your take home may not be as good as when you were in, even if you are on that six figure gross pay.
Here’s your corner of tough love: stop being an entitled asshole. Employers want what your chain of command wanted: right place, right time, right uniform. In short, you need to be on time and sober. You aren’t being edgy and worldly by trumpeting your failures and trying to advertise them as logical side effects of being a Veteran. Address your fears and insecurities through therapy and self-improvement. Gained weight after you got out because there’s not group PT? Being a self-starter is important in life, but find a community to encourage you if you can’t motivate yourself. Do you feel like you lost a sense of purpose after you left the military? The local bar isn’t going to fill that void; get out and get involved.
No one owes you anything, it’s up to you to prove your worth everyday. Or, you can keep making things harder than they have to be and wondering why the crowning achievement of your life was carrying a machine gun in Afghanistan and shooting at enemies with no idea why you were there in the first place.
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I accepted a job offer with a power company that allowed me to make the move and start my new life. On my first day at the new job, I felt a difference in the atmosphere. The company wants people to succeed. There is encouragement to have a life outside of the workplace. Employees are actively engaged in the community. The only catch is that your life can not interfere with the company’s continued operation. My eyes were opened to the amount of self-imposed stress I endured previously.
My first month after the move, I lived out of an Airbnb so I could see the area before committing to where I wanted to live. One day before being officially homeless I found a centrally located apartment near work. Now I can explore my new home in all directions.
I did not sell my home in Pennsylvania until late in 2019 so money was a limiting factor. Paying a mortgage and rent on top of my living expenses left little room in the budget for fun money. But hiking doesn’t cost much more than time so I took the opportunity to explore.
I settled in the Mat-Su Valley where there are more than 2000 miles of trails. There is amazing scenery everywhere. Trails provide access to side by sides, snow machines, overland vehicles, and horses. Some trails are seasonal, requiring the lakes to freeze for full access. I have yet to have the financial capability to participate in anything that requires more than my feet, but even the idea of doing so is appealing. Many of the trails allow my dog. He is getting older and has some health issues that prevent us from completing the more intense trails together, but he still gets to participate on the easy days.
Last summer, the state of Alaska had several major wildfires. I had not considered wildfires to be a danger to my life before coming here. The 2019 fire season saw more than 650,000 acres burn. Residents lost their homes. Evacuation orders were issued where the fires were projected to spread. Fortunately, the impact to my life was limited to adjusted travel plans.
While taking a day trip to the Kenai Peninsula, the highway was covered in a layer of smoke so thick I could barely see. My plans had been to drive South and see what I could see. The Swan Lake Fire had shut down the highway, forcing me to Seward instead. This was one of my first experiences getting out to see the world beyond my front door. The heat of the summer slowed down the plans for the day, as the dog isn’t well suited for hot weather so we walked along the stone beach. This slowdown emphasized the importance of appreciating the moment. Blue water, blue sky, and snow-capped mountains in the distance made for a wonderful introduction to what Alaska has to offer.
My first real hike was the West Butte Trail, just outside of Palmer. While this is a shorter trail, coming in at just under 2.5 miles out and back, it still provided a significant challenge. I knew I was out of shape, but 2.5 miles seemed easy. Except for the elevation change. The majority of the elevation change happens right in the middle of the round trip. Just before the 1-mile mark to about the 1.25-mile mark, there is 500 - 600ft of elevation change. This highlighted my lack of cardio fitness, which I am addressing so I can participate in more difficult hikes in the future. When I did make it to the top, I was above the low cloud cover of the day. It gave the appearance climbing to a much higher peak.
I find stunning scenery with a lot more ease than some hikes require. While there are named “scenic” drives, as someone who primarily lived in heavily populated areas, every drive is a scenic drive to me. Everywhere I look there are the kind of views many people wish they had the chance to see in person.
By far, the most refreshing part of being somewhere new is the people. Most of the country is currently on some sort of lockdown with businesses shut down and panic shopping happening everywhere. What I have seen happening here is people coming together rather than tearing each other down. Offering food or other needed items to one’s neighbors, including coveted toilet paper, is almost commonplace. This may be happening everywhere, but here people being more neighborly did not just start with the lockdown.
My first day at work, I met a very welcoming woman who got me started with the onboarding process. After a few months, she offered to be my tour guide, and took me to the Alaska State Fair. We continued to build a friendship, ensuring I didn’t fall too much into my anti-social introverted ways. Her family fell in love with my dog. I actually got to experience the holidays because of her family. Moments like Thanksgiving dinner and a Christmas gift exchange were when Alaska started to feel like home.
I found a house that fits both my current needs and the need for more space in the future. Having settled into the house and beginning to find a new routine, I look forward to this year’s adventures. In addition to climbing to higher peaks, I am diving head first into fishing and hunting.
Get out of your comfort zone. Take smart chances to make your life the life you want. Sometimes it may be the change your life needs to set you down the path you need to be on.
Written by M. Skotnicki
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You don’t have to dig too deep into the internet before you will come across researchers and bro science experts alike referencing a supposed sweet spot called the “anabolic window”.
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This idea of the anabolic window has been researched for almost three decades. In fact, the post-exercise time period is thought to be the most important moment in nutrient timing. After intense training, our bodies are depleted and looking for fuel to rebuild to be bigger and better than before.
Carbohydrates and protein are the fuel our body needs after training. Carbohydrates are needed to replete glycogen stores, which are the stores of carbohydrates found in the body that are used to fuel physical activity. Protein is needed to halt muscle breakdown and switch gears into muscle building. Furthermore, this combination of protein and carbohydrate intake spike our insulin levels. Insulin is considered an anabolic hormone that helps our body stop the breakdown of muscle post-exercise and possibly stimulate muscle building.
