The Everyday Marksman

Back in April, I launched "Project Hoplite," a 25-week program to prepare for a Spartan Race Super 10k. My "why" for this journey boils down to doing hard things for my family, my career, and my own capabilities. Now, six weeks in, I'm sharing the first update: how the gains are going, and the lessons learned from pushing the limits. See how the needle is moving!

Recently, I mentioned that I was going to run in a Spartan Race Super 10k at the end of October 25. To train for success, I've organized a 25-week training program covering all aspects of physical success for the event. This is the first part of a series of posts where I'll share how training is going, and lessons learned as a 40-something guy attacking Tactical Fitness in a way I haven't really tried before.

Let's take a look back at Q1 of the year and where I'm at with several projects for myself and the site. There's a lot of content coming, and I'm having a blast digging into pistol shooting. Let's get started.

Here at the end of the year, it's time to look back across 2024 and grade myself on how I've done (pretty mediocre, to be honest). I'm also setting the main targets for 2025, which ties back directly to what you can expect next year.

A bit of an off-the-cuff musing about the current state of the second amendment legal world. I've been in this debate for a long time, and I think we've got a lot of momentum behind us- but I also think there's some serious risk in the future. The debate is not over, not by a long shot.

At the start of October, I went to a Project Appleseed Pistol Clinic to get a refresh on my pistol skills and see what the new program was all about. I came away both satisfied with my performance and appreciating the hard work that the Appleseed folks put into developing this new curriculum. Let's dig in!

I've got a bit of a confession to make, and it's embarrassing. I'm not all that great with pistols. I'm not a bad pistol shooter, per se. But on balance, my pistol shooting lags way behind my rifle shooting. I think that's a problem, so let's talk about why I'm going to fix it.

Let's talk long term. Too many people think that success is just a few weeks or months away, when that is far from the truth. In reality, success is a culmination of long term effort often years in the making. In this piece, I take a little known two day challenge and show you how I would break it down into a series of seasons and blocks that could be repeated over and over again, always driving closer and closer to success.

I've got a little bit of a bone to pick with how a lot of the shooting culture talks about drills. Much like weight lifting and gym bro culture, it seems a lot of shooters are more interested in flexing their egos than actually using drills as a way to improve. But how, exactly, should we approach that?

There's been a question floating around the web that I wanted to take a poke at. If you were advising someone on how to start their own "serious" arsenal, what would be your suggestions? In what priority order? HEre's my answer.

My recent post on establishing a fitness hierarchy made me realize that I need to do the same thing for marksmanship training. So here we are. Today I'm discussing my breakdown for prioritizing training distances and my reasoning for them.

In the last episode, I mentioned something called the homeostasis problem. It's a way of viewing why big changes in life are so difficult to make. It was going to be a large aside in that article, so much so that I decided it was worth its own post. So here we are: the homeostasis problem.

Mindset is one of the core topics of The Everyday Marksman, and it's one of the four corners in our pyramid of performance, but I've never planted a flag in the ground about what exactly I mean by, "Mindset." So let's fix that.

In the last episode, I discussed the Martial Marksman ideal and how it relates to the various topics I talk about here. One of the challenges that anyone going down this path quickly runs into is the fact that there is a lot of “stuff” to learn and practice. It’s one thing for a professional soldier to do these things, but it’s a very different beast for Everyday Marksmen like you and I.

Every year, I tend to focus in on a "theme" to pursue. Sometimes it's personally, sometimes it's got a bit more to do with the site. For most of 2022, the key phrase was "Minimum Capable Citizen." The idea was around a set of standards and baseline targets that I think any prepared citizen should strive for. Eventually, the idea fizzled out a bit when I felt like there wasn't much more to write. I'm not interested in "minimum." I believe we should strive for excellence, and minimum doesn't cut it. In 2023, my goals turned personal, with a heavy focus on my health and fitness. Now, coming out of my annual break, I've settled on an idea that's worth exploring with you: the Martial Marksman. The philosophy and capabilities of the Martial Marksman is the focus of the book I've been working on. The book itself won't be ready for a while, I've still got more to do, but I'm happy to start talking about the ideas stemming from my effort so far. I credit the seed of the idea to two places: John Simpson's latest book, and Jeff Cooper. A Means to an End In my review of John's book, I quoted something that needs to be said again. Bold emphasis mine. The audience that this book is written for has already made the decision to deploy patrol rifles, so I don't need to talk you into it. They've picked the manufacturer and model of the rifle they'll use, so I don't need to sell you a particular product. And they've picked the ammunition design, so I don't need to make recommendations. The point is that you've got your patrol rifles and you want to know how to train with them. That's why you're reading this book now.Keep in mind that the type of marksmanship we'll be discussing here has nothing to do with shooting bull's-eyes for score or seeing who can shoot the smallest shot group. Those are fun sports and have their place, but always keep in mind that in patrol rifle training, shooting on the range is a means to an end and not the end in itself. John Simpson This sentiment is not new. Several of my previous guests said variations of the same thing. Time on the range and in competition is not wasted, so long as you're doing it with the right motivation. You must keep the end goal in mind. Your goal is building proficiency with the rifle and its employment. If your goal shifts to competing and winning as your primary purpose, then your training and practice change accordingly, often for the worse. Eventually, you're more "gamer" than "Martial Marksman." This was the first impetus. John put it clearly and concisely in a way that I could chew on ever since reading it. Now let's look at Jeff Cooper. A Good Shot Years ago, early in my marksmanship journey, I picked up a copy of The Art of the Rifle from the now defunct Paladin Press. Published in 1997, it predates my serious interest in shooting and marksmanship by nearly 20 years. Jeff opens the book discussing "The Queen" and about finding a why. Rather than summarize, I'm just going to quote some relevant excerpts. Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason, it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying groups of enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, because a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized. The rifle itself has no moral stature,

For a while, I've been kicking around an idea for a new type of competition. I enjoy all the various disciplines I've played in, but also think that each of them in isolation is missing something. Today, I'd like to tell you about my vision for a "complete" type of match that I think covers all of the foundations of Everyday Marksmen, and it does so in a way that lets all of us have an objective to train for. Let's talk about the Rifleman Pentathlon.

This is a philosophical one. For the last month or so, I've been obsessed with an Ancient Greek concept of excellence and how to apply it. Today's post is about presenting the core concepts and how I think it works within the construct of The Everyday Marksman. At a broader scale, this will weave throughout my work and form the bedrock what I want you to achieve.

A while back, while talking about the latest revision to his sniper marksmanship book, John Simpson let me know that he had another book on the way- this one focused on patrol rifle marksmanship. Well it recently hit the shelves and we got together again to talk more about rifle marksmanship, training philosophies, and competition. Let's dig in.

This is both my review of a new book on strength training as well as an interview with the author. Over the last year, I've built up a library of strength and conditioning books, and I think I've settled on the one to suggest to just about everyone who wants to get started. Let's dig in.

Months of prep time, new gear configurations, and a lot of articles. I finally ran the West Virginia Gun Run this past Saturday. Here's some notes on how it went and what I'd do differently in the future.