Today at the gym, I tried out the rowing machine for my cardio. I've been very good at doing around 30 minutes of cardio at the end of my workout. I feel great after doing it, which has lead to me even looking forward to my cardio sessions. However, the movements themselves are still awfully boring. Pedaling, walking, running, climbing up stairs, and whatever it is the elliptical is doing are all mind-numbing reptitive movements. Of course, I do watch episodes of Frieren on my phone and sports on the gym tv, but I would still appreciate a little more zest. I mentioned this in conversation last shift, and my coworker advised me to try out the rowing machine. I did today, and yea I think this is the one. I think the fun stems from how technical the movement is. Form is extremely important when it comes to getting a good workout on the rowing machine, and thanks to all the different parts of the movement, getting the form down is no small feat. I did some research when I came home after my session and found a ton of nice resources, the best of which being this video. Apparently, each oar stroke consists of 2 parts: the drive and the recovery. The drive starts in the catch position, where you hold the oar handle out with your knees bent and your body slightly forwards. You push off with your legs, hinge at the hips to move your body slightly back, and pull with your arms to your ribs. The recovery consists of these movements in the opposite order to end up in the catch once again. It's all very involved and requires a fair amount of coordination, which I find very fun! My brain loves these sorts of things where there are always small aspects to focus on and improve. I honestly can't wait to try the rowing machine again.
I also want to talk a little about PokemonTCGP. They recently released a ranked mode, and I surprised myself by having a ton of fun with it. I get very easily addicted to ranked gamemodes. I usually play nonstop for days at a time with the rising elo points setting my dopamine receptors to overdrive before randomly burning out. It happens to me more than I'd like to admit. In my friend's discord server, I'll be in there 24/7 @ing everyone and grinding Apex Legends or Valorant ranked for about 2 weeks before going back to never touching the games. I don't know why I'm like this. This time stood out to me because I didn't feel the urge to do that. I played a few games, and my brain said "Hey, you could just keep playing a few every day like this and slowly rank up," like it was some crazy realization. I was struck by how funny it is that I've never had this thought before. I've changed as a person. I'm using the Misty/Articuno deck. My experience with ranked modes in online TCGs taught me that with a good enough deck and good enough winrate, it's all really just a numbers game. Misty/Articuno satisfies this criteria. This deck essentially lives and dies by the Misty coin fips. All card games essentially boil down to some coin flips: are you going to draw the cards you need or not? In this way Misty/Articuno almost feels romantic in its expression of the genre. A refined deck for a TCG purist. Plus, I've always been an aggro player.