The anabolic window theory claims that in order to maximize muscle building you must ingest the above mentioned post workout fuel during this magical time window. Some research suggests that the anabolic window exists within one to two hours, while other research indicates that this window can exist for up to four to six hours. After years of trying to figure out exactly when the anabolic window opens, the research is still inconsistent.
Here’s what we do know. After training, your muscles are sensitive and ready to absorb the much needed nutrients. This muscle sensitivity can last up to 24 and 48 hours after exercise. So maybe this “anabolic window” is actually more like an anabolic barn door. It isn’t the end of the world if you can’t get your post-workout snack in within an hour. Your body can reap the benefits for hours and hours to come.
Yes, it’s true that your post-workout snack should be consumed sooner rather than later, but it’s also true that your meal and snack patterns continue to matter following that initial post-workout snack. Your workout has made your muscles sensitive to the absorption of the nutrients we get from food and supplements for up to 48 hours, so being consistent with your intake of high-quality nutritious foods has just as much benefit as getting fuel in during the anabolic window.
The anabolic window is actually more like anabolic barn door. Food consumption for 24 to 48 hours following exercise can enhance body composition and future athletic performance. Post-workout snacks should be consumed at your earliest convenience since your muscle are needing that fuel following exercise, but the idea that it only matters for hour after exercise is false. To optimize training-related muscular adaptations, we need to think about the bigger picture and be consistent with healthy, nutritious meals and snacks to keep reaping the benefits of hard training.
https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-10-53
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577439/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16705065
[training-ad]The only constants of physical health are that people need to be consistent in their efforts, they need to put in the work and sometimes they might even need to push a little bit.
]]>But you, dear SOFLETE reader, are cut from a different cloth. You know what you want to do with your physical vessel before you shuffle off this mortal coil, and you know you’re not going to be able to do that without putting in the reps and trading some pain for all those gains.
But what if you didn’t actually hard charge and try to push as much as possible?
Therein lies the rub and it is my duty to convince you that you’re actually going to be able to slay more dragons by pressing the easy button rather than committing yourself to taking the long way around.
For you to understand what I’m saying, we first have to take a step into the classroom and to deepen our understanding of stress.
Most people understand stress as something to be avoided.
“Stress is bad,” they say. “Don’t deal with too much stress or you’ll snap,” they say.
But when folks begin to deepen their understanding and realize that there can be such a thing as “good stress” is when they start to frame recovery protocols as such. But to truly understand stress you have to take it a step further, to recognize the core of the idea of stress.
Stress can only be defined by the response to a stimulus, not by the stimulus itself. A tough day at work isn’t defined as stress. Rather, your reaction to the tough day is the stress.
Read that again, pause, and internalize it.
What that means is that one person’s bad stress can be another’s good stress. Still with me? Good. Because if you’re with me, the picture will start to appear for you that there is no easy or good way to define good and bad stress based on the stimulus. It all depends on the person and the context.
Hans Selye, the clean-shaven, mild-mannered endocrinologist who is considered the godfather of our modern understanding of stress, split the definition of stress into two different types: eustress and distress.
The best way to define these two types of stress is to categorize eustress as stress that the body is able to easily overcome and adapt to, whereas distress is stress that the body is either unable to adapt to or adaptable to only with great difficulty.
Contrary to popular understanding, all stress responses are not the same and the response to the same stressor can vary based on the person and the context. One person’s tempo run is another person’s recovery run. One person’s one-rep max is another person’s restorative rep work.
Now, to get back to the lede we’ve so buried.
Most of you hard chargers are consistently training in the distress zone. You’re pushing reps to failure, working beyond the point where you can maintain ideal speed, alignment, breathing, and so on. All this does is objectively ramp up the need for recovery.
Don’t take my word for it though.
Cal Dietz, head of Strength and Conditioning at the University of Minnesota, spent some time testing athletes and empirically determining how much pushing into distress affected recovery demands. The result is basically a straight line: keep things under 1-2% drop-off in velocity, and you can train twenty-four hours later. Push to 2-4% and you need forty-eight hours, 5-6% requires seventy-two hours.
Keeping your training out of distress and in eustress allows you to keep training with more frequency and ultimately more total volume. All you have to do to stay in eustress is to keep an eye on those baseline performance parameters - speed, breathing, alignment. As soon as anything shifts, stop the set or the session entirely.
In other words, keep it easy.
Think of it this way. You’re probably smart enough not to try to hit your deadlift max every training day and hope it will somehow move up. But if you’re a hard charger that’s probably exactly what you’re doing if you look at the sum total of your training session as a stressor. You’re consistently pushing too hard and you likely have the injuries and issues to show for it.
So if training in a eustress zone is so much better, why do the two types of stress matter to you?
Eventually, you’re going to find yourself taking on doses of distress. Whether it be in training, play or competition, you’re going to push beyond what’s comfortably within your limits. In fact, if your sport or job requirements push you into distress it would behoove you to purposely, occasionally train in distress. But how to dose that is going to have to be another article.
The important thing is that by knowing that any stressor can be eustress or distress, with a little bit of self-experimentation you can hone your own ideal training and recovery protocols. Once you understand that, you might find that an easy run or light deadlift session can be just as restorative as massage, sauna, breathing work or whatever your favorite modality is.
Keeping your finger on the easy button doesn’t mean you don’t need consistency and dedication in your training. You can still charge hard and constantly push yourself to new heights. But my experience training everyone from cancer patients to athletes on the world stage shows me that you can accomplish much more over the long term when you press the easy button.
