In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, many attorneys have vowed to become more physically active. Attorney-authors Ryan Danz and Keith Robert Lee both say that martial arts training is particularly beneficial to lawyers, and they explain to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles exactly why.
In Danz’s book, Jiu Jitsu Jurisprudence, he discusses how learning Brazilian jiujitsu not only had benefits for his body but taught him mental techniques he is able to use in his practice of law. Lee, author The Marble and the Sculptor, agrees. “In looking at it from the outside, someone who’s really never done martial arts, it probably looks to be primarily a physical activity,” Lee says. “I think anyone who’s done martial arts for any significant amount of time will tell you it’s equally a mental activity.”
In addition to providing stress release, Danz and Lee both concur that one of the benefits to be gained from martial arts is a certain humbling of one’s ego. “It’s important to get your ego checked and check yourself, and to know that you’re not always the best at everything,” Lee says. “It kind of brings you down and it humbles you, and makes you kind of look at things differently, and I think that’s a really valuable thing that can come from training in martial arts.”
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