EPT
About this blog/diary:
I'm a professional musician and (very) amateur gamer.
Blogging about improving and sticking to a self-proscribed program is very effective for my overall progress!
Thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!
I'm a professional musician and (very) amateur gamer.
Blogging about improving and sticking to a self-proscribed program is very effective for my overall progress!
Thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!
Goals for the Week
Fitness Goals:
3 Weight-lifting (Starting Strength) sessions:
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/6/66/GreenCheck.png)
2 Running sessions at desired HR (link):
Gaming Goals:
Log Write-Ups of Blood Bowl and Dominions 4 games:
3 WarOwl CS:GO practice sessions:
Log CS:GO practice sessions, and Ranked results:
Log Hearthstone Drafts/Results:
Personal Goals:
5 Mental Discipline sessions:
1.5 Goal-oriented sessions a day: (
)Log daily food intake: (
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/3/30/Writers_Icon.png/15px-Writers_Icon.png){kind=icon}
Week preview: I've worked up so that I'm lifting more weight than I have in previous years and I want to ramp that up further! This week begins the Starting Strength program in full with two running sessions spread throughout the week. I'll give myself bonus points for cross-training, but I really want to get the running in while still lifting regularly.
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Monday 7/21:
Today, more than anything else, was a challenging and frustrating day. A mishap at work on my part is jeopardizing my vacation next month and it's going to take some political maneuvering to get it to happen. So I was freaking out all morning, and then my wife was freaking out the rest of the day, compounding how bad I felt about myself. Not an easy day at all.
Later in the afternoon, I did knock out two fairly decent practice sessions and an awesome lifting session (cleans day woohoo!!!), after we dealt with the drama as best we could. In my downtime, I played some Hearthstone that didn't go well, but the replays actually felt informative and I learned from some mistakes.
Got to see a bit of The International too, and afk farmed a dollar or two in CSGO, but largely the day was dominated by stress... And i'm glad it's winding down. I'll do some affirmations while doing the dishes and taking the dog out.
Tuesday 7/22:
Another rough day today as the office designated to handle my holiday request gave themselves vacation until Wednesday... Hurray... ugh. Oh well.
Got one good practice session in, did some self-hypnosis and some affirmations in the afternoon, then called it a mental health day and played around a bit. Two fun CSGO games and a boring Hearthstone session. I keep wondering why I still am interested and find myself playing HS. Half of it is probably because you can very easily watch a TV show at the same time and that multi-tasking and over-stimulation appeals to me. Oh well. Lost two arena games in interesting fashion... I'll have to review the tape, but then won 3 in a row that I deserved to win honestly. I got shit draws in two of them and clawed my way back using Gurubashi Berserkers well.
Wednesday 7/23:
Whew! After much gnashing of teeth and supplicating the proper authorities, I was able to secure the trip overseas... Ahhh... Having that ironed out feels much better. The impending decision looming over our heads caused more stress than anything. Glad it's resolved!
The wife and I celebrated with a nice outdoor seafood and lobster dinner with the puppy! After that I watched the new iteration of Robocop; or rather I watched the first hour and then cruised the net while passively listening to painful dialogue and explosions.
Deadlifting day was fricking awesome! Ever since the coaching, I've felt more confident on the lift. Switching the grips on the work set and taking time in between the work reps makes a huge difference! My deads and squats are now comfortably above the BW mark. woot! and chin-ups feel pretty good. They activate the forearms and grip strength much more than pull-ups.
Thursday 7/24:
As of today, I'm sacking the "goal-oriented practice" goal. I've been thinking about it over the last week and a half and something about the process just feels wrong. When I approach the session, I'm not motivated to get in there and explore what I need to explore to get better at the excerpts. Audition prep is all about quality repetition and priming yourself for peak performance at any time under any conditions. Forcing myself to sit down in a stodgy, just wasn't exciting the creative juices needed to bring my all to these sessions. They just didn't feel as productive or inspired as I was hoping.
I'm going to experiment with the idea of getting goals accomplish through the practice, rather than the goal of accomplishing 1-2 sessions a day. This idea is much more fluid and will probably come down to me writing about the process of the practice during the day. The specifics of what I accomplished on such and such an excerpt I will shy away from. Instead, I'll write about how it relates to the audition process as a whole, and how I felt about the day's work in general.
After reading Drive, I'm going to take a cue from that book and see if this slightly adjusted motivational technique excites my motivation for the process of getting better.
