If you are new to the concept of psychology playing a crucial role in sports, strap in. Quite simply, there is an inextricable connection between sports and psychology that has proven, time and time again, to be greatly influential in the careers of our most beloved athletes. A simple Google search of the words “sports psychologist” will return over 70 million results, meaning that the link between both is really is no secret.
When it comes to the most testing and daunting of sports in our culture, there is one that stands out like a shining beacon on a cold, December night: boxing. The ancient art of pugilism has consistently captivated mankind for centuries and has seen mere mortals transformed into demigods and modern-day Gladiators on account of their triumphant battles. Even those not as revered are still afforded absolute respect.
To make that long, lonely, and daunting walk to a ring in the center of a packed arena – with the eyes of the world watching in anticipation – is something most of us will never experience. When the first bell rings, televised, modern-day battle commences, often with brutal and hardcore consequences. Blood, sweat, and tears are spilled in the ring, all for the lust of legacy, pride, titles, and, of course, the coveted prize of the purse.
World class boxers have been heralded as either heroes or villains in our societies for hundreds of years. For every Muhammad Ali there has been a Mike Tyson; a hero and a villain. What both men had in common is the ability to achieve at the highest level, and enthrall the minds of spectators and fans of the sport. When we scratch the surface of these opposing characters, we find the presence of great minds.
Boxing and psychology go hand in hand, like a parent walking a young child across a busy street. However, the mind plays a huge part in more than just the fighter’s ability to perform on the night. There is much, much more.
I remember my first day inside a boxing gym. I was eight years old and clearly the youngest person there. This was an old school gym that was dark and dusty, with the sunlight slipping through the high windows, illuminating the far end of the room. There were heavy bags hanging from the ceiling, with skipping ropes and weights dotted around. The floor was old and worn and the old paint on the walls was peeling off.
The center of the room was dominated by a huge ring, and there were two older guys punching the hell out of each other inside. There were posters on the walls of boxers that I had no clue about, with a speedball in the corner and a double-ended bag just in front of the large bin that seemed to be the source of most of the stench. Of course, it was not a bin, but the place where the communal boxing gloves would be placed into.
I remember rummaging around for a pair of gloves to wear in order to hit the heavy bag. Among the huge 10 and 12 ounce gloves was a smaller pair of bright red training gloves. I reached in, took them out, and placed them over my hands. Eventually, I got used to how they felt and walked over to the bag. I imitated what one of the older guys was doing and did my best to hit the bag hard enough to make it move. It hardly budged an inch.
My shots on the heavy bag were interrupted by one of the older guys in the gym. He had bright, red hair and looked as though he ate kids of my size for dinner. According to this guy, those gloves I had on were his. He pulled them off my hands, put them together in one of his hands, and then slapped me across the face with them. Hard. I tried to hold back the tears but it didn’t work. Even though I was crying, I knew I had learned a lesson.
Most kids that join a boxing club will drop out within the first few weeks. I stayed for a few months. I moved town with my parents and eventually found a new gym via a new friend I had made in a new school. It was here where I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: dedication. With dedication, hard work comes a lot easier. Simply attending the gym three times every week helped me transform my body and push my mental state to places I never knew possible.
It was tough, granted. While most other kids were playing video games or wandering the streets after school, I was running, skipping rope, doing circuits, or sparring. However, I was around new friends and we all were bonded by our love of the sport. As time went on, I was in tremendous physical shape and had an understanding of the “sweet science” from the inside out.
Unfortunately, I found the lure of girls and freedom a little too hard to resist. My coach banished me from the gym for not being committed enough. I begged to be let back in but left after a month or two as my heart was more attracted to the cute brunette that lived a few doors down than the familiar sounds of bags being punched and clocks signaling the end of a round of sparring.
When you have witnessed and experienced just how much effort and dedication goes into boxing – even at that stage – you cannot help but appreciate what high-level boxers put themselves through. For most fighters, they started this way of life as eight or nine-year-olds in overwhelmingly tough gyms and stuck to it. They resisted going out with friends, chasing girls (or boys, for that matter), and missed birthday parties, nights out, and everything else that comes with growing up.
