And here we go again. Let’s not waste any time..
How’s my CORE doing?
I still feel as if I haven’t been keeping my annual theme of CORE in my area of attention as much as I would like. That said, I realised I’ve been applying things that I’ve learned to pry apart deeply-held beliefs about myself — working on the CORE of myself, as it were. And I suppose that is where all good things start.
Some progress on the Shoulders and Legs front
While I still don’t definitively know what is causing the I now have a better idea of what works. For my legs, one day I thought to do Walking Lunges and I kid you not something about it massively helped. Step Ups also seem to alleviate the pain as do (maybe) Bulgarian Split Squats. The thing they all have in common is the working leg is in front of the body.
For my shoulders, the therapist-recommended stretches help (as long as I do them!) but I was looking for exercises that would complement them. I finally found something that helped: Face-Down Y-Raises but starting with arms at 90° before raising them into the Y position. I can’t find the original video that I watched on YouTube but I’ve included one that comes close. Note the person does not start with their arms at 90°.
In a way, I unknowingly achieved my 1st milestone which was to make the pain manageable to the point that it affects daily living as little as possible. The next step is towards elimination of the pain. Right now I don’t have any better idea than to continue with the stretches and exercises so that’s the current plan.
Energy Levels
I’ve started a mini-project focused solely on restoring my energy levels. I had an energy crash at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2023 which was the result of some personal matters starting in 2018. While I generally had enough energy and motivation to go through my day, I would experience dips where body felt so tired I couldn’t do much more than that. A clear example is exercise; I’d been exercising 3 times a week but had to reduce it to 1, maybe 2 if I was lucky. The crash would stay for a few weeks but would eventually leave only to come back quite unpredictably. So you can imagine how much this annoyed me.
While restoring my energy levels has always been part of my annual goals, I recently decided to explicitly make it a mini-project which simply means it has it’s own piece of paper with my plans scribbled on them. One thing that I’ve started is measuring my Sleepiness, Tiredness (Physical, Mental and Emotional) and Motivation at 3 points in the day. I give each a rating out of 10 and just the act of doing it is making me feel better somehow even though I could not give a detailed explanation of why I chose these constructs or how they differ. Maybe the CORE of the activity is just checking in with myself more than the actual rating or the constructs themselves.
Overall, I think my energy levels have slightly improved. At the same time I am wary of I over-stretching myself thinking they’ve improved more than they really have, something I’ve done in recent years.
Street Fighter 6
I’m still enjoying the heck out of playing this game and I recently pre-ordered a leverless joystick! My initial goal with playing has already been achieved and I already see possible new goals but right now I just want to enjoy playing the game.
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