the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

do you have a morning routine?

an evening routine? that helps your brain or productivity?

for example, get one thing done before checking your smartphone in the morning. do some form. or some pushups.

or do you have a routine you think you should not have? like read a bunch of rsf on a smartphone before going to sleep, haha.

For productivity habits, check out Me We Do Be by Randall Bell.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsg3m_roYFI


A fun book for brain stuff is Brain Rules by John Medina.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI

There's the tap test where one taps a pencil on a piece of paper as fast as one can for 10 seconds than multiply that number of taps by 6. This gauges how one's nervous system is doing and is a good indicator of how hard one should train that day. One can also do one rep of a difficult exercise to see how the body feels. An example would be one one-arm one-leg pushup and a one-leg squat (pistol squat) on each arm and leg and then give oneself a 1-10 rating on how it went. 8-10 train hard, 4-7 medium effort, 1-3 take the day off.

For nighttime, Systema breathing. Lie in bed and breathe from the soles of your feet to the top of your head and then reverse it. Vasiliev's Let Every Breath goes into detail about this type of breath work.

oh never heard of the tap test, that's cool.

at night, I tend to do some qigong lying in bed before I sleep. usually is pretty good.

the tip I was watching (via a screen) was to try to not be on your smartphone before bed, and right after waking, which is pretty hard to do these days.

Tap test is excellent as a diagnostic. People I've talked to indicate that it is an almost perfect predictor of when their health is about to take a hit.

As for me, 30 min of breath retention in the morning followed by 10-15 min of wire beater exercises. Evening, 2x per week self acupuncture. I'm out like a light after that.

For the brain, I spend the time before sleep studying languages. I agree with the idea that learning new skills keeps the brain active. But, a lot of the results are just a crap shoot.

have my morning and evening/night routines(excercises) but there can be sight differences from day to day both times the pace is slow and even, in morning to get the body going, in late evening wind down. but now im more exited after visiting my teachers in dalian and had my exersises corrected and also learned some short staff which mean more vigorous mornings and nights other "must" routines are morning coffee and evening chamomile tea, for the same reason as get going and wind down

I came across this last week, but haven't tried it yet.

Perform this five minute brain warm-up each morning before getting out of bed.

Count backwards from 100. Speed is key. Don’t stop if you skip a number.

Find a noun that fits each letter of the alphabet.

Don’t just think of an object. Imagine the colors and shapes and sizes of the noun. This will activate your right brain (colors, images, shapes, sizes) and left brain (verbal, think of a word) simultaneously. This “brain crosstalk” will improve your overall cognitive performance.
*
a – apple
*
b – boy
*
c – cronut
*
d – etc.


Create a numbered list of female names, 1-10.
*
1 – Lisa
*
2 – Tina
*
3 – Sherry
*
4 – etc.


Create a numbered list of male names, 1-10.
*
1 – Edward
*
2 – Tom
*
3 – Bob
*
4 – etc.


Close your eyes and take 10 deep meditative breaths.

As you breath deeply, focus on oxygenating your brain. You should feel the blood vessels and capillaries surrounding your brain start to expand.

Open your eyes and start your day.

Why does this brain warm-up work?

The brain warm-up creates neurological connections in your brain by getting all hemispheres of your brain “talking” to one another. It improves your working memory because you have to keep track of where you are in any given exercise. “Okay, I said d-door, so that means I need a word for e.” It teaches you to think fast. It stretches your vocabulary.

You learn how to get inside your head. To perform this brain warm-up, you are talking to yourself (finding words) and watching a movie (visualizing the objects). It teaches you how to focus, as you can’t play with your smart phone while performing this exercise.

My morning routine consists of an hour drinking coffee, watching the news, reading a page from The Daily Stoic and playing with my phone; an hour of taijiquan practice; shower, walk the dogs, then go to work.

wow that is a long routine.

and the 5 minute one is pretty hard.