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Knee Strength 7: Walking

Byjack

Yesterday I was walking around a lot when I felt a lot of pain on the interior side of the meniscus of my right knee.

I was really concerned, but this experience helped me get back into the knee challenge to focus on my knee and how it is moving.

When I used connection theory, I noticed that I was using my legs too much (specifically calves) when walking.

The steps for proper walking:

  1. Use hips to step out
  2. Flex and stretch out leg fully
  3. Only use calf muscles at the end of a stride

Also, stretching the calves helps.

It is actually incredible, I went from pain in every step to no pain at all even though I walked for a long time.

Also, I tried connection theory on walking on uneven ground and some tips for that:

  • Keep the ankles active
  • Relax the hips
  • Bend the knees slightly

When this is done properly it should feel like walking talks no effort.

I also did a big on climbing stairs:

  • Center the weight on the leg stepping up
  • Keep everything controlled and centered while stepping up

Finally, in terms of relief, the only exercise that really helped when my menicus was hurting was the Gentle Knee Spacer exercise in this post.

Nothing else really helps, what surprised me is that the foot scrape actually caused pain.

I still haven’t figured out how to sleep on my side safely, but my intuition tells me that I need to build up more muscles in the legs.

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Fitness Challenge

Byjack

In this challenge, I want fill out my body and get a lot more energy and health before my girlfriend visits me on July 15th.

This means that I have approximately 2 months in the challenge.

UNIT ONE: Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health (21 days)

  • Week 1: Regen from tiring out (no matter how tired, wired or drained)
  • Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day)
  • Week 3: Enjoyable rhythms (finding pleasing routines that further my goals in health, wealth and relationships)

UNIT TWO: Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle (21 days)

  • Week 1: Try everything (bulking trial and errors)
  • Week 2: TBD
  • Week 3: TBD

UNIT THREE: Pushing myself, weight, strength, energy (21 days)

  • Week 1: Decrease resting heart rate
  • Week 2: Double strength
  • Week 3: TBD
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Video Making: A Breakthrough

Byjack

I just made a breakthrough in making videos and/or content in general.

I have huge anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed when I make content because I want things to be perfect the first time, yet the thought of making it perfect feels like an impossible task.

I end up not making anything at all.

The question becomes, it is better to make a lot of bad content? Or very few good content?

The idea is probably to strike a balance. You don’t want to make tons of bad content because there is no point in making content if it is all bad. But at the same time, it is impossible to make perfect content because until you make bad or mediocre content, you will never learn how to be good.

I have an idea of how exactly to strike that balance….with time boxing.

With time-boxing content creation, you address both concerns at the same time, making content good but also not taking forever to make it.

I remember reading Alex Hormozi’s book $100 Million Dollar Leads, I was struck by this conundrum as well. He talks about making a lot of content, but at the same time he talks about how it has to provide a lot of value. He talks about giving away value for free and the more you give away the more leads you get. But I wonder, how do you address the fact that it can take too long to make all that value to give away?

Time boxing answers this question too.

Here is my formula:

  1. Set an amount of time you want to spend making the content
  2. Come up with a plan (syllabus method) if needed
  3. Create the content, for video focus not on what words you are saying but the emotions behind the words, they are far more important
  4. Use the remaining time however you feel makes the most sense
    1. One option is to spend the entire time editing.
    2. Another option is to spend it doing more takes, or gathering more footage.
    3. Either option is totally fine and can be a mix of both.

My big realization is this: I thought that I wanted to make really good content and was just too lazy or stressed out to do it. That isn’t true. I want to make really good content, but good content comes at a hidden cost…time. I need to balance the quality of the work with the amount of time I am willing to spend on it. It cannot take an infinite amount of time because that would mean I am getting less reps in.

It is all fine a good to give away tons of free value, but it is better to give away tons of free value while requiring a low time cost from you.

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Profit In Peace 19: Taking Charge

Byjack

I’m angry. I feel trapped at home, at work, and in my relationship. I am tired and uncomfortable like I have no personal space. I am taking charge today.

I don’t know what that means, but right now it means, that for the first time since I came back to my parent’s house, I am doing my daily routine.

Nowhere To Go

My parents

Hovering

Watching

Judging

Like glue stuck to my arms

My girlfriend

A ball of frustration and negativity

That I feel anxiety in my core

Every time she pulls at me

My work a clash between

Two fighting parents

With me stuck in the middle

Where is the space for me?

I feel several realizations come to me when I write about these emotions. First, the technique of taking space. I feel all my oxygen, happiness, room, and sanity is taken away by others. I feel like I’m making myself smaller to give room to others. The first thing I want to do is to start taking up space, making demands, and making myself big.

The second thing that I feel is important (and might give me a clue as to how I can make myself big, and not huddle real small), is remembering my boundaries and needs:

  1. Time – I want to be in control of my time
  2. Honesty – I want to be honest with myself and others
  3. Empathy – I want to empathize and others to empathize with me
  4. Possibility – I want to believe anything is possible
  5. Respect – I want others to show respect for me and my abilities

This already gives me a clearer idea of what is happening here.

