My Boxing Experience

by Eena Shrestha

25 November 2017

Boxing is an amazing sport. We learn it at school for self-protection. I started as someone who doesn’t know anything about boxing. On my first day of lessons, we stretched and I had to just raise and lower my heels.

Then I started learning the positions and punches for training and sparring. I only learned the straight punches or jabs and foot work that day, but it was a little confusing. The next couple of days were less confusing but still confusing enough.

As I learned many more punches and combinations such as jabs, uppercuts, hooks, slips, dodging, it was all very complicated, I thought.

Three times a week, we have boxing lessons. They are intense. We stretch with the warm up to avoid injury. We start with the hands then move down to our feet. In the middle of the stretches we run and jump.

As we jump we stretch our body, and when we stop running, we do a few more stretches and rest. There are about 30 different sets of exercises that we do while warming up.

After a rest, we normally do shadow boxing. I didn’t know how to do shadow boxing because I didn’t even know how to do foot-ups, so… Pradeep sir taught me how to do hooks, upper cuts, how to hit down and up, dodging,  and slips.

Balance is also really important in baxing because if you don’t have balance you’ll just fall and lose, and does anybody in the world want to lose? No… I don’t think so. But by doing some gymnastics basics, we try to get much more balance and control over our body.

Punches and foot work have to be done together, otherwise you would either move forward for nothing or stay there and punch. There are 4 types of punches that I’ve learnt, they are: jabs to the face, jabs to the belly, hooks and upper cuts.

With the hook we try and hit the side of faces and with upper cuts we try to hit the chin or the upper midsection. There’s also two defensive moves that I’ve learnt. They are: dodge and slip. I learned these moves step by step and after learning them, I learned a few different combinations.

I also focused on foot movement combinations like how to do a foot up. I still didn’t know how to, do shadowboxing and I stayed on the same spot while practicing. Then while punching I moved forward but still came back to the same spot. With footworkI learned to keep my knees strait. Unless I’m going down to dodge, then the front knee should be bent.

I’ve been doing shadow boxing for about two and a half months, and I’ve sparred wearing boxing gloves three times. Even if I’ve done boxing with gloves on, I didn’t feel ready to spar but I had to try and so I did and….

Anita didi hit me on my chest, which hurt… quite badly so… I ended up crying. Amulya, a 4 year old was learning to punch and Tina had to practice her defense with him and he made her cry. Pallav sir teased us a little and we both ended up happy….

Overall boxing is about getting mentally and physically strong, so if a random stranger came and punched you, you would be able to protect yourself instead of crying and getting hurt.