Week One

 I have always had an interest in boxing even though I would watch every fight that was on if there was a fighter, I knew that was fighting I would try my hardest to watch it. I even did some boxing with a personal trainer just before Covid hit but that was more for fitness rather than technique and what to do if you were in a real fight against another boxer. So, when I went to the freshers fair at ulster university and noticed the boxing society, I quickly went over to chat with the people running it. To my surprise, one of the people at the stand was a person in my course who I’d spoken to the year before, he told me about what time they train and how they have an amazing coach who knows all the ins and outs of boxing I quickly gave my email to be contacted. 

So that Thursday I got the bus over to the Jordanstown campus and met the coach a man named Brenden and told him I had done some boxing before but as soon as we started, I didn’t know what had hit me until it was too late. We had done a few rounds of shadow boxing practising what to do in the close medium and long range and my lack of athleticism showed through there. We then did other exercises to help us try and read our opponents and try to react accordingly by tapping each other’s foot with our own only looking at the other person and not our feet. By that stage I was tired enough, so my foot was tapped several times.

We then did several different exercises on the bags like different combinations of different punches I went softer on the bags because I didn’t have wrist straps so my hands we sore and bruised by the end of it despite having the gloves on. Even though I was extremely tired I carried on and even though I was close to Death’s door by the end of it I loved every second of it. All the people there were sound and most of them were my age or just a bit older, so it wasn’t too difficult to try and talk to people. Needless to say, I was in my bed soon after the training. I really enjoyed that session and I want to go at least once a week, but I will need to see how it matches up with my work schedule.