EPTAbout this blog/diary:
I'm a professional musician and (very) amateur gamer.
Blogging about improving and sticking to a 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 program is very effective for my overall progress!
Thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!
Week preview: This week, despite numerous travel commitments, I'll be increasing my mental prep and starting a new running program, Bridge to 10K.
Goals for the Week
Fitness Goals:
3 Weight-lifting sessions (log)(program):
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/6/66/GreenCheck.png)
2 Running sessions at desired HR (log)(program):
Gaming Goals:
Log Write-Ups of OCC Blood Bowl games (Current Standings):
Log CS:GO practice sessions and Ranked results:
Log Hearthstone Drafts/Results:
Personal Goals:
Daily Mental Discipline sessions: (
) Log daily food intake: (
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/3/30/Writers_Icon.png/15px-Writers_Icon.png){kind=icon}
Quality challenge-seeking practice session: (
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images/1/10/Gold.png)
---
Monday 7/28:
Off to a good start today! The morning I was anticipating being able to practice, but lack of facilities at work cut into that. I did however get two good sessions in this afternoon and I'm looking to do one more tonight before close. Mental prep was accomplished in the morning during the dead time.
Deadlifts kick my ass!! Holy crap! I keep thinking that I have just a bit of butt tuck at the base of the lift... I'll try to get the wife to video tape it and see if my hamstrings are doing their job correctly. If I'm too be entirely honest, hamstring flexibility and stretching has really fallen off in the last several weeks... I do need to focus on it more before heading back to my lift coach.
Divinity: Original Sin is so much fun!! I'm playing a couple of co-op campaigns with a work friend and my brother, and they both are having wildly different success rates. My brother stormed off at the end of our session last night in a tizzy, incredibly frustrated with the game and his fighter character. He was so upset that I honestly thought that he was going to stop playing entirely. Today however, I found him experimenting with a pair of Earth/Fire mages lighting the entire ground on fire.
On a side note, the wife made some really nice muffins today that were deceptively small and insubstantial. After I had 2 and was unwrapping a third, I decided to rummage through the recycling and upload an accurate calorie count. They definitely did not taste like 240 calories a pop.... Whooops. Oh well. This was a perfect day to solidify the habit of logging intake no matter what. Even if it's over log it. No judgement and no negative self-talk, it's just information!
Tuesday 7/29:
Whew! A busy busy day today! No exercise or food intake was logged, but I was pleased with the overall effort. The first 3/4s of the day was non-stop work and was very well executed! I knocked out a great sessions of nuts and bolts practice session, a self-hypnosis, and challenge-seeking audition prep. Actually, the last practice session included a baby epiphany and reconnection with an old practice technique designed to shore up a weakness I've been addressing. Needless to say, I was extremely happy with the morning practice.
I left morning work for an afternoon of 4hours of rehearsal and 2.5 hours of commuting. Around those obstacles, a friend and I were able to recharge my car's AC. This proved more hazardous than expected... I ended up losing two canisters of the coolant due in equal parts to faulty manufacture and poor directions. Thankfully Google had better directions than the print ones given.
Recently, a Friberg video introduced me to a great CSGO training map and I am officially hooked! It's such a well designed and implemented map! I love sinking time into the game of improving my twitch!
Wednesday 7/30:
Another busy busy day today. I'll come right out with the disappointments of the day first... I didn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish practice wise today. This morning I woke up very early with very bad allergies and couldn't fall back asleep until 9 or so. After I woke up from that nap, it was time to travel for rehearsals. Back by 5, I was able to get a good nuts & bolts session in, and a killer killer Cleans lifting day, but no quality challenge-seeking sessions. I was just spent.
That being said, I got back on the horse of logging my food intake after yesterday's cheat day. The cleans session was very good! I'm getting used to logging on my phone as well, so that's nice. This evening's dish-washing and dog-walking will be accompanied by affirmations for my mental prep, but other than that I'm pretty exhausted and will probably crash soon.
So, all-in-all, minor disappointments today, but I'll make up ground tomorrow. Also I have a big Blood Bowl match against the league leader tomorrow!! Hopefully I don't get killed too too badly :D.
Thursday 7/31:
Very very delayed write-up of the day. I'm writing these all on Sunday because of the travel and craziness that ensued. Thursday was great! I knocked out a great run, a great practice session, and a greatly frustrating but exciting Blood Bowl loss :D.
