So it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m into fitness. I’ve actually been an athlete my whole life. I played sports all through high school. In college, I ran cross country (I hate running now) and began to seriously lift weights. By the time I started my law enforcement career, I was what the kids called a “fitness nut.” I was always on the hunt for the newest and best training techniques to get me fit and keep me that way.
As a police officer, my life depended on me being fit. Now, before you say it, yes, there are a lot of fat, out of shape police officers out there. I fought that battle with my fellow officers for 16 years. My thirst for fitness became really sharp when I made SWAT. Well, we called it SRT (Special Response Team) but you get the point. I was a SWAT operator for almost twelve years of my sixteen year career. It was as a tactical operator that I came to understand that fitness could literally mean the difference between life and death. Don’t get me wrong, you needed to be well trained. You needed to be proficient with all your weapon systems and tactically sound and you needed to train and train and train. The real world crucible of a live operation where bullets start flying necessitate hard training. The more I got into it, the more intensely I pursued physical training as well. I wanted to find something that was functional and would serve me as a street officer and operator and get me to my sharpest edge. Around the twelve year mark of my career, I was getting bored with the same old thing when it came to fitness. It was around then that I discovered CrossFit. Now, before we go any further, let me throw in some caveats. This is not a plug for CrossFit. Nor is this a bashing session for CrossFit. This is merely me stating my opinion based on my own experience as an athlete, affiliate owner and full on CrossFit junkie. CrossFit was what I had been looking for (or so I thought). I could achieve a very high level of fitness without spending two hours at the gym. Heck, I loved it so much I started my own affiliate that my wife and I owned and operated for three years. I saw lives changed, made so many great friends and got to compete against some very high level athletes. But along the way some things happened. Number one, I started getting older. The closer I crept to 40 the more this stuff was hurting. I was constantly sore and some minor thing was always injured. The second thing that happened is that I began to question the efficacy of it as truly being “functional” specifically as it related to law enforcement. Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve said, you can achieve a very high level of fitness utilizing CrossFit methodology. But I was asking myself questions like, “What the point exactly, functionally, of muscle ups?” I mean, aside from being cool and fun, what was their functional purpose. Fast forward almost five years. I’m now 45 years old and no longer in the CrossFit world. Not because I think it’s bad or anything. It’s just that my desires have changed and I don’t care about being a competitive level athlete anymore or how much I can clean and jerk. What I do care about is longevity and functionality. And that brings me to what I really wanted to say today. I discovered sandbag training a little while ago. In fact, a friend sent me a sandbag so that I could do some of these workouts for myself. I also, around that time, discovered the Brute Force app. This app is solely designed for the use of sandbags in training. Can I just tell you something? This stuff is awesome! I love training with a sandbag. Here are some reasons. 1. Affordability A good quality sandbag is not super expensive. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on barbells and squats racks and rings and wall balls and all those cool toys you find in CrossFit gyms around the world. You can spend around $200 or less (mostly less) and get a really high quality sandbag. Then go to Home Depot and get play sand. That’s right, play sand. Like what you would put in your kids sandbox. You can get 100 pounds for less than $10. Voila. You now have your very own home gym. The only limitation is your imagination. You can carry it, clean it, squat it, press it, swing it, throw it…etc. etc! And if you don’t want to do your own programming, download the Brute Force app. You’re welcome. 2. Transportable I can now carry my gym with me anywhere I go. If I have to get on an airplane, I can just dump my sand out and find a Home Depot or something like that where I’m going and I’m in business! No more worrying about lugging heavy equipment with you when you travel or searching for a gym where you’re going. Dump the sand, fold it up, put it in your luggage. You’re welcome. 3. Functionality This might be my favorite part. There is literally almost nothing you can’t do with a sandbag and here’s another really cool thing. Water won’t hurt it. Unlike barbells and kettlebells which can rust, these won’t. I’d still suggest you dry them out if they get really soaking wet but water won’t hurt ‘em. But the really cool part of functionality here is that it relates to real life, especially for those who operate in tactical venues. The use of sandbags forces you to deal with things that move, which forces you to stabilize your body in a totally different way than a barbell does. A barbell is static, a sandbag’s contents shift around making it really difficult to handle. Again, the practicality of sandbag training for tactical use is hard to overstate. So, for my fellow police officers out there, for the military folks and firefighters (had a hard time choking that out ‘cause let’s be honest, firefighters really wanna be cops), go get you a sandbag, load it up and get after it. Commanders, looking for something to help get your people in shape and don’t want to spend a ton of money, get them some sandbags. You’re welcome. Get some.
