I always intend to do a lot of taekwondo practice during the summer.
I am generally quite successful with my patterns but I find it hard to practice drills and other things without someone to help me keep moving.
Thanks to some reading about ADHD and exercise, I have figured out that I need two things to stick with an exercise program – accountability and guidance.
My accountability will come in different forms including posting here and using my Fitbit.
My guidance is going to come from YouTube videos. I have always liked doing exercise videos but I have gotten out of the habit and I have been struggling to work from paper lists recently – with varying success.
This week I’m doing a seven day routine about learning to kick higher.
And I’m going to be reporting in briefly every day on how I’m doing.
Right now, after a warm up, I can comfortably side kick to about waist height. My front kicks can go considerably higher but right now I’m working on my side kicks.
The program I’m following was suggested to me by my friend and training partner, Kevin.
The instructor (4th degree black belt Samery Moras) teaches in a different type of TKD than I train in but the types of kicks are the same so it holds up.
You can see the video series here.
In fact, we do a lot of these drills in class already but doing them with a video when I am at home lets me take the decisions out of the process and focus on the exercises themselves. (That increases my fun level by about 80%)
Anyway, here’s my report from Day 1:
I’m beat out but in a good way. See?
The first video is only 11 minutes long but you have to pause it to do repeats on some drills.
It’s hard, really hard, but it feels purposeful. I can see how this effort can pay off. This is huge for me since one of my ADHD challenges is that I have trouble seeing how small efforts will add up to bigger successes.
The routine itself involves 4 stretches and 4 drills, most of which I had done before. They were all really challenging but I pushed myself and it was worth it.
Most of my progress this week will be measured qualitatively – in how things feel to me – but two of the exercises will give me more quantitative measurements.
I’m not getting into specific measurements but there should be a visible difference over the 7 days in these two exercises:
Wall Splits
My wall splits were not very split-like, it was more of a wall V. Progress in this exercise will be clear because my legs will get closer to the floor. (I hope!)
Figure 8 Kicks
These were very challenging – after a low kick, I had to draw a figure 8 in the air with my toes. My 8s were not very large – I expect those loops to increase in size as the week goes on.
See you tomorrow for Day 2!
KIYA!
