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It’s Valorant Time
I love gaming. The competition. The graphics. The speed, the maps, abilities. The headshots, the camaraderie.
Today I asked myself a question. How do I get to the level of gameplay that I want to get to? How do I play Valorant in the way I want to play it?
I listened to my body and I used connection theory. Your body is tired. It’s aching. Your mind is cloudy and distracted. Your eyes are dry and tired.
I need to feel the magic that Valorant can be.
I turn on the Dark and Dangerous playlist:
It is time to turn off all the lights. To go into my closet. To let everything go silent.
I feel scared and anxious and my head hurts, but my body knows it’s okay to relax now.
I lay on my bed to meditate. Long enough to wonder when I should stop. Long enough for my mind to wander to think of my colleague who left today and wrote a very nice email. Long enough for the magic of nighttime to sink in, for me to want a hot drink and settle down for a night of gaming.
Turned off the lights again. Fired up the playlist again. It feels like the mood.
Had a good few games where I team MVPed every single game until the last one with a smurfing reyna on both teams. The one on my team was classic only, the one on the enemy team was not. Didn’t really like my duo, he annoyed me. Also bottom fragged every game.

Pretty pissed off about that last game.
Valorant 7: Embracing Death (and Improving Movement)
I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
- Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
- Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
- Makes me frustrated when I lose
- Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
- When to peek
- If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
- How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
- Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
- Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
- The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
- The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
- When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
- I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
- I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
- What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
- I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
Knee Strength 4: Didn’t Sleep Well
I slept last night not very well. I woke up a couple of times, and I was tossing and turning. Just wanted to report back and say that the crossing the legs and bending my legs definitely helped me a lot.
I don’t know what I want to work on today. Maybe massage.
That feels sort of right. Stretching and massage for additional recovery. I don’t really know yet.
Update on goals:
- Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
- Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
- Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
- Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
Well I’m surprised! I thought there was a goal on just feeling comfortable normally. But I never created a goal on that, but I am succeeding at that. Walking around, sitting, and relaxing feelings more comfortable than ever before.
The closest goal I am to achieving is goal 2. I learned that sitting back on the heels, pronating helps as well.
“Pronation refers to the way your foot rolls inward for impact distribution upon landing. It’s part of the natural movement of the human body but it differs from person to person. As your foot strikes the ground it rolls inward to absorb the shock.”

Wow makes sense that since I’m supinating (rolling heel outwards), it is not good at absorbing shock. I must have unconsciously started doing that as a result of trying to alleviate pressure on my hurt leg.
Knee Challenge: Looking Ahead
I completed my knee challenge in terms of going hiking in Zion national park. I felt like I succeeded in a big way but still have a long way to go in terms of getting where I need to go.
What is next for me? I know in the long term, I want to be very physically active. I want to be able to practice martial arts, do a little parkour and gymnastics. I know it will take a lot of effort and time to get there and it feels quite overwhelming for me.
I’m going to set a few large goals and then look at some of the very short term goals getting there.
2 year goal – the ability to practice martial arts, parkour gymnastics and skiing. My goal isn’t to go too hard in any of these areas, just to be able to do them safely.
1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels
1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.
I don’t really know what the next step in my process is. It feels too soon to set a schedule yet.
I just want to slowly rest and explore for now.
My feelings are that challenge videos make for really good productivity but I need to slow down sometimes and feel the feelings.
Maybe I will write a poem:
Creaky Knees
When I bend my knee
It feels like I’m grinding
Hinges made of old stone
Like the kind in movies
That open secret magical passages
And grate against themselves
I say that I want to be able to do martial arts again
But the truth is
I don’t know what I want
I am afraid to dream again
Of a world where I can be active
I’m so used to being scared
Of clutching my knee close
So as not to hurt it
I feel like I’m too old to have these dreams anymore
Of flying
Like I did when I wanted to learn parkour
Everything scares me
I feel that
I need to understand this part of myself first
Listen to what it wants to say
“Everything is a danger”
It tells me
The protector of my knee
Of my body
It feels safe to not move at all
Valorant 12: The Movement Gun
I realized recently that having really insane movement is better for certain types of guns. Specifically the phantom.
I tested this theory today, by playing phantom and I think the results speak for themselves.
