Right now, I am on a down period. I am no longer that tolerant and patience as I was a few months back. I get irritated and angered easily, but because all the therapy and medicine, I have learned to contain my agitated emotions. However, after a while, you start to feel uncomfortable because these feelings turned into bottled-up emotions, and you are scared to let them out all at once.
Boxing became a solution to this problem. It allows me to channel my bottled-up emotions into punches to smash against a punching bag. Every punch thrown at the bag is for different situations, problems, and stress that I have built for a while, and I just lay it all. It feels good, and the adrenaline rush keeps on rising. Soon after, I started to feel have fun punching the bag while channeling the anger in my punches. And after your arms feel sore, all the stress went away for a bit. Boxing has been my biggest stress reliever.
However, one downside to using boxing as a stress reliever is that there are limited places where a punching bag is available. Some, you need to pay. The one I am using is from the Long Island City YMCA. I use the guest pass to get in with my friend because why not? For those who go to my college at CCNY, there are four punching bags (of different weights) at the Wingate Fitness Center. Another downside is that you need boxing hand wraps to protect your knuckles and keep your hands and wrist stabilized and boxing gloves. In other words, it involves some investments. However, if you do not want to invest in some wraps and gloves, that's alright. Just be careful when you box without protection.
Anyways, here are clips of me throwing most of my stress away. I am not professionally trained, so therefore, my stance and posture aren't perfect. Regardless, this is for relieving stress, and not actual training. The satisfaction of letting it go is real. Warning: Shaking camera because my friend is terrible at recording.
It may not seem much, but every punch I threw in these short clips is emotions bottled up from a few weeks of stress.
It is great to channel your negative emotions to something healthier like working out or putting the gloves on rather than exploding on someone or actually becoming violent.
Over time, you start to develop a sense of discipline with yourself. You become a bit more patient rather than aimlessly punching and tiring yourself out. You start to switch up your stances and style for a bit to have a different approach in punching the bag. You also start to have fun because all your stresses are letting out, and you feel a sense of accomplishment.
What you just read can be applied metaphorically in your daily life. In life, you have to be a bit more patient rather than just going deep and all out without a sense of aim. You'll only tire yourself out and become stressed. In life, you sometimes have to switch up your approach on situations and experiences. Go out of your comfort zone a bit in order to achieve what you want. Eventually, you'll start to feel more at ease, and you'll be less stressed.
Here are the remaining clips I compiled from last week Here, I switched up a lot of things from going heavy punching to quick fast punching to slowed down patient boxing to just having fun. You can see the plastic covering of the boxing glove peeling off a lot compared to the first two videos.
If you're thinking of taking time to go boxing to take away some stress, let it rip!
