Polly Vernon
I’VE MADE TWO New Year’s Resolutions in my whole life.
The first was when I was 11, and concerned me working ’n’ toiling ’n’ sacrificing ’n’ studying ’n’ doing whatever it took – WHATEVER IT TOOK – to become a professional dancer, because fame costs, and right there* was where I started paying, in sweat! It didn’t work out. The second was this time last year, and it was to ‘I dunno, maybe, like, start boxing?’ I kept that one. What inspired it? As I told my mate Hels: ‘I’ve got to a point in my life where I want to know how to hit people.’ Hels – who has boxed on and off since she was a kid – took me to my first ever session, a women’s only class at our neighbourhood boxing gym.
Reader: I nearly fucking died. I almost passed out during the warm-up; I lost the sight in one eye halfway through circuits. It was so hard. And yet, by the end of that first hour, I had fallen in love. No exaggeration. In love. With an exercise class. This is not, you understand, because I realised – as I landed my first, inexpert punch against the chained, swinging deadweight of a leather punchbag – that I was naturally good at boxing. I was not. One year and 40-odd classes on, I’m slightly better, but no great undiscovered fighting talent. No. What I did realise is that I am filled with previously unsuspected rage. Reservoirs of it! I am so angry, about
so many things! Epic things and tiny things, legitimately and not. From Twitter slights to acts of abuse at the hands of an ex. From that old, insidious work bully to the arse yesterday who tutted at me because I meandered into her pavement-path while checking a text. And bloody hell! It felt good to deal with it. To recognise and release it; to convert it into endorphins and superior upper-arm tone (nothing says: screw you, friend who betrayed me, shopkeep who sold me an overripe avocado, boss who fired me, like you hitting at those lingering senses of injustice so hard and often, you end up with great biceps).
That’s why I fell in love with boxing. Women are not encouraged toward violence. If we want to be angry, we’re supposed to do it on social media, with a hashtag. Our rage gets warped, reduced to bitchiness, bitterness, passive aggression, snarking, impotent tears and tweets. Let me tell you: that is a waste of an extraordinary force. One which, when unleashed the right way, in the right gym, will do good things to your body, and good things to your head.