Rainy Season Has Begun

It's that time of year again, and I'm not too excited about it... the forecast is rain, rain, and more rain.  I know I should be grateful that we never have a drought like many other parts of the world.  I'll gladly take a Corvallis drizzle over a Midwestern blizzard... but still, I could use another month of sunshine.

OSU Beavers Game = good time to train

A funny thing happens every time there's an OSU Beavers game in Corvallis: no one shows up to train or workout.  There were only a handful of people at MMA class tonight, and even fewer at the gym.  I really like it, because there's more individual instruction from the coaches, and no waiting for space when lifting.  My MMA coach gave us a really good workout, and kept motivating us with comments like "you're the only one doing pushups tonight!  Your friends are just sitting around!"

I've been taking my fitness to another level lately.  MMA class is an hour long workout that leaves me drenched and tired.  When I started I would wonder how I'd get the through the entire hour.  Now it's like a long cardio warm-up, and I walk next door to a gym and really kill myself with olympic lifts and crossfit-type workouts.  I feel like I've reversed the aging process, and am stronger than I was even in the Army.  I could crush my 22-year-old self... if I could catch him.

Independence

My sounds have been played over 5,000 times!  Here's an odd improv piece I did last year.  It's an experiment in left/right hand independence, and playing octaves greater than one octave.

https://soundcloud.com/jesse-mattson/independence

No Training Wheels

One of my favorite purchases for my kids has been a balance bike, which is basically a bike without pedals.  Instead of starting a kid on a pedal bike with training wheels, they learn to balance and coast first, then pedal later.  My 2nd kid and first boy, Ivan, was crazy fast on a little 4-wheel toy at 20 months, so we bought him a cheap balance bike at Walmart for $35.  In a few days he could roll down the driveway with his feet up.  A few weeks later he was rolling around a bmx track, then the skatepark, dropping in on the biggest ramps.

He's always been a little guy, barely even making the graph for height & weight percentile.  Finally when at 2 years 7 months he could touch the ground on a 12" bmx bike after cutting the seat post down.  We splurged on a Specialized Hotrock and within days he could pedal everywhere.

Now Max, kid #3 and 2 years 8 months, is on a balance bike and getting closer to inheriting the little Hotrock.  We had a nice sunny 65 degree day and hit the ramps today.  Ivan has moved up to a 16" Hotrock we found at a garage sale.  Watching them tear it up at the park is one of my greatest joys as a parent.

Fitness Inspiration: Rock Stars!

Henry Rollins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trent Reznor: average age of 50 and looking ripped.  These aren't your emaciated liver-spotted rocks stars.  They're not limping around like sacks of skin draped over a brittle skeleton.  No- these are American Ass Kickers who lift heavy things and eat healthy.  I would even argue they look better now than in their 20s and 30s.  These are the guys who help me embrace getting older, rather than fear it.  They show me there's no such thing as "the good old days" and it's not all downhill after 30.  Check out these photos, be inspired, pump some iron!

Henry Rollins has long talked about lifting weights.  Here's a great article he wrote about starting to lift weights and seeing the results.  

Social Network(ing)

I've been having fun posting on Instagram and Vine.  Both can be linked to facebook, so cross-posting is very easy.  Vine is like the video version of twitter.  You can only post short videos with minimal editing capabilities, then people can view them as a loop.  I like the hashtag search in instagram and the ability to also post a photo to facebook at the same time.  I subscribe to the "picture's worth a thousand words" mentality and would rather show people what I'm up to.
Here are my links to follow me on Vine and instagram   -both have free apps for your phone.  A lot of my family and friends are far from home, some haven't been to Corvallis or Philomath yet, so sharing pictures is a great way for them to see the kids growing up, and what life is like in rural Oregon.

My boy Ivan

My middle child Ivan.  He has rocket fuel for blood.  He is completely invincible.  He has crashed his bike and motorcycle countless times, and gets back on without a word.  He never walks- only runs.  On the day he turned 6 months old, he pulled himself up to standing.  At 9 months he didn't learn to walk, he learned to run.  At 2 years 7 months he could ride a bike without training wheels, and drop in off the biggest ramps at the skate park.  He usually only wears shorts, no matter how cold it is.  Now at age 5, he says he wants to be an Astronaut and a Rock Star.  Challenge him to a push-up contest... you will lose!

I'd like to be able to take credit for how bad ass he is, but in reality he was born that way.  He came out kicking and screaming and never calmed down.  So I can't offer any advice on how to turn a kid into a tough guy, but I can say this: if you have a wild kid, embrace it.  Channel it into something productive and fun.

It would break my heart to send him off to a public school where he'd be expected to sit quietly in a desk, raise his hand to speak, stand in lines, and get minimal amount of physical activity.  Ivan is very quick to learn reading and math, but it has to be interactive and engaging.  For every minute spent on a worksheet, he spends an hour playing Legos or making a complex train track system.  The result is a boy who can do math in his head, without counting fingers and toes, and apply it to building his own toys.  

Here's a video of him at age 2 riding...

