Why Boxing Is Good for Your Kid

Boxing can teach your children everything they need to know about the more important aspects of life. The traits that boxing instills in young participants are not easily found in other activities. With a lack of character-building pastimes for children, parents should open their minds to the possibility that boxing might be right for their children.

This is not an easy sell. Enough negative notions about boxing exist that most parents would bristle at the mere thought of involving their children in this sport. The thought of bloody noses, smashed knuckles, and mashed features are too much for most parents to bear. Boxing itself shares in the blame. Boxing has been marginalized in the past few decades compared to its previous mainstream status. The shady characters and exploitation of its participants fall on the doorstep of the sport itself. It is important to note, however, that boxing on the youth level bears little resemblance to the cutthroat world of professional boxing.

Here are some of the more critical characteristics that can be instilled into your children through their involvement in the sweet science.

Hard Work = Results

Children today often have a sense of entitlement. Some of our younger people seem to think the world owes them a living. Boxing has a way of adjusting this mindset. Anything achieved inside the boxing ring is a direct result of the work put in. Natural talent plays a role, but even the most gifted young boxer is nothing without hard work. Trainers give their young pupils different things to work on and if they practice, they will improve in a very visible and noticeable manner.

Young boxers will initially struggle with the sport. Most are shocked that despite being able to play other sports with ease, they cannot box merely one round without falling to pieces. Young athletes who can run all day long without getting tired will invariably collapse within three minutes during their first experience in a ring. The stamina required for boxing calls on an altogether different kind of resourcefulness. With the threat of being hit, a young pupil will tighten up and lose poise. They will be unable to even hold their hands up after a minute or two.

Beginning boxers will not be able hit the punching bags properly and will be utterly lost in actual boxing action. They will marvel at the more advanced pupils, being instilled with a natural urge to be like them. There is an inherent coolness to being able to swap punches in a heated sparring session or to achieve the rat-a-tat action on a speed bag. The more advanced kids will seem like superstars to them. Many are shocked to find those “superstar” kids have only been boxing for a few months. They will want to rise to that same level without even consciously attributing it to hard work.

Within a few months, the young boxer will improve exponentially. As they continue to train, the improvement becomes very graphically demonstrated. They are soon able to work the bags well and handle themselves in the ring. It becomes impossible for even the most thickheaded students to not emerge from this experience with a more tangible appreciation for the value of a good work ethic, a pre-requisite for a successful life in any field.


Facing Fear

Young adults who are ill equipped to deal with fear could have benefited from boxing in their youth. Climbing into the ring and exchanging punches requires young people to soldier on despite fear. Boxing eventually forces you to take that fear and harness it. Rather than be consumed by it, young boxers are taught to use it to make them more alert and to prepare harder.

Boxers quickly learn that fear is not something exclusive to them. Everyone has fear in youth boxing. Being frightened or nervous is not the issue; it’s how you handle it that is critical. Young pupils form an awareness of the very elements of fear they will face in their lives and how to handle it.

Instead of facing months or years of abuse from a bully, they will instead have the gumption to face the minute of fear and fight back. Rather than caving in emotionally in light of a huge job interview, they will buckle down and prepare more. This poise in the light of fear is not a quality that will magically appear later in life. Boxing can help bring it about at a young age.

Refusal to Quit

Many young people have shown an aversion to quitting, but have they really been put to the test? If everything is within their level of comfort, they cannot develop this quality. In youth boxing, youngsters are pushed to overcome the very mental barriers that prohibit success. The nature of the sport itself calls on you to push beyond the self-defined limitations of yourself.

To rise above the immediate urge to resign is a critical attribute in any walk of life. In boxing, this trait is tested and improved upon. Everyone has a deeper reservoir of doggedness than we give ourselves credit for. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” may be a tired saying, but it embodies what children will have impressed on them through boxing. The natural human inkling to create excuses or find an “out” is washed away as students re-define their personal limitations.

Life can be difficult for adults who cave in to the trials of life. The frequency of people running up the white flag in the face of adversity is at an alarming level today. It’s all to easy for a child to immediately stop running at PE at the first sign of fatigue or for a student to close the book when the content becomes to difficult to easily understand. That might seem harmless enough until that same loser mentality is applied to their adult life. If the marriage is too difficult, you can walk away. If your boss is giving you too hard of a time, just go ahead and quit. Boxing can help children deal with the often-unforgiving nature of adult life and rise to the occasion instead of allowing difficult conditions to overwhelm them. They realize that the urge to quit is a small moment in time, while the consequences of quitting last days, months, or even years.