Full disclosure, I'm prepping for a relatively major national level audition that's about 2 months away. It's a fairly big job and one I'd like to win, so I'm going to play my best on day. The mental prep is actually just as important as the physical practice, so that will be ramped up in the months to come.
Enough music talk! Running today was good! I let it go a bit longer today, and ran a couple minutes over a half hour. I'm thinking the next running session I'll go for 35 minutes and see how it feels. This doesn't include the 3-5min warmup. The book on tape that's entertaining me for the runs, Hellhole, I would generously describe as plodding, archetypal trash, but that's ok.
I played a CSGO with my brother today and also did some Warowl DM practice. Goood stuff. Also, I had scheduled my 5 match in the Orca Cola Championship Blood Bowl tournament, but the internet conspired against my partner and I. At turn 2 in attempt one, my internet cycled itself. Truth be told I was pretty happy about this as I was getting my ass kicked in. 5 blocks in the first two turns yield 3 AV8 injuries... it wasn't pretty. The second take was slightly better, but I was not in a comfortable position at the of the game by any means. In that one, the servers themselves died and my UK-located opponent didn't have the time or patience for another rematch. We decided on a draw, and as a noob Chaos team, I'm totally happy with a draw when facing dwarves.
Friday 7/25:
Another full day of travel and rehearsal with little chance to practice and no chance to exercise. I was however able to make the most of it by coopting some coworkers into playing excerpts as a section together. We were on stage in front of the thousand or so early-birds to the concert playing some of the biggest section orchestral moments! It was a good time!!
Saturday 7/26:
Today was pretty much co-opted by the wife who wanted to go shoe shopping.... I offered that we should leave first thing in the morning to disrupt the day as little as possible... That of course turned into leaving at 11 and getting back at 4... Ugh. Whatever... it's 530 now and I've done my nuts and bolts practice. I'm going to get my lifting session and a good practice session in before tonight is over.
The late night practice session was AWESOME!! I let myself choose the goals of the session and ended up getting the first page of this piece I'm premiering to 96% target tempo. As someone whose strength isn't facile and technical play, I was very happy with my progression on this piece. It is very much so a technical showpiece across the entire range of the instrument. After that session, I rounded out the night with some adversity training on some excerpts. Some didn't respond too well to tired chops, but I did learn about how to produce despite sub-optimal conditions. Most excerpts were solid, but the real point of contention was flubby front-end articulation from under-supported low playing.
After that I played two CSGOs with my brother and won both!
Sunday 7/27:
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CS:GO Reference Section:
7/21: Loss, first on the chart despite a long disconnect.... 2 teammates were worse than worthless and I couldn't carry that hard. Made some good shots, but had some bad rounds too.
7/22: Tie, first on the chart... again 2 bad teammates seems par for the course. The other good teammate choose Bison every round and used it pretty well... but still.
Win, second on the chart. Almost allowed a massive comeback, but were able to hold them off. Some teams just cant' play T.
Hearthstone Reference Section:
Warrior Draft: 7/21+ Show Spoiler [Reactions while drafting] +
#2: First time ever seeing Arcanite Reaper! woohoo!!
#3: First shit row.
#4: Picked up a good weapon, so i'll grab the great 2drop over the hard removal.
Through 10, good weapons and good top end! No more Arcanites for me though...
#11: Next shit row... grr... Deckhand for now... have lost of 5dmg removal.
#12: Need the 2 drop...
#13: Took the mixed situational removal over the faerie because I have none yet.
#29: Guess I'm taking Reaper #3...
Mage Draft 7/22:+ Show Spoiler [Reactions while drafting] +
#7: Solid deck thus far! Got a Nerub'ar Weblord in the middle spot of this row, but decided on another frostbolt instead of it.
#9: Card draw would be nice, but I need the early minions!
#11: I chose probably too quickly... arcane intellect might've been the right choice there.... Damn do i need minions!!
#13: Probably the first time I'll ever take kobold over silver hand knight... but I need the 2drop and the spell dmg would be nice for frostbolts...
#14: Aaaand, I'm full on removal... minion time.
#16: Wow... it seems like all the spells from previous mage drafts are coming back now... I don't think i can afford to take Flamestrike here... it's just overkill. Gurubashi is just better.
#24: Woooow... what a hard row... I need to take the water elemental is it's just so good... I don't have the requisite little pecking spells to make mana wyrm worth it, and I don't want to take them in later rounds as I'm minion light.
#26: Tough choice, but went with the 3 for the curve.
