140k hands - Summer Challenge
Posted by Unicorn
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Unicorn
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140k hands - Summer Challenge
I've been struggling with my mental game and self confidence lately and wanted to start tracking my process more.
I challenge myself to play 140k hands during next 2 months on NL200. I might take shots to NL400/500 if I manage to run good but most likely I will be just rebuilding my confidence and bankroll in smaller games.
On the side I will be losing weight from ~83kg to 76kg and fix my body while doing it. I've been having a lot of problems with my body for so long (especially my hip flexor tendon) that I really need to take a break from harder exercises and just focus on mobility and conditioning.
I will try to update at least couple of times a week but I might just update every day if I feel like it.
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I've been lacking volume a bit but that was expected since I've been doing activities and such with my girlfriend on her summer vacation. I am really happy with the way I've been playing although I have played a bit more tables than I first planned.
I've been also tried to stand 1/3 of my sessions. Even though I've had standing desk for a couple of years already, I never really forced myself to actually stand. Sitting is really bad for body and energy levels if done for too long so I definitely recommend anyone to force oneself to switch positions if possible during the day.
A Part of healing my body is my somewhat new morning routine. I start my day doing A LOT of movements to open up my joints and muscles. I will usually do around 1000 reps of different joint and muscle opening movements which takes about 30 minutes. After that I do 3 rounds of Wim Hof breathing technique which I've been doing for the past few years somewhat regularly and would highly recommend this to anyone. After that I take a cold shower, do a my morning meditation and drink my coffee and start my grind. It is really hard to push yourself to do this long routine (except the coffee part and especially the meditation part) since your mind is trying to convince you to do something 'useful' already, but I believe that the more it resists, the more these things are needed.
I will write more about these subjects later.
First 4 days
With a morning routine like that and setting this sort of challenge you must be an absolute machine, good luck and I hope to see you playing 500nl+ by the end of the challenge!
Thanks!
I don't get bored easily so that makes these kind of routines a lot easier. I recommend meditation for everyone who is getting bored or distracted easily. At first it is really f*ing hard to sit down and watch your monkey mind which tells you to go do something that is valuable or entertaining but that will fade away over time with practice. Many people experience this (state of being in the present moment) when they do something they are really interested (or addicted) in but this can also be experienced without doing anything.
Volume is still lacking because I have had my days full of other things. Next week will prolly gonna be the same but hopefully I'll find my time to grind a bit more. We'll see about that!
Great stuff OP. Thank you for making me aware of Wim Hof method. I checked it out on YT and it looks great. I currently meditate pretty regularly, I do miss some days here and there my life is hectic raising a toddler but that is no excuse, and I do cold showers as well after being inspired by Demondoink blog. I never researched about the benefits but from doing it for last 30 days I've realized that it helps me break through the mental barriers that I set for myself and has helped me become more disciplined in life.
Looking forward to more posts <3
Have you already tried it? These kinds of intensive exercises can have huge impact from the get-go too but the most important thing is to do them regularly. I don't remember all the science behind this but I like to think that I am teaching myself to be calm in high-stress situations.
Another great exercises that I can recommend take look at are Oxygen Advantage. Those will focus more on your base breathing and teach you to breath slowly, deeply and calmly. Many people are wrongly breathing through mouth and that causes them to have all kinds of problems in the long run.
If you want to take a test how well you are breathing try this test called BOLT. With empty stomach take a regular breath in, and breath it out. Then breathe a small sip in and then fully exhale. After that hold your nose with your fingers and hold your breath with empty lungs while timing your breath hold. When the first urge or physical symptom to breath appears you are done. Meaning that if you have to take a big compensating breath you have done it for too long. Here we are aiming for 40 seconds but many peoples results are as low as 10-20 seconds. If that is the case, it means that you are most likely breathing too shallow on day-to-day basis.
Another great trick to better your health if you happen to breath through your mouth during sleeping is to use tape to close your mouth. It sounds like a brutal way to do it but if you buy Micropore-tape and use it to gently keep your mouth shut. There are great benefits to be had if you are breathing through your mouth. And no, your nose can't be naturally blocked if you are breathing through it. :)
Holidays are over and I will most likely start playing a lot more. I played one horrible session while being somewhat pissed off and could have saved a few buy-ins but obviously that is also mostly variance. Grinded it back though and feeling great now about fully starting my challenge!
Still lacking volume because had some stuff IRL I needed to do. This week I am aiming to play 20k hands.
any chance you're playing under the screen name "unicornius" on some apps?
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