Amazing Exercise When Sick

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.

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.

So I’m most of the way through my second part of my challenge – Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day) and I’m having a huge amount of issues.

I try to eat a lot but I don’t seem to be able to find a way to digest the food.

Several things seem to be standing in my way:

• Extreme chronic stress
• Lack of exercises and energy
• Poor sleep

I’m going to do what I always did in these situations of great stress. I’m going to simplify and try to find something very small to focus on. And that thing will be breathing.

Whether or not I feel full, hungry stressed, tired or anxious, I am going to strive to do only one thing. To breathe. I find that breathing has tremendous effects for all the of things I listed above as obstacles standing in my way.

I did boxing class today, and felt amazing afterwards, but my knee did not feel good so I put on a brace immediately.

Some more thoughts:

My inner thigh is definitely tight and can use some body work and I wonder if that is causing me to move it a way that hurts my knee.

Fantastic point. Need to keep the knees over the toes. They connect because of inner thigh tightness it makes it harder to keep knees over toes.

Some more ideas when it comes to kicking.

This seems really helpful. Pointing your knee at the target.