Kept this upper body workout short and sweet: went to the gun range last night for target practice for the first time in almost a year, and my upper body was quite sore today! Walking into the range, I was panicking a bit thinking I’d lost my shooting mojo. I had pretty bad performance anxiety.

Smolski did not bring his AR 15 (boooo; he said he’ll bring it next time), but he brought a Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic pistol with a red dot that I got to play with. It’s lighter than my revolver and has a much bigger kickback. Smolski was one of my favorite ER drs to work with at Southpaws, and is physically one of the nerdiest stereotypes I have ever seen. It was so fun watching him transform into this gun wielding badass. He’s only been doing this for a year (he’s a raging liberal that decided to break that stereotype too) and has fallen for it hook, line and sinker!

I fired 3 shots with my revolver, failed all 3 epically, played with Smolski’s pistol, also failed epically, then went back to my revolver.

My target was a drawing of a dude holding a gun with organs illustrated. I aimed the revolver at the head…and hit him dead center in the forehead, right on the longitudinal fissure of his brain. I was very impressed with myself. I then proceeded to methodically take out the rest of his face and each lung lobe. I also incapacitated his arms. I was VERY happy to discover that once I got my shit together, my aim is somehow even more deadly than it was before. Go Dad genes! (Because it certainly wasn’t practice!) But also: I freaking love my Taurus revolver. They say that you *know* when a gun is meant for you: it just feels right in your hands from the moment you pick it up. I bought mine online sight unseen off of its specs + what I wanted to do with it, and it’s just felt perfect in my hands from day one. It’s like it was made specifically for me. I got very, very lucky!

Smolski and I traded guns again, and this time I was finally able to actually hit my target where the red dot was pointing, but it wasn’t consistent. Smolski ended up giving me pointers. I couldn’t shoot the Ruger as a semiautomatic: I had to inhale, then slowly pull the trigger as I simultaneously exhaled if I wanted to hit the target with any kind of accuracy.

I went back to my revolver. This time I took out the dude’s femoral arteries and basically played Connect Four with bullet holes in his groin. Smolski laughed when he saw that.

My shoulders and traps are not used anymore to shooting a revolver with kickback for an hour straight! Even my pecs were somehow tight. So cool!

Push-ups
3 x 6, 2 sec tempo descent
(1 min)

Lat pulldowns
3 x 8 @ 77
(1 min)

Cable rows
3 x 10 @ 77
(1 min)

Chest press machine
3 x 10 @ 55
(2 min)

Dips - assist machine @ 80 lbs
3 x 6
(2 min)

Cable chest flyes
3 x 10 @ 26
(1 min)

Bird dogs
3 x 10 each side
(1 min)