Backwards Walking
This feels really good. I want to try to incorporate this while I’m walking to anything.
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Workpost 54: Fears
Byjack
I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:
- Fear of failure
- Fear of being misunderstood and not heard
- Fear of being seen as bad, lazy, unproductive, dumb
I feel trapped. Shoulders, fear in center of chest. I don’t know what to do to be seen as productive.
I feel overwhelmed. I feel out of control. Nerves vibing in my chest. Clenched stomach. I don’t know what will work.
I feel like a failure. Pain in my chest. I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m imagining failing. I feel worthless. Head, chest, cold, numb tingling.
Grounding
I may not satisfy other people’s ideas of productivity, but I can satisfy what I see as productive. I can focus on my personal growth and the growth of my companies.
I don’t know what will work but I know what I can try.
I’m adventuring into new territory – that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.
This gives me the opportunity to process the I’m unworthy wound.
Reframe
This is my opportunity to help other people grow in what they understand as productivity.
Embrace people knowing what you are working on, practice being proud of your process (like emotional processing). -> Big trigger from dad being skeptical of my process and feeling like I need to justify
Big failure literally always leads to big growth and learning. Let’s chase failure. I shouldn’t feel guilty as failure is all on me.
Ok, that makes me realize a lot of this comes from my dad constantly being skeptical, not trusting me, and dismissing my process. I feel always I need to justify myself.
It leads to a very strong I am trapped wound. Shoulders compressed and pain in chest.
Also some I am misunderstood, I am a failure, I am not trusted.
I wonder if that’s how he was treated? I wonder if he has those wounds too.
To grow from it, it occurs to me that he needed an explanation, a justification, and was skeptical because of his own internalized judgement – not because there was something wrong with me.
His comparison of me with other people was all due to his own shame.
Demanding an explanation is from own lack of trust in himself, he can’t understand my trust in myself.
Additional processing:
I did some more processing later in the day. I felt super tired but I kept feeling pressure to work. I feel fear that if I don’t get a certain amount of work done, that I will be rejected.
My dad would say that I didn’t plan the day out well enough, I was not efficient enough, or that I need to work harder.
I felt that fear in my chest as a I am not good enough wound.
In reframing I came to the conclusion that even though my dad had no boundaries around the amount of energy he could put into work, doesn’t mean I cannot.
I choose to put boundaries around my work, and to stop working or move on when I feel I’ve given as much as I can give within the course of the day.
Knee Rehabilitation: Rediscovery
Byjack
As I look at my jiujitsu challenge, I realize that knee rehabilitation must be an essential component to my strategy because strengthening my knee, healing it, and making it less prone to injury will probably be the most important factor for how successful the challenge is.
In looking into it further, I also realized that I completely forgot about my last post about my knee in which I outlined three goals:
- 1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.
- 1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels
- 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.
It’s funny because it’s been 5 months since that last post and I pretty much immediately dived into the 2 year goal because I lost motivation for the 1 month goal.
I also realized that my first post with two exercises for massaging the knee are extremely effective, especially the one that lifts and relaxes the knee joint.
I also rediscovered this video about tendon strength:
With these key takeaways:
- do concentric-focused movements, a lot of volume with lower weight, do them explosively, fast eccentric
- reversing the direction very fast (eccentric to concentric), challenges the tendon
- if you lower the weight slowly you will favour the muscle, if you jerk it you will favour the tendon
- larger range of motion challenges the tendon, but you can train them with short range and high weight and high speed
- progress all of these slowly: weight, range of motion, speed
Bottom line though, I don’t really know what to do next.
My main blocker is just this feeling that in order to achieve the level of strength in my knee that I want. I will have to literally work out every day for a significant period of time and I don’t have the strength and the interest in doing that. It also seems really hard to get that done while also juggling work, jiujitsu and sleep.
However, now that I write that out, maybe I’m thinking about it all wrong. Maybe I don’t need to work out every day at all. Maybe I just need to work out once a week intensely. I know that even that low frequency over a long period of time will be at least enough to sustain strength in my knee. I might even be able to get away with once every other week!
I also really want my workouts to help with one very important thing for me, stress relief. I have so many mentally rigorous tasks from doing work at my job, thinking about youtube, and playing Valorant that I need an outlet for my stress. I guess I haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet, how to integrate it into my day that doesn’t feel like it is going to take a huge amount of time.
