My DAILY
My DAILY
Daily What? Daily patterns, rules, actions I'm using every day to create a flexible framework in my life keeping me in check.
Keep the structure & I keep the balance. Keep the balance & I can find freedom. Find all this and I can figure out a little more about who I really am.
These don't usually change often in my life but I will change what's posted in this section and not planning on keeping an archive so check it out now and check back again:
Sep '21
Check out the video HERE
Pick something to keep momentum. I’ve had my different phases. I obsessed about Olympic weightlifting, I obsessed about powerlifting, I obsessed about boxing, I obsessed about some sport. I’d go all-in on each of them, practice them and constantly and persistently think about them.
Whatever my focus was, I’d still take days off, though. Even as crazy as I’d get, I always kept enough sense to rest at least one day a week, even if I didn’t want to. I had enough clarity to know that I needed that to keep doing what I loved.
Now that I’ve adopted a more balanced mindset (arguably) and enjoy a few different types of strength training and physical hobbies that are for the good of my body instead of using my body for any singular physical purpose, I’ve found that I can more easily get derailed.
I love all the many physical challenges I take on and I appreciate the function of my body that allows me to do it all. But because I don’t have one burning focus I can find myself doing much less physical activity than I should at times.
I’m still curious about all of the things I do but because there’s no one thing burning in my mind, I’ll go more days between being vigorously physical than is good for me. Then, I’ll have a hard time getting back into the same focused intensity to do anything.
But If I do one thing, anything, on most days, I keep my enthusiasm to keep up practicing everything I enjoy. I also found that it’s much easier to do this now than when I was only practicing something like Olympic weightlifting. It was really hard to grab that barbell and start putting plates on it on days when I wanted to hide in a homemade living room fort made out of blankets.
If you get what I’m saying about wanting to improve the function of your body with a variety of physical activities, you can do any small thing to keep your momentum going. I have days where all I do is some stretching and some breathing. Other times I just work on some bodyweight control and try to learn something like a headstand.
Here’s what I find most interesting, and something that my obsessive (make everything complicated brain) can’t easily accept. It doesn’t take a lot to keep things going. I don’t have to take on some great physical struggle. Walking quickly up a hill with a weighted vest once and then taking 10 breaths holding a supported stretch on days I feel a little down is all I need to keep the impulse to do something harder, the very next day.
Don’t undervalue how any and everything that tenses or stretches the muscles and elevates the heart rate even slightly starts and keeps a ball rolling.
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Aug'21
Knees were meant to bend and bend completely. I could have avoided so much of the pain and stiffness that I dealt with daily when lifting competitively in Olympic weightlifting or powerlifting and even after if I had just started my day with some kneed bends. Standing knee bends... I think people call them squats.
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I’ve been touting how bad it is to wait until we get to the gym to move our bodies through our full usable range of motion for a while now. And while I’ve kept my ‘move first’ rule for a while, it took me a while to convince myself to do some full bodyweight squats first thing in the morning.
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I’d do a whole slew of seated or lunge position stretches after getting out of bed, but moving my ass up and down repeatedly was out of the question. I still woke up too stiff and achy to convince myself to do even five bodyweight squats.
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I knew I’d probably feel better as a whole if I consistently did it and I’d probably adapt and not feel so bad doing it in the morning after a few weeks but that wasn’t going to convince the five-year-old boy in my head who doesn’t want to listen.
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Then, I remembered what I did years ago to get my knees feeling healthy in the first place. I did close stance squats on a slant board.
I’d still do these from time to time after heavy squats. They always made my knees feel great, whether I was sore, tired, or stiff.
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They’re actually getting a ton of looks these days with the Knees Over Toes Guy growing in popularity. The skinny of it is that the elevation of the ankle helps you get into the position easier and helps you slowly work the push the knees over the toes more and more each rep and make it almost into an active stretch where the muscles in the front of the shin and the quads move through a further range of motion while getting the muscles in the front of the shin and the quad firing quickly.
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And this makes you feel good, almost immediately. If the first rep feels good, I’m more willing to do more.
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I don’t have a slant board at home so I just stack some old books up to elevate my heels pretty significantly. I purposely keep my toes straight, feet close, and push my knees as far forward over my toes as possible. Most of the time I only do one set of eight reps but I do it almost every day.
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It’s not a lot but it’s enough to keep me from feeling stiff each day and reduces the time I need to warm up if I do squat with weight later in the day.
Short periods of work a couple of times a day, it’s done wonders.
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Step one
Find a comfortable place to sit and keep your back flat and your torso upright