28 Before 28: Take a Boxing Class

In my 28th year of life, I’m attempting to do 28 new things. Full list here.

My gloves. They also came in pink, but I’ll always prefer black.

A couple of weeks ago, I broke up with my significant other. It was something I knew had to happen and felt confident that it was the best decision to make. Between making the decision and when I actually got to sit down with him to do it, I had a span of four days to stew it over. In classic type A fashion, I spent a good amount of time researching tips to getting over break-ups, moving on, letting go, emotionally healing.

Did you know that science has shown that what happens in the brain of someone who is going through a break-up is nearly the same thing that goes on in the brain of an addict going through withdrawals?! The brain begins to lack the pleasure-inducing endorphins that it was getting from the companionship. It causes depression, feelings of sluggishness and even physical pain. One way to combat this is with physical exercise. So I found a boxing gym close to me and signed up.

My last couple of weeks have been flooded with work and amazing friends buying me booze and listening to be complain/cry. But I have managed to attend two boxing classes. The first one was with five middle-aged Hispanic ladies. I felt right at home. None of them were exceptionally athletic, and we were all sweating profusely and making ugly faces while doing something like 100 squats. It was 20 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of strength training, then 20 minutes of freestyle one-on-one time with a punching bag. The instructor showed me a couple of basic punches, and I worked on perfecting them. The class was perfect. I left exhausted and sore but with a clear mind and heart.

The second class I went to was me and three dudes. It was the same instructor as before and, and he spent a lot of time focusing on helping me while the guys did their own thing. We did a lot less cardio and strength-training and spent over half an hour with the punching bags. I was happy just bouncing around, jabbing and hooking to my heart’s desire. But the instructor honed in on me and lectured me on self defense. At some point it wasn’t even about boxing anymore as he told me to punch with my nail’s facing my attacker so that I could get his DNA under my nails?!?! Whoah! I was just there for stress release, not to learn how to avoid getting dragged into an unmarked vehicle. I found myself biting my bottom lip to keep from laughing as the scenarios got more intense. I mean, I’m glad I have an idea now of what to do if someone tries to stab me from the side, but I don’t expect that to be happening any time soon. I guess no one does though.