Practicing martial arts is not just about what happens on the mat, but influences how we live our daily life. Progression in one’s practice is about training the mind and body. Meditation is a great way to strengthen your practice.

Some insight into how meditation can strengthen you both on and off the mat from budhadarma.com:

Meditation makes us more self aware, both on and off the meditation cushion. This helps us to recognize negative emotions as they arise, before they catch hold. This has the obvious advantage of not having to spend a lot of energy doing damage control after an outburst of anger, for example, and countless other instances where greed, cunningness, lying, deceptiveness, harsh speech, lust, etc., might have taken control over our actions. If we can go though the day without negativity, we will not be fighting off disturbing thoughts when we go to sit in meditation. Eventually, when negativity is well under control, genuine compassion, generosity, honesty, and other qualities will shine in our actions and this will support a deeper meditation practice.