Perhaps it isn’t about taking a huge amount of time. Maybe it is like my posture challenge. Since I had some very simple exercises for that, maybe I need to simplify my workouts to be much more simple. I tried my warmup playlists, but they feel a little too slow and stagnant. This playlist seems really good to stop and start at any time:
I think what will be most effective is to slowly work through the video, only doing it for as long as I want to, for short periods of time. So always pick up where I left off, but never feel the need to go for a certain period of time. Hell, I could do 10 second intervals throughout the day. I can handle 10 seconds no?
Also, in the meantime, I think I need to find a way to do more of the knee over toes workout every single day, except the weekends.
The months I am not doing jiujitsu, I will need to organize my own conditioning and physical therapy workouts.
I think overall, I work too hard when I’m already exercising and too little when I’m not. For instance, right now I’m doing jiujitsu at least 3 times per week so I don’t need so many conditioning exercises, probably just more soothing massage, warmth, meditation etc.
When I take time off of jiujitsu though, I would like to go a bit harder.
Finally, I want to remind myself of a couple of truths when it comes to my knee:
- Allowing tissues to slide and glide will remove pain, its not the scar that is the issue, it is when it sticks
- Building up strength in muscles help protect against injury even with weak tendons and ligaments by absorbing shock
- Building up tendons and ligaments will protect cartilage and bones by absorbing shock
- Increasing range of motion help make muscles and tendons more efficient
Knee Strength 4: Didn’t Sleep Well
Byjack
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.
Bedtime Challenge 2: Wavering and Innovation
Byjack
I’ve done it, started to waver on my sleep challenge. The main issue is that I no longer take a hard stance on when I go to sleep, but the one thing that is holding over, is that I get to my bedroom by 11.
I want to recommit to getting into my bed by 11, even if I continue to stay up after.
However, despite wavering, and getting into bed at 11:30, I have started to innovate and think more carefully on how I spend the rest of the hours of my day:
- I stop playing Valorant at 9 (or in the case of yesterday, don’t even play Valorant)
- I started writing in my journal every night before bedtime to process any feelings that need to be processed
- I started doing cupping before sleep to improve circulation
- I also usually work on posture and my knee exercises
Now that I think about it, I actually succeeded pretty good at this challenge because I’m starting to feel like doing all sorts of things before bedtime such as drawing and reading books.
Another thing I like to do at night is listen to videos that are about AI and are interesting to me to keep up with the latest AI news.
I really like where all of this is going, and writing this at 5 AM in the morning makes me feel like it is nighttime and I’m feeling the vibes. I want to spend more time at night creating worlds. Either drawing, writing a novel or learning.
Fitness Challenge 3: Sleep and Pills
Byjack
So I’ve fallen off the weight challenge a little bit due to losing my phone and having some serious trouble with routines.
But here are some updates.
In terms of appetite, I realized that stuffing yourself with food simply doesn’t work with me. I tend to feel stressed and bloated, and end up somehow losing weight as my digestion falls apart. A major tip for me that seems to work is eating enzymes. They always seems to help me a lot when breaking down food and I definitely seem to gain weight after that.
In terms of routine, I started implementing daily walks morning walks with a cup of tea and that has been working great. What hasn’t been working great is getting enough sleep and going to bed on time.
The main blocked appears to be Valorant. Today I thought about how I always focus on the problem itself as the issue but I was wondering whether or not the issue actually manifests earlier.
For example, I know in Valorant, I always blame my aim for losing gun fights, but I never think about what led up to the gunfight and how that might have put me in a unwinnable situation, or at least, a very difficult to win situation.
In terms of going to bed on time, I always blame gaming late at night. But thinking about it more deeply, I theorized that the issue actually occurs much earlier in the day, specifically during noon and afternoon. This is when I start to feel discomfort and turn to Valorant to start numbing out the pain.
Fix noon and I fix bedtime.
Today I tried taking a nap at noon and it seems to work. It’s 11 PM and while I feel pretty shitty from playing Valorant, I actually feel like it was easier for me to stop, and I may go to bed around midnight instead of 2 or 3 AM.
Today is actually the end of unit one (Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health). The next unit starts tomorrow (Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle).
I’m excited to see how I can start to use the rhythms I’m starting to build up, with the energy exercises and increasing diet to greater effects.