Weapon Systems: The Martial Virtues of the Pump Shotgun

The pump action shotgun has remained largely unaltered in concept since its introduction in the late 1800's. Even vintage pump shotguns still effectively compete with modern semiautomatic designs. To understand why this design has endured so long and appears to fulfill an archetypical martial expression, it's important to understand the roles it serves and the history of its evolution.

Background

The continued existence of the modest pump shotgun as a viable option when semiautomatic rifles are now economically available for comparable prices can help provide some clues as to which advantages are unique to the shotgun alone. The shotgun in historical context is essentially the contemporary progeny of the musket, and it shares many of the same advantages and disadvantages of its ancestor when compared to a rifle. Advantages of the musket upon its introduction were the devastating effect of a musket load relative to handgun rounds, a durable design, a simple method of operation, and with lead shot composed of many projectiles, a high probability of hitting a human target per trigger pull. Disadvantages included slow reloading, cumbersome size, perpetually inaccurate projectiles, the weight of the weapon, and the large, ballistically inefficient projectiles historically necessary for effective terminal performance. As technology in metallurgy advanced, inventors began to eliminate certain disadvantages of muskets which caused longarm development to diverge into 2 specializations: simple shotguns and precision rifles.

Rifles sought to improve on the musket by improving precision of barrels and replacing large, slow projectiles with small, fast projectiles exhibiting more efficient ballistics. These advantages entailed certain disadvantages, however. Rifles are more expensive to produce than a shotgun of the same size due to the precision of the barrels and components. They also require more intensive maintenance, configuration, and cleaning to ensure performance to a precise standard, which can degrade with neglect. They are much more complex than the muskets they replaced and can be less durable in consequence. Further, the ammunition is also more expensive and must be loaded to especially strict specifications in order to fire safely, effectively, and consistently which can render the shooter dependent upon industrial production. To configure a rifle and ammunition additionally requires intensive measurement and adjustment. Achieving good hit probability per trigger pull then requires intensive training and further precise adjustments. Even when a rifleman has learned these skills they still need to learn combat tactics which are not addressed in the least by rifle maintenance and accuracy training alone.

The shotgun developed to serve different priorities and a different philosophy of combat. Rather than improving on accuracy and precision, shotguns attempted to fully realize the advantages of the musket (simplicity of construction and operation, reliability, durability, devastating effect, and good hit probability with multiple projectiles) while eliminating certain disadvantages (weight, size, and slow reloading). What results is a firearm that is easy to use, effective, reasonably quick to reload, cheap, simple, durable, reliable, and resilient despite parts breakage.

Simplicity

The greatest virtue of the shotgun is its simplicity of design. Homemade shotguns can be made with a shotgun shell, a 3/4" steel tube, a 1" steel tube, an endcap, a washer, a sharpened screw, and JB Weld. (Another reason why gun control is impossible). The pump action shotgun is merely a refinement of those core elements. The 3/4" tube is equivalent to a makeshift barrel, the 1" tube and endcap is a minimalist bolt and chamber, the screw is a primitive firing pin assembly. Stock, grip, and bead sight are optional additions that make the homemade gun comparable in functionality and identical in lethality to any single shot 12 gauge. This minimalism of assembly lends well to user serviceability. Even the ammunition is a standardized kind of musket load contained in a plastic shell. In fact, in situations where shells are not attainable, but lead, cloth, and powder are available, a shooter can still reseat a primer on a used shotgun shell and muzzle load a contemporary shotgun with powder and lead shot to yield a makeshift musket with equal power to a regular 12 gauge shell. Finally, the operation of the shotgun is simple. Press the slide release, pull and push the slide, sight the bead at the center of the target, and pull the trigger. The simplicity of function additionally expands the tolerances of the gun for error. A slightly misaligned bead sight is equally as accurate as a zeroed bead when using buckshot. This means a shooter in combat conditions can knock a bead sight out of alignment or even knock it off the barrel without losing combat effective accuracy. Underpowered shells that would fail to cycle in a semi auto can also be manually ejected by the pump which makes a well made pump action less finicky about functioning with a variety of ammunition. The gun can potentially work as well for a novice as an expert, which reduces the degree of skill necessary for combat effectiveness, thus saving time for a vigilant civilian with priorities beyond preparing for war, which uniquely qualifies the shotgun as an easily wielded weapon by those with minimal training for tasks like perimeter defense in a civil emergency.

