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Valorant 19: The True Warmup

Byjack

In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing. 

I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.

I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.

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Fitness Challenge 2: Increasing Appetite

Byjack

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.

Goal Setting

Byjack

Today in the King’s council, part men’s group, part coaching session, we talked about setting goals.

I didn’t have an idea of what my goals are but a couple of visions came to mind:

  1. Coaching is a large part of my life. I saw about 3 coaching conversations with clients or potential clients every week.
  2. Youtube challenges being a large source of energy in life. I saw myself dedicating a little time every day to focus on an active challenge. This could be writing about the challenge, doing the challenge or shooting videos and thinking about the final video.
  3. I imagined feeling a lot more confident and in control of my challenges. I saw this as having successfully editing and posted a single challenge to youtube.
  4. I saw myself being outside and having a lot more energy. I would spend different parts of my day in different places.
  5. I saw my work-life come alive again. This meant posting posts on Linkedin every week, and engaging with people at work about my life outside of work.

I need to choose three main ones for the intention of the Kings Council.

I will choose the following goals:

  1. To have a powerful coaching conversation with three more people.
  2. To have one paying client.
  3. To have produced three challenge videos and posted them to youtube.

Thoughts on The Video About Mastery

Byjack
  1. Mastery is about feedback not just repetition as I always thought (with Valorant, then with language learning)
  2. People are bad at predicting things with randomized scenarios such as stocks, maybe it’s important to understand how to play the averages
  3. My thought is that people have a hard time predicting things that happen only once (presidential elections)
  4. I think lots of learning comes from motivation, finding it fun is HUGE is making you better and better

Knee Mobility Challenge 2: Redirection

Byjack

Today in looking into how to increase strength and mobility into the tendons and ligaments, I made an exciting discovery and change in direction.

I’ve heard of the Knees Over Toes Guy ever since I went to Thai Massage and the massage therapist told me that he helped a lot with his knee injuries from doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I know this challenge was to make my knee stronger just for going to Zion National Park, but this changes things completely.

The Knees Over Toes Guy has a program that costs about $50 per month. I decided to try it out as part of this challenge…but also as part of a bigger effort to regain my life. For the longest time, I have been searching for something that would let me be active again in life. Specifically, I want to get back into martial arts and work on Jiu Jitsu, wrestling and striking. I know that is completely impossible right now since I can’t even sleep on my side without pain in my knee.

This guy has renewed hope in me because apparently he was struggling with knee pain for 10 years and has had 6 surgeries and now is able to play basketball with zero pain even though he is pushing his body farther than ever (now dunks the ball).

This of course, changes my approach to the challenge and I need to rewrite my syllabus. I didn’t want to get rid of the syllabus because that is what has created such happiness and progress in all my challenges, but this is an excellent opportunity to improve the process. I have always felt that rigidly following something even when it isn’t the best path anymore is inefficient and wastes time. Being able to adapt the syllabus when you feel a major shift (not just all the time for no reason) makes a lot of sense.

There is a major shift that needs to happen because I realized that the current syllabus is not perfect due to the fact that even day 1 I realized that all exercises involve muscles, fascia and ligaments and tendons, yet they are all spread out over days in the syllabus and that makes no sense.

So here is my revised syllabus:

Days until Zion: 8

UNIT 2: Testing Knees Over Toes

Day 1 – Surface Tissues

UNIT 2: Testing Knees Over Toes

Day 1 – Day 5 – ATG workouts (Zero Program)

UNIT 3: Recovery

Day 1 – Cooling and antioxidation
Day 2 – Cleansing and Fasting
Day 3 – Fortifying and Nutrition

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Knee Challenge: Looking Ahead

Byjack

I completed my knee challenge in terms of going hiking in Zion national park. I felt like I succeeded in a big way but still have a long way to go in terms of getting where I need to go.

What is next for me? I know in the long term, I want to be very physically active. I want to be able to practice martial arts, do a little parkour and gymnastics. I know it will take a lot of effort and time to get there and it feels quite overwhelming for me.

I’m going to set a few large goals and then look at some of the very short term goals getting there.

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.

