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Knee Strength 8: Strength Side

Byjack

I’ve been feeling the need to add much more intensity to my knee workouts but I don’t know what. I sought out some outside help from one of my favorite youtube channels that I discovered: Strength Side.

1. Foam Roll Lateral Leg, 2-4 min. each leg
2. Single Leg Hinge Stretch, 20 sec. hold x 3
3. Knee Circles, 20 each direction
4. Poloquin/Peterson Step Up, 15-20 (beginner) or 8-15 reps (full range)
5. Single Leg Calf Raise, 10-15 each leg
6. Sidelying Leg Lift, 8-12 reps with 6 sec pause at top
7. Split Squat, 8-12 reps, pause 5-10 sec on last rep before knee touches ground
8. Squat to Seiza, 2-6 reps *only if knees feel healthy

Hamstring Leg Curl, 5-10 reps

I also found a free version of Knees Over Toes:

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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.

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Knee Strength 5: Awesome Progress

Byjack

So I developed a new exercise in the middle of this week, but didn’t have the time to post about it.

To summarize the exercise which I will call the weighted knee spacer:

  • Use ankle weights, weighted shoes, or in this case, bands to pull on foot down
  • Do heel raises with the other foot to elevate the weighted foot
  • Keep the weighted foot as level as possible

I’m thinking this exercise is really useful in any scenario where I feel the knee is getting caught or stuck, which seems to happen a lot when there is any sort of bending exercises.

What I want to work on next is getting a full bend in my right knee without pain.

So it has been a full month now and I have not stopped this challenge yet or restarted jujitsu, but I think that is ok. I want to keep this challenge going until I can actually achieve the goals set in my original goals.

As a reminder, the goals are:

  1. Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Getting there for sure!
  2. Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable. Pretty much achieved this one!
  3. Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed. I don’t lay much on either side, just on my back these days, will have to revisit.
  4. Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed. Not even close on this one, probably need a full range of motion bend in my knee to be comfortable first.
  5. Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong. Part of the way there on this one! I feel pretty stable.
  6. Able to kick a roundhouse while feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Not there yet but an improvement from before.

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Knee Mobility Challenge 3: Fasting

Byjack

Today I fasted and I had mixed results. Fasting seems to create more inflammation as my stomach felt irritated and painful and my body felt hot. The left side of my body felt blocked right where my spleen is. It sort of feels like I have an enlarged spleen. The only thing that sort of helps with this is doing meditation. I’ve been having sweats. My lips are cracking from the dryness.

But I decided not to give up. I am going to address the problems at their root, which is certainly the stomach and the spleen. Digestion issues are not new to me. I started using dance therapy techniques and feeling the discomfort in the spleen as sensual and my body started to move. I started to feel pain inside the spleen area. It feels cold. The pressure relieves a little and I feel a trickle.

I wonder if the stress of the drawing challenge and traveling soon are making my stomach clench. It is certainly possible.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Dance therapy is like magic. I don’t know why I stopped using it. There is this interplay between feeling the feelings and finding comfort. I guess that might be why I left this technique behind. I left it behind to feel pain. To feel without judgement or plan.

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Fitness Challenge 1: Initial Thoughts

Byjack

Today I had a couple observations after feeling very depleted and inflamed with allergies:

  • Breathing fully and deeply while feeling the sensations helped move the chi
  • Clockwise massage on my stomach really helped the chi flow a lot
  • Same direction with palms facing back on the lower spine to tailbone also very helpful
  • Clockwise rubbing of the solar plexus also really helpful
  • Hanging was a nice resting position
  • Eating slow wasn’t the best method
  • Prefer to eat moderate speed for a small amount at a time, chewing in a bigger motion and smelling and tasting the food with small breaks in between bites and some stomach massage

I want to continue to push myself and work on finding good resting positions and strategies to recover.

I also need to work on setting a baseline and measurements to track progress.

  • Get a scale to weigh myself
  • Get a heart rate monitor, smartwatch or fitness band to monitor vitals
  • Need to come up with a standard lighting to take a photo

UNIT ONE, Week 1: Regen from tiring out (no matter how tired, wired or drained) lasts 7 days

Today is day 1, end of Week 1 is May 18th.

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Mewing and Tongue Position

Byjack

I’ve always had trouble finding a relaxed position for my tongue at the roof of the mouth. I always felt that I was forcing it and in the past when I tried to “mew” I got terrible headaches.

However, I noticed I spend a lot of time breathing from my mouth and I wanted to fix things so I used a bit of connection theory to come up with an idea on how to hold my tongue and I came up with this simple technique:

  • Imagine your spine ending at your tailbone and reaching up all the way and ending at your tongue
  • Imagine keeping your spine open at extended

This imagery has a couple of benefits:

  • Most importantly for me, this allows me to move my body and my tongue without feeling like I cannot maintain tongue posture (mewing always felt static and forced to me)
  • Simple and seems quite relaxing to me