Starting the PLP Challenge Today

Today I'm starting the "PLP 60 Day Challenge" which starts at 10 pull-ups, 10 lunges, and 10 push-ups, then each day it's +1 rep.  At the end of 60 days, it will be 70-70-70.  If necessary, it doesn't need to be done all at once.  Ideally it should also be done in addition to an existing workout program, several hours apart from the primary workout.  The goal is to make your body more active throughout the day, burning more calories, and building endurance.  It shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes per day, and there are many indoor pull-up bars that work great if you don't have a gym membership.  I'm going to get out a measuring tape and share my progress later...

Sunday afternoon daddy/daughter time (shooting stuff)

In this video, Adelle is first shooting her Remington single shot 22 at a small steel plate.  Later she is shooting an old cooking pot- rapid yet accurate fire.  Notice the rifle is out of ammo and when the rifle goes "click" she does not flinch at all, and the barrel does not move.  I'm very happy with her technique at such a young age.  At the end of the video we placed a small exploding target (1 pound, legally sold at nearly every gun shop, around the size of a soda can) on the pot and made it disappear.  We're near the Oregon Coast, about 15 minutes from Philomath.

It's amazing how much girls can love shooting when introduced at an early age as a normal family activity.  It has turned out to be an awesome father-daughter bonding activity.  My oldest is now 10, and I started her shooting with a BB gun when she was 5.  The good ol' Red Ryder lever action.  She now is very good at shooting her own single-shot .22 with iron sights, as well as my scoped semi-auto 10/22, and even my AR-15.  It's a light rifle with an adjustable stock so it can fit a small shooter.  Recoil is almost non-existent too.

When shooting, I have Adelle practice three main positions: standing, sitting, and prone.  We then modify them to use available trees, backpacks, or other objects for support.  Very little time is spent using a bipod, and never ever do we shoot from a bench.  We usually shoot standing at 25-50 yards, sitting at 50-100, and prone at 100-200.  I'll get more into the specifics of what we do in later videos...

Few things are more fun than driving in the sand dunes. Here's a video of my brother and I tearing it up in his Rally Fighter near Florence, Oregon.  This is a production car made in Arizona by Local Motors

 

I went into a gym, lost....

I went into a gym, lost.  Rows of cardio machines- those should get me into shape right?  Those weights look intimidating, and no one uses them anyways... I'll just use the bench press machine instead.  Then maybe I'll pick up some dumbells and work my biceps... that sounds like a good plan!  Leg day?  Arm day?  Sure I can figure that out...  After months of going through the motions, having no idea what a real workout plan actually was, I wasn't getting any noticeable results- making it easy to quit.

Then I learned about Circuit training: the ultimate workout.  Crossfit has popularized this method of high intensity training, but it has actually been around for decades.  It is the best method of building both muscle strength and cardio endurance.  By combining multiple weight training exercises, you move from one to another with minimal rest so that you elevate your heart rate.  Instead of taking a break between sets of weights, or using some kind of cardio machine requiring a lot of time at the gym, you can often keep your workout under 20 minutes.

Years ago I turned to the Dark Side (desk job) after years of military, construction, and various physical activities that kept me in reasonable shape.  Over time my fitness gradually slipped away until I found it a struggle to run just 1 mile at a good pace.  I thought because I could run a mile in under 5 minutes when I was 20, I should be in shape for the rest of my life right?  Way wrong.  Combine lack of activity with junk food and the body goes downhill fast.  I finally got a gym membership at a local YMCA and when I stepped on the scale... I was not happy.  More importantly, I didn't like what I saw in the mirror and I felt like crap.  Weak crap.

The Army never really taught me about fitness or how to properly work out.  They basically just beat me into shape through 5-7 days a week of hell.  2 hour "smoke" sessions, 15 mile road marches, 9 mile runs.  There was no weight training at the time, so everything was based on body weight exercises: push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc.  Later in life I would learn that working these same muscles with heavy weights would dramatically improve my strength, and in a lot less time.  I can comfortably say that I can push, pull, and lift far more weight now than my 20-year-old self.

The other difficult thing about getting back into shape was running.  I never liked it, even when I was good at it.  22-year-old me could run a 5k in under 20 minutes without any preparation.  I ran a single mile in 4:51.  (still much slower than competitive runners)  Fast forward 15 years and just the distance of 5k worried me.  So I started slowly jogging and trying to work my way up... big mistake!  Each run was only slightly better than the last- if at all.  After researching, I started to do interval training and my gains were much faster.  I would run no slower than an 8 minute/mile pace for as long as I could, then I would rest/walk for a minute.  I would also work on sprints from 100 to 400 meters.  In a month I could run a mile in under 7 minutes and knocked off 10 minutes of my worst 5k time.  I also started barefoot running, but I'll save that for a later post...

Sometimes it's easier to just SEE what a person is talking about.  Here is set number 5 (out of 5) of four exercises: box jumps, roman chair sit-ups, back squats, and pull-ups.  To add an extra layer of difficulty, I am wearing an Eagle SPC (armored vest) with 6 loaded 30-round magazines attached.  I move from one exercise to the next without a break, and you can see I'm pretty spent at this point.  Between sets I would rest about a minute and rehydrate a bit.