David Dellanave is a lifter, coach, and owner of The Movement Minneapolis in the Twin Cities. He implements biofeedback techniques, teaching his clients, ranging from athletes to general population, to truly understand what their bodies are telling them. He writes articles to make you stronger, look better naked, and definitely deadlift more at http://www.dellanave.com/. He holds several world records, including one in the Jefferson deadlift, and his alter ego, Dellanavich from Dellanavia, has a penchant for coaching classes wearing a weightlifting singlet and speaking with a (terrible) Eastern European accent.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ddn
Facebook: http://facebook.com/movementminneapolis
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]]>If you're unsure what Apnea Training is, watch this video to learn more.
As athletes, we constantly look to improve muscular strength, endurance and flexibility. However, during those brutal grinders, the first thing to go typically isn’t our muscles, capacity or pliability. Rather, it’s our breath. When our breath goes, there is a cascading effect that reverberates through our system leading to breaks, missed reps, dropped barbells and the like.
The upside to this problem is that you don’t need a gym to train your lungs. You just need focused effort and a plan. Apnea training is an exceptionally valuable endeavor and you can do it from the comfort of your own home, while on the couch watching television.
Apnea training or hypercapnia training is a fancy way of saying “holding your breath.” Yes, that silly game we played as kids where would see who could hold their breath the longest actually has been proven to be a quite effective tool in the effort to improve overall athleticism.
Breathing is the quickest way to both hype up and calm down your nervous system, thus learning how to breathe becomes exceptionally important when trying to rid your body of Co2, the byproduct of aerobic metabolism. The buildup of Co2 in your system causes a domino effect during brutal workouts which inevitably ends with you slowing down and your ability to tolerate and subsequently flush out Co2 from the system will give you a leg up over the guy who is sucking wind next to you. Your muscles crave oxygen but the exchange is one-for-one. One molecule of O2 in equals one molecule of Co2 out.
As mentioned above, breath holding and other forms of apnea training are designed to increase the body’s tolerance to carbon dioxide. When Co2 builds up, it is uncomfortable. It’s the sensation that causes your twelve-year-old self to shoot up from the bottom of the pool after a whopping twenty oxygenless seconds of impressing your friends. By incorporating doses of apnea training (static or dynamic) into your training you allow your body to adapt to the stress caused by Co2 build up.
During hypoxic training, you are depriving your body of its greatest need, oxygen. So of course, there are risk factors to be aware of during your bouts of holding your breath. Your body has built-in reactions to such threats to the system such as passing out. If you pass out in a pool by yourself holding your breath, you drown. If you pass out standing up, you will fall and hit whatever objects are between you and the floor. If you have a health condition that makes hypoxic conditions particularly life-threatening, then these techniques are NOT for you. The rule is to never do hypoxic work alone. ALWAYS have a buddy.
Provided all things are healthy and functioning properly, incorporating these techniques in small doses over time is both safe and effective and will improve your level of aerobic fitness drastically.
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Late that month, a gentleman called who needed someone with a strong work ethic and stronger back for landscaping work. The next day I met him for an interview at the local Lowes parking lot, got hired, then went on a quest for work clothes. For the previous three years, proper work attire consisted of three-piece suits with tie clasps and French cuff shirts. Now I wore Carhartt pants, work boots, and an assortment of Dickies t-shirts.
I reflected on why I left a white-collar career in Las Vegas for fear and uncertainty in Wilmington, NC. Mainly, I left for Julie. But I was also not doing a very good job of transitioning out of the Marines. I moved to Las Vegas from Maryland in 2014 to continue my career in life insurance sales, a career I started after my career as a Government contractor died in the sequester of 2013.
Selling life insurance was the second time in my life I had to reinvent myself. I knew nothing about sales, I knew nothing about customer service, and I barely knew how to talk to people in a civilized manner. But all that changed. By becoming very comfortable with being uncomfortable, I was able to really excel in sales. Within a year I was asked to assist in opening the Las Vegas location. Two years after getting to Las Vegas, working 7am-11pm Monday- Saturday, and barely getting the agency off the ground I was done; with sales, with suits, and with my environment. I couldn’t continue. Little did I know I was training for my dream career.
So I found myself leaning on a shovel at 6 AM, listening to a nineteen-year-old kid explain the process. I was ten years his senior, had been around the world, and run a business. But now he was boss. “First you kick the sod with a sod-cutter” he explained, “it cuts into the earth three inches down and lets you to roll the grass up like carpet. Then it’s time to grab the shovel”. With all the fiber optics and other cables in the ground, machines were out of the question. You dig out the ditch one foot wide by two feet deep to allow clearance for the PVC pipe. Next, you use a survey tool to ensure the grade will allow the water to flow through the pipe on its way to the ditch. Finally, after everything is complete and the sod is replaced, the remaining fill dirt is packed into a wheel borrow and hauled to the truck. When the job is complete, it is as if we were never there.
The “crew” wound up consisting of me and my nineteen-year-old boss who was happy as a clam be in charge. The first day my hands went through a grinder before lunch time. On my break I ran to the local CVS for sports wrap and gloves so I could finish out the day. I got home long after sunset. Julie stared at me walking up the driveway, covered head to toe in mud, my hands crudely bandaged and asked if I was going back tomorrow. I replied, “Of course I am.” I knew eventually my body would harden to the demands of the work.
I kept the job for a week before I was offered another opportunity at a father and son ammo shop. I later discovered that the father funded the operation, but my new boss was the twenty-year-old son. My only experience slightly related to the job was having fired weapons of the same caliber as the ammo when I was in the Marines. My shift was 5 AM to 1 PM, Monday through Friday. I started by loading hoppers with brass casings. A single cylinder engine controlled the press. The first step was to wash the raw brass in a machine that mixed soap and water with beads to clean the casings. Next the brass was seated in a tray, a pin punched out the spent primer and a die reformed the swage. Then, the casing fell into a bucket. After that, we lubed the brass and sent it to another set of machines that trimmed the casings. Once the necks were sized and the casing could be reloaded, we put them back into the wash to come out shining like the golden sun. The process was hypnotic, the fifteen machines ran like an orchestra, all humming to the same rhythm. The job paid $15 per hour so it had the potential to get us moving in the right direction.
I enjoyed the job a lot more than digging ditches, it was fun to watch the brass move in the assembly line, I also started to understand what reduce-reuse-recycle meant. I felt like I was getting somewhere, and the schedule allowed me to be home to watch my son get off the bus. Unfortunately, it never turned into the opportunity that I hoped for. After four months of work, the father told me they were cutting my wage down to $7.25. I quit a few weeks later and was once again trying to understand how we could rub two pennies together to make a living. It took our savings to save our skin.
By January of 2017, I lay in bed, frustrated with myself. I promised Julie and Kameron I would take care of them and now, five months into our new lives, I was still struggling to make ends meet. I needed a real job. I needed a career. Then Julie told me about a general manager position with O2 Fitness she saw while job searching. I laughed at the thought. The job would be an absolute dream, but Julie had more faith in my ability than I did at this point. She said, “I’m serious. I think this is exactly what you’ve been looking for, this position was made for you and you’ll be great.”
I thought, “What do I know about running a gym?” The only thing I ever ran was a PFT and I wasn’t great at that. But I love working out and talking to people about working out and helping people understand how great it feels to accomplish a goal you set out to achieve so, with her support, I applied for the position.
So in February 2017, I started as the general manager of a single location. From the first time I sat at my desk I knew I had found my place. My supervisor told me about the culture of the club (or lack thereof). He let me know the gym had been without leadership for over six months and that the staff didn’t trust management anymore. I fell back on my time in the Marines and the old adage, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
I didn’t know a whole lot, but I did care a great deal. This was my opportunity, my club. I was going to let everyone know I was willing to do whatever it took to turn the ship around. After my only salesperson left a few weeks into my role, they got to see the dedication I had only talked about in the interview.
My new schedule was Monday – Sunday from 9 AM to 8 PM or, as we used to call it in the Marines, day-on stay-on. Compared to insurance, it felt like I had every day off. I used everything insurance taught me to build a business and excel in my new career.
Step One: Learn how to sell your product. First you must find people with a problem you can solve. Then present your product as the solution to their problem.
Step Two: Find and teach people how to sell your product. This may come as a surprise, but I only look for two characteristics when looking for salespeople; Are you willing? and are you coachable? If you are both those things I don’t care about your education or resume.
Step Three: Teach people how to teach people how to sell. This is where you find your leaders. With all these steps in order you can grow a territory or open a new one. These were the rules I used, but the experience I used came from being in a place of uncertainty the entire time I had been out of the Marines, knowing at any moment the rug could be pulled from underneath me. I made a promise to my wife and son that we would never be in that place again. Within four months of working every day I built a team I was proud of and we turned that ship around.
Within eight months, I was promoted to managing the most prestigious club in the company at the time. I kept the promise I made. I worked as hard as I could and developed an amazing team along the way. We took the number one spot in the company multiple months in a row. I came to feel like I had made it. When that thought entered my mind, I knew that I had gotten comfortable like I had before, and had to change. From this point on I started to force myself out of my comfort zone. Books on introspection and emotional intelligence became the grinding stone to sharpen my mind
Within two years, I was promoted to area director over five locations in Wilmington, overseeing four general managers and working to coach and develop them to the same level of success I found. After eight months in that role, I took an opportunity in another area running a single leading location. I discovered during my time it is important to do things that make you happy. Running a single club allows me the ability to coach future leaders and the freedom to have time with my family.
I tell this story to help those currently in the same position I was four years ago. Don’t get discouraged, don’t feed your insecurities, instead spend your time working on getting better and be willing to fail forward. Focus on being better every day. I guarantee if you focus on getting better in the mind, body, and spirit it is impossible for you to stay in the same place. Be better today than you were yesterday and be better tomorrow than you are today.
Better is a never-ending mission.
Michael Tribbit has been a US Marine, a salesman, a laborer, and a business manager. He happily lives in Raleigh, NC with his wife and son.
I didn’t have a home as a child, I bounced between houses and family members. I slept on a couch here, a floor there; a bed if I was lucky. As soon as I got close to being settled, I’d get moved. One of my earliest fears was that I’d never have my own place to call home. I took to living in the woods as much as I could. We called it camping. It ended up being preparation for the many nights I spent under the stars later in life.
Looking back, I can’t even remember much of high school. It feels like a dream. The instability I experienced did not allow a settled feeling through those formative years. I think I had friends but the fears I had at home carried over to school in the form of not being close to a lot of people. I believe I was friendly, but I was not close to people outside my very close circle of guys who loved the thought of being a commando someday.
The desire to be a Soldier came early to me. I believe it was more of a way to climb above the fear of being unwanted than it was a way out of the whole mess. The Army offered somewhere I could belong; a home. As we got older, my small circle of friends and I stayed in the forests around our homes more and more often. We all expressed some level of interest in one day being “elite”. It was the eighties. My dad was a Vietnam Veteran. We learned the Ranger Creed and truly tried to understand what it meant; sitting underneath poncho hootches and discussing the meaning of it. This led to more fear for me. Could I live up to what I knew would be expected from a life like the one I wanted?
Even at that young age, I studied sacrifice. I read everything I could get my hands on at the local library about World War Two and Vietnam. I knew that glory and war didn’t necessarily belong together, but words like honor, sacrifice, and service to a cause bigger than myself really mattered. Late at night, I feared what that meant for me. Would I be someone, like the paratroopers I was reading about, who would step up when it mattered? I knew the only way to find out was to commit. I made that decision long before I ever raised my hand and recited the oath of enlistment.
It didn’t take long after I joined to the military to realize that all the fears I had been hiding could actually be useful. I could take the knot that came from not feeling good enough and use it to steer myself towards a purpose. The bureaucracy of the Army had its own plans during the early days of my career and I didn’t initially get to walk the exact path I intended years before. Regardless, I was beginning to use that new found drive to try and be better every single day. We didn’t have intelligent workout programs in the early nineties, we just had GO. Go fast, go hard, and don’t ever quit. I was fast, fit, and studied warfare almost every minute of the day. But there was always fear.
Fear crept in during quiet times to remind me that I was not as fast as some guys within the platoon. I was not as good a shot as another. I was afraid of heights. I ran more; the sound of my feet on roads and trails my attempt to drown doubt. The range became my church. Every single jump, I was afraid and ashamed inside. I didn’t think anyone else was really scared. What could I do? Jump, that’s what. Even when that meant standing on the ramp, seconds away from falling into the dark abyss from 20,000 feet. Jump! Never, ever quit. Always keep moving forward. Keep running, shooting, jumping. Whatever it took.
For me selection was three weeks of fear, though at the time I never would have admitted that to anyone. Even though I had spent ten years in some great Infantry units I was afraid I wouldn’t meet the standard. Would my good be good enough? In the dark hours alone in the woods, I had to take that fear and drive it down. I had to mold that fear into the belly fire I needed to rise above the pain and doubts I saw in the mirror.
They say selection never ends. My success there came with even more fear. Once I arrived on a team I quickly realized that I had to earn my place every single day. Fear of failing my teammates was a daily part of life and in many ways it still is. I got to 3rd Special Forces Group shortly after their first combat deployment. The day I showed up to my team, I was the only one without the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge. My entire career, I had looked at men with their CIB with an awe. Combat: they’d seen it. Grenada, Panama, Desert Strom, Somalia and now my team had all seen combat in the opening phase of Afghanistan.
Then it was my turn. I found myself in the back of a dark MH-47 en route to blow down some dude’s door to kill or capture him in some Afghan village. In the darkened helo, I reflected on a life of fear that brought me to that moment. Could I live up to a life’s study of what others had done? Yes. I could. Fear equals drive if you can recognize it and use it. That night was a major junction in my life. It was the beginning of many years of combat. Looking back, I cannot even count how many nights I’ve had just like that; controlling the chaos within myself while controlling the actual chaos all around me. It’s life.
Life is fear whether anyone wants to admit or not. What matters is what you choose to do with it. You can let it win and give up to its dark wish to own you and cause you to fail, or you can move forward in the knowledge that you are unstoppable. I know that I’m afraid. I recognize that I have fear. Hell, I just retired from almost three decades of military service and now I have to figure out the “next”. You think that’s not scary? It fills me with fear at times. But though fear is my constant companion, it will never win. I know that I will never be stopped. I may get hit. I may get knocked back, but I’ll always find a way. Oh, and my circle of childhood friends? Not a single one of them became a commando.
They must’ve been scared.
Jim Thompson was born in a small town in Mississippi. He recently retired after 29 years of military service; 26 of which was Active Duty Infantry and Special Forces.
That is probably the most common response that ultra-runners get when discussing their sport with normal people. Running is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it’s all day, overnight, and into the next day. But I don’t get why, as Americans are dying younger, eating more garbage food (I’ve certainly contributed here), and lying to themselves about their desire to be fit relative to their desire to put in the work required, some Americans proudly proclaim themselves the equivalent of sentient compost.
There is good news though. More people are undertaking credible fitness efforts every day. In 2013, two million people completed a half-marathon. But that’s 2 million worldwide. Many Americans are less and less physically and mentally prepared for anything more challenging than a Homeowners’ Association meeting.
But not you. You’re here to Die Living. For you, that just might mean toeing the line at a race you not only won’t win but may not even finish. And that’s okay because as our Special Air Service friends say, “Who Dares, Wins.”
So let’s talk about how we regular mortals can run the distances other people proudly claim not to drive.
What are we even talking about?
An ultramarathon is any race over 26.2 miles and, as more and more people run marathons, they are growing in popularity. In 2004, there were almost four-hundred ultramarathon events nationwide. By 2014, that number more than doubled, to over eight-hundred. I ran my first ultra, the 2000 Guana River 50k, with thirteen other people. 50k, or 31.25 miles, is the most common ultra-distance. That’s a great accomplishment for anyone and there is no debate that finishing one makes you an ultra-marathoner.
But I’ve run a lot more since then, and since time and distance will warp your perspective I think it’s fair to call fifty miles the threshold distance for folks really looking for a next level event. The next typical distance is one-hundred kilometers or 62.5 miles.
The Holy Grail for mortal runners, of course, is the Hundred Miler. Though events even greater than that distance are becoming more widespread as more and more people hit that hundred-mile mark. There are road ultras, track ultras and trail ultras. Some people run treadmill ultras, but I would rather spend twenty-four hours driving knitting needles under my toenails.
You got this. But man, it’s gonna hurt.
Simply put, ultras are not your 5k charity run. If you want to do this it is going to take a lot of time and a lot of miles. Your family, if you have one, has to be on board and you have to be ready to adapt your training to them. You need to run early, run late and run overnight.
In ultra-running, at least in my experience, the time on the race clock is far less important than the time on your feet, as calculated by months and years of training and experience. Six months after I ran my first fifty miler, the relatively novice friendly JFK 50, I found myself stumbling down off a mountain, laying down on the side of a road and going to sleep, ending my Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 Mile attempt at mile fifty-two. I just didn’t have the right store of training, education, and experience.