Even the names of the ammo indicate simplicity of purpose! Birdshot kills a bird in one shot. Buckshot kills deer sized quarry in one shot. Brenneke and magnum hardcast slugs kill just about anything short of an elephant... and designing an effective 12 gauge elephant slug is certainly within the realm of possibility provided there are hunters willing to fire one within 50 yards of quarry that large! By comparison, rifle and handgun calibers are subject to endless debates concerning the best caliber to use loaded to what specifications for how many shots to incapacitate a human threat. Shotgun logic is simpler. Shoot 9 pellet 2 3/4” 00 buckshot at human threats. One shot within 50 yards is almost always sufficient to stop any human threat. Repeat in the rare instance another shot is required.

Reliability

Pump action shotguns almost require purposeful mistreatment by the user to induce a malfunction. In place of precision, shotgun manufacturers have emphasized durability, especially in shotguns of the pre-polymer era. There are still police departments and military branches issuing perfectly functional steel and wood shotguns from the 70's and 80's with much less intensive maintenance than that required to refurbish a rifle. These are great weapons when one values reliability over precision and ammo capacity in situations where only one shot will likely be needed to resolve a threat. A similar justification might be used when selecting a revolver over a semi-auto handgun to avoid malfunctions.

In the rare instances malfunctions do occur, pump shotguns are also resilient and modular in their operation, capable of maintaining operation even with multiple parts broken or removed. If the magazine tube is broken or jammed, single shots can be loaded nearly as quickly as working the pump with some practice. If the shell elevator malfunctions, shells can be loaded directly into the barrel. If the extractor breaks, shells can be pried out of the barrel with the edge of a pocket knife. If the ejector breaks, shells can be removed by racking the slide back and manually prying the shells out of the action with one's finger. As mentioned before, if new shotgun shells are unattainable, the plastic on used shells can be cut off the brass and discarded, the primer can be replaced in the brass hull then loaded into the barrel and chambered, then powder, patches and shot can be muzzle loaded with a ram rod to yield a fireable musket for hunting or defense, even in cases where all the malfunctions mentioned have occurred simultaneously.

Durability/Longevity

The simplicity of components contribute to the durability of pump shotguns by reducing the complexity and fragility of specific parts, but the pressures contained and directed by a shotgun are also significantly less than those of a rifle or even a typical handgun. The maximum piezo pressure limit for the diminutive 9 mm handgun cartridge for example is 35,000 psi: 3x greater than the 11,500 psi limit recommended for 12 gauge shotshells. Less pressure means less noise per shot as well as potentially less wear on pressure directing components like barrels, bolts, and slide locks. Considering that these parts are usually overbuilt in most pump shotguns, longevity tends to be an intrinsic attribute of these guns.

Devastating effect

This trait of the 12 gauge appears indisputable based on cursory observation of shotgun fodder. The 12 gauge 'removes meat and bone' at close range, decimates a torso with multiple messy wounds, and can implode a human head with nightmarish results.

However, when considering the ballistics of 00 buckshot, the standard load for human combatants, the effectiveness of a shotgun is less obvious and more paradoxical. Even though many pellets delivered at once can be devastating, a single pellet of 00 buckshot is nearly a ballistic twin to the meager .32 acp handgun cartridge, conveying about 180 foot pounds of energy, or about half the energy of a mild 9 mm cartridge. It also seems this limited power per pellet may be unresolvable. Loading a shell to fire pellets more than 1,300 feet per second increases the power of each, but also reduces hit probability by increasing the spread of shot. However, this modesty of performance per pellet may have certain advantages in instances where one desires minimal risk of collateral damage at range. 00 buckshot retains lethal effect only to about 400 feet away due to the wiffle ball ballistics of the imperfectly round pellets deforming against one another through the barrel. A 00 buckshot pellet fired to 400 feet conveys less than 50 foot pounds of energy. It loses over half the energy it carried at the barrel and becomes essentially nonlethal.

