Concealed Carry/SHTF Fitness!
Let's face it, if your not in shape it hinders you. If you conceal carry, are looking to get your conceal carry permit or even "SHTF", you better get your ass in shape! As Tim Kennedy says "Be hard to kill". Being agile and somehwat athletic means you have options. Options in a self defense situation. If you are prepping for SHTF, well hell you better be getting in shape. McDonalds won't be around when SHTF hits, so better get ready now! But what does "getting in shape" mean? TO eat person the word fitness means something different. Some people thing free weights and others it means Crossfit. I have always been a meddler, kinda moving to the beat of my own drum. So I do a little of everything. But lately I have been lacking in the fitness side of the house, hence the idea for this article.
Average people wake up, eat breakfast and get ready for work. Go to work and then eat lunch, come home and eat dinner and sit on their ass. In all honest that sound glorious, I have a bit of a love for the lazy. But lazy should be the exception not the rule. So let's look at an average day and some of the fitness things you can integrate into your daily grind, as well as some nutritional things. Waking up blows for me, I am not a fan. Once I get up I am good to go, but taking the blankets off, no thank you! So for me, when I get out of shape and off track, that is the first thing I have to zone in on. It all comes down to mental strength to tell the lazy to buzz off. Mental strength really is key in almost everything. So you wake up, your alarm goes off and you say "eh, no let's snooze". Wrong, right there you failed. Just wake up. Get your feet on the ground for god sake! The other thing that contributes to this is people the night before say work, saying "uh work tomorrow it's going to suck". Now you have set yourself up for a shitty wakie wakie time. Be mentally strong, your going to go to bed and have good rest and wake up and crush everything you do.
Upon waking up it's time to give yourself a jolt. No, not a Red Bull. Some exercise. But being in shape means many things. In relation to self defense, hitting the weights all time and not doing much else is a bad way to exercise. Maybe if you want to be the worlds strongest man, but you probably don't. Flexibility, agility and stamina are where it is at in relation to self defense fitness. Think of it this way, you can bench press 200 pounds but can you pull a 200 pound person out of harms way if they are injured during a shooting? Don't confuse lifting weights with functional strength. So there are a few things I believe add to functional strength. Upon waking up go for a run or a walk for 30+ minutes is on option. I have a BowFlex Max Trainer, so I hit that up for their 14 minute HIIT workout. I hate long workouts, so their interval training on that machine works well for me. I like running hills and joining 5K's throughout the year. Your legs are used all the time, so keep them conditioned and in shape. But doing this also increases your cardiovascular stamina.
Maybe you want to lift weights in the morning. To that I say add function exercises. Drag bags around, run with weights attached, do box jumps, pull ups, etc. It is not about having a banging looking body, it is about being functional. The more and more you lift weights, the more you are becoming stiff if you will. Only lifting weights all the time is no bueno. I lift weights once a week and I do it like a circuit. So for instance I will hit each main body part and go right from one exercise to another. This also increases stamina. So I will do something like bicep curls, shrugs, military press, cable chest flys, tricep pushdowns, bench press, rows, lat pulldowns, barbell curls, Arnold press, etc. I do 3 sets of 12 reps of each other right after another. I blaze through it and then sometimes I will do another circuit of other exercises in the same manner. But I do not make lifting weights my main type of workout. I want my body to be loose. So I stretch a lot. Particularly since hitting my mid 30's, keeping your body loose is a good thing to practice in preparation of getting older. Each decade you will notice a few things negative compared to the previous decade. So being proactive with health and fitness is huge. You want to train on quick explosive movements. That is the key to self defense, events happen in seconds. So Plyometric training is good for this. Think Plyo Pushups. Perform a standard pushup, but explode from the bottom position until the hands completely leave the ground. Do some jump rope or hit the battle ropes. The battle ropes in particular are a killer way to hit your core and increase your cardio. Go buy some Rogue Sandbags. You can hit the range with these, as Pat McNamara has shown, use them to get your heart rate up. So grab one run some distance then draw your gun and do your drill. This is functional strength, unlike traditional pumping iron.
If you do not stand much at work, start standing more through out the day. After lunch walk around for 5 minutes. This not only keeps showing your body a continued movement, it will help kickstart digestion! As far as nutrition there are a few things I take very day and believe in. I take vitamins throughout the day. So in the morning after my breakfast I take Vitamin C and D3, Glutamine, Fish Oil and Gluclosamine. Then after lunch I take my Multivitamin and the rest of my daily Gluclosamine. Then after dinner I take Magnesium. People get confused what strong bones means. Without Magnesium, taking too much Calcium makes your bones brittle. Magnesium allows the bones to be not too brittle. Think knife steel hardneing. You do not want a knife blade hardened too much or it runs the risk of breaking too easily. Same thing with your bones and Magnesium. The last thing I will hit on is sleep. It has been shown so much lately that not getting enough or positive sleep has huge ramifications. So make sure to hit the sack and give yourself good recovery sleep most of the time. Obviously you cannot all the time, but most of the time is a hitable target.
Hopefully I gave you a few ideas. I know I will be getting back on track since I was off track with my own fitness the last month or so!