Can someone just decide to run a hundred miles, go out and do it? Of course. At my first successful hundred miler, the 2013 Graveyard 100, a West Point Cadet and member of the West Point marathon team showed up, having driven down the day before. He had on a pair of track shorts, a cotton hoodie and a ruck. Several hours later, he actually finished the distance (looking like an extra on The Walking Dead). But due to all the things he didn’t know meant he did not make the time cut-offs and was ultimately disqualified.
Experience and conditioning will generally beat strength in ultras. I recently ran a 100k and was chatting with a runner who was doing the hundred-mile option.
“How many is this for you?” I asked, already suspicious because he was dressed like he was headed to the gym to hit the elliptical.
“It’s my first running race of any kind, but I am a very determined individual!”
Neat. Got it. Good luck. The next and last time I saw him, he was at mile forty-five, standing on the side of a trail and mumbling incoherently into his cell phone. Ironically, my first hundred-mile effort featured a very similar conversation and a very similar result. Respect the distance and put in the work. That may mean a few years of racing and learning. Good things come to she who waits.
Don’t be afraid of the dark
In any race over fifty miles, you’re probably going to run in the dark. I DNF’d (“did not finish”) at my first two hundred-mile attempts. One was simply too hard for my level of preparation (the aforementioned Massanutten 100). On my second, the Umstead 100, I was moving too slow to finish by the (generous) cut off and by nightfall, I had completely psyched myself out.
The truth is I was Evan Persperis’ poster boy for why endurance athletes quit.
The turning point that allowed me to finish the Graveyard 100 with a Belt Buckle (the traditional hundred-mile finisher’s award) was when I decided to train by running by myself, without music, and, once a week, to run from my daughter’s bedtime and until I needed to shower for work the next morning. The last thing I wanted to do after a day of work was to forego my warm bed, run six-to-eight hours, then work a full day. But for me, that replicated the same feeling I had in my DNFs when it got dark (and probably wet and cold) after I’d been running twelve hours and I had another twelve-to-eighteen hours of running to go.
By replicating the part of “The Suck” that had defeated me, I conditioned myself to overcome the whimper in my head that made me question the whole thing and head to the nearest bed.
Let’s talk about sex. And lube. And your feet.
More specifically, let’s talk about maintaining your sexy fun time gear and your feet.
As the great Northwestern Philosopher Sir Mix-A-Lot said, “I'm long and I'm strong and I'm down to get the friction on.” And much like Mix, you’re about to experience some serious friction on. You will sweat out all the salt in your body. It will dry in your compression shorts. The quads you are so proud of, assuming you like squats as much as the next SOFLETE adherent, will rub together for anywhere from twelve to thirty-six hours. It may rain. You may cross a river. Clouds of dust and dirt will settle on the fabric and work its way in.
But there are steps you can take to mitigate that facet of “The Suck.”
You might take some Agent Orange - in the form of Nair - to your downstairs forest. But if a Brazilian isn’t your thing, a little maintenance with the clippers followed by liberal application of Desitin Extra Strength should be. Actually, Desitin needs to happen whether you go baby smooth or not. Remember buy the purple tube and put it anywhere you would want your significant other to be interested. Armpits and nips too. Early and often.
Moving out of the fun zone; your feet will hate you when this is over. Some folks tape trouble spots with moleskin or duct tape before the start, whereas others lube their feet with Vaseline, Desitin, Squirrel Nut Butter. Some runners wear two pairs of socks or toe socks. All I do is cut my toenails short, make sure I have no ingrown nails (I actually recommend a pedicure three to five days out from a race), and buy high-quality compression socks. That’s it. With compression socks, there is little-to-no slippage. So even when your socks and feet are soaked, there’s no friction. Ergo, no blisters.
My most recent 100k saw none whatsoever. I did lose a nail though because I didn’t cut it back enough and it rubbed through my compression sock and into my shoe. That hurt for thirty-five miles and my $35 socks are useless now. Lesson learned.
Eat and run
Besides, “why?” the most common question I get about ultra-running is whether I eat and sleep?
Yes and no.
I run way too slow to sleep but no one gets between me and junk food. And although I know Brooke West is correct in wanting us to treat our bodies like a temple, ultra-running is a license to treat it like a bus station for a day or so.
Races stake their reputations on the quality of their Aid Stations so volunteers generally have an insane spread of sugars (simple and complex), carbohydrates, fat and caffeine. But simultaneously, the clock is ticking. You do not want to sacrifice time to the comforts of an Aid Station, so grab it and go. Eat on the move. At my last race, I consumed two pieces of sausage pizza, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, six chocolate chip cookies, and a Coke between mile thirty-six and thirty-six-and-a-half. My mouth hurts for a day or two afterward from drinking hot soup, cramming mouthfuls of crunchy, salty, foods and candy.
Deal with it, pain is the price of glory.
Be cool to the locals
Ultra-running is a self-sustaining sport. By that I mean the people who volunteer to tape your nasty feet, lance your mega-blisters, give you baby wipes for your chafed bum, or worst case, medevac you, are probably ultra-runners themselves. They are giving up a weekend to see you achieve your goal. No matter how tired you are, be cool. They will feed you, fix your gear or body, and fill your water bottles. They are ultra-angels. Treat them accordingly and say thank you. They will do the same for you when you are crewing their race.
Take the pain
This article is already too long and there are ten million other things to tell you. But you need to discover some of it for yourself. One of the lessons only you can teach yourself is to, as Staff Sergeant Barnes said in Platoon, “Shut up and take the pain. TAKE THE PAIN!!!”