So, how is a regular load of 9 pellet 00 buckshot within 15 yards so unquestionably devastating to human targets to the point where even 9 shots of .32 acp seem incomparable?  This outcome may owe to the simultaneity with which the individual pellets are meant to hit the target. The hydrostatic shock theory posits that the stretching and displacement of tissue when shot can be an additional source of wound trauma. Rifles accomplish this effect through increased projectile velocity which creates enough energy to separate bodily tissues, but a massive amount of energy per shot is required (bullet speed of 1,800-2,000 fps minimum for a human target, depending on who you ask). Shotguns may be the cheapest, simplest way to accomplish a type of hydrostatic shock by compromising the integrity of the tissues struck instead of increasing the power and speed of individual projectiles. While pellets fired one at a time will create separate wound tracks that close before the next pellet hits, pellets fired all at once result in pellets hitting tissues while they are already stretched and compromised. This further tears and displaces tissue resulting in essentially one giant wound that does not close because the elasticity of the tissue itself has been destroyed. This process may be directly opposite to the effect of a rifle round. A high energy rifle round increases intrasomatic pressure to the point that surrounding structures are damaged through overpressure. Buckshot compromises structures to the point that bodily fluids are under-pressured to sustain the organism. Both effects are greater than the sum of energies of individual projectiles in motion.

Only slugs are able to maintain suitable performance at range, exceed 1,400 feet per second at the barrel, and quite possibly induce hydrostatic shock with a single round, although according to Chuck Hawks, they "combine decreased accuracy, low velocity, low sectional density, low ballistic coefficient, rainbow trajectory, and heavy recoil." They perform about as well as musket balls, except they don't penetrate as well, which means only boutique hardened slugs with improved sectional density are applicable for large game or predator defense. In other words, just as a handgun is used to fight your way to a shotgun, a slug gun should be used primarily to fight your way to a rifle, or in instances where practicality, economics, or legality constrain one to use only a shotgun in situations where a rifle would be more effective.

Great Hit Probability

Though the most devastating effect of shotguns is delivered at close ranges, shotguns with buckshot still have merits at intermediate ranges (50 yards, or across a small field). Even with the advent of submachine guns capable of burst fire, pump shotguns are still able to fire more lead downrange in less time. Given the .32 acp as a fair comparison to a pellet of 00 buckshot, a single shotshell of 9 pellet 00 buckshot is equivalent in its combat impact to a 9 round burst from a .32 acp submachine gun. It can pepper and suppress a group of combatants, injuring some and forcing others behind cover. Shotguns also have perhaps the best hit probability per trigger pull compared to rifles, submachine guns, and pistols at 50 yards. At least 1 pellet out of 9-12 per shot is likely to impact a combatant at that range, which means at least one combatant injured or even killed per trigger pull. When one considers the effect of multiple scatter shots in succession, the shotgun can effectively suppress, injure, demoralize, and thin the ranks of a large group of assaulting fighters in very few shots given the element of surprise. This earned the pump shotgun the name 'riot gun' for this reason. The shotgun excels at perimeter defense and repelling a group attack. A great gun for 'social work.' For those assailants who do manage to close distance, the effect of buckshot at point blank range is almost guaranteed to be lethally gruesome, which can help to further discourage combatants not already struck by multiple projectiles as they advance.

For this reason, a perimeter shotgun loaded with slugs for stopping opponents at distance followed by buckshot for suppression is an outstanding defense. Due to the advanced firing rate possible, a single pump gun essentially duplicates the effect of several musketeers from centuries past, many of whom historically loaded buckshot for increased hit probability per shot.

For all the reasons described, the pump shotgun remains a common weapon a century after its development. It isn't precise, fancy, or efficient. It doesn't need to be. The fact it reliably suppresses or neutralizes combatants with very few trigger pulls is merit enough to recommend it still.

Spearing the Ghost Buffalo: On Finally Completing a Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a strange thing to pursue.  It is regarded with an almost mystical aura by the typical person precisely because of how incomprehensible its process of attainment can be.  A medical doctor has obvious social capital simply because of the economic realities associated with medicine: you'll never run out of customers, and you can charge what you want.  An undergraduate degree holder has somewhat reduced social capital due to the increasingly raw deal that college has become: some of your dumbest, most impulsive high school friends could attain a liberal arts degree from the modern American university so long as they will go in debt to obtain it.  Master's degrees gain you something tangible in the sense of a demonstrated 'mastery' of a technology or skill and a badge of initiation into the world of white collar labor.  But a doctor of philosophy in a liberal arts subject matter?  What the hell is that?  What does it show the average person?  Understanding the answer almost requires a college degree in itself.

Here's some illustrations of why a Ph.D. in a nonmedical subject matter baffles the average person.

