The Best Physical Exercise To Improve Your Mental Performance
By knowing how to use your body in many different movements you’ll also sharpen your mental ability
The fastest field game in the world will improve your mental performance.
But it won’t earn you money.
Because even though it’s a great game that takes so many attributes to play, it’s not a well-known one.
Hurling is an Irish game that’s thousands of years old. As it demands so much basic skill to compete in the game concentration levels need to be extremely high to survive in the fifteen versus fifteen-player match.
Played on an outdoor field with two goalkeepers, six defenders, and six forwards, with the two other players battling it out in the middle of the field the ball which weighs about half the weight and the same size of a baseball flies about the field hurled by wooden sticks that players swing at their leisure.
And your brain must react to all of that.
It has to control the movement of your body which must be fast and agile. Split seconds can change the game in an instant. With single points attained by pucking the ball over a goal’s crossbar and a goal being awarded once the sliotar ball goes between the two uprights of the goalposts (which scores three points) and beyond the goalkeeper yet under the crossbar, the teamwork to defend is fierce.
Physical shouldering is allowed by the rules and carrying the ball can happen on the stick but defenders can stop others with stick tackles such as flicking the ball away, hooking another player’s swing, and blocking their puck also.
Yet the ball moves at over 100 miles per hour.
Scores in one goal can be quickly wiped out as the ball reaches the other side of the pitch and depending on the alertness of the attacking players the game can be turned on its head in an instant.
But it’s not only the speed of the game that sharpens your brain.
It’s the fact that your upper and lower body have to move in unison at times and in other ways need to do different things from another to succeed in winning a tackle. Decision-making happens without too much thought as even a bounce of a ball can dictate the flow of the game.
Mental acuity must be at its finest otherwise the opposition takes the game over and big scores can be gotten in a couple of minutes.
However, hurling is not the only exercise that can improve mental performance as there are other ones that test it to its limits.
And life itself maybe be considered the biggest game of all with relationships, money, careers, health, and happiness all challenging your performance in a never-ending symphony that challenges you every day.
Table tennis too can sharpen our brains and help us with other areas of our life.
Played on a small table with two players opposite one another and only a low net of a few inches separating both competitors, hand paddles not much broader than the palm of your hand propel the ball over the net. As the ball is a hollow plastic one that’s not much bigger than a golf ball it whizzes over the net at breakneck speed.
This means that our brain’s thoughts must shoot quicker than the ball and full focus is required as points are scored in seconds.
Similar to the Irish sport of hurling it demands that the upper and lower bodies are required to work in harmony and the movements are dictated by the opposing player’s actions.
Other games such as squash and racquetball are also great contenders to help with mental performance. Played in small courts where individual players strike rubber balls against a wall all four walls act in opposition to one another and demand that the players must have 360-degree awareness of what’s happening next. And their bodies need to be speedy and nimble to react also.
All of these games involve some form of stick, batt, or racquet. They demand that you move your body in many different ways. And those movements can’t be orchestrated but instead must be reactive to the dictation of the ball.
You don’t have too much time to think too deeply.
Even between points you only have time to get your breath back before the ball is coming towards you again and you must take your chances and play it as best you can.
But there’s a lot of training, practice, and preparation behind these games. For one, you need to eat properly otherwise you won’t be able to move at speed for so long. Your mind needs to be settled so that you can give yourself a chance to concentrate for longer periods in the game and neurologically you must have good brain fitness otherwise you won’t survive for very long at all.
And that’s the beauty of these games.
They demand that you sculpt your life around them so that you are ready to compete on game day. That means that you will be sharp in other areas of your life too and you`ll feel that you`ve lots of time to make big decisions and organize your thoughts.
Because although life is tough, it doesn’t have a ball bobbling about all the time so you may as well enjoy it for the ride that it is.
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