A couple of notes:
- The Vandal will require a different mindset to play (the catch them on the crosshair, holding angles type of mindest)
- Movement is really good but need to peek tighter angles still
Overall, I need to pick the weapon best suiting my mood and the map. Vandal for slower smoother headshots, phantom for more energetic aggressive plays.
Knee Strength 7: Walking
Yesterday I was walking around a lot when I felt a lot of pain on the interior side of the meniscus of my right knee.
I was really concerned, but this experience helped me get back into the knee challenge to focus on my knee and how it is moving.
When I used connection theory, I noticed that I was using my legs too much (specifically calves) when walking.
The steps for proper walking:
- Use hips to step out
- Flex and stretch out leg fully
- Only use calf muscles at the end of a stride
Also, stretching the calves helps.
It is actually incredible, I went from pain in every step to no pain at all even though I walked for a long time.
Also, I tried connection theory on walking on uneven ground and some tips for that:
- Keep the ankles active
- Relax the hips
- Bend the knees slightly
When this is done properly it should feel like walking talks no effort.
I also did a big on climbing stairs:
- Center the weight on the leg stepping up
- Keep everything controlled and centered while stepping up
Finally, in terms of relief, the only exercise that really helped when my menicus was hurting was the Gentle Knee Spacer exercise in this post.
Nothing else really helps, what surprised me is that the foot scrape actually caused pain.
I still haven’t figured out how to sleep on my side safely, but my intuition tells me that I need to build up more muscles in the legs.
It’s Valorant Time
I love gaming. The competition. The graphics. The speed, the maps, abilities. The headshots, the camaraderie.
Today I asked myself a question. How do I get to the level of gameplay that I want to get to? How do I play Valorant in the way I want to play it?
I listened to my body and I used connection theory. Your body is tired. It’s aching. Your mind is cloudy and distracted. Your eyes are dry and tired.
I need to feel the magic that Valorant can be.
I turn on the Dark and Dangerous playlist:
It is time to turn off all the lights. To go into my closet. To let everything go silent.
I feel scared and anxious and my head hurts, but my body knows it’s okay to relax now.
I lay on my bed to meditate. Long enough to wonder when I should stop. Long enough for my mind to wander to think of my colleague who left today and wrote a very nice email. Long enough for the magic of nighttime to sink in, for me to want a hot drink and settle down for a night of gaming.
Turned off the lights again. Fired up the playlist again. It feels like the mood.
Had a good few games where I team MVPed every single game until the last one with a smurfing reyna on both teams. The one on my team was classic only, the one on the enemy team was not. Didn’t really like my duo, he annoyed me. Also bottom fragged every game.

Pretty pissed off about that last game.
Valorant 7: Embracing Death (and Improving Movement)
I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
- Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
- Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
- Makes me frustrated when I lose
- Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
- When to peek
- If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
- How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
- Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
- Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
- The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
- The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
- When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
- I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
- I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
- What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
- I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
Knee Strength 4: Didn’t Sleep Well
I slept last night not very well. I woke up a couple of times, and I was tossing and turning. Just wanted to report back and say that the crossing the legs and bending my legs definitely helped me a lot.
I don’t know what I want to work on today. Maybe massage.
That feels sort of right. Stretching and massage for additional recovery. I don’t really know yet.
Update on goals:
- Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
- Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
- Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
- Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
Well I’m surprised! I thought there was a goal on just feeling comfortable normally. But I never created a goal on that, but I am succeeding at that. Walking around, sitting, and relaxing feelings more comfortable than ever before.
The closest goal I am to achieving is goal 2. I learned that sitting back on the heels, pronating helps as well.
“Pronation refers to the way your foot rolls inward for impact distribution upon landing. It’s part of the natural movement of the human body but it differs from person to person. As your foot strikes the ground it rolls inward to absorb the shock.”

Wow makes sense that since I’m supinating (rolling heel outwards), it is not good at absorbing shock. I must have unconsciously started doing that as a result of trying to alleviate pressure on my hurt leg.
Knee Challenge: Looking Ahead
I completed my knee challenge in terms of going hiking in Zion national park. I felt like I succeeded in a big way but still have a long way to go in terms of getting where I need to go.
What is next for me? I know in the long term, I want to be very physically active. I want to be able to practice martial arts, do a little parkour and gymnastics. I know it will take a lot of effort and time to get there and it feels quite overwhelming for me.
