Learn Boxing

I was about 10 years old when I decided to learn boxing. To say that my parents were surprised would be the understatement of the year! They had both been trying to encourage me to get more exercise for the last couple years, but I had had no interest in it. I was a bookish kid, and I preferred to stay indoors and read rather than going outside and playing with my friends. I had friends, but they were like me. We were all intellectual, shy, and not physically active. My parents couldn’t for the life of them figure out why I wanted to learn to box.

Part of it was just my natural impulsivity. In some ways, it was as simple as one night deciding that I wanted to learn how to box. Of course, there were more complex motives lying beneath my desire to learn boxing. One of them was the fact that I was a little bit sick of being picked on at school. One kid in particular would always challenge me to fight. He was smaller than me, but much more vicious. I knew that if I could learn boxing, I could take him in a match. That way, I would have more respect at school.

I’m sure that my parents suspected that this was part of my motivation for learning boxing, but nonetheless they supported me. They even bought me a boxing punching bag and gave me Junior boxing lessons. Truth be told, the desire to learn Boxing wasn’t just about defending myself and my honor. I wanted to learn boxing because I wanted to be in shape. I wanted to look tough. I wanted people to look at me and understand that I was an unbeatable force.

Most of all, I wanted to learn something that no one else did. A lot of people in my school decided to learn martial arts – it was one of the most popular activities. Nonetheless, few of them ever tried to learn boxing. It had fallen out of favor. It was too brutal, too inelegant, and it required much more training. You could learn martial arts by training an hour or two every week, but if you wanted to learn boxing, you had to be in the gym at least three or four times each week. To me, boxing seemed like a great American sport. It turned out to be a lot of fun too!