Jiujitsu Challenge? Knee Challenge

Ok, so I no longer have an ongoing jiujitsu challenge, and I don’t really know if I have a knee challenge or not.

However, I really want to start that now. I feel really good about my progression.

It all started with 10 round Tuesday.

I went 3 rounds (2 days ago on the 21st). I absolutely died. I didn’t recover from feeling dizzy and like I was going to throw up for an hour after that.

I ate food when I got home, and slept like a baby after.

Ever since, I went to jiujitsu everyday.

On wednesday I was feeling super undermotivated, but I found an old training buddy and it was actually a good time.

Today I had even more fun.

My stamina seems to be increasing fast. I’m sore everyday and I still feel fine.

My knee feels good. It doesn’t hurt every day.

It feels strong. I feel like I can push myself more now.

My knee therapy and techniques around walking backwards, shifting my knee to be more balanced, stretching the hips and pointing the knee in the direction of the knee. AND IT’S BEEN WORKING.

I learned a lot from live rolls:

  • Don’t let someone get a completely dominant position, interrupt their attacks, move to the side
  • Don’t let your arms separate too much, too easy to armbar
  • Don’t let both arms get trapped above your head, too easy to armbar

I’m learning some basic attacks, armbars, leg locks, chokes.

Very cool stuff.

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Knee Strength 10: Boxing

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.

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Knee Strength 9: Videos for this Challenge

Other than walking backwards, I found a new video that seems to have some very good videos for knee repair:

Also, I saw this video a long time ago and it did not work great but I still want to reference it in case I want to try them again at some point:

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Posture Challenge – Unofficial Made Official

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.

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Knee Strength 8: Strength Side

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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Knee Strength 7: Walking

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.

French Challenge 2: A New Lease on Life

Some thoughts:

  • I’m stressed out because even though I feel like I’m making progress, I feel that I’m not getting results until I learn specific words
  • I am doing unorthodox way of learning language but expecting orthodox results
    • The orthodox was of learning is memorizing words – thus your results will be on how many words you memorize
    • I feel like I want those results when my methods are completely unorthodox, it makes sense that my results are not going to be the same, at first at least
  • I worry about forgetting everything after French practice, but nothing in the subconscious is forgotten, my goal is to harness and bring out the subconscious knowledge
  • If I were to state my goal another way, it could be to learn French subconsciously…which means that forgetting actually makes sense, since I am not consciously learning anything (that would be memorization)
  • Since I am forging my own path, I want to capture everything I experience and feel because I want to know how this new process works (what should I expect from subconscious learning?)

Overall I feel much more encouraged. This is the right path for me. I feel confident in my methods. I’m forging a path that no one has ever forged before. The point is not to get orthodox results, the point is to capture my progress, my feelings, and my experience. I will continue to use connection theory on French in order to learn more intuitively and use connection theory on myself in order to deal with my feelings of uncertainty and being overwhelmed.

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Profit in Peace 22: Feeling Like Shit

I feel like total shit. I didn’t sleep well and the back of my eyes hurt and I’m tired and bleary and a little cold. It is taking everything to not play games all day. I feel what gives me anxiety in this house isn’t just the expectations from my parents…but also the amount of stuff. There is too much stuff to feel comfortable around here. To feel calm.

I have been thinking about this idea a lot. The idea of “Whatever you feel the world is withholding from you is what you withhold from the world.”

I feel that this can help with a lot of the turmoil in my mind.

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Profit in Peace 21: A Break

Today is my first break from work in what seems like forever. I have a couple of things planned for the break, hanging out with family, spending some time gaming, and hopefully sneaking in a few calls with my girlfriend.

I also want to spend some significant time on my Instagram and business.

I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries and how to let go of taking responsibility for other emotions, and I’ve been thinking again on this idea of believing in everyone’s power over themselves.

I feel that when you feel that people don’t have the resiliency to handle situations, or the ability to overcome situations, or at the very least, learn from them, that is when you start to take responsibility for their emotions. How could you not, if you have the ability to handle your emotions, but they are not able to handle theirs? Sometimes, you need to just trust in the process. If they need to complain, get hurt, work through their feelings, something you need to trust in their process.