Jabs Not Journals: Why Boxing is the Only Self-Development Tool You Need
Ditch the ice baths and lace up the gloves.
If you’ve started (or re-started) your path to self-improvement, you’ve likely come across the same list of tips and tricks to help you change your life.
JournalBullshitMeditateBullshitTherapyBullshitIce BathsBullshit
Not that these actions in it of themselves are bullshit, but crossing off an arbitrary list of tricks and hacks because your favorite influencer said so isn’t how you develop as a human.
It’s not the one trick pony it’s claimed to be and won’t improve your situation on its own.
But do you know what the worst thing about this list is?
It’s sterile.
Lifeless.
It’s a checklist of pseudo-achievements that trick you into feeling ‘accomplished’ when you are no closer to the goal. Changing your life is a combination of a stimulating system-shock to jolt yourself into the immediacy of life, and a committed daily discipline to ensure the work gets accomplished. Excitement meets monotony.
Sounds a little like boxing to me.
At least in my experiences, I can credit the majority of my improvement to starting boxing my senior year of college. Drinking heavily, broke as a joke, and well outta shape, I was ashamed of myself. Disenchanted with a lifestyle of fun defined by binge drinking and racing to the finish line of an average life.
So, I decided to start doing something that would force myself into change. Something so shocking, invigorating, potentially deadly, and inspiring enough to force me to level up in all areas of life.
Enter, boxing.
Here’s why the Sweet Science is the ideal vehicle to improving your life:
The Physical
Everything and I mean EVERYTHING trickles down from your physical health. Mental health, business acumen, social skills, spiritual fulfillment is all impacted directly by your level of fitness and health.
Boxing is an ultra-effective and efficient workout that utilizes your entire body for the duration of the rounds. I don’t need to explain how it burns fat, builds athleticism, improves your heart, or any of the tangible health benefits. Beyond the obvious, the best effect that training boxing brings is what it teaches you about the human body.
Boxing demands a holistic approach to health in order to successfully compete or at least train at a high level. You quickly learn:
How to eat for weight loss, and fuel for performance
How to build strength and endurance via lifting and running
How to recover from the grueling sessions
You really learn how the body works. The more you want to improve, the more you have to dial in by demand. It turns learning about health and wellness into a necessity and an education, rather than an option or burden.
It’s not that you just ‘get healthy’ but that it is built through a craft that taps into your primal urge to fight. Practicing controlled and directed aggression fine-tunes your mindset to be more than a passive human.
It puts you directly into the driver’s seat of life.
Let’s dive deeper into that element…
The Mental
When you have a strong body, you have a strong mind.
Boxing amplifies this to the extreme. It’s a combat sport that by design is teaching you how to fight another human with maximum efficiency and destruction. This isn’t just getting stronger, faster, leaner, etc.
This is training to fight.
Fun stuff.
Even if you never compete, punch someone, or get punched by someone, the mental acuity to train and develop through boxing will test you:
You’ll get it wrong. A lot.
It can take years to feel competent.
Physical and mental pain is a guarantee.
Boxing coaches are extremely tough and critical by nature.
As much as the bullets above may keep people on the fence to starting, it’s the biggest reason to start. Daily practices that take us out of our comfort zone and test us with challenges to overcome is what builds mental resilience. No getting around it.
This goes beyond the “learn how to take a punch” and “get knocked down, get back up” cliches.
You quite literally gain a new perspective to life. Don’t be shocked if you start to walk differently. Your ability to express yourself with a fundamental foundation of combat skills opens up abilities within your mind that we all crave:
The ability to not give a fuck.
The ability to feel comfortable in your own skin.
The ability to handle stress and opposition.
In a society that is trying to soften you at every turn, having the ability to simulate hand-to-hand combat and stimulate your nervous system to a new way of thinking will build a mentality to handle anything that comes your way.
The Strategic
Boxing is a thinking man’s game.
It’s often compared to chess. You set traps, analyze each move your opponent makes, calculate your way to victory, all while limited by a ruleset. The only difference is the punches.
However, the comparisons prove a valuable lesson in the study of boxing in how it applies to your self-improvement. Learning how to compete against obstacles and tackle challenges brings out a valuable characteristic within:
Your inner strategist.
You become the master & commander of your life. It becomes easier to make choices and design routines which set you up for success. You begin to take immediate action and accountability for yourself. The physical and mental demands are all calculated around your life, each decision leads you closer or farther away from your goal.
It’s easier to build this creative discipline around an activity you enjoy.
From there, you take that same identity and apply it to the other areas of improvement you’re going after…
You learn how to plan, how to control, how to negotiate.
You begin to understand human psychology, what makes people tick.
You balance risk and reward daily.
…and so much more.
Training boxing gives you an education that touches all areas of your life. As long as you’re paying attention…
The Spiritual
The biggest surprise I’ve found in all my years of boxing is how much training for violence brought me peace.
One of the biggest reasons people start boxing is to deal with stress. Anger and anxiety gets bundled up within ourselves, heightened by today’s outrage culture and system overload of information at the touch of our fingertips.
That stuff’s gotta go somewhere. It needs direction.
Boxing is the outlet for many in this category. Hitting the bag is cheaper than therapy and sparring is the greatest antidepressant there is. But if you aren’t really training to learn and build your boxing to its best, you miss half the equation.
The slow and steady building of technique engages the explosive & meditative benefits that boxing can bring to your inner being.
No longer are you the rage-filled monster who looses their cool too quickly, or the wimp who’s scared to talk to strangers.
Yin and yang. Balanced.
The Warrior archetype is an identity that permeates all walks of life.
The Conclusion
Usually quotes start these kinds of posts off, but I figured I’d wrap it up for this:
“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
―Thucydides
Fighting goes beyond X vs. Y.
It’s more than a competitive match to see who’s the toughest, strongest, smartest, and greatest. Boxing requires you to change your life to study and train to the max.
It’s quite literally a vehicle to elevate your life and programming to its fullest capabilities if you choose to see it that way. One more quote to hammer this point home:
“If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.”
Training with all 4 of the pillars in mind (Physical, Mental, Strategic, Spiritual) will enhance your experience.
You’ll begin to feel aligned with purpose and direction. You’ll be able to handle the physical burdens life throws your way. You’ll be able to mentally withstand the biggest stresses. You’ll be able to plan and execute your strategy to success. You’ll immerse your spiritual self with the warrior archetype.
You’ll see the way.
See you in the ring.