As I said at the outset, running ultras is going to hurt. But finishing feels amazing. One of the best hours in my life was spent eating freshly cooked pig by a fire after twenty-nine hours of climbing up and down mountains in Eastern Kentucky. You just have to decide whether the pain you feel now matters more than breaking through your limits forever. Now go forth and, as my buddy who’s a much better runner than I says, “suffer in silence.”
Russell Worth Parker is a career Marine Corps Special Operations Officer. He likes barely making the cut-offs in ultra-marathon events, sport eating, and complaining about losing the genetic lottery. He is an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and graduate of the University of Colorado, the Florida State University College of Law and the Masters in Conflict Management and Resolution Program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
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]]>Fasting diets have been lingering around as fad diet trend for some time now.
]]>Claims about fasting include:
Basic Types of Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a daily fasting pattern with set eating and fasting windows. This limits your feeding window to 12 or less hours a day. One of the common splits is 16 hours fasting and 8 hours eating. It is suggested that men respond best to a 16 hour fast and 8 hour eating split; for women, a 14 hour fast and 10 hour eating window. Traditional intermittent fasting protocol involves fasting through the night and breaking the fast in the early afternoon hours.
Periodic fasting is a full day fast done once a week, month or year. It is recommend that you don’t fast for more than 24 hours once a week. Current research indicates that 4 to 5 days of fasting can have health benefits lasting for up to several months. However, most of this research however is done on rats and primates.
Emerging Fasting Research
Prolonged period fasting research done in primates that share 93% of the human genome has shown that calorie restriction extends the lifespan significantly. Calorie restriction without malnutrition had a positive impact on primates survival. Another similar study showed no significant change in lifespan, but the caloric content given to this group of monkeys was lower. This could indicate that adequate calories to avoid malnutrition play a crucial role in the outcomes of following a fasting diet.
Research done in rats has shown an increase in lifespan up to 40%. With such an increase, it would be expected to see an increase in disease biomarkers, but this is not the case. This study actually found reduced instances and decreased risk factors for cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. One interesting effect of this eating pattern was a decrease in organ size; when normal eating resumed the organ systems returned to normal size.
Scientists have identified growth factor IGF-1 as as an important mediator, but the biology of exactly how this pathway works with the effects on aging and extending lifespan is still not totally understood and not without risk.
The Possible Negatives
Should I Try Fasting Eating Patterns?
Based on the current evidence, it is very likely that simply eating less calories than you burn that are comprised of real foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins is just as beneficial as intermittent fasting protocols. Prolong periodic fasting and fasting mimicking diets are looking excitingly promising but still just in the beginning stages of understanding how this complex biology works. A healthy eating plan paired with exercise might just be all you need. The key to making lasting change for success with nutrition is picking what works for your lifestyle.
People that should definitely avoid fasting eating patterns:
Practical Applications
If you decide to try intermittent or periodic fasting, here are a few things to keep in mind:
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]]>A building body of evidence is indicating that carbohydrate restriction can be a viable treatment for certain cancers. Restricting carbohydrates can slow or stop tumor growth, enhancing the treatment for cancer patients and even extending their survival. Benefits for the treatment of cancer are shown when carbohydrates are restricted to 20% of total calories or less. Most of the research is using the ketogenic diet, which restricts carbohydrates to 10% or less of total calories. More research is needed on if carbohydrate restricted diets with also work for cancer prevention.
]]>Cancer research races on. The focus however, has recently switched from genetics and molecular biology to metabolism and biochemistry.
Let’s go back to the 1920’s, before gene-centered approaches to cancer came into the spotlight. Studies on lab rats indicated that cancer cells were primarily fueled by glucose. Previously, scientists believed that oxygen was the main fuel for cancer cells. Not only were these rat tumors feeding off of massive amounts of glucose, but they were able to do it with or without oxygen. The cancer cells relied primarily on the metabolism of glucose even when oxygen was available. This discovery is now known as the Warburg effect.
It is estimated that 80% of cancer follow this Warburg effect and thrive off of glucose. This is why PET scans (positron emission tomography scans) are used as a diagnosis tool for many cancers. Health care professionals are able to diagnose and even stage cancer based off of PET scans that illuminate areas where the body is consuming excess glucose.
Genetics and molecular biology were the main focus of cancer research for much of the 20th century. Identifying the genomes for cancer, although informational, doesn’t really provide much in the realm of treatment or curing cancer. Recently, the idea that metabolism and biochemistry of cancer should be the focus of cancer research has resurfaced. In fact certain nutritional practices, or lack thereof, are linked to certain cancers. For example, eating a diet heavy in processed meats and low in fiber is linked to colorectal cancer.
A building body of evidence is indicating that carbohydrate restriction can be a viable treatment for certain cancers. Restricting carbohydrates can slow or stop tumor growth, enhancing the treatment for cancer patients and even extending their survival. Benefits for the treatment of cancer are shown when carbohydrates are restricted to 20% of total calories or less. Most of the research is using the ketogenic diet, which restricts carbohydrates to 10% or less of total calories. More research is needed on if carbohydrate restricted diets with also work for cancer prevention.
So far, the scientific data has not shown any negative effects for a low carbohydrate diet for cancer treatment as long as the individual consumes adequate calories. When an individual has cancer, their metabolism is in overdrive and requires more caloric intake than under normal conditions. With appropriate calorie intake cancer patients can preserve their muscle mass and avoid the common complication of cancer cachexia, which is a wasting syndrome that eats away at lean mass. There is a need for additional research on possible adverse side effects to make more solid conclusions.