In order to successfully defend your dissertation, you must first demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of your field, usually in the form of published works that pass peer review, or more traditionally, a set of challenge questions posed by experts in the field.  In most programs, you need to complete this process twice, to prevent lucky breaks from granting you the right to defend a dissertation.  This process is never guaranteed in the same way that undergraduate 'exams' often are.  These are never multiple choice or rote memorization tasks.  In fact, the professors often have no incentive whatsoever to pass you.  They aren't paid extra for time devoted to you, and you've already paid the university in full.  Sometimes these professors will fuck with you just because they can.  In the case of publications, editorial peer review boards sometimes have actual disincentives to publish your work.  Therefore, you need to impress multiple career experts in your subject area with your degree of knowledge, creativity, independence, and cleverness on at least two occasions with a product output equal to two published articles in peer reviewed journals or a viable grant proposal and a published work.  And none of those experts are under any obligation to like your work or pass you.

The coursework is also less forgiving.  The kind of classes chosen are often selected without consideration of your readiness.  It is simply assumed that you are well enough educated to manage the work.  If you aren't, then literally no one will care as you fail your classes.  I personally spent 20 hours a week on studying to earn a barely passing grade in Professional Statistics.  This class was taught by a stranger in another field who could care less if I kept up or made the grade.  Through sheer grit, I eked out a passing grade for this course, despite a history of difficulty with mathematics and only one undergraduate course in the subject.

If you want the Ph.D., you find a way.

Another course had us execute a feat of memorization for the final exam for no other reason than the professor wanted to toy with us.  We had to recreate a flow chart from memory including the shapes and positions of dialogue boxes for over 100 items, none of which I can remember today.  However, I damn well knew every single item the day of the exam, or passing the required class was impossible.  These sort of games are commonplace.  In the martial arts, a good metaphor is the hazing practice of thousands of pushups, squats, situps, and basic drills just to demonstrate toughness and willingness to endure hardship.

Both of these classes I took 8 years prior to being able to begin my dissertation.  Before then, I finished a Master's degree and attained professional certification and licensure.

I've gone in debt nearly $100,000.  This kind of debt burden requires you to land a job of at least $100,000 a year in order to have any hope of paying your debt back in 10 years while supporting a family and owning a home.  I consider it a humility brace.  After 10 years, I'll have enough money for a sports car, kid's college, retirement, or underground supply bunker, but until then, I pay back my debt to society that they neither understand nor approve of.  It's like an abstract type of prison sentence paid back over a very long time for the crime of staying in college too long.  Just remember as you pay your exorbitant debt, other countries give their citizens this shit for free...

After your coursework and examinations are successfully passed, you have now earned the right to begin the worst undertaking of your adult life: a dissertation.  First, some background.

An undergraduate degree of the modern day signifies one's ability to show up to class on time regularly for 4 years, read and write, speak to professors in a socially appropriate way, and not commit crimes in the dormitories.  Most individuals can attain this, and going in debt to do it is foolish.  A Master's degree signifies mastery of a subject area, such that one could be employed to do that thing for a job with minimally guaranteed competence.  This justifies a certain degree of debt.  A Ph.D. signifies a NOVEL CONTRIBUTION to a subject area.  Something exploratory that no one has ever done before.  An abstract attainment sometimes completely divorced from economic value.  Furthermore, a Ph.D. requires one to determine their own research methods, technologies, assistance staff, budget, and timeline, as well as the technical work of compiling data, writing up the results, and soliciting feedback from the dissertation committee.  And the worst part?  No one cares about any of it.  Not your committee, not your spouse, not your kids.  No one.  Most likely, not even people in your field of study.  The only people who care are you, your committee who is made to care, and any future dupes who want to extend your frontier research line.  For however long it takes you to finish your dissertation, your only friends will be dead people or living dead people who write about your topic.  You will work long hours only to receive apathy and disdain from typical people who will wonder why you don't do something more useful.  You'll even begin to hate yourself as you grow older, sicker, sadder.  You'll pay to work and grow to hate your work.  At the same time, it will be the only thing you think about.  You'll grapple with your subject matter.  Argue with it.  Just to feel some facsimile of a human connection as you sequester yourself in a prolonged monastic routine of self abasement.  You'll regard current events, politics, economics, even your own livelihood as curiosities occurring in the background of your all consuming obsession to finish the degree and escape your self imposed cloister.  Your marriage will suffer, your friendships will suffer, your sex drive, health, and finances will suffer.  And YOU will suffer.  All so you can contribute new knowledge to an uncaring society.  You will carefully polish thousands of pearls for direct delivery to the pig pen.  And you'll go in debt to do it.

In the course of my own dissertation, I worked a full time unpaid job seeking out old psychometric tests that are no longer in use, soliciting and running participants through a novel teaching methodology, and processing all data as well as writing my dissertation document.  I was self appointed CEO and director of my own little laboratory.  This required me to independently learn how to administer psychometric tests, run audio software, engineer sound, teach advanced musical skills to complete novices, compile spreadsheet data, run operations in Excel, decide which statistical tests to run, run those statistical tests using open source software, calculate certain statistical tests by hand, write the results in APA format, rerun the same tests every week to inductively learn whether my research was a waste of time or a breakthrough, and learn how to tolerate it all for over 2 years straight.  All my friends left town.  I became a stranger to my family.  Somehow, I stayed sober, which I count as a personal accomplishment.  Did I mention that I taught 6 college classes per week at the same time?  My title at the university: teaching assistant.  I didn't even get to be called professor for teaching over 600 students.  Only my students called me professor, and I never bothered to correct them.  My take home pay was slightly higher than $15 per hour.  My own students could have outearned me easily with high school diplomas.

The offhand way I list these requirements isn't meant to imply that the demands of the dissertation came without significant setbacks.  I had to determine which tests to run and track them down through interlibrary loan, which required 6 months of research in psychometric assessment.  I had to run all experimental sessions myself.  Prior to this, I needed IRB approval to run my experiment, which took 6 months of revised proposals.  I had to teach myself statistics, and if I couldn't understand something, no one I knew could help me.  Do you know why it's important to calculate the normality of residuals when running an independent samples t-test to support a significant difference between demographic groups in your sample?  I got to figure that out using textbooks and 10 year old forum threads.  You tell me if it's a marketable skill.  When my equipment malfunctioned, I got to learn how to fix it, so I guess I also dabbled in fucking variable capacitor physics.  Again, no help, no human connection.  Also, my coursework was close to expiring, since I had taken some of these courses 8 years (!) ago.  Meaning I would essentially need to quit college or retake those courses I barely found a way to pass the first time if I outstayed my welcome.  Keep in mind, I had my 2nd comp publication repeatedly rejected by multiple journals, meaning I was not eligible to defend my dissertation, and would shortly run out of time to try.  I somehow satisfied the 2nd comp requirement by completing both a publication and a grant submission in 6 months alongside teaching classes, running participants, processing data, and writing.

I also found my libido flagging as a consequence of a zinc deficiency acquired from my strict plant based diet, which resulted in a sudden loss of my libido and sperm counts.  It took me months to figure out that high phytic acid intake through dried beans were sapping nutrients out of my body (canned beans are much healthier).  In the meantime, I assumed I was getting depressed and losing my libido for psychological reasons, and as my attraction to my wife began to decline, I eventually found only one 20 year old undergraduate I supervised was able to elicit any feeling of attraction from me.  No one tells you that a lost libido also makes a man far pickier about females.  A lesser man would have acted on this situation.  Rather, I was smart enough to know there must be a physiological cause for my declining physical functions and I had to reject this young woman's growing closeness to me and watch her take an interest in a boy so I could go home to a nearly sexless marriage.  As this happened, I eventually became unable to sexually perform at all for days at a time while I worked to complete all degree requirements (some of which were outside my control) in hopes of starting and supporting a family with a woman with whom I could no longer sexually function.  Fixing this situation required me to conquer grinding depression as I watched this beautiful young woman slipping away from me, serious revisions to my diet to reverse nutrient deficiencies, and nearly 2 months of struggling to regain sexual function using diet.

If you want the Ph.D., you find a way.

After finding the tests, obtaining IRB approval, administering the tests, teaching the participants, running the stats, writing the document, you now need to propose and defend the document.  That means, you will approach 5 Ph.D. level professors who don't care about you and convince them to be unpaid members of your committee.  They receive no incentive to join your committee or pass your work.  They are also experts in the field, so they will regard your 'novel contribution' with suspicion and criticism.  Your job is to answer their every criticism and craft a dissertation that forces and persuades them to sign off on your work.  You will do this by making your proposal and defense in person.  In my case, my proposal meeting took a whole year to schedule.  My defense meeting took 6 months.  This is due to the sheer busyness of these 5 professors who literally could not feasibly agree to 2 hours on a given day.  Somehow, the day was set.  Even then, one of them missed the meeting and needed to be hunted down for a one-on-one review of my work.

