Early Success is a Terrible Teacher

A well-oiled machine, as the saying goes is a good thing.  Over-oiling the machine is not.  From fitness to shooting, there has to be a balance between our practice and our rest.  For most of us, the concept of boredom takes care of any potential issues we would otherwise have by over working something at the mental level and for the physical, we have burnout, which usually occurs during lactic acid production.  When lactic acid is produced, it splits into a lactate ion and a hydrogen ion.  The hydrogen ion is the acid and it gets involved in your muscles by interfering with electrical signals, slowing energy reactions and impairs muscle contractions.  The burn is that hydrogen ion.  Paying attention to the burn is important.  Fight through it and you could cramp or injure yourself.  Despite the body’s attempt to make us stop, quite a few of us are stubborn to the point of pushing things too far and this leads to injuries that could have very easily been prevented by just admitting that there is always another day.  We won’t see gains every time we step in the gym; it’s just not going to happen.  Sure, we could break things down to weight increments in the gram/ounce level or speeds into the hundredths of the second and see some improvement each and every time but I don’t know too many people who do that (or where you can buy some 1 ounce plates.)  No, as much as we hyped ourselves up all week to deadlift another 10 pounds or finally step up to that 45 Lbs kettle bell, today may not be that day and that’s okay.  It needs to be okay because like it or not, our body is telling us something and we should listen.  Next week, next leg day, next WOD, next attempt we have another chance.  We can prepare for that next chance.  Sometimes the preparation is needed; knowing how to prepare is always needed.

“Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.”

― Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Here’s something interesting.  In shooting, it’s really no different.  

Of course I know that lactic acid isn’t as much of (or any) issue, we don’t generally exert ourselves in isolated skills practice to the point of muscle fatigue; but the mental fatigue and strain on our senses is very real and can prevent us from achieving a goal we set for ourselves and this is a good thing.  When I step on the range with an unrealistic expectation and I succeed, I am setting myself up for a future failure.  It may have been nothing but chance that allowed me to perform to a level I may have had no business performing at and that false confidence is more harm than help.  All the fundamentals combined and executed properly should give me the result I want; at least in the static sense.  Shooting a bullseye from a standing and relaxed position under no stress from 10 feet is objectively easier than doing the same from a supine position with a time requirement.  The fundamentals must be obeyed for success, but they have to be adapted as experience is gained.  We are the sum of all our mistakes and those mistakes have to be made in order to be the best prepared.

 

What’s more, the fatigue we experience from repetition keeps us from making needless mistakes and helps to prevent false confidence in early success.  It takes time and proper practice to build motor skills and make them work in concert with our senses.  In Motor Learning, Dr. Schmidt established that it takes approximately 300-500 repetitions to establish a new motor skill, 3000-5000 to correct a bad motor skill.  Now there are a lot of caveats and conditions that can alter either number because learning does not occur in a vacuum but of the two numbers, which one is preferable?  300-500 is a much shorter distance to travel.  If I fatigue, get sloppy or try to get ahead of myself, I’m likely to slide much further back when I hit a performance wall and need to put in much more time to fix past mistakes.  I can be the fastest and most accurate shooter in the world at 5 feet; that doesn’t mean that performance carries back to 10 feet or 50 feet.  I can have perfect deadlift form pulling 145 lbs, that doesn’t mean I can jump right to 300lbs even if I am physically strong enough to do it.  Everything has to be fine-tuned over time and setbacks are going to occur.  We are going to hit performance walls we don’t think we can get over.  We may have to dwell at a certain skill level for days, weeks or months before our foundation is strong enough to support getting over that wall but once we do, sliding backwards is unlikely.

The foundation of skill is built on proper repetition; shortcuts to genuine skill don’t exist.  True strength, true skill is the ability to perform any required task under any conditions.  We get there one day at a time.

Police Body Cameras? How is that a bad idea?

“Would you wear one?”

I was asked by a co-worker.  My day job is in Law Enforcement.  On occasion I interact with known or potential criminals.  The answer was pretty simple;

“Why wouldn’t I wear one?

The police dashcam came to be in the late 1970s; it was a slow crawl and the technology was resistant to improvement, as late as 2009 I worked with a Martel system that was just slightly more useful than having an impressionist painter ride shotgun to record the action with acrylic paint on toilet paper.  It’s not that the camera systems are bad; it’s the fact that most of the time they are repurposed from commercial products and shoved in a police vehicle like that’s a good idea.  The camera designed to film the kid’s birthday parties you won’t watch isn’t going to handle the abuses put on it by an officer who has little respect for the physical boundaries of matter.  It’s not that they get broken intentionally (exceptions permitted) it’s just that everything inside of a police cruiser has a half-life that can be as short as one shift.  Ive seen some of the newer systems that are “purpose built” not survive a chance encounter with a thrown clip board.  If NASA put the same sort of attention into the space program as law enforcement did into quality cameras, we probably would have astronauts running around the lawn making airplane noises.