The Blood Bowl loss was epic! I was forced to receive early and was instantly behind on luck because the wood elves were able to get a perfect kick to land within two squares of the halfway line AND get a perfect defense for the clutch re-position. Somehow through all of that I did pick up the ball (no RR this time thank god!! Sure hands FTW.), and set up the preliminaries of a cage. The wood elves setup for defense, but leave some key players in awkward positions! I'm able to split and isolate both wardancers while also dropping the big tree!! The first wardancer is on the ground and I set about fouling him twice over the next two turns while advancing slowly up the left hand side of the pitch. Do facilitate this, I roll the dice, and expend three turns worth of rushes on my Minotaur, risking the blitzes on the 2+ rolls. I don't eat the blitzes, but neither does my only might blow character cause ANY damage against the AV7 of the elves... I'm getting 1-3 solid blocks a turn on top of my blitz and no one is dropping... My fouling attempts bear no fruit despite having 3 follow-ups on the foul... Ugh.
My turn 5 was the really risky play on which the game hinged. I have the ball on the 3rd hex from his endzone, and I'm solidly caged. He has one Wardancer pinioned to the left of the cage and I'm planning on blocking him with a Chaos Warrior. I go to setup the approach and the fuckign cyanide client commits me to a move action so I lose that player's blitz option... Grr... So I'm a bit flustered but have another Warrior to blitz with. Long story short, I fully cage in around a loose ball, but a wardancer double-dodges into a leap blitz, gets the required KO to knock a player onto the ball, which prompts the 1-IN FUCKING-36 CHANCE that the ball will scatter perfectly and pop completely out of my cage to be retrievad by another elf player. Oh my god... I was so chagrined. But that's blood bowl. I'm going to review the tape, but I still think the risk I ran was worth it in the circumstances... particularly if the clunky client had allowed the first block. It's always risky doing that versus leaping elves, but I was in such a good position and had absolutely NO KOs in the first half. Such ridiculous fricking luck. Goes without saying that the elves knocked out two AV8s, but I had a backup and a recovery roll to not go understaffed.
In hindsight, leaving the ball exposed but fully caged was a pretty big risk, particularly after my initial setup failed. I probably should have taken the scoring opportunity, but I knew that 3 turns is easily enough for a wood elf to score particularly with no one injured, and I decided to roll the dice... Will review and write more. The other coach then proceeded to school me on how to play wood elf on offense. It was a good game and the other guy was a good sport.
Friday 8/1:
busy busy day! Lifting was awesome! I managed to get a workout in between rehearsals and a quick dinner! The gym at the school that hosts this series of concerts upgraded and has nice bumpers and lifting platforms now! No need to adjust my schedule to do deadlifts.
After the full day, I came back and did a very good practice session late at night before sleep. All in all a great day!
Saturday 8/2:
A friend wanted to go on a hike up into the mountains (hills for anyone that's been to the Rockies), and I signed on despite him forgetting bug spray. Halfway through the hike, my legs just start burning! Lifting my personal bests for deads and squats the day before turn this outing into a real chore. At any rate, he's nice enough to give me a breather halfway through and we continue up to the top. The view is nice and I try to facilitate his enjoyment of the moment by remaining quiet and serene, but I think I was betrayed by constantly thwacking the mosquitos attempting to have me for lunch.
After lunch and the hike, the nap I take feels like the nap of the dead... Oh man, I was out like a rock for two solid hours. Upon waking and realizing the time is short before the night's concert, I rush to get a quick dinner, load my stuff in preparation for leaving, and begin a quick practice session. The session was good, but not completely focused. I did get some good work in, but it felt flustered in the end.
The concert went pretty well however! I'm generally happy with how my level of play is improving in those settings. I'm staying focused and in the moment regardless of what is going on around me. Definitely an improvement!
Sunday 8/3:
---
CS:GO Reference Section:
Practice Log:
7/28 50min session
7/29 30min session
Game Log:
7/29 W (and promoted!!! Silver 4)
Hearthstone Reference Section:
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.
Mage Draft 7/29:+ Show Spoiler [Reactions while drafting] +
#7&8: Both hard rows... I wanted the early game control on both... that was the rationale. Frostbolt is just so good at all times... I'll miss the youthful brewmaster though...
#12: And the spells pay off potentially! I love wyrms so much... hmm, hopefully it works.
#16: Hard choice... under whelming spells or 3-cost removal... I'm going to play around with nova this game and see if can be employed well.
#19: Card draw!! needed for sure, and i'm pretty strong early.
#25: Eeek... the gods want me to have two wyrms apparently... but I'm not going to bite. Taking the turtle.
Wow... what a crappy draw. Oh well... what can ya do?
