What does boxing teach you
I was a boxer for 12 years.
As an amateur, I earned a state Golden Glove Title, a National P.A.L. title, and a peak rating of #4 in the nation. As a professional boxer, I was signed to Roc Nation Sports and went 13-1-1.
Here are some boxing lessons from the boxing gym that you can also use in your personal life.
Pain is just a feeling
Everything in boxing hurts.
The training, the fighting, even good defense. Discomfort doesn’t mean anything. In fact, you should worry if you don’t feel anything. Rarely, does pain come before the knockout punch. You just suddenly find yourself on the canvas wondering what happened.
Hurting is a sign that you’re still in the game
Read this article to learn how to push through the pain:
The punch you don’t see is the one that knocks you out
As long as you can keep your mind alert enough to see what’s coming, there is little chance it will overwhelm you. But the moment something sneaks past you, it’s going to do more damage because you aren’t ready.
When something slips past your defense, it doesn’t matter your level of strength & conditioning or your cardio level. The fight will be over.
Life is like this as well. It’s always the thing you don’t expect and don’t see coming that will put you down the hardest.
Don’t blink
Normies flinch when a threat comes their way.
A fighter will be destroyed by feints if he reacts to everything. There is no advantage to flinching. Either it’s a distraction to set you up for something worse OR it’s the real thing and by not biting, you’re ready.
There is nothing to fear in the fight but losing control of your mind. As long as you have that, then you have a great chance of surviving and even winning.
Read this article on how boxing teaches you how to handle fear:
How to overcome fear: 7 Lessons from boxing
Make ‘em miss close
Make your opponent miss by as little as possible.
If they miss you by too much, you won’t be in a position to capitalize.
You can’t flinch. You can’t freak out. You must be patient, brave, and relaxed when you’re under fire. It’s the only way to capitalize.
Read this article on how to stay calm:
Fear is useful
When you’re afraid, it means you take the threat seriously.
It’s pointless to try and stop being nervous. Instead, recognize it as a call to harness all of your faculties on the task at hand. Fear should invigorate you. Like pain, worry when you don’t feel it.
Fear lets you know that you’re alive. It lets you know that there is something worth fighting for that you must prepare for.
Talent is real
But it’s useless without heart & discipline
You need discipline to train and develop your talent. You need heart to fight If you lack discipline, you won’t survive the training If you lack talent, you won’t survive the fight If you lack heart, you’re useless.
Read this article to see how important hard work, even if you have talent:
Beauty is boredom
You won’t become good at something until you’re practicing it to boredom–and then keep practicing. No one becomes talented if they only practice when motivated or excited–because most practice is boring.
This is a feature to weed people out. Not a bug.
Read this article to learn how to focus, even if you’re bored:
Control your emotions
This doesn’t mean being emotionless. It means that you do things with your emotions as the passenger; not the driver.
You can’t give in to your feelings, because they will betray the future you mentally planned for and physically trained to attain.
No one likes getting hit
But you won’t survive if you don’t learn how to roll with the punches and tolerate pain.
You need to land punches to win, but it’s more important to be able to take a punch than to give one.
There are only two ways to get anything worthwhile
The hard way and the really hard way. Once you accept that, then you can get to work putting in the painful, miserable work.
It’s always gonna suck because it’s not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to develop you.
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