With a successful defense complete, you can now call yourself Dr., but you still need the official approval of the graduate school, so you hunt down signatures to be filed by very strict non-negotiable deadlines for graduation (don't forget that your credits are expiring as you gather these documents!!).  Those 5 professors who were so hard to pin down the first time, now need to be pinned down again within weeks.  To add further complexity, your 100+ page document must conform to special graduate school formatting conventions in order to be accepted.  If it is not accepted, you might just miss your graduation deadline and need to try again in 6 months.  As your credits expire.

This process in total is incomprehensible to most.  A good metaphor would be the hunt.  Particularly, a hunt for a rare or legendary animal, like a ghost white buffalo.  If you spear the rare, fierce animal, you receive the accolades of fellow hunters.  If you fail to catch the animal, others will ridicule you as foolish or over-ambitious and you'll receive no credit.  Some will even question whether your goal is even possible.  Therefore, the experience of a doctoral candidate is one of unending existential anxiety in part because some of your degree attainments require sheer good luck.  It is one of the very few human endeavors wherein you either become a complete success or an abject failure and there is NO in between.  It is possible to do everything properly and still fail to satisfy all requirements in the requisite time.  If you succeed, you are granted social status and a very good chance of higher lifetime income.  If you fail, you are worse off than someone who merely earned a Master's degree and started a career.  For that reason, it's a ballsy move and not something to be recommended to the impulsive, weak willed, or easily discouraged.

How to Extend Your Life and Help the Environment with Some Easy Diet Choices

It turns out that halting and reversing disease processes such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer may be quite an easy matter once you've mastered some simple diet modifications.  I've now been eating a whole foods, plant based diet on a consistent basis for a year.  Through this process, I've learned a lot about health, longevity, physical performance, and broken more than a few myths about nutrition for athletes. 

First off, eating healthy does not need to be boring, tasteless, or unenjoyable.  I've greatly increased the variety of foods I eat.  I went from eating only meat, fried potatoes, and cheese with hot sauce to a wide spectrum diet including multiple types of beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, fruit, mushrooms, and vegetables, all consumed throughout the day so I literally never feel hungry.  Further, since none of the foods I eat are habit forming, I have no hunger induced anger or anxiety after prolonged fasts.  I just eat until I'm full, then wait until I'm hungry and eat again. 

Making this transition seems difficult, until you learn how basic substitutions of a few key healthy foods can easily replace unhealthy staples.  For example:

Substitute beans for beef and pork.  With this one simple modification, you can cut your risk of disease dramatically.  Beans are heart healthy, much more nutritious than beef, low in artery inflaming fat, rich in fiber, and beans are much CHEAPER than beef or pork, especially if you buy them dry in bulk portions and soak them the night before cooking.  If you don't like the taste, you simply need to learn how to season them.  A dash of curry powder, black pepper, iodized salt, nutritional yeast, lime, and mustard can make beans taste delicious.  You can mix and match different types of beans as well.  Red, black, and other varieties of beans along with lentils, chickpeas, soy, and black eyed peas all have their own unique flavor profiles and nutritional benefits.  Most importantly, none of them are associated with disease risk, and consumption of beans has been shown to be the most important single dietary factor that predicts lifespan.  More than saving your life, eating beans has also been suggested as a way of saving the environment.  Though leftists are generally wrong as a rule in matters of government, even broken clocks are correct twice per day.  Raising beef consumes more water, cropland, money, and time than growing beans while producing tons of literal shit, and ironically, most of the soy produced in the US is grown to feed beef cattle.  Why not simply eat beans yourself, instead of waiting for a cow to eat beans, be pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, get slaughtered, left to sit and collect bacteria, then pumped full of preservatives and left to rot on store shelves so you can take it home to overcook it and fill your arteries with inflammatory fat?  And with reduced cattle demand, more land would be available for growing beans of all varieties or any vegetable food for that matter.  With this one fix, we could literally fix the health of the nation and our environment.  And on this matter, both environmentalists and ecofascists could potentially agree as well, so it may be a bridge to political compromise.  Beans bring us together.

If you simply must eat meat, try eliminating just land mammals from your diet.  That includes cattle, goats, pigs, deer, and carnivore meat.  Instead, substitute all meat for fish, ideally fresh caught and frozen.  Eating fish twice per week can guarantee proper amounts of omega 3's and vitamin b12 as well as sufficient protein while minimizing mercury intake.  Fish twice per week is the only meat I eat anymore.  It also helps to ward off common 'vegan problems' they don't like to talk about like demineralizing teeth, nutritional deficiencies, hormonal insufficiency, reduced sex drive, frail bones, and wimpy little muscles.  Poultry is also fine, but does not contain the same amount of health promoting omega 3.

