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Martial arts has a variety of benefits that extend outside of the physical fitness and self defense.

Bullying is discussed in regards to both the school system and in the dojo.All kids need different things to thrive. “The same boiling water that softens the potato, hardens the egg”

12:00 –How martial arts helps to develop the understanding of boundaries.Boundaries around discipline. Discipline is how you get good at anything. Sticking it out and allowing yourself the time and space to grow into whatever role in question.

We get bored with the small daily mundane things that compound into eventually meeting your goals. We’re told to do this one small thing 800 times and we don’t feel as though we’re getting anything out of it and then one day something clicks and you realize you’ve leveled up into something different.

This translates across our lives, just as the martial artist has to do the same kick 3,000x to master it, so do we have to show up to all categories of our lives that many times to truly get what we want out of it.

A 1% change every day is a 365% change in a year. “More if you compound that interest.” In the beginning it looks like you’re not evening moving. Most often, we notice benefits in hindsight of what we’ve been doing.

17:45 –Yoga and martial arts have a lot of cross factors. They both teach us lessons we can take out of the studio. For example, if you can allow yourself to sit in a stretch or pose you hate for several minutes, or do 300 kicks in a row, it makes other things in life easier to handle. Suddenly, waiting in lines hurts less. Having patience at work or in traffic is easier.

We tend to over estimate what we can do in a year and under estimate what we can do in 5, 10, 20 years. The average timeframe for a successful anything is 10 years.

Martial arts gives us a means to get in touch with ourselves and our limits. It allows us to learn our boundaries, our bodies and what we’re capable of while giving us an outlet for anger and aggression.

25:45 –

Movement and wrestling is instinctual and we’re taught to suppress it in schools as children. We mask this urge with food, video games or other things until we become adults who then don’t know how to get back in touch with it.

Just as animal cubs wrestle to build bonds, explore their own limits and establish an understanding of who one another is, we also need these tools.

Physical movement and exercise helps our mental health by getting us out of our own heads and into our bodies. Most of the problems we have in our lives are created in our own heads and not even real.

30:50 –Healthy competition helps you to push yourself to the next level of growth. There is definitely competition out there that is unhealthy and gets taken too far.

How you do anything is how you do everything. There are no shortcuts. You have to work for what you want. Often we spend too much time looking for shortcuts where there are none when we could have spent that time making progress.

You can’t get clean enough to never have to take a shower ever again. There’s no meal you can make to never have to eat again. Some things just have to be done over and over.

Some people torture themselves in a cold shower for the sake of the benefits. Others torture themselves with learning to cook for the sake of the benefits. You have to decide what you want, what benefits you’re looking for and start. There’s probably going to be a certain amount of torture to it.

36:15 –There’s a huge overlap with people who are into martial arts having their own business. It teaches you the discipline you need to do the things that aren’t fun or comfortable that get you the results in the end.

There are no secrets. There’s really only 10-20 basics to anything you want to do once you get in there and figure it out. Mastering those basics is all you have to do to succeed. There’s always a deeper level to the basics you think you already understand.

You have to figure out where your lane is and what seemingly mundane and boring tasks you’re happy to do every single day to build your own success in what it is you want to do/have/be.

You may have to try a few martial arts forms out before you find the one that’s for you. Tailor it to fit you, your body and your schedule. It is an art form which means it’s malleable.
About Our Guest:
Jeremy Lesniak is a lifelong martial artist, with black belts in karate, taekwondo, and Superfoot Kickboxing. Having started very young, his 40+ years of training includes schools all over New England, in a variety of styles. He is also the author of several martial art books as well as the founder of the martial arts lifestyle brand Whistlekick. Through his work with Whistlekick over the past decade, he has taught seminars all over the US, connecting with martial artists of all styles, both in-person and as host of the top-rated podcast, Martial Arts Radio.

• whistlekick.com
• whistlekickmartialartsradio.com