Indigenous Ability

  The Old Man Invites You to Sub-30 Minute Conditioning aka “A New Y-O-U in Six Months” YOU--“ Hey, Old Man, I see lots of Unleaded Conditioning stuff spread throughout your store. Not sure where to dial in, is there a single go-to you’d recommend?” ME--“ Glad you asked. Let me hep you to something coming soon.” Unleaded: The Whole Hog What’s that? Here goes… ·         A complete 24-week conditioning course. [That’s a full six-months, Kids.] ·         All based on Old School physical culturist principles. ·         24-weeks broken into 6 four-week Blocks. ·         Each 4-week Block [Block I-VI] gives you a complete 5-days per week training template. ·         Each day is broken into a specific conditioning focus—complete reps, counts, sets, & rest times are provided. ·   ...

  I’ve been training in Western Martial Arts for 48 years. For 44 of those years, I trained with what I thought was the ideal—everything from scads and scads of Hindu Squats, Dands, Dive-Bombers, Pull-Ups, box jumps, tire-flipping, sprints, miles of roadwork, skipping-rope, shadow-boxing, Olympic lifting, the whole nine yards. By 2018-2019 I had compiled a treasure-trove of counter-intuitive old school physical culturist information, not from the usual manual re-prints but from actual correspondence, yellowing fighter interviews, etc. So much of this information struck me as archaic and likely out-and-out wrong. Afterall, so much of it was diametrically opposed to what we know as gospel truth today. And then the obvious elephant in the room rared it’s trunk and asked, “Old Man, you obviously revere and resurrect these old school combat ways, enough so you put them to the test in the gym day-in day-out and find them not only up to snuff, but objectively wiser than new di...

  The Old Man Invites You to Sub-30 Minute Conditioning aka “A New Y-O-U in Six Months” YOU--“ Hey, Old Man, I see lots of Unleaded Conditioning stuff spread throughout your store. Not sure where to dial in, is there a single go-to you’d recommend?” ME--“ Glad you asked. Let me hep you to something coming soon.” Unleaded: The Whole Hog What’s that? Here goes… ·         A complete 24-week conditioning course. [That’s a full six-months, Kids.] ·         All based on Old School physical culturist principles. ·         24-weeks broken into 6 four-week Blocks. ·         Each 4-week Block [Block I-VI] gives you a complete 5-days per week training template. ·         Each day is broken into a specific conditioning focus—complete reps, counts, sets, & rest times are provided. ·   ...

  Stay with me, we’ll get to “The Killer.” FIRST: What is The Black Box Project? In 2020 I was asked a question along these lines… “ Old Man, if you had to boil meanness down to the marrow bone, trim the fat and leave all the Parisian filigrees behind what would that Black Box of mayhem look like?” That dovetailed into my deep delving historical research left turn towards the meanness BEHIND the meanness. The real roughness behind the early boxing, behind the early wrestling the even meaner aspect behind the scuffling that is called rough ‘n’ tumble fighting. As my combat archology grew, the sportive aspects held less appeal; still love ‘em, but, oh, how I love this more. I turned to “Living History.” That is, not just skimming the waters, but living it as much as I could. Everything from learning the Comanche language and a smattering of Kiowa to have access to more resources, earning my Captain’s License in Sailing to better understand the mindset and milieu of th...

  [Part of The Plains Knife Fighting Series . Other currently available volumes are Comanche Knife Ambush & Dixie Knife Games .] The belt-knife of the early American Frontier, circa 1700-1830s was a staple of the dense Eastern Forests that stretched from the length of the Appalachians and Westward through the Ohio River valley. The belt knife was worn by settlers, indigenous peoples of many tribes and the legendary “Long Hunters” from where we draw such a stock of men as Daniel Boone and Simon Girty. Before the commonality of a holstered revolver, we saw an equipage that was usually a carried Kentucky or Pennsylvania rifle, shot and powder horns on shoulder-slings, and a belt from which usually hung a tucked tomahawk on the strong side and a sheathed knife on the offhand side. Tomahawks and knives were both tools and weapons; they were typically used singly and less common in tandem—meaning drawing both at the same time, but it could and did occur in close-quarters mel...