Okay, forget anything I wrote about not continuing with boxing. I went to what I thought would be my last class last night (after taking a week off the week before) and found myself just as in love with it as the first time. And this was after having run seven miles to work that morning...
This time, in addition to the intoxication of the speed/power/form/skill/thinking of the actual exercise, we spent a fair bit of time discussing the different types of boxing and what they focus on. (We ended up skipping a whole jump rope segment to talk about this - thanks to those seven miles earlier I was quite happy to skip that!) The other woman has recently started going to another gym to be able to qualify for amateur fighting, and had a lot of questions/complaints about how things are being done there. Our trainer comes from a professional background so was explaining the difference between the two. Which gave me room to voice the teeny tiny issue of what about this whole hurting people business...
...because, really, what business do I have learning something that's all about hurting someone...
...except for the fact that I really, really love it (and so far, have not hurt anyone).
No answers yet. That's okay. It's enough that there was room for the question. And I have some idea of where to begin looking for other voices.
One of my favorite writers comes to the rescue:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
I guess I will just have to fit this into my training somehow, especially as I'd like to start practicing a bit in between classes. Perhaps by becoming stronger and more fit? Well, time will tell.
Excitedly,
Annie
Yes, the purpose is to hurt people…for sport…Karate has "katas" and competitions dedicated exclusively to katas. I wonder if boxing has anything like that?
ReplyDeleteAmateur boxing is point-based (Olympic boxing is this). So there's certainly the possibility of getting hurt but there's not the same emphasis.
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