I started this challenge on October 8th. Now it is November 21st. And I can say with honesty that I really followed the challenge very very well.
A couple of notes:
I was forced to go to bed later on two separate occasions, once for work, when I finished a production deployment at 11:30 and went to bed at maybe 12:30
Another time when I was helping my girlfriend with her project and I was up until 12, I cheated by “sleeping” on the coach by the computer at 11 but since I didn’t actually go to bed until much later, it wasn’t that good
After these cheat days it got really hard to stick to my schedule for a few days, but now it is easy again. There were a few times that I went to bed at 1 or 3 am because I didn’t go to sleep and I often go to sleep at 12 or 1, but I get to my bedroom by 11:30 usually and almost always start washing up by 11:10.
Overall this is a smashing success. I have genuinely changed for the better and I think this time the change might actually last.
I do want to still apply some of my earlier ideas and focus on different needs and try to meet them better every day.
I can also work on turning off screens earlier and stopping eating so close to bedtime. But the eating has definitely gotten better and the screens are just hard since I like to play Valorant with my friends at night.
I’ve narrowed down core aiming principals to a couple of things:
General Aim: Pointing your body toward your target
Survivability: strafe peeking (strafe out, prediction of enemy location, hit strafe and shoot at the same time as seeing enemy)
Preaiming: crosshair placement
Flicking: loose mouse hand + some general aim mechanics
Overall, I think the most important technique is just having the mindset of pointing to your body toward your target (what I’m starting to call general aim since it gets you in the general vicinity of your target). This helps massively with confidence, with holding angles, and with tracking and flicking.
Second most important is probably a combination of a loose mousehand and good crosshair placement as this allows you to hit most targets while also being ready for a flick. This pairs with a strong understanding of how to slice a pie and clear a site.
Finally, some sort of strafing is important as it increases survivability by a lot.
There are a couple more aiming techniques that I feel are significantly less important as they are more niche. These will help you in deathmatch and higher elos but are not part of core aim:
Strafe shooting: general ability to track and strafe a moving target, paying attention to crosshair
Spray control: the ability to crouch spray and spray adjust
Angle holding: predicting how close or wide a peek will be
Strafe shooting is probably the most important as it is good for long range fights as movement based aiming is a lot more effective on those fights.
Spray control is pretty niche to close range gun fights and fighting multiple enemies.
Angle holding is very important but general aim and strafe clearing are more key to holding angles.
UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 3 – Animate
Unit 1: Shooting from Vandal
Stick figures
Gesture sketch
Final sketch
Unit 2: Shooting from Bow
Rough sketch
Structural sketch
final sketch
Unit 3: Camera movement (Sova Drone)
Rough gesture
Structural sketch
Final Sketch
I noticed in all of my animation attempts that I didn’t really need stick figures.
It was nice going back and refining each step before moving onto the next.
The structural step was really helpful, I liked marking where the limbs attached to the body with an X.
For the structural step I like to make the torso a tapering box and the pelvis a triangular prism.
I really didn’t like the final output compared to the structural sketch it looked super awkward.
To transform the manikin structural step into the final you need to focus on adding muscles.
I decided to explore the final sketch a little more by doing another drawing:
rough drawing
structural sketch
After getting the basics down, I played with many iterations of the final sketch.
first iteration
final iteration
I realized I don’t really like the linework on the final and it makes the form look very 2d. I decided to really focus on forms instead of lines when drawing. After all, I’m mostly interested in painting not drawing. The forms will help me figure out where the light hits.
A excellent video of someone reaching radiant from silver
A video of how to aim well by Scream a team liquid professional valorant player
What I realized is that there are many ways to improve and win valorant games and climb to plat. There are somethings that will make it easier but you don’t need to do all of them.
Valorant, like life, is a game with specific rules, but how you play it is up to you.
A few different examples:
You can play only solo queue (deciding to team up with random people)
You can play only with people you know
You can play the game to gain rank
You can play the game to try out the different agents
You can play the game for the high reaction time and mechanical skill like aiming
You can play the game for the strategy required
I decided to make a list of how I want to play Valorant in the context of this challenge.
