“There are no off days” overview
As is obvious, I've been very lazy about getting writing done lately. I reached a point where I was constantly traveling and concentrating on a number of obligations like playing poker, my social life, the WPT, and a few new things. Still, I told myself that come March 7th I was going to begin a project of spring season workaholism much as I did last year where my combined goals are to get myself to single digit body fat and to grind a mixture of studying and playing poker over a huge volume leading up to the WSOP.
Today was my last day of freedom. I ate heavily, drank well after my session finished, and began visualizing what I would have to get done tomorrow to kick things off. I've decided to call the project "There are no off days" because of the scheduling of everything. My intention is this:
Sunday through Friday I'll play poker around 8-12 hours a day. I've lined up my personal training at noon every day so I'll be able to get a session started by about 2pm every day, sometimes even earlier. I intend to register through around 8:30pm every night and have about 6 hours of registration most days. Naturally, I'm willing to be flexible about moving the off day around based on what comes up professionally and socially, and if something enormously important unexpectedly materializes I can give myself more days off, but I will always be passing up casual invites in favor of work during this period. When I attend a live poker tournament I do not intend to make myself play any online poker except a Sunday where I'm at the venue but don't have to play or have responsibilities. I'm giving myself one day a week entirely off from poker and won't force myself to go near it, but if I decide to grind because I'm in a good flow and enjoy it then I'll just go to seven day weeks. I've spoken to a number of other players, told them about my project, and lined up HH review swaps so I can constantly be thinking about how to change and evolve my game.
I've hired a trainer at the gym across the street and assigned him the task of getting me to 8% body fat. I've purchased 60 one hour sessions in advance and we've lined it up so we work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. The house hired a chef and I've requested that all she cook me is chicken, broccoli, and some brown rice. I'll be starting the morning with a bowl of plain oatmeal and a low calorie protein shake. I'll be aiming to hit around 2200 calories a day and based on Shon's advice may have to reduce that at some point. I've given myself between March 7th and May 20th to get it done. Besides the work outs I'm going to go for 30-40 minutes of jogging on an empty stomach every morning except for the days I don't wake up earlier enough to get it in before the work out with Shon. In many of those cases I'll put in a session of cardio or HIIT work at some point in the evening after my session. I'll be arranging tennis lessons for Thursday and Friday every week for perhaps a couple hours around 11am or noon so I can use that period to burn calories and build myself into a better tennis player leading up to the summer.
And just like last year, I intend to force myself to write an update every day. Even if I have zero time and I only throw up two sentences about not breaking the diet and how poker went that's fine, but I'm going to put an emphasis on getting it done again. I'm also going to make an effort to put more poker theory/analysis content in the blog since that will be my main focus over the coming months.
My live poker schedule during this period looks like:
March 13-18 Bay 101 Shooting Star San Jose, California
March 19-23 Wynn Poker Classic Las Vegas, Nevada
April 9-13 Hollywood Poker Open Lawrenceburg, Indiana
April 27-May 2 Seminole Hard Rock Showdown Hollywood, Florida
May 14-20 WPT World Championship Las Vegas
I might edit out the Florida trip if I'm getting killed online but will probably make it happen. Any day I have to play a live poker tournament I won't expect myself to get more than one work out in.
After all of this it's WSOP time, so the next four months are pretty much handled. I feel like the attempt at something similar last year has me better prepared for the attempt this time around, so let's do this thing. Also, I've launched a formal and professional website at www.tonydunstpokerplayer.com. I'll be putting the updates there too, as well as anything else I feel like writing during this period.