Friday
In the BN Ops room again. Today is a day of random research. This includes, reading "The 4-Hour Body", various military websites, and training material. My written notes have much, much more crap.
4HB
First off, I really recommend this book. I first read Tim Ferriss's "The 4-Hour Workweek" while at SBOLC and loved it. This book makes points about health and exercise I never realized. His narrative style is also very informal, humorous, and interesting.
While I'm deployed I plan on getting in good shape, so this book was a good supplement to the professional reading (Army stuff) I do on a regular basis. More "me" reading.
What he has to say about eating is very insightful (i.e. showing how much more efficient your metabolism is if you eat within 30 minutes of waking) and other practices are just plain strange yet make sense (how taking cold exposure increases your standing body heat, therefore causing you to lose fat). Here's a little bit about exercise I found cool:
-Kettlebell swing - shown to be extremely effective in losing weight; gaining muscle. Do at least 75 reps. Note: I did this the next morning, and yes it is an ass-kicker.
-Two most effective ab exercises – 1) Myotatic Crunch. Stretches out and involves all of core. 2)Breathing exercise (Tim calls it the Cat Vomit). Involves important horizontal muscle in the abdomen otherwise generally neglected (the muscle that hurts when you laugh really hard).
-Principles of a good workout: One set-to-failure of each exercise. 5secsup/5secsdown cadence. Only 2-10 exercises per workout (at least one multi-joint, one pulling, one pressing, one leg).
Some cool quotes:
"Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness." – Dean Karnazes, ultra marathoner who did a marathon in each of the 50 states in 50 consecutive days
"Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of." – Mark Twain
"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." –William of Occam
"It is the lieutenant's privilege to live close to his men, to be their example in conduct, courage, and in devotion to duty. He is in position to learn them intimately, to help them when in trouble, often to keep them out of trouble. No matter how young he may be nor how old and hard and boild his men, he must become their counselor, their leader, their friend, their old man." –Dwight Eisenhower
Barriers to Situational Awareness:
These are from some of my training. Despite the fact that the context of these things were for POW's, I feel that they apply to soldiers who are deployed as well:
-Stress, Denial, Past Experience, Complacency, Insufficient Communication, Task Overload, Health, Haste, Group-think
I'm pretty sure one could point to one of these as the cause of any problem encountered in a unit.
http://www.fourhourbody.com/
