Physical aspects of poker

[AJ]

I was looking at my poker record for the past six months, in overall cash terms I've run only slightly ahead of break even . But it shows two huge upswings, followed by two gradual down swings. Variance ? sure. But here's the strange bit, the up swings match exactly the two weeks I've taken off work. Do I play much better poker when I've not had to deal with the stress of a hard day at work ? I guess the point of this thread is, are there phyiscal aspects to poker that I need to consider more ? I've read about people that use yoga and meditation to improve their game, does anyone here do this ? Do i simply have more bandwidth for poker when I'm not working ? Any thoughts?

[Nade]

Re: Physical aspects of poker Many people say to keep your mind fit you need to keep your body fit which makes sense. A good example which counters this theory is greg raymer - poker god but hardly an athlete ;) I think though that you've got to be in the right mental state to play the game well, how each person gets into this state is each to their own but when i was into the focus games i genuinely used to do some amateur meditation pre game as i know my game isn't the strongest so needed to get totally focussed on my strategy and it paid off a lot. I don't do it for cash games though as there's no pressure to play hands like in tournaments so you can just chill anyway.