The ketogenic diet is a low carbohydrate, adequate protein and high fat diet. The extreme carbohydrate restriction, usually less than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day, put the body into ketosis. Ketosis is a metabolic state that results from using fat as a primary fuel source. Ketones are a byproduct of the metabolism of fat. Research indicates that cancerous cells cannot metabolize ketone bodies. In the simplest terms, the theory is that when the ketogenic diet is used as a treatment for certain cancers- including brain, colon, gastric, lung, neuroblastoma, pancreatic and prostate cancers- it inhibits the growth of tumor cells through starving the cancer cells.
Two young girls, ages 3 and 8, with non-resectable brain tumors were being treated at the University Hospitals of Cleveland in 2013. Since the tumors were both inoperable, they decided to pursue nutritional treatment interventions and began the ketogenic diet protocol. Within a week, there was a 22% average decrease in the glucose uptake of the tumors. One of the young patients was even able to learn a new skill which is a huge milestone in combatting a brain tumor at such a young age. This same young girl was able to stop the progression of her brain tumor for 12 months on the ketogenic diet. No follow up has been done since that one year mark. These two case studies are an example of many that demonstrate the possible clinical application of the ketogenic diet for slowing or stopping tumor growth for certain cancers and the value of exploring with further research.
This may sound like a cancer treatment miracle, but there are a few considerations to take into account. A ketogenic diet can be challenging to maintain and sometimes hard for people to tolerate. A low carbohydrate diet approach may be something to consider because it can beneficial without having to severely restrict carbohydrates to maintain ketosis. Another concern about this approach to cancer treatment is that nutrients consumed may be inadequate since fruits, vegetables and legumes will have to be limited to keep carbohydrate consumption down. Supplementation might be necessary to make sure individuals get all the vitamins and minerals they need. Anyone considering adapting this diet for cancer treatment should talk to their oncologist and other members of their health care team first.
The promising future for cancer prevention and treatment involves nutrition as a powerful tool. The Western lifestyle is typically mostly sedentary with a high carbohydrate diet, of well above 50% carbohydrates. If most Americans aren’t moving, whey do they need high carbohydrate diets?
Carbohydrates are extremely important in the world of sports nutrition for active individuals, and some elite athletes eat very high carbohydrate diets because they need the fuel. But for the average American, we see an emerging trend of an overfed, undernourished diet and inactive lifestyle. This lifestyle profile contributes to chronic diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, and even cancer.
Traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation take a serious toll on the body. These new alternative methods are hopeful compared to the effects of traditional cancer treatments. Major pharmaceutical companies are even researching ways for medicine to interfere with cancer metabolism. These medicines could be far less harmful to the body. More research is needed on treating cancer through nutrition and metabolism based therapies. New promising research is underway, and hopefully this biochemistry breakthrough can be the secret to slowing cancerous cell growth, stopping cancerous cell growth and even curing cancer.
#DIELIVING
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]]>Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems causing pain on the sole of the foot near the heel. This condition alone results in approximately two million visits to both foot specialist and primary care physicians each year. The condition is caused by inflammation of a thick band of tissue that runs along the bottom of the heel to the toes.
]]>Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems causing pain on the sole of the foot near the heel. This condition alone results in approximately two million visits to both foot specialist and primary care physicians each year. The condition is caused by inflammation of a thick band of tissue that runs along the bottom of the heel to the toes.
There are several factors that have been suggested that cause this condition:1
1. Obesity
2. Occupation: There is a correlation between plantar heel pain and sudden changes in stress placed on the feet or prolonged walking or standing.
3. Injury: An acute injury to the heel such as stepping on a hard object before the pain started.
4. Anatomical: A loss of elasticity in the heel pad has been linked to be a factor in plantar heel pain.
5. Biomechanical: People with high or low arches are at increased risk because there is increased stressed being placed on the plantar fascia.
6. Calcaneal (heel bone) stress fracture: Seen in a sudden increase in running activities, such as boot camp.
7. Weak intrinsic foot muscles
Signs and symptoms:1
1. Reports of pain and tenderness where the arch of the foot connects to the heel, especially during the first weight bearing steps in the morning or after a period of inactivity. It is thought that the plantar fascia becomes stiff at night because when we sleep, we naturally point our toes downward, which shortens the plantar fascia. Then, when we take that first step in the morning the stiffness developed overnight on the sole of the foot causes pain.
2. The pain felt in the heel decreases during the day but increases with activity, such as running, walking up the stairs, or raising up on toes.
3. Slight swelling in the area and tenderness to touch is common.
4. A tight Achilles tendon.
Interventions:2
1. Manual therapy: Performed by a physical therapist for joint and soft tissue mobilization to loosen the area of the calf and ankle and to decrease pain.
2. Stretching: Plantar fascia specific and gastrocnemius/soleus (calf) stretching.
3. Taping: A physical therapist can tape the foot to relieve plantar heel pain.
4. Foot orthoses: A custom or over the counter foot orthoses can be used to reduce pain.
5. Night splints: A clinician can prescribe a night splint to keep the foot from naturally plantarflexing (toes point down) at night to prevent pain with first steps in the morning.
References:
1. Dutton M. Dutton's Orthopaedic Examination Evaluation and Intervention. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Medical; 2017.
2. Martin RL, Davenport TE, Reischl SF, et al. Heel pain-plantar fasciitis: revision 2014. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2014;44(11):A1-33. doi:10.2519/jospt.2014.0303
Dara Ching is a competitive Olympic weightlifter and Crossfit athlete. She started competing in Olympic weightlifting in 2004, and since, has competed in numerous USAW National and American Open Championships. Dara has been competing in Crossfit competitions since 2011. She is a six time regional level Crossfit competitor. Dara is also a Navy Veteran, who served as a Naval Flight Officer. Currently, Dara is pursuing a doctorate in physical therapy at the University of St. Augustine for Health and Sciences, where she graduates in April.
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