I tried boxing at 46. Could it quiet my busy brain?

When my gym removed the Body Combat class I’d loved for years, a friend suggested proper boxing. I pictured Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. Nobody mentioned the skipping, the trampoline-like ring or my pelvic floor.

I started boxing because I was cross, which seems as good a reason as any to put on a pair of gloves.

I’d been going to Les Mills Body Combat for years when my gym decided to remove it from the timetable. I loved that class. It wasn’t simply exercise, it was part of my routine, and I felt as though somebody had taken away a valuable bit of my week. I’d been whingeing about it to a friend when she suggested an alternative.

Why didn’t I try proper boxing? Proper boxing. Now there was an idea.

In my head, I was already Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. Admittedly, a 46-year-old version from Newcastle with absolutely no intention of being punched in the face, but there was no need to trouble my daydream with minor details.

So I went to TKO Boxing Gym in Kenton, Newcastle.

Could proper boxing replace the workout I loved, and what would it do to my busy brain?

I wanted to know what would happen if I swapped choreographed punches for the real thing, and whether boxing could give my brain something demanding enough to stop everything else barging in.

THE EXPERIMENT

I remember walking up the stairs at TKO and wondering what I’d signed myself up for. I was horribly self-conscious.

I’d spent years doing Body Combat, so punching and kicking weren’t alien to me. But there is a considerable difference between throwing choreographed punches into thin air in a familiar exercise studio and walking into a proper boxing gym.

It was noisy. There was grunting. Gloves thudded against bags and pads.

There were serious boxers training alongside people who were there for fitness. Men, women, younger people. And me. At 46, I felt as though everybody must be watching me. They weren’t. They were far more interested in their own training and opponents than the blonde woman hovering nervously at the edge of proceedings. Knowing that didn’t immediately make me less self-conscious. But I’d made it upstairs.

Midlife fitness is not always glamorous

We talk quite rightly about encouraging women in midlife to exercise, lift weights and try new sports. But the reality of women’s fitness doesn’t always resemble the photographs accompanying the advice. Sometimes it is considerably less glamorous.

Sometimes you’re thinking: I can finish this round, but I may need the loo first.

THE SURPRISE

More importantly, I began noticing the things I could do.

I had power, endurance and for once, I could remember combinations when I concentrated. I could hit the bag hard. Even when I was knackered, I could keep going. I’d walked upstairs worrying that everybody else belonged in that gym more than I did. My body gradually started proving me wrong.

THE DISCOVERY

This was the part I hadn’t expected. Boxing takes concentration. Real concentration.

You need to know where your hands are, what your feet are doing, which combination you’re supposed to be throwing and what the person in front of you is doing.

Jab.

Cross.

Hook.

Move.

Watch.

Listen.

Again.

If your attention wanders too far when you’re working with another person, there is the rather compelling possibility that somebody might hit you. That concentrates the mind. I knew boxing could command my attention in a way many other things couldn’t. Looking back, that fascinates me.

I’d always known my thoughts could wander, but boxing showed me the other extreme. If something was physical, exciting, new and demanding enough, I could concentrate incredibly intensely. For that hour, the rest of the world had very little chance of getting in.

I stopped worrying quite so much about whether I belonged

Boxing was physically hard. I sweated and ached, and it challenged my coordination in ways my familiar exercise routine didn’t. It made me feel powerful because I was learning to make my body do something it hadn’t done before.

The gym changed too, or at least my perception of it did. The serious boxers were still there. The bags still thudded. People still grunted. But the place that had seemed intimidating when I first walked upstairs gradually became somewhere I knew.

We tend to imagine confidence is something we need before we walk through the door, but often it comes afterwards. You walk in feeling uncomfortable, you do the thing and then you come back.

What I learned from boxing

Did boxing change my life?

No.

Boxing didn’t turn me into a boxer. I didn’t float like a butterfly or sting like a bee, and Hollywood has yet to call about the Newcastle remake of Million Dollar Baby.

But it did change something.

It showed me how intensely I could focus when something captured enough of my physical and mental energy. It showed me that excitement and novelty mattered to me. It also reminded me that being a beginner at 46 wasn’t embarrassing. It was exciting.

Brilliant for focus, confidence and hitting whatever annoyed me that week. One star deducted for the skipping. My pelvic floor really didn’t like it.

Confidence doesn’t always arrive before you do. Sometimes you have to get upstairs first.

Join the conversation

What have you tried in midlife that didn’t change your life, but did change something about the way you saw yourself?