Toughening Up

Observing young people today will quickly give way to the feeling that life is too sterile for them. Shielding children from certain hard truths of life is fine, but it can quickly become a disservice if taken to far. Getting hit in the face today is usually a cataclysmic event for any youngster, whereas it used to be par for the course. Many of these advances are for the benefit of young people, which is well intentioned. Sometimes it can go too far.

Without casting aspersions and making judgments about the generational changes that have taken place in this country, one would be remiss in not noting a mental and physical softening of the youth today. When you drive through neighborhoods you don’t see kids playing ball on the street anymore. You don’t see kids with scabs on their knees and elbows anymore. Adults cannot even criticize a young person without getting yelled at by another adult. We can get rid of some of the more damaging aspects of child development from the past without raising children like veal. The backlash to the past has been too severe.

Kids are inside now, playing video games and whittling away the hours on a computer. If they ride a skateboard, they’re more protected than a SWAT team member. Nobody wants to see kids hurt, but taking absurd measures to prevent pain could be doing them a disservice as well. In life there is physical and mental pain, sometimes on a pronounced level. Not allowing them to ever experience pain can backfire as they face the beatings that life can sometimes dish out.

Becoming Humble

Many young people with an arrogant, self-entitled air about them have gained a proper perspective through their participation in boxing. As harsh as it may sound, getting punched in the nose has a way of instilling children with the fact that they are not “all that.” Confidence is one thing, unsubstantiated conceit and bluster are quite another. Boxing teaches confidence, and the other less-becoming traits are driven out of them

Confidence is based on one’s assuredness in their own abilities. Arrogance is often a mask for insecurity. In boxing gyms, confidence is built by having a student climb the ladder of success through hard work. Arrogance has no place in a boxing gym. Pupils with empty bravado and a wise guy smirk immediately find out the hard way that they are on the wrong track.

Sometimes you have to tear something down to build it up. A student with a false sense of self-entitlement will find out first-hand how empty that trait is in real life. Maybe it worked with their friends before, but it takes more than a big head and a cute smirk to be able to hold your own in a boxing ring. Through training, students can replace their hot air with genuine confidence, the type of self-worth that can carry them into the more demanding phases of adult life.

Dealing with Setbacks

If young people are protected from every hard reality of life, they will not be able to cope well with the problems that come later. Resistance to hardships is like a muscle; you must develop it in order to call on it down the line. Some young people today are kept away from moments of failure, as their lives resemble a gradual ascent up a slope with no dips. It becomes easy to see why these same kids have trouble later when faced with the Grand Canyon-sized valleys that adult life can present.

People sometimes have a way of defining themselves by their problems and hardships. They are not happy with their station in life, and inevitably point the finger, looking for someone to blame. In boxing, students become less intoxicated with all the good things they can do and instead focus on how they react in the face of adversity. It does not take long for a boxing pupil to realize that while it is nice to be able to hit hard and fast, it is more important how to react when taking the shots.

In life it is often times more important how you react in the face of hardship than during moments of success. Success is easy to manage, but what about setbacks? You often see young people thriving in the face of good times, only to be derailed at the slightest sign of difficulty. Boxing can change that. Even the most prodigiously talented young boxers will fall flat on their face if their ability to dish out punishment is not equaled by their willingness to absorb it and soldier on regardless.

Poise Under Pressure

In boxing, you often see a young boxer dazzle in the gym only to fail in a real boxing match. The pressure of boxing in front of an audience, under the bright lights, and with an equally talented opponent in the opposite corner can be too much for some youngsters. That is natural. As the training continues, however, students learn that falling apart under pressure is a choice.

Boxing teaches the mental toughness that will enable a young person to thrive under pressure in real life situations. If a young person can learn how to coolly tap into their talent while under the tremendous strain of a boxing match, then they will also be able to remain poised in the face of adult obstacles. The natural human urge to succumb to enormous pressure is weeded out in boxing training, as students have no choice: either compose yourself or get run out of the ring.

Final Thoughts

Boxing is the ultimate truth machine. It will cut through all the pretenses and reveal what is truly inside an individual. The characteristics that impede future success will be quickly unveiled in a boxing gym and can then be addressed and improved upon. Boxing allows young people to undergo an advanced study in their own self-discovery. It will give them the tools they need to not only survive, but to thrive. All these virtues are naturally occurring in boxing, as they are instilled naturally. The goal is not to create world boxing champions, but world champions in life.