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Life is a lot like boxing. It’s rewarding. It’s frustrating. You get knocked down, you get back up. You can decide to throw in the towel or you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face. Ultimately those challenges make you stronger.
And it's that fighting mindset that sets us apart. In this week's Out of Step journal post, we pulled some seriously inspiring quotes from the team at All-City Athletics boxing studio...
"Falling in love with the sport essentially has mapped out the last ten years of my life and introduced me to some of my closest people. The people I have met through the gym speak a language I understand. There is something about boxing that exposes everything about you and a lot of the elements you learn while training to fight are completely transferable to real life. It also gives me a sense of confidence in my own body, an access to personal power that I might had never known I was capable of prior to boxing."
-Anna Farrant, All-City Athletics co-owner
“Being a fighter is making things work no matter how difficult it can be. If you want something bad enough, you’ll fight to make it happen or die trying. That can be applied to anything, not just boxing.”
-- Julian Kim
“Boxing is humbling. To walk into a boxing gym can be extremely intimidating - it takes guts! But to keep coming back, that takes humility - the courage to learn and to grow. Growth takes repetition and no matter how many punches I throw, I know that there is still so much to learn. It isn't about perfection, it's about dedication.”
- Julie Chutter
“I love boxing because at the end of the day, you're fighting yourself, your fear, and you can't blame anyone else. Your mind and your strategy are as important as your physical abilities.”
-Yacine Sylla
"I love so many things about boxing. The challenge, the strength, the growth and the fact that it humbles you as an athlete. I truly feel like there is no ceiling with boxing, there’s always something to work on and new skills to tackle. I love the mental strength that it requires. There are very few sports and forms of exercise that I have tried that have the ability to shut out all of my other thoughts. It’s a meditative experience in the sense that for the entire time that I’m boxing, I’m focused entirely on what I’m doing in that room, and I’m completely immersed in that experience. I’m not worrying about whatever happened in my day earlier or what I need to do next, I’m right there in that moment. That’s a really rare experience to find, and I love it. It’s a complete experience for me physically, emotionally and mentally."
-Giulia "Hard Rock" Halkier
"I love the honesty and humility that comes with stepping into the ring to fight. No matter what happens before the fight, you can always tell the fighter who prepared or wanted it more in the end. Judges don’t always get it right, but the fighters always know who came out on top."
-Nate "Napalm Bomb" Kulczycki
"With boxing, I was anything but a natural talent. It was something that really helped me develop a work ethic. You have to get your runs in, you need to eat right, pushups in the morning aren’t just a good idea--they have to get done. If you want to perform well in the gym, you can’t be hung-over or eat ice cream and pizza for dinner. I had something I was working toward that kept my focus."
"And boxing really kept my temper in check. Boxing is not just about who is tougher. There is aggression and there is violence and tempers flare up but working with these things in the controlled environment of a boxing gym, you learn how to control yourself. I took a huge life lesson from the gym. You might get people trying to rattle your cage but you can’t get pulled off your game plan. You go into the fight with your plan and you work that plan. "
-Jordan Bowers, All-City Athletics co-owner
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All-City Athletics Boxing Studio is on West Hastings Street in Vancouver (back alley entrance). If you're in the area, check them out.
All photography credited to Kezia Nathe: