[Wk24] Improving in Fitness, Gaming & Music

About this blog/diary:+ Show Spoiler +

I'm a professional musician and (very) amateur gamer.
Blogging about improving and sticking to a program is very effective for my overall progress!
Having been inspired by Haulvern, I hope this humble blog can motivate another someone in need of positive change.
Thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!

Week preview: This week will be a gentle cleanse of bad eating/living habits accumulated over the holiday.
Time to record myself for you all as well!

Goals for the Week

Fitness Goals:
4 Weight-lifting sessions (program): [image loading]

(opt.) Running/Hills/Weighted walk sessions (log): [image loading]

1-Month of Maintenance: + Show Spoiler +

Gaming Goals:
Log write-ups of my team's OCC Blood Bowl games (Current Standings): [image loading]

                  Log write-ups and session prep for my DND 5E Campaign (wiki):
                  Log games/practice for CSGO:

            Personal Goals:
                  Daily Mental Discipline sessions: ( [image loading]

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Log daily food intake: (log) (

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Quality challenge-seeking practice session: (

)(

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Weigh-in regularly (log): ( [image loading]

)

Previous Weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.

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Saturday 1/3:

Sunday 1/4: [image loading]

Back in the saddle again! Being home after the extended holiday vacation feels so relaxing. While it was great to see family and play endless hours of Dominion, my wife and I not having any privacy and sleeping on an air mattress got old really really quickly. Our dog must have sensed our general unsettled nature and was more agitated and uneasy than usual. Needless to say, when it came time to head back, we were ready and willing.

Back to lifting as well! Yesterday's Press Day was as amazing as today's Deadlift was underwhelming. My 3+ work sets just weren't happening today for whatever reason. I did manage to get a video and will throw that up on the TLFI 2015 thread for feedback. Just didn't feel solid. I really missed lifting with a real bar! The pencil-thin knurling on my bar can't even file my nails... Ugh. I definitely felt the bar slipping mid set. Oh well. Next time will be better!

Lifting with my brother over the holiday helped inform my lifts! He was able to give some feedback on my DL form and other general training guidelines. Most influential was the time he takes in between sets. No longer will I be trying for 1RMs with 1 minute in between sets. Taking time makes the workout completely different; no way I'm going back now

.

I got CREAMED in Blood Bowl again today... uuuuugh. I made a couple stupid mistakes back-to-back and just let the game get away from me. Man is it frustrating.... In the lower leagues my underleveled Chaos team was able to compete but the losses this season have crippled my core squad and my confidence.... Hopefully next season will rebuild nicely. Relegation here we come....

Sidenote: Dark Souls is awesome! It was my brother's xmas gift and will probably dominate a good portion of my upcoming time. More on that later though.

Monday 1/5: [image loading]

Had a rather rough CS day thus far today... not enthused. Had a MM game where none of my shots hit... like literally none. So frustrating. But during my extended lunch break I ended up grabbing a quick Ring of Binding in DS2. Holy crap that item makes a world of difference! All for now. more later!

On the whole, I was pretty frustrated by the day's effort... Nothing felt accomplished. I didn't do solid practice at home and I felt rushed at day's end to do what little meditation was ultimately accomplished. I fell behind the ball and suffered because of it. Just dumped too much time into playing without focused time for the horn.

Tuesday 1/6:

Whewie!!! Today was another hot Craigslist day! A local ex-Navy threw up a liquidation sale for his powerrack and weight-sets. I was the first to the party, but ended up only getting the really nice Body Solid FID Bench and not the cheap customizable dumbbell set. Losing the dumbbell set doesn't bother me so much because another option presented itself: Oly-Dumbbells. Going to check and see what weight it can hold, but it looks like a great option for my setup!

The CSGO suckage continues... slightly better today as I pulled near even on K/D/A... ugh. not feeling the best.

Wednesday 1/7:

The whirlwind Craigslist gym equipment carousel continued today. I woke up at 630 to drive an hour and pick up some Olympic diameter dumbbell bars! I can now row on Bench day with some serious weight! Good stuff. I'm also planning on supersetting some curls just for shits and giggles.

Squat day was very nice today! Nailed a 5set on the 3+.

