Why I Would Recommend Martial Arts To Any Leader

I've been practicing Martial Arts in various capacities for nearly 25 years now.

My main style of practice was mainly a form of Tae-Kwon-Do with aspects of Karate, Chinese Martial Arts, Escrima, American Boxing, Tang-Soo-Do, and Hapkido.

I have also formally studied Judo, Aikido, Tai-Chi, and Chanbara.

Informally I have studied many other styles including Wing Chun, Shaolin Styles, White Crane Style, Capoeira, Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, Bagua, Jeet-Kune-Do, and Hung-Gar to name a few.

There have been many benefits from doing this in my life, especially from a Leadership Perspective.

However, I'm not going to focus on the typical reasons you hear like "confidence", even though those are benefits as well.

What I want to focus on are the specific scientific reasons that it is extremely beneficial to becoming a better Leader.

Fight-Or-Flight

One of the major benefits is getting used to Fight-or-Flight states.

In Leadership, you are faced with many moments where you will be in a situation that will send your body into a fight-or-flight mode, whether you like it or not.

By getting used to these states in a safe environment, you get better adjusted to being able to think more clearly when these states inevitably arise.

Also, how we respond in these states has an impact on how easily (or difficult) it is for us to get into Flow states.

Calming Nervous System

Every martial art forces you to use every part of your body.

Throughout your entire body, you have nerve endings that send signals to your brain systems.

The less these are used, the more your nervous system freaks out and you will have a more difficult time handling stress.

However, as your body feels these nerve endings more often, it actually creates a soothing effect throughout your body.

This ends up reducing stress in the long run, making it easier for you to face stress in other situations, such as at work.

Focus

One of the most difficult aspects of getting into Flow is sticking with something long enough to get past the "struggle" phase.

In fact, two of the reasons most people have difficulty getting into Flow states are:

➼ Too Much Stress

➼ Not Enough Focus

The stress gets reduced for both of the previous reasons I mentioned.

However, every martial arts system also has training in Focus.

How to do it, how to maintain it, and how to drive it forward.

This is especially impactful when you combine focus with the fight-or-flight state.

These become exceptional fuel to push into Flow states.

Body Language

Doing martial arts requires you to learn how to read different types of body language.

In order to react to an attacker, your body needs to begin to intuitively understand body language.

Every martial art teaches this, but in doing so your ability to read body language expands beyond the ring.

Your ability to read facial expressions, hand signals, body structure, and more will all improve which helps you understand people better.

This is especially significant to help you understand what your team is feeling at any given moment.

Flow Begets Flow

Above, I have mentioned there are many aspects of martial arts that directly correlate to Flow states.

However, it goes beyond just getting into Flow states during martial arts practice.

One of the rules of Flow is, "Flow begets Flow."

Simply, this means that the more often we experience Flow in any aspect of our life, the easier it becomes for us to experience it in other aspects of our life.

Flow is "autotelic", or better put, it is so powerful to feel that our bodies will seek out the experience for no other reason than to experience it more.

So, by getting yourself into Flow states consistently in one arena, your body will enjoy being in it so much that it will unconsciously seek to get into more Flow states, as often as possible.

This means that over time, you will begin to experience Flow states in other parts of your life, often without trying to.

At work, this can powerfully drive up your personal productivity.

Plus, if you learn how to utilize Flow well, you can also drive your team into Group Flow states as well, which is how top teams achieve success.

Recovery

One final reason that Martial Arts helps to improve Leadership is through Recovery practices.

In every style of martial art, there are practices that are designed to help the body recover from the challenges it has been put under.

However, these practices are not just beneficial to body recovery, but also mind recovery, and nervous system recovery.

Each style may have slightly different methods, but the results are similar.

The Recovery methods end up aiding you after any form of stress you encounter.

Whether it is fighting an opponent in a ring, or getting yelled at by a customer, or needing to handle a challenging employee.

These Recovery practices will help any of these types of situations.