I’m going to set a few large goals and then look at some of the very short term goals getting there.
2 year goal – the ability to practice martial arts, parkour gymnastics and skiing. My goal isn’t to go too hard in any of these areas, just to be able to do them safely.
1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels
1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.
I don’t really know what the next step in my process is. It feels too soon to set a schedule yet.
I just want to slowly rest and explore for now.
My feelings are that challenge videos make for really good productivity but I need to slow down sometimes and feel the feelings.
Maybe I will write a poem:
Creaky Knees
When I bend my knee
It feels like I’m grinding
Hinges made of old stone
Like the kind in movies
That open secret magical passages
And grate against themselves
I say that I want to be able to do martial arts again
But the truth is
I don’t know what I want
I am afraid to dream again
Of a world where I can be active
I’m so used to being scared
Of clutching my knee close
So as not to hurt it
I feel like I’m too old to have these dreams anymore
Of flying
Like I did when I wanted to learn parkour
Everything scares me
I feel that
I need to understand this part of myself first
Listen to what it wants to say
“Everything is a danger”
It tells me
The protector of my knee
Of my body
It feels safe to not move at all
Valorant 12: The Movement Gun
I realized recently that having really insane movement is better for certain types of guns. Specifically the phantom.
I tested this theory today, by playing phantom and I think the results speak for themselves.
A couple of notes:
- The Vandal will require a different mindset to play (the catch them on the crosshair, holding angles type of mindest)
- Movement is really good but need to peek tighter angles still
Overall, I need to pick the weapon best suiting my mood and the map. Vandal for slower smoother headshots, phantom for more energetic aggressive plays.
Knee Strength 7: Walking
Yesterday I was walking around a lot when I felt a lot of pain on the interior side of the meniscus of my right knee.
I was really concerned, but this experience helped me get back into the knee challenge to focus on my knee and how it is moving.
When I used connection theory, I noticed that I was using my legs too much (specifically calves) when walking.
The steps for proper walking:
- Use hips to step out
- Flex and stretch out leg fully
- Only use calf muscles at the end of a stride
Also, stretching the calves helps.
It is actually incredible, I went from pain in every step to no pain at all even though I walked for a long time.
Also, I tried connection theory on walking on uneven ground and some tips for that:
- Keep the ankles active
- Relax the hips
- Bend the knees slightly
When this is done properly it should feel like walking talks no effort.
I also did a big on climbing stairs:
- Center the weight on the leg stepping up
- Keep everything controlled and centered while stepping up
Finally, in terms of relief, the only exercise that really helped when my menicus was hurting was the Gentle Knee Spacer exercise in this post.
Nothing else really helps, what surprised me is that the foot scrape actually caused pain.
I still haven’t figured out how to sleep on my side safely, but my intuition tells me that I need to build up more muscles in the legs.
It’s Valorant Time
I love gaming. The competition. The graphics. The speed, the maps, abilities. The headshots, the camaraderie.
Today I asked myself a question. How do I get to the level of gameplay that I want to get to? How do I play Valorant in the way I want to play it?
I listened to my body and I used connection theory. Your body is tired. It’s aching. Your mind is cloudy and distracted. Your eyes are dry and tired.
I need to feel the magic that Valorant can be.
I turn on the Dark and Dangerous playlist:
It is time to turn off all the lights. To go into my closet. To let everything go silent.
I feel scared and anxious and my head hurts, but my body knows it’s okay to relax now.
I lay on my bed to meditate. Long enough to wonder when I should stop. Long enough for my mind to wander to think of my colleague who left today and wrote a very nice email. Long enough for the magic of nighttime to sink in, for me to want a hot drink and settle down for a night of gaming.
Turned off the lights again. Fired up the playlist again. It feels like the mood.
Had a good few games where I team MVPed every single game until the last one with a smurfing reyna on both teams. The one on my team was classic only, the one on the enemy team was not. Didn’t really like my duo, he annoyed me. Also bottom fragged every game.

Pretty pissed off about that last game.
Valorant 7: Embracing Death (and Improving Movement)
I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
- Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
- Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
- Makes me frustrated when I lose
- Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
- When to peek
- If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
- How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
- Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
- Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
- The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
- The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
- When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
- I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
- I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
- What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
- I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
Knee Strength 4: Didn’t Sleep Well
I slept last night not very well. I woke up a couple of times, and I was tossing and turning. Just wanted to report back and say that the crossing the legs and bending my legs definitely helped me a lot.