It’s also not an issue of cheap departments; it’s an issue of money in general.  Sure, there are the examples of nonsensical spending by police departments, usually from the larger, higher profile agencies.  The rural Sherriff’s department that have cruisers dangerously close to breaking 300K on their odometers cant concern themselves much with pumping out cash to replace downed cameras, or even buy them in the first place.

And then there are the limitations. The audio is usually body mike dependent, meaning you have to take a wireless mike from the car and wear it to get audio on the stop.  Yeah, if anything is going to break, it’s going to be that thing.  The first in-car system I ever used came with a wireless mike the size of a VHS tape that weighted twice as much at a time when my personal cell phone shot better quality video, audio and fit in my pocket.  I was given a device that would have been more useful as a space crayon than an audio recorder (yes, I know there is no such thing as a space crayon and that’s kind of my point).  Predictably, these things break.  Or you can’t get batteries for them.  Or they don’t sync with in-car video.  Or as I saw recently, they record at such a level as to make the audio useless, for no explainable reason. 

  

Now the body cameras are newer tech.  I think the first one I saw that didn’t look like a film rig from a Zach Braff movie was one made by a company with a name like an STD that had a camera that lacked the STDs reliability.  The video was choppy, audio was garbled and it only had thirty minutes of recording time.   The officer spent his own money on it because his department was too poor to buy them body armor, let alone in-car cameras.  Yeah, if you didn’t know, LEOs spend a lot of money out of pocket for gear that their department either can’t afford or won’t buy because some salad eating desk pilot doesn’t see the need for it.  I can understand shooting down a request for Space Based Laser Platform or In-Car Back Massagers but when you see a request for hand sanitizer, bio-shields, rubber gloves, tourniquets or new body armor get denied; it sort of puts things in perspective.   Of course the technology has improved, the Taser AXON system by all reports is more durable and more reliable than cheaper, repurposed technology but it comes with a serious price tag and it’s one that most departments can’t afford outright.  Seeing as some departments still don’t issue body armor or Tasers due to their cost (some officers even buy their own service weapon), this new cry for police body cameras in the wake of the Ferguson shooting is probably going to be met by many police chiefs and sheriffs with a shrug and many a thought or two as to how to turn public desires into usable currency. 

Of course we run the risk of people having unrealistic expectations of the video quality or what it can and cant see.  Video quality from Mars is awesome because the camera and supporting logistics costs more than many nations have or will have ever.  Something that straps to the body and is small enough for a determined mope to swallow to destroy the evidence (if it hasn’t happened, it will and yes it will be hilarious) is unlikely to give the public the THX experience.   Most cops are computer savvy,  the newer generation of officers with their hipster glasses and FaceySpace history are likely to be more so but tech is tech and just because an officer knows more about the tech does not mean the job is going to go any easier on it.  Shits gonna break; conspiracy theory to follow.

When the dashcam came to be, I don’t know if there was any controversy among officers over them.  If there was I guess I would find it as ridiculous as I do now.   Officers I’ve talked to that don’t support the idea of a body camera are few and far between and these are probably the same officers that either fall into the im working on getting fired or the why can’t I wear tin foil in uniform categories.  For the uniformed officer and plain clothed (non-UC) officer, a body camera is going to be 100% awesome.  Not only will videos “leaked” to youtube be epically more awesome (seriously, it’s like taking the donkey that is dashcam video and turning it into a fire breathing Gryphon that is ridden by a dancing mom with infinite flexibility) but the camera will greatly reduce citizen complaints, provide more credible evidence (in some cases) and perhaps in the long run change the criminals/suspects/witnesses/mope-on-the-corner-drinking-rubbing-alcohol-out-of-a-broken-T-Ball trophies attitude.  LEOS know that the behavior didn’t change much at all with the prevalence of dashcams, but body cams change things for the better.  Now video is going into the domestic, across the field, under the bridge, behind the gas station and over the wall.  Like Dashcams, it’s unlikely we will see some constitutional requirement to have them though if the public wants us to have them and they are willing to foot the bill, let’s do it.

