Notes from Max (Incl. 2019)

This is a catch-all post to put out some information as we move into the holiday season and approach the end of the year. I hope you are all well and had a great Thanksgiving, and I wish you and your families the best for Christmas and the New Year.

1) This weekend is the final class of the year, CQBC, which was rescheduled due to the hurricane and is currently full. The next class is Texas 2019 in February, which is currently full at the expanded student number of 16.

2) 2019 Class Schedule / Open Enrollment:

I previously posted on November 6 about ‘2019 Prospective Dates + New Class Ideas.‘ Posting the prospective dates was designed to reassure people but in retrospect it was a mistake. Why to reassure people? Because due to the shift on open enrollment classes this appears to have caused a mild panic with students thinking that open enrollment classes are going away – they are not and it was expressly stated that they would not but rather a schedule will be published. Why was it a mistake? Because I have received countless emails trying to book the dates that were published as prospective, and even emails asking me if the classes are now fully booked because they are not on the schedule. My mistake: the prospective dates were just that and they have not yet been scheduled, and thus never appeared on the calendar. When the full schedule for 2019 is published, I will blog / forum about it and send a mailer, and classes will be published on the training calendar.

There will be open enrollment classes. Currently on the schedule for 2019 there is only Texas and the two private Idaho classes. Scheduling a year ahead is a nightmare and although I have the prospective dates, I have so far been unable to nail the schedule down due to waiting on information that I do not yet have on personal scheduling commitments for 2019. This is why the open enrollment schedule is not out yet. Once I get the information, which will be no later than the new year, I will be able to massage the open enrollment schedule and publish it.

Once I am able to schedule 2019 (first half) I will publish dates for the classes mentioned in the ‘2019 Prospective Dates + New Class Ideas‘ post. I will publish HEAT 1, HEAT 2, CQBC, AirSim events etc. Once that is out, Scott will layer over with HEAT 0.5 and DCH classes.

The drive to have students approach me with either private mobile or VTC classes, or simply as a group with a desire to run a certain class on a certain date, remains extant. Knowing when students want classes to run, and scheduling based on real demand, is far better for MVT than the nightmare of trying to predict an open enrollment schedule a year out. The nuance here is that if a small group of students wishes a certain class on a certain date, that can then be turned into an open enrollment class to make up numbers. As you wish. Communicating this has been hard. See this post for more background: ‘2019 Prospective Dates + New Class Ideas‘.

Barring Texas in February, the first open enrollment classes are going the begin around April. If I get the schedule posted NO LATER THAN New Year, this will give at minimum three months notice for booking on the first open enrollment classes.

3) Audio Books: I have finally succumbed to suggestions that I create audio books of Patriot Dawn and Patriot Rising. I have decided to narrate myself, for better or worse. This is why I have been so quiet lately, and have not produced any Max Talks for YouTube (plus the weather): I have been researching and building the required equipment to narrate /record the books. It is surprisingly complicated and required learning a new skill-set in audio recording and production. After writing this post, I plan on doing the first serious bit of narrating / recording of Patriot Dawn.

4) Novel Project: Plans for the winter include the narration of the two novels, and then moving into writing my next novel, which I have been planning. This will be a departure from the norm, and will be a near-future military adventure. My focus over the winter will be these projects.

5) UTM / AirSim: following the issues experienced with UTM, plus the cost, and further discouraging communication with the company itself over the quality issues with the ammunition, MVT will be moving entirely into AirSim for 2019. This will be for Force on Force events, CLC, and the force on target / force on force elements of CQBC. I encourage you to invest in your own PTS MEGA ARMS MKM AR-15 as sold in the MVT Store. This will provide you with a high quality AirSim gas blowback rifle rifle that you can prepare for class as a mirror of your live-fire rifle, and provides a training aid to allow you to train force on target and force on force at home, extremely cheaply once the initial investment is made.

6) Fitness: I previously posted in Rehab, Physical Training & Diet: A Personal Testimony. Since then I have continued with my twice weekly Explosive Performance classes, and been reading heavily into what this is really called, which is Functional Fitness. Explosive Performance is merely a marketing name for a certain gym chain to sell functional fitness; all good. I am currently reading ‘New Functional Training for Sports’ by Michael Boyle. So far, it seems like the mother-lode of info. This is being incorporated into my training sessions outside of those mentioned classes: which means it is replacing my crappy machine weight sessions of the past. What I think is important is that, as I think back over the years at the student body at MVT, and look outside that to the tactical training community in general, there is a real disconnect between the need for real fitness ability and what people are actually doing. It is a societal weakness. This is one of those ‘if the cap fits, wear it’ things where some of you reading this will be taking your functional fitness very seriously, and good on you. I encourage you to look into functional fitness, find a coach if necessary, and start to get it done.

7) Class Fitness Prerequisites: Following on for the above, I have just sent an email to Johnny Mac, who is both one of the most frequent students at MVT classes, and also an excellent fitness resource on the forum. As a wrote before, unknowing to me at the time he is a resource on functional fitness that leads by example. The class fitness prereqs were an attempt by me to create, somewhat unknowingly, a functional fitness test as a baseline for participation in tactical training. I have asked Johnny Mac to take a look at that. Why? I want to create a fitness prereq that does what it is supposed to do, but is somewhat more accessible to people than a 2 mile ruck march / run, and includes the functional strength / balance / cardio elements that the original test was designed to replicate. Although designed to be accessible with minimum equipment, and I don’t know what the result will look like at this time, you must understand that if the test is designed to test core and lower body strength and balance as applied to movement and taking cover in a tactical situation, then depending where you are with your fitness, it may still need working up to. If so, we will provide training tips on the forum. If this has the effect of getting more of you to take functional fitness seriously, then that is a good thing. Plus, if this is a simple parking-lot-style test with minimum equipment, we may even do it at the beginning of some classes, to catch the cheaters! More to follow.

That’s all for now. If you have questions, get me on the forum version of this post. Thanks!