I want to play with people who are fun to hang out with
I want to make the entire game comfortable to play for me
I want to focus on the actual objective, killing all the enemies and winning each round
Step 1: Finding people to play with
The most efficient way is just to focus on playing with people I already like playing with and try to meet new people by adding new people from games I play. I should also focus on unadding people I don’t like playing with.
Step 2: Making the game comfortable for me
The areas I need to focus on being more comfortable:
Minimap
Being able to visualize where everyone is just looking at the map
Aiming
Being able to comfortably get the physical mechanics of aim and crosshair placement down
Movement
Knowing the different ways and distances to peek comfortably
Abilities
Knowing lineups and ability planning
Clearing
Knowing how to path through a site properly
Switching weapons
Knowing the physical coordination of switching knife, pistol and main weapon
Step 3: Focusing on winning rounds
Usually, I am laser-focused on two things:
Abilities
Killing people and not getting killed
I want to reframe Valorant for me.
Generally, you want to either play for a plant/defuse or try to kill every member of the enemy team.
As a result, I want to think about Valorant in the following plays:
Brute force brawl with team, if team is pushing site together
Try to get the enemy to trip up and make a mistake by confusing them and holding weird angles or lurking
Try to set myself up for an ace by having my abilites and pathing planned out
Overall I think Valorant meets the following needs for me:
Growth: Getting better over time
Significance: The chance to practice my learning techniques in a measurable area
Love and connection: Playing with people who I like hanging out with
Here is what I think my routine should generally be:
Warmup physically, and stretch, get pumped up with music
Warmup in deathmatch, get a feeling for the mouse
Warmup in the range and spike rush and defuse
Meditate
Play a game, focus on winning rounds
Vod review, focus on the minimap awareness
Practice in custom game lineup and setups to win next time or win by more
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
I was thinking about the concept of how Alex Hormzi approaches learning. The idea that you purpose things in a way expecting to fail at first, but you pursue them in such a way that you make it hard for you to fail. That the chances that you will fail is lower than the chances of success.
I was thinking about what made emotional or spiritual success. And that brought me to a few different ideas. They all centered around one thing, the relationship with oneself. I believe that the relationship that you have with yourself dictates the freedom and happiness you have in life. Some ways in which I am not a kind or loving friend or parent to myself are:
Thinking my needs are not important, especially if they make it less convenient for other people
Shaming myself and comparing myself to other people
Lashing out at myself when I’m not the best or successful
Yelling at myself for making mistakes
Putting on the pressure that if I’m not stressed I will not perform
Being disgusted by my weakness
What if I took this idea from Alex Hormzi? What if I accepted I am going to be a shit friend and parent to myself but I am going to ask myself what I need to do to make it harder to be unkind and unloving toward myself than it is to be kind and loving?
Well, what would the most loving parent do for me?
Value my emotions and encourage me to explore them
Hold me close when I’m upset or feeling weak and vulnerable
I am the most important person in their life, they will drop everything if I need them
Be interested in hearing about new adventures and failures and lessons
Does not see me as a static person but as a sum of everything I’ve been, where I’m now, and where I’m headed
Guide me when I’m feeling lost or need to defend myself
I want to know how I can make it impossible for me to not do that for myself.
Some ideas come to mind:
Create a meditative time to watch my own content (read my journals, watch my videos, listen to my recordings). It feels like 1,4 and especially 5. As a side effect, this can create GREAT opportunities for understanding what kinds of videos I can make.
Write down and read my thoughts when I feel lost, scared, angry, ashamed or frustrated. Create a place to feel hurt. This can hit at 1,3, and 4, and maybe 6 if I write responses to things I write.
Work on dance therapy especially the following elements: allowing the world to hold you, inward closing comfort, sensual movement and touch, outward releasing movement
I don’t know how to come up with a strategy on how to mix this in with my life yet but some of my ideas includes:
Using therapists as a safe space to practice
Using people who are close as a way to practice
Using camera off meetings as a way to practice
Using youtube videos and coaching as a way to practice