Seriously.  Let’s do it.  Our relationship with the public is fundamentally broken.  We have a great deal of support from the individual citizen, only you never seem to see or hear from that citizen.  I don’t care what the criminal element thinks, because we won’t ever be bros with those dudes; though the erosion of public support is troubling.  Showing our trust in our actions by videoing every encounter in and out of the car will go a long way towards fixing things.  Officers that were not before will probably be a little more respectful, evidence will be stronger and CBS will launch a new series of cop dramas starring David Caruso as a tough as nails video tech. YEEEEEAHHHH!

Labor Day, its More Than a Day Off.

Today is Labor Day.  End of the recognized summer, though most kids are already back in school and for us adults summer doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to.  Labor Day is about celebrating the social and economic achievements of workers.  First proposed and promoted by the labor unions of the late 1800s, it became a celebrated official holiday under President Cleveland and in its infancy was organized with parades, speeches and picnics. 

It became a day of mall sales and general retail bargains sometime later I suppose.  While I can’t see James Cash Penny, founder of JC Penny eager to take a day off, the day off for everyone else would be a chance for him to work harder so perhaps he was okay with it.

“I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life's problems.”

-JC Penny

The late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of explosive growth in the US (even with a depression in 1983).  Men like JC Penny, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Nathan Straus and many more were building businesses and empires, America was buying and settling more land than at any point since Jamestown and as a nation we were making the sorts of gains not seen by many nations still in their infancy.  This was a time when American Exceptionalism and hard work were hand in hand.  Now, there isn’t a name mentioned free of controversy.  Men like Andrew Carnegie have been demonized by some and since history is largely written by those with the greatest stake in its telling, we sometimes view the past through the lens of today.  Hindsight gives us the opportunity to judge without having to experience.  Is empire a bad word?  Should one be demonized for being the best at what they did?  Is success in business not measured by assets and profits?  Labor Day, in my mind, is exemplified by men like Rockefeller, Carnegie and Vanderbilt before them.  

“I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so.”

-Cornelius Vanderbilt

 Empires are built by the worker, guided by the managers and envisioned by the owners.  Not a single length of track could have been laid without the worker.  Not a single spike driven in without the hammer.  Not a single locomotive driven across the country without men like Dr. Thomas Durant and Charles Crocker.  Labor Day is indeed about the worker; but it’s not just about the wage earning worker, it’s acreate the work that we identify as celebrating.  Without the minds of the inventor, there is no industry.  Without the work of the owner, there is no organization, no opportunity and no Labor Day to celebrate.  

We have grown so large, so comfortable as a nation that the demonizing of profit has become engrained in our collective conscience.  Those men and women running empires today are demonized (sometimes rightly so) as only being interested in profits…as if businesses are started with the sole intention being failure?  By my mind, my will and my work, I create a product, an idea or a process.  I will provide either a good, or a service.  This creates a job.  My product has a price; that price is a reflection not only of the material cost but also of the worth of my time and energy.  The customer exchanges their money, which is a direct representation of the worth of their time and energy for that product.  We both profit.  If enough people come to me for that which I sell, I may hire employees.  This is how every business, every empire and every demonized company begins.   

Worth for worth.

Hard work used to be admired, and I understand in a way it still is; however these days it seems that the more social the work the more it is admired; the more industrial the more it is shunned.   Someone will be amazed by the steel worker’s bravery and resolve in the photographs by Lewis Hine as the Empire State Building came to life, yet look down on the construction worker of today, the garbage man, the van of painters, the truck of grounds keepers.   We don’t look at hard work the same way anymore, not as a nation.

Well, I still celebrate the worker, just as much as I celebrate the creator, the owner and the man rich from the profits of his worth.  In my industry I guess they are often one in the same.   I think about the ingenuity of companies like Magpul, Two Vets Arms, Unity Tactical, CMC Triggers and High Speed Gear; the work and customer service of Noveske, 556 Tactical, Glock and Jones Tactical.  As a business owner I am impressed by the work of Austin Weiss, Rob Tran, Kerry Davis, Willie Robertson, Dustin Ellerman, Ebbs at Haus of Guns, Steve Aryan at Grey Fox Industries, Ben at Ar15news.com and Zeke and Marty from Talking Lead.  As an Instructor I wouldn’t be where I am without the hard work and contributions of men like Dr. James Williams, Ken Good, Larry Vickers, Clint Smith, Benjamin Samuel Bloom and Dan Gray. 

As an industry, we still recognize personal relationships and putting in our worth; that’s what Labor Day is about.  At least, that’s what it is about for me.

Happy Labor Day.  Go create something.

-Aaron Cowan