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It was moment frozen in time for me. A night that will forever be burned into my soul. We all have seminal moments in our lives and this was one for me. I don’t remember the exact date but it was a cold January night. Let me back up a sec. I was a police officer for 16 years. Of those years, I spent 13 of those years at what I will call “the tip of the spear.” I’ll explain. I was a SWAT officer for 10 years and an undercover narcotics detective for a bit over 3 years. Me and those like me, men and women, who served their cities with honor and bravery did and saw a lot of things that changed us. Some for the better. Some for the worse. But we were out there, doing our job. Sometimes, actually often, in very dangerous circumstances. We were in the darkness to fight against the darkness. We saw evil up close and personal. We saw violence and chaos. We visited violence on those who would harm us or those we loved or those we served. We were the first ones through the door in a gunfight and we were the ones living undercover in an evil and dark and hard world. But this night was different for me. For all us on my team. This night would change us forever. Without going into all the details, we were called to do our job; to go after a man who had armed himself, living out his demented fantasies of demons coming to get him and “dark angels” who would come for him. We answered the call. He ambushed the team as we came through the door. Three of my brothers went down in a blaze of gunfire. But they kept fighting. Because that’s what we did. We survived and we won. Evil could not be allowed to win. So we trained to win. And this night, our training worked. We won. At great cost. Three officers badly wounded, two of whom would never wear a badge again. The man we went after killed in the exchange of gunfire, a family grieved. A community served and kept safe. I’ll never forget the feeling of holding my friend, my brother as he bled almost to death in my arms as we carried him to a car to evacuate him. I’ll never forget his screams of pain. I’ll never forget the blood soaked clothes I kept for years because I never wanted to forget. What I didn’t know was that the uniform didn’t matter. That night is burned into my soul and heart forever. I love those men and women I served with. They were brave and honourable men and women doing a thankless job for very little money. The thing about being at the tip of the spear is this; the tip of the spear is the first to encounter the enemy, to be bloodied. I have often been asked if I miss the job. The answer to that is no I don’t. I don’t miss the long nights away from home. I don’t miss the hard job with basically no pay. I don’t miss dealing with all the scum of society. But that’s not entirely true. I miss serving alongside those who are willing to give their lives for what they believe in, for each other, for something greater than themselves. I miss the feeling that you were doing something with your life that would have lasting impact. I miss being the tip of the spear. Now my desire isn’t for gunfights and chasing after drug dealers. By God’s grace and His sovereign saving grace, I am not the man I once was. But my desires haven’t changed really; only been purified by the Word and Spirit of God.
I wonder if this is a little of how Paul felt. We see in Acts and his epistles Paul taking the light of the gospel of Jesus into the darkness. And he incurred wounds, betrayal and great personal cost. Read 2 Corinthians 11:21-33 as an example. Paul and his brothers were traveling all over the Roman world taking the light of the gospel into the darkest places at great peril to themselves. The tip of the spear. If I’m being real, I have to admit something. I miss it. I miss knowing that my life counts for something greater than myself. I want to be at the tip of the spear again. But not like before. I don’t want gunfights and high speed pursuits. I want incursions into the spiritual darkness. I want to be the first through the proverbial door of lostness. I want to take the gospel where the name of Jesus isn’t known, where it’s not cool culturally to be “Christian.” I’m not seeking martyrdom. I don’t want to die. I want to serve. I want to be used up in the proclamation of the gospel to those who don’t think it’s cool to be Christian. And I may have to hold the bleeding bodies of my brothers and sisters and they may have to patch my wounds as well. But the cost is worth the prize! I want to live in the service of my King alongside brothers and sisters to take the good news of Jesus to those who don’t know Him. I want to be like Paul, living in the service of One who is greater, counting myself as nothing and His tool to be used to bring His kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven! Here’s how Paul puts it in Philippians 3:8-14: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Tip of the spear. Soli Deo Gloria! |
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