seems like I might have a displaced rib or something. Apparently the side of my body hasn’t seized up because my healthy life style. Going to get some deeper investigating done.

Light foam roll today. Getting a massage later. Should be pretty painful.

🔵

Foam rolling and lacrosse ball rolling. A longer and slower session which is good. The more I stretch out my chest the more I notice the tightness of my traps.

🔵 just some foam rolling this morning :)

🔵

I don’t necessarily like doing this because it’s pretty painful at times. But the more I do it the more I realize I need too. It’s one of these things…

The kind of interesting thing about this is like I’m learning how much muscles are like clay or something. It’s a pretty incredible material especially in terms of how it’s all orchestrated together to like produce movement and manipulate objects. Super crazy.

But yeah these muscles also get tight and you kind of have to keep working through them and keep them ready for the work they need to do.

Still haven’t gotten into traps. In this incremental way of working through ‘everything’ essentially, I’m learning that ‘micro studying’ happens organically. At some point while doing this I’ll look something up and it’ll change what happens in this journal.

🔵

- no way to really shortcut duration on this process. Just takes some time to go through this process. On days with tighter time lines, the effects are nowhere near the same obviously. It’s just an activity that requires slowness.

- a good session today. Need to figure out how to work into traps. Studying this stuff will be a recurring note I imagine.

🔵

Feeling pretty relaxed through this. Fell asleep at one point (lol). Maybe I’m just really tired. Need to look into how to get better at this stuff. Specifically what happens to my muscles exactly when I’m doing this? And how can I open my traps more over time?

Today while a lacrosse bull was under a tender muscle and it kind of just let go and opened up I could feel it stretching and just become stronger and more flexible or something and I thought, “I love my body”. Lol

🔵

I think I’m finally clicking or starting to understand the benefits of this foam rolling / lacrosse ball work. Today I kind of just let my body stay in some painful positions with the lacrosse ball on tender parts of my muscles and over time it would just slowly open up. And then it would be entirely comfortable. Kind of surreal. I think I store a lot of tense-ness in my chest and it’s been really helpful on multiple dimensions doing this.

Today was an unelected break through though. I stood up and it felt like I just got a massage or something. Like super refreshed feeling.

Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s important for me to set a kind of vibe while doing this. Whether it’s an album that helps me zone out or maybe a podcast or an audio book or something. It seems this process can’t be rushed. I can’t just tell my muscles to relax. I have to just let it happen naturally.

🔵

Ball rolling
Foam rolling

I’ve been wondering like how this process changes or feels different depending on how many glasses of water I’ve consumed before I do it. Might be worth experimenting with. Like how it feels if I do it in hydrated state vs non. Just felt like my muscles were tighter and rougher or something today.

Kind of cool. Lol

🔵

Wonder about how consistently increasing water intake might affect this entire process.

🔵

🔵

Lacrosse ball on my back and chest trying to get this kink out. I think it’s slowly starting to feel better.
A bit of foam rolling.

🔵

It’s frustrating cause this muscle or bone pain or whatever in my chest is limiting my range of motion. This has happened before but I can’t remember how I fixed it lol. It’s also frustrating cause it doesn’t seem like a single session of this will fix it (of course). Need to stay with it.