4 Reasons Meditation Will Make You a Better Fighter

I found an amazingly insightful article on Huffington Post today:


How Meditation Affects the Gray Matter of the Brain


This article, written by David R. Hamilton PhD, describes many ways in which meditation affects the brain.

Now, most of us who have been practicing meditation and meditative exercises (like Qigong) have known for a while that meditation is beneficial for you. Hamilton really drives this point home and cites several important studies.


Hamilton lists several benefits of meditation and all of them can help make us better fighters:


1. Improved nervous system function – This means stronger muscular contractions, quicker muscular contractions (specifically when going from relaxed to tense and back again), and better coordinated muscular contractions.


2. Improved Blood Flow – More blood flow means more nutrients to the working muscles. This means better performance and quicker recovery.


3. Increased Ability to Focus – This means quicker reaction times and the ability to ignore distractions (and self-doubt).


4. Protection Against Aging – Now this may not immediately seem as though it can make you a better fighter. But because meditation slows (or halts) the mental aging process you’ll be able to hold onto those quick reflexes into old age. This makes you less likely to become a victim later in life (Senior Violence).

Again, a lot of us have known that meditation was beneficial for us for quite some time. It’s nice to have this knowledge made more mainstream.



Train Hard,

Josh Skinner (donjitsu2)


Basic Internal Training (includes a section on basic meditation for martial artists)