Substitute all fried foods for healthy snacks.  Instead of potato chips, eat no fat baked tortilla chips with salsa.  Instead of french fries, eat oil free baked potatoes, or if you crave something crispy, make oil free garlic sourdough toast.  When you feel like binge eating, eat bananas until you aren't hungry anymore.  Make oil free popcorn with nutritional yeast, cayenne, and salt for flavor.  You can overeat those foods without worrying as much about your health. 

When you crave sweets that are fruit flavored, eat actual fruit.  There are so many varieties to try.  Grapes, peaches, prunes, plums, apples, bananas, berries, etc.  Why eat sugary imitations when you can have the real thing with actual nutrients?

Lastly, eat your damn vegetables.  Cruciferous veggies, root veggies, and leaves of all kinds.  They're good for you and they make you a well rounded adult.  They aren't fun to eat, but exercise isn't fun either.  You should damn well partake of both and grow the hell up while you're at it.  Eat 3 servings per day, every day.  One steamed, two raw.  If you flavor your vegetables, you might as well take a Pilates class so you can workout the same way you eat: like a woman.

Tolerance vs. Acclimatization

In physical conditioning, typical training regimens disregard an important distinction between building exercise tolerance and becoming acclimated to exercise of a certain intensity.  Training at one extreme or the other can make the difference between failing to progress further in training and consistently progressing.

Exercise tolerance is one's capacity to withstand discomfort and push one's limits for short bursts.  Though this can be an important component of mental conditioning, one's limits are relative to their physical structure and metabolic function.  For example, when I was very young, my brother and I sought to improve our fitness by performing one set of burpees per day which increased by one repetition per day.  On day one, we both completed one burpee.  On day two, we completed two burpees, and so on.  This continued until we had reached 31 burpees in one set, or gave up.  I recall reaching 27 burpees and needing to quit due to a shoulder overuse injury.  For most individuals, this challenge sounds modest, even easy.  But for me at the end of my teenage years, this was the limit of my physical capacity.  I could only sustain this effort for 2-3 minutes, which means I would complete my repetitions and quit exercise for the day.  As a result, my body only adapted to the point of completing 2-3 minutes of hard exercise and no more.  Therefore, if I had continued to "work hard" by pushing myself at burpees, I would plateau at the same physical conditioning level and become optimized for 2-3 minutes of burpees at maximum, regardless of how difficult those 2-3 minutes would feel.

Acclimatization, by contrast, is the gradual shifting of one's latent exercise capacity, or the force one can produce comfortably and sustain over a long time.  This relates to deeper changes in metabolism and physical structure.  An example of this would be completing 1 burpee per minute for 5 hours.  In contrast to the primarily muscular effect of the 2-3 minute exercise tolerance sets, these sets would gradually shift one's physical constitution and metabolic resting state to be capable of a large volume of burpees at any instant.  The body would become better synchronized to that demand, and better results would emerge over sustained practice, such that eventually completing burpees would occur with the same effort as walking.  Eventually, completing 2-3 minutes of nonstop burpees would feel like a modest effort to an individual who has acclimated thoroughly to them.  Therefore, the best mindset for progress in physical conditioning is to make any movement of importance as effortless as walking.  Instead of striving to lift heavier weights, perform more repetitions faster, or go past the point of fatigue, one should make exceptional movements commonplace.  Examples of this include performing pushups, bear crawls, situps, and squats in high numbers without ever reaching muscular failure on a near daily basis.  This kind of training mimics my martial arts years where high amounts of these movements became a near daily ritual performed before and occasionally after work days with the same regularity and difficulty as tooth brushing.  I found results attained through this approach to be more sustained through periods of rest, even over weeks of minimal physical activity.  I've previously described this approach as the dying theory of muscle maintenance.  The downside to the long term adaptations produced by this kind of training is that not only the muscles adapt.  The organs and blood vessels also grow and thicken in proportion to one's muscular development, which can result in greater susceptibility to disease given an unhealthy diet (excess protein and fats beyond what the body requires).

The best balance is to train with high volume distributed over a long period of time and eat a mostly whole food, plant based diet to facilitate recovery.