Blood Bowl was depressing. I was creamed again. This time against a team I knew would give me trouble. The opponent specced his Chaos to kill kill kill, and my team was not immune to his pressure. I lost one lvl 2 Beastman, but other than that I was pretty happy. Getting owned is absolutely no fun... but what can you do? Hopefully next season I'll get some breathing room to level up my team.

In gaming, the biggest news is that I officially have caught the Dark Souls bug! It's so fun! Having a blast tearing through it. I'm up to The Lost Bastille having beaten every boss without assistance. For the full original playthrough, I'm going to try to hold myself to that standard of not inviting other PCs. The first stretch of bosses was no problem, but I'm anticipating that to change.

Thursday 1/8: [image loading]

Having a blast with Dark Souls today! Knocked out the trio boss on the third overall try (the first two being screwed by my errant pilgrim sidekick). I'm having a good time playing this game down without getting extra assistance for the bosses!

In the morning I knocked out a good practice session and a nice self-hypno. There will be some changes incoming to the mental prep routine, but I'll post those after I attend to my dental cleaning.

Friday 1/9: [image loading]

Above is the new insignia for meditation days! In the coming weeks, I'll be rolling out my new mental prep plan. Asmodeus's latest blog post put some things in perspective for me. Currently, I'm stretching myself too thin in multiple directions. I'm interested in improving in gaming (ala CSGO, HS, SC2, DS2) but that pursuit is taking too much of my headspace and focus. The tangential possibility of launching a DnD campaign and starting streaming have been intriguing me, but I really feel like I need to leave those behind for the time being. All of my focus needs to be put into improving on the horn and improving in fitness. Gaming improvements will come, but they shouldn't be the focus of my day. Dark Souls is kinda perfect for that in a sense. There's less of a time commitment issue with it than other games due to not being multiplayer, and the progress points are tangible and accessible. Advancing a rank in CSGO is at best nebulous, but you can always come back and try the boss again.

Nailed Bench Day on my beautiful new Body Solid FID Bench

! Hit 6 on my 3+ reps... not too shabby. I'll use tomorrow's busy schedule to reset the calendar and do the next Press Day on Sunday.

Saturday 1/10:

While today was productive and I felt like I accomplished a good deal, it definitely wasn't up what I had hoped. After waking and knocking out a good warm-up/fundamentals session, I squandered away the rest of the morning and early afternoon traipsing around in Dark Souls. Despite the two bosses killed, I wouldn't consider it productive. The reason for the early focus was a dress rehearsal and concert of Prokofiev 5 later that day. I took it easy on the rehearsal, but still didn't feel up to practicing the stuff for tomorrow's recording.

The concert went ok. The principal wanted to take it easy so I stepped up and played first on Mozart's Haffner Symphony which is nothing particularly challenging but involves a fair amount of face time. Every moment of that time was made more taxing by the poor intonation of my second horn, so I was happy walking away with a satisfactory performance. Compared to how excellent the rehearsals went, I was frustrated with the only mediocre performance of the Prokofiev. The mistakes were silly little concentration slip-ups too... Oh well. I rallied and played better in the later movements.

Sunday 1/11: [image loading]

A stellar day! Upon waking, I fired up TotalBiscuit's LotV Tournament and used it was a backdrop for an awesome Press Day! The 1+ set rallied for a solid 3 showing and almost pulled out a 4th rep. Chinups also are progressing nicely! I saw improvement in them today throughout the 5x5 set.

After that, the wife and I met some friends for a smorgasbord of dim sum. She left for shopping and I returned home to proceed to knock out the following: Two solid practice sessions including a recording session for next week's blog, cleaning out my fountain pens, taking photos of workout equip for craigslist, moving said equipment to the shed, taking the dog on a poop walk, hypnotizing myself, and just generally being a badass

. While it wasn't particularly special, I was pleased with the hours of solid effort. The recording stands out in that regard. I'm very happy that I bit the bullet and completed the recordings. It's always a stressful undertaking and I'm happy that I pushed through and got a couple meh takes of the Neuling.

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CS:GO Reference Section: Loot Timer:

Original Nova 1 Account: Case

+ Show Spoiler [Most Recent W/L] +

L, W, L, L

Nova 2 Alt Account:

+ Show Spoiler [Most Recent W/L] +

1/4: 20min Aim practice. L,W on Main.

1/5: 20min Aim practice. L on Main

1/6: 15min Aim Practice. L on Main.

[Wk24] Improving in Fitness, Gaming & Music

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