Backwards Walking
This feels really good. I want to try to incorporate this while I’m walking to anything.
Similar Posts
Knee Strength 10: Boxing
Byjack
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.
Workpost 42: Loneliness
Byjack
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
- Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
- Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
- A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
- A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
- Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
- Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
- Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
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
The Sleep Deprivation Challenge
Byjack
Life is pretty challenging:
- I am severely sleep deprived to feeling pins and needles, dry eyes and nausea
- I have a big work project due by next week that I pulled all niters for but still am not close to being finished
- I have taxes looming over me
- I still have a messy apartment and other goals like exercise of my knee to work on
The challenge is simple: survive, adapt and thrive
Posture Challenge – Unofficial Made Official
Byjack
I’ve been unofficially focusing on posture for some time now, including mewing, building muscles and strength, and ultimately for more a more aesthetic, healthy, and functional body.
A really helpful video is this:
I always have a lot of tightness in my chest and would like to have more of a wider back and more shoulder mobility.
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.
Knee Strength 10: Boxing
Byjack
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.
Workpost 42: Loneliness
Byjack
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
- Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
- Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
- A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
- A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
- Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
- Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
- Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
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
The Sleep Deprivation Challenge
Byjack
Life is pretty challenging:
- I am severely sleep deprived to feeling pins and needles, dry eyes and nausea
- I have a big work project due by next week that I pulled all niters for but still am not close to being finished
- I have taxes looming over me
- I still have a messy apartment and other goals like exercise of my knee to work on
The challenge is simple: survive, adapt and thrive
Posture Challenge – Unofficial Made Official
Byjack
I’ve been unofficially focusing on posture for some time now, including mewing, building muscles and strength, and ultimately for more a more aesthetic, healthy, and functional body.
A really helpful video is this:
I always have a lot of tightness in my chest and would like to have more of a wider back and more shoulder mobility.
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.
Knee Strength 10: Boxing
Byjack
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.
Workpost 42: Loneliness
Byjack
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
- Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
- Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
- A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
- A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
- Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
- Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
- Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
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
The Sleep Deprivation Challenge
Byjack
Life is pretty challenging:
- I am severely sleep deprived to feeling pins and needles, dry eyes and nausea
- I have a big work project due by next week that I pulled all niters for but still am not close to being finished
- I have taxes looming over me
- I still have a messy apartment and other goals like exercise of my knee to work on
The challenge is simple: survive, adapt and thrive
Posture Challenge – Unofficial Made Official
Byjack
I’ve been unofficially focusing on posture for some time now, including mewing, building muscles and strength, and ultimately for more a more aesthetic, healthy, and functional body.
A really helpful video is this:
I always have a lot of tightness in my chest and would like to have more of a wider back and more shoulder mobility.
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.