I definitely feel a lack of honesty, time, and sometimes respect and empathy at home. In fact, maybe possibility sometimes too. In my relationship I feel lack of honesty, empathy, possibility, and time (and sometimes respect). And at work, I feel a lack of respect, honesty, empathy, and time as well.

I also feel that in every scenario, the key is wanting everyone to like me to not feel uncomfortable.

I caused most of these boundary violations to happen, and that is empowering because I have the ability to change them,

One of the things I want to do instead of wanting everyone to be happy and wanting everyone to like me, is approach people with my same values.

For example, if I want to be honest with someone, empathize with them, show respect, but let go of trying to control how they feel. If I want to be respected more, I can do that with empathy and honesty and respect as well.

This is far more empowering and less stressful because I am in control of myself. I can change how I approach situations, but I cannot control others.

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The Trifecta of Growth and Progression Down the Path of Truth

Byjack

There was a big journey I went down in terms of working on myself, becoming more mature and being able to live a free and meaningful life.

  • I started by thinking that you needed to meet your own needs
  • Then I thought you needed to be good at asking for your needs
  • And finally, I thought you needed to process traumas and emotions

But I realized that they are all part of the same things and have different parts to play.

In a way, everything is about not abandoning yourself and taking care of yourself. You surround yourself with people who you can talk about what is on your mind truthfully and emotionally. They help you understand what you need. You are able to then give yourself what you need and walk down further along the path of understanding different parts of yourself that are in pain.

From processing emotions, we can truly love ourselves, and the people around us, and be present in the moment.

There is a sense that being with people who don’t accept us, don’t allow us to feel safe speaking our truth is self abandoment. In a way, even if someone meets some of our needs (for example is attractive enough to make us feel special), if we settle for someone who doesn’t love us or allow us to be ourselves, we are putting ourselves down.

Not allowing ourselves to meet our own needs (for example, asking for validation from others because we refuse to give it to ourselves) is self abandonment.

Refusing to look deeper, and shielding parts of ourselves from the world (for example, keeping a confident outward appearance when we feel anxious) is abandoning parts of ourselves and placing the outside world’s comfort above our own.

The French Challenge: The Plan

Byjack

So I have a new challenge I’m working on.

To summarize my goals in order of how much they resonate with me:

  1. Be able to communicate and connect on a deeper level with my girlfriend, her friends and family
  2. Discover a whole new undiscovered world, the French world
  3. Understand and empathize with others better, understand and empathize with myself better
  4. Challenge myself to do the impossible
  5. Maybe win some cool points in learning French written language
  6. Learn more about French food

Timeline: 31 days (not counting today) from December 15th to January 15th

I’ve always wanted to learn French in a way that isn’t conventional. Not the Duolingo or the Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur way. None of those programs really worked for me. Maybe on the surface level they work…like if I spent enough time learning and studying those programs it would work but the way they were structured was all wrong for me. It just felt so dry and boring and something alive about the language was lost. I love how personal language can be. I want it to be personal for me.

But in order to do so, I’m going to have to rely a huge amount on connection theory because learning a language is incredibly difficult and I will need to really come up with something next level to learn a language without following one of these programs.

So let’s think about it. While I would love to plan out all 31 days of this, I simply cannot. That is too damn hard. Because I don’t have enough experience in learning languages, I need to try to learn it in different ways and understand and feel the feelings.

Some things I want to try:

  1. Write a story in French. Get help from a large language model in doing it.
  2. Write a comic in French, and also get help from AI.
  3. Learn through mimicry. Watch a YouTube video or movie in pure French. No subtitles, no explanation. Just imitate and copy the entire language. Don’t even try to understand what is being said.
    1. This is how babies learn and how large language models learn
    2. This might be my entire strategy in the challenge
    3. What I train on might be important, for example, if I watch a lot of comedy, I might end up being a very jokey person in French
    4. This is probably by far the hardest but most profound way to learn a language, need to be extremely comfortable with feeling the feeling of confusion (one of the most painful feelings for humans)
  4. Leave a message to my girlfriend in French every day. Let go of pronunciation or grammar. Focus only on trying to communicate as much as possible without looking any French up. When I need to look something up, don’t try to memorize it. The point is to communicate a lot, not memorize or get things perfectly right.
    1. This makes a lot of sense because my primary goal is to connect with my girlfriend.
    2. It makes sense to let go of anything that would prevent me from wanting to leave a message, namely
      1. Being afraid to pronounce something wrong
      2. Annoyed at having to look something up
      3. Annoyed at having to memorize words I look up
    3. By talking a lot, expressing a lot every day, and potentially looking up the same words over and over, I will start to absorb them
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Valorant 8: Incorporating the Pistol Into Movement

Byjack
  • Need to aim higher than you think to knife
    • If you are close enough, you can look almost directly up and still hit them in the head
    • Looking higher makes it hard to aim, since their head moves fast, try to look somewhere slightly higher than usual
  • Feeling out the potential lost (what would have been the perfect scenario) is a REALLY strong way to deal with the feeling of dying
    • Helps take off the shock and frustration
    • Allows you to improve from every death since you imagine a better scenario