I don’t know what I want to work on today. Maybe massage.
That feels sort of right. Stretching and massage for additional recovery. I don’t really know yet.
Update on goals:
- Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
- Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
- Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
- Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
- Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
Well I’m surprised! I thought there was a goal on just feeling comfortable normally. But I never created a goal on that, but I am succeeding at that. Walking around, sitting, and relaxing feelings more comfortable than ever before.
The closest goal I am to achieving is goal 2. I learned that sitting back on the heels, pronating helps as well.
“Pronation refers to the way your foot rolls inward for impact distribution upon landing. It’s part of the natural movement of the human body but it differs from person to person. As your foot strikes the ground it rolls inward to absorb the shock.”

Wow makes sense that since I’m supinating (rolling heel outwards), it is not good at absorbing shock. I must have unconsciously started doing that as a result of trying to alleviate pressure on my hurt leg.
Knee Challenge: Looking Ahead
I completed my knee challenge in terms of going hiking in Zion national park. I felt like I succeeded in a big way but still have a long way to go in terms of getting where I need to go.
What is next for me? I know in the long term, I want to be very physically active. I want to be able to practice martial arts, do a little parkour and gymnastics. I know it will take a lot of effort and time to get there and it feels quite overwhelming for me.
I’m going to set a few large goals and then look at some of the very short term goals getting there.
2 year goal – the ability to practice martial arts, parkour gymnastics and skiing. My goal isn’t to go too hard in any of these areas, just to be able to do them safely.
1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels
1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.
I don’t really know what the next step in my process is. It feels too soon to set a schedule yet.
I just want to slowly rest and explore for now.
My feelings are that challenge videos make for really good productivity but I need to slow down sometimes and feel the feelings.
Maybe I will write a poem:
Creaky Knees
When I bend my knee
It feels like I’m grinding
Hinges made of old stone
Like the kind in movies
That open secret magical passages
And grate against themselves
I say that I want to be able to do martial arts again
But the truth is
I don’t know what I want
I am afraid to dream again
Of a world where I can be active
I’m so used to being scared
Of clutching my knee close
So as not to hurt it
I feel like I’m too old to have these dreams anymore
Of flying
Like I did when I wanted to learn parkour
Everything scares me
I feel that
I need to understand this part of myself first
Listen to what it wants to say
“Everything is a danger”
It tells me
The protector of my knee
Of my body
It feels safe to not move at all
Valorant 12: The Movement Gun
I realized recently that having really insane movement is better for certain types of guns. Specifically the phantom.
I tested this theory today, by playing phantom and I think the results speak for themselves.
A couple of notes:
- The Vandal will require a different mindset to play (the catch them on the crosshair, holding angles type of mindest)
- Movement is really good but need to peek tighter angles still
Overall, I need to pick the weapon best suiting my mood and the map. Vandal for slower smoother headshots, phantom for more energetic aggressive plays.
Knee Strength 7: Walking
Yesterday I was walking around a lot when I felt a lot of pain on the interior side of the meniscus of my right knee.
I was really concerned, but this experience helped me get back into the knee challenge to focus on my knee and how it is moving.
When I used connection theory, I noticed that I was using my legs too much (specifically calves) when walking.
The steps for proper walking:
- Use hips to step out
- Flex and stretch out leg fully
- Only use calf muscles at the end of a stride
Also, stretching the calves helps.
It is actually incredible, I went from pain in every step to no pain at all even though I walked for a long time.
Also, I tried connection theory on walking on uneven ground and some tips for that:
- Keep the ankles active
- Relax the hips
- Bend the knees slightly
When this is done properly it should feel like walking talks no effort.
I also did a big on climbing stairs:
- Center the weight on the leg stepping up
- Keep everything controlled and centered while stepping up
Finally, in terms of relief, the only exercise that really helped when my menicus was hurting was the Gentle Knee Spacer exercise in this post.
Nothing else really helps, what surprised me is that the foot scrape actually caused pain.
I still haven’t figured out how to sleep on my side safely, but my intuition tells me that I need to build up more muscles in the legs.