1 year goal – to get back to preinjury levels

1 month goal – be able to sleep, walk, stand and light exercise with zero discomfort. I will call this goal little freedom.

I don’t really know what the next step in my process is. It feels too soon to set a schedule yet.

I just want to slowly rest and explore for now.

My feelings are that challenge videos make for really good productivity but I need to slow down sometimes and feel the feelings.

Maybe I will write a poem:

Creaky Knees

When I bend my knee

It feels like I’m grinding

Hinges made of old stone

Like the kind in movies

That open secret magical passages

And grate against themselves

I say that I want to be able to do martial arts again

But the truth is

I don’t know what I want

I am afraid to dream again

Of a world where I can be active

I’m so used to being scared

Of clutching my knee close

So as not to hurt it

I feel like I’m too old to have these dreams anymore

Of flying

Like I did when I wanted to learn parkour

Everything scares me

I feel that

I need to understand this part of myself first

Listen to what it wants to say

“Everything is a danger”

It tells me

The protector of my knee

Of my body

It feels safe to not move at all

The Bedtime Challenge

Byjack

Sleep has always been the beast I had to conquer.

Ever since I left my house and went off to college, it has been increasingly hard to go to bed on time.

It’s killing me. I don’t recover from workouts, my mind is foggy, and my memory mists away. My moods feel erratic and neurotic. Energy during the day is a thing of the past.

And yet I cannot stop.

2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I keep going to bed late. And sometimes later and later.

I tried so many times to go to be at a reasonable time. I try for a few days, and then I relapse. But we aren’t giving up. We are trying it one more time.

And I didn’t do it alone. My good friend Edgar gave me this kick in the butt:

So what is my gameplan this time? How am I going to succeed when I failed so many times before?

A couple of things:

  1. I will not try to control how much sleep I get
  2. I will not try to control my screen habits
  3. I will not control anything but one single factor, which is my bedtime
  4. At the same time, I will figure out what needs I am meeting by going to bed late and how to meet those needs earlier in the day
  5. I will commit to this bedtime long enough to form a habit

I made a list of reasons why I love staying up late at night:

  • Completely alone
  • Lots of time – no rush
  • Sense of accomplishment (if I feel I haven’t accomplished anything yet it gives me more time to get things done)
  • Consume art
  • Nighttime magical vibes
  • Dread of the next day
  • More time to eat and digest

I realized that not sleeping is incredibly compelling to me. It is far more challenging for me to go to sleep on time than most people. So as a result, I need to keep it simple. Bedtime at 11 PM for the next 66 days, no exceptions. The challenge will end on December 12th. I am two days into this challenge already.

What does this mean?

  • I can eat right before bed
  • I can watch videos in my bed after 11
  • I can get back up, stretch if I cannot fall asleep, then go back to bed
  • I can toss and turn at 11
  • I can get up at 6 am if I have work that needs to be done but I don’t have the time to finish it

In the meantime, in an attempt to meet all my needs before bed:

  • I will silence notifications and try to find some alone time every day
  • I will work to identify a task that is feasible to do and will give me a strong sense of accomplishment every day
    • I will try to get this done early so that I will have larger open times during the day where I don’t feel rushed
  • I will pursue more art and magical vibes
  • I will try to leave gifts for myself the next day so I have positive anticipation(ex: a clean empty sink, plans for something fun)
  • I will try to eat at 8 pm at the latest so I have time to digest before 11

In terms of how to structure the next 66 days, I have not decided yet, but perhaps I will try to focus on each of the needs and strategies every week.

Some additional strategies/thoughts:

  • Turning off all the lights
  • Melatonin gummies

So far, finding a way to feel accomplished/ready for the next day has been a game-changer in wanting to go to sleep. Also, it is easier to go to sleep when bedtime is a hard boundary that is very strict and everything else is quite relaxed (I can still get less sleep and wake up super earlier if I feel I’m not prepared for the next day, I don’t have to go to sleep as long as I’m in bed). Nothing is tempting as a valid excuse/difficult decision anymore.

So tentatively I feel this time will be different. My hope is that after 66 days, I will no longer have to try to go to bed at 11, it will just be automatic, and I will start to cherish my sleep and life in general!