League Play: February 10, 2021
February 10, 2021
My left shoulder felt significantly better tonight after a solid week of daily stretching. I noticed some weakness at times—a symptom of the nerve compression that doesn't seem to be resolving itself—but further stretching seemed to help. Another week, another week of stretching, another few steps in a helpful direction.
When doing push-ups, however, I noticed some back pain. I watched a few videos and concluded that I'm straining my back with bad posture, which means that my "real" push-ups were, in fact, still cheating. (Shut up!) When I fixed that, I had to go back to knee push-ups, but slow, steady, solid ones. I'm up to 14, steadily making my way up to 30. Once I reach 30 knee push-ups with no back strain, I'll try full push-ups and work my way back up. I imagine it'll take about 6-8 weeks of steady progress, but I'll get up to 25 full push-ups for real this time.
I was imprecise, to say the least.
- Triple: 641 (213-178-250)
- Triples: 1.
- Dubious Achievement: 5 strikes for 213 in game 1. I even think there was a double. I know.
- Spares: maybe.
At Mitchell Wxhao's suggestion, I tried a "rounder" and higher pushaway into the arm swing. Think less Geoff Born and more Jennifer Baker/Jim Head. I felt comfortable with it. When I keep my overall approach slow and steady, this round pushaway feels smoother, easier to repeat, and my shoulder feels more relaxed. Sadly, my overall approach was not slow and steady tonight—at least not very often.
I'm now in an annoying dilemma. When I relax my mind and let my body do its thing, my second step becomes noticeably faster and I end up going too quickly through my release. The usual problems occur: turning at the line, falling out of the shot, not much of a follow-through. When I slow down my second step, I find myself much more balanced at the line, with a smoother delivery, but I really, really need to focus on slowing down in order to make that happen. I don't want to rely on a mental cue about mechanics while I'm on the approach, so I need to just repeat this enough times to make it autonomic.
Good news: I know which mechanical thing to practise next.
Well...
- Have you experienced particular problems in turning a mechanical adjustment into an unconscious habit? What did you try?
- How long does it typically take you to go from conscious mechanical change to "having it" in muscle memory?
Tell me!