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Valorant Challenge 40: The Trifecta

Byjack

I’ve since taken a different approach to Valorant. I think I had a lot of good ideas in the past but I realized the value of simplicity.

Having too many things to worry about in Valorant makes it hard to focus on the game.

So I narrowed things down to just three:

  1. Piano hands: Keep your arm at a 90 degree angle, let gravity pull your arm down and use the force of gravity in all arm and wrist movements. This allows for the most relaxed posture.
  2. Imagine success: The most simple and straightforward way to have a good mental is just to visualize yourself killing everyone and winning the round.
  3. Stay clean: Instead of wildly aiming and shooting, stay calm, precise, and efficient. Peek cleanly using just the A and D keys.

An example of staying clean is Curry:

Watching his gameplay makes me realize how much I panic and do so much extraneous movement.

After applying these three tactics, I started doing very well in my games.

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Valorant 21: Aim Mechanics

Byjack

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.

 

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Valorant Higher Elo Insights

Byjack

Yesterday I played two 10 man customs with my brother. It was interesting because everyone was higher elo (high plat to diamond, and immo peak).

I realized something while playing with them. First, they aren’t much better skill wise, but take much fewer risks when they place. I often take a lot of risks and rely on my aim.

However, something occurred to me recently while watching profession Valorant play.

Diamonds and even immortal are not the best Valorant players and I know even from my own Valorant games that playing defensive is not always the best move.

The point is the take risks when you need to, like when your team is down numbers, or if you have a read. In those moments, you need to believe in yourself, trust in your aim and play aggressive, not afraid.

Often times, when I play aggressively, it is out of fear, confusion, and pressure to make a play. When I play defensive, I’m always afraid, confused and defensively hide.

I wonder what it would be like to play in a more yin yang balanced approach. As you would in tai chi, be soft when they are hard, hard when they are soft. What that might me in Valorant is to be gone from places where the team is holding strong map control, and be present in places where they are weak.

I don’t exactly know how this will work as a technique, but I’d like to try it out today.

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Knee Strength 3: Recovery and Mobility Exercises

Byjack

Today is all about recovery.

Strength seems to be half pressure/work and half recovery and growth. And today is a recovery day.

I’m quite pleased that I have a recovery day because I really need to comfort and soothe my knee a lot and I like exploring ways to do that.

It’s also interesting that my exercises are completely different from the knees over toes guy. Maybe at some point, they will converge when my knees get stronger.

Recovery Exercises:

  1. Gentle knee spacer
    1. One leg is straight and extended
    2. The other leg is lifted up gently to the side and slowly relaxed so there is space created in the joint
  2. Foot scrape
    1. One leg straight, the other leg lifted up
    2. Relax and let the lifted leg gently fall and scrape on the ground
    3. Repeat with both legs in all directions
  3. Bonus lying down comfort
    1. Crossing legs
    2. Bending legs
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Bedtime Challenge 1: 44 Days In

Byjack

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.

Overall I am very happy with the progress.

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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.

Core Beliefs 5

Byjack

I don’t know exactly if this is a core wound, but I strongly believe that I am responsible for people’s emotions and that I am a bad person.

In order to process this (a rebalance my emotions), I am going to focus on a time when I hurt someone and focus on the part right before it so I can remember that there is a good reason for doing what I did and perhaps have a little more compassion for myself.

The Phone Call

She was a lonely girl

Quiet and shy

I wanted to be kind

By being a good friend

But she seemed to want more

When she asked me

If she could sleep in my bed

What to do

If she was sexually frustrated

I did my best to set my boundaries

I did my best to be firm

But she kept pushing

And it was too much

I knew too little

To do anything than

To push her away hard

After years

Of sending me letters and emails

She must have know

I didn’t want to talk

I just wish

She knew

It wasn’t her fault

That I didn’t like her

But I needed

To be able to say no