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The Importance of Meditation

I started Strong Kicks (http://strongerkicks.com) to help people develop their kicking skills for martial arts. Part of this, as I continue to flesh out the website, is my own, personal martial arts journey. I used to compete at a number of Tang Soo Do/Taekwondo tournaments a year until I started college and working full-time. Now I want to get back to that. I’ll be 32 this year so I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good as when I was 15-19 and sparring guys invited to the Olympic team tryouts, national champions and state champions every week, but at least I’ll qualify for the old-person division now… 🙂

Anyway, I want to post daily on this blog with my personal journey back into Taekwondo to motivate myself and hopefully motivate others who want to either get back into Taekwondo or get to a higher level in it.

So to the topic of meditation.

You should strive to meditate at least 10 minutes a day.

Why? Meditation has a number of benefits including reducing stress, improving focus and concentration, and there is even evidence that meditation can help your body heal itself and its DNA.

So my goal is to meditate at least 10 minutes each morning after I wake up. I did that this morning and it felt amazing.

How to Meditate

  1. Set a timer on your watch or phone (I recommend starting with 1 minute, then working your way up to 3, then 5 then 10 minutes at a time).
  2. Sit in the lotus position (I prefer to sit with one leg over another instead of them crossed in the middle).
  3. Keep your back, neck and head straight.
  4. Either clasp one hand in the other on your lap or sit in the more well known position with each hand resting forward on your thigh, thumbs touching the tips of your finger(s).
  5. Close your eyes
  6. Focus your closed eyes and mind on an imaginary white dot in the distance, directly in front of you.
  7. Don’t think about anything. Simply breath in deeply into your diaphragm through your nose then exhale through your closed mouth.
  8. Continue until the timer finishes, then exhale and slowly open your eyes and stand up.
  9. Good job! Felt great, didn’t it?

Besides the meditation today, I am starting on my General Preparation Phase (GPP) for fitness for Taekwondo. What does this include?

  • Walking two miles to and then from the gym to strengthen my legs, shins and feet for running and eventually sprits.
  • Lifting (I am using a modified StrongLifts 5×5 program with dips, pull-ups and core work added).
  • Stretching

Traditional Taekwondo coaches will flip out about the weight lifting but as long as the volume is low enough, you stretch and don’t get caught up in bodybuilding, it can be very beneficial and cut down the time necessary to build a strong enough body to withstand and deliver some amazing strikes.

Tomorrow will have swimming (an amazing recovery exercise and stress-free steady state cardio) and regular Taekwondo practice using my StrongKicks program.

Leave a comment below!

Mont

Press Release: Introducing StrongerKicks.com

April 12th, 2019–StrongKicks, a website, announced its launch. The website is designed to improve one’s kicking ability primarily for Olympic-style Taekwondo sparring but any martial artist or fighter who kicks will find it useful. StrongKicks features a complete training program and also instructions on each kick and exercise.

Mont Cessna, the founder of StrongKicks, was inspired to make the website after being out of Taekwondo for 10 years and then not finding any good training programs specifically for Olympic Taekwondo online as he started to get back into it. Realizing that most people are not fortunate enough to learn from an international level sparring coach he decided to make the website and teach the proper Olympic style kicks and training. He started building the website a month ago.

Mont said, “I hope everyone who competes in Taekwondo sparring will find the website useful. It will be a good supplement for competitive Taekwondo players to their regular training in the dojang. It will also document my personal training journey to getting back to a high competitive level.”

While the website is launching not fully complete, it will develop on a daily and weekly basis to be a complete guide for Olympic Taekwondo players.

The StrongKicks program can be viewed on its website—http://strongerkicks.com.

For press inquiries about StrongKicks, please contact Mont Cessna at strongerkicks@gmail.com.