A few years into a young fighter’s career, they will understand another of the most important lessons in life: the ability to sacrifice in order to gain what they want. For all the missed days out, the birthday parties and nights on the town that they can’t make due to training, the food they can’t eat due to weight cuts comes a special type of strength. Denying yourself these simple pleasures in order to pursue larger goals becomes natural.
Throughout amateur bouts, the mind of a fighter grows and grows. Another underrated value of young boxers is their ability to feel comfortable in their own skin, as they tend to follow a dietary and sleep regime that means they are often confined to their company or have their own special eating habits. All of this contributes to how they conduct themselves inside the ropes.
A fight is the culmination of weeks and months of training. One of the greatest battles a fighter will always have is with themselves, especially when taking to the ropes for their first bout. This is not something that goes away if and when they make it to the highest stage on the planet, as a professional, but the ability to manage and select what thoughts they allow into their mind does.
That constant battle against the fear of losing, being embarrassed in front of friends and family, questioning how good they are, if they can beat the next opponent… all of these things will naturally run through the mind of fighters. This is simply one battle in several that make up the war as a fighter. In practically every evenly matched bout, these anxieties will rear their ugly heads.
There have been cases over the years of talented fighters allowing their training regimes and general lifestyle choices to affect their performances inside the ropes. Former junior welterweight champion, Ricky Hatton, would famously overeat and drink excessively in between fights, often piling on the pounds in the process. Eventually, his body paid the price and his career ended prematurely, in the eyes of many.
A boxer like Bernard Hopkins, on the other hand, made the history books as the oldest world champion of all time (at 51). Hopkins was as immaculate in his dietary choices as anyone could be. The Philadelphian legend never smoked or drank alcohol (he quit in his 20s) and was always in bed by 9pm. He was always in shape and this was clearly a major contributing factor to his longevity in the sport.
More than anything, a clean body leads to a clean mind. When a fighter walks into the ropes in such shape, it is often only Father Time that has the final say in the matter. Even if they are overcome by their opponent, it is not going to be themselves that leads to defeat. This is a very crucial part of psychology in boxing.
If you compare how comfortable and productive you are in work on a Monday morning with a hangover against a Thursday morning with almost a week of clean eating and alcohol abstinence, you can probably get the picture. Consider how your mindset is on that Monday compared to how confident you would feel heading to work on Thursday. There is no competition.
More and more fighters are using the services of sports psychologists these days., whether they admit to it or not. Former super-middleweight world champion, Carl Froch, and two-weight world titlist, Carl Frampton, have both employed sports psychologists at one point or another. Despite the obvious machoism and bravado associated with the sport, there is no shame in seeking this help.
A genuine, talented sports psychologist can help fighters to choose the thought patterns that go through their minds. They can help to refine their self-confidence and unlock their self-belief in order to ultimately make them better fighters. Once again, using a professional to help them in their efforts and preparation before fights is not a negative thing. The reason is that the mind is… complicated.
Fighters recognize that confidence – one of the most important aspects of a fighter’s mind – is similar to a freight train that gathers momentum. With each win and positive performance, that train gets faster and more difficult to stop. However, a knockout loss or convincing beating can halt that train to an abrupt stop. Getting that train back up and running takes time. For some fighters, simply getting back on track is unachievable.
Hypothetically, there are fighters out there in the shape of their lives, physically. They possess the skills and attributes worthy of being world champions. They are in the prime of their careers, yet, one bump in the road has completely destroyed their mental state. As such, they cannot perform to their truest capabilities. These mental fractures – which are almost absolutely psychological issues – can destroy the careers of elite fighters.
Leaving most of the technical aspects of a boxer aside, I believe it is important to understand the key psychological points that a professional fighter must deal with in their careers. In order to be a highly functioning boxer, these important psychological attributes will usually have to be mastered. Fighters like Muhammad Ali, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Sugar Ray Leonard have all demonstrated how to deal with these aspects, over the years.
It is often easier to refer to the main psychological factors in boxing as “mental strengths.” Fighters who have demonstrated passing these frequent psychological tests, consistently, will therefore usually be branded as being “mentally tough.” In boxing, mental strength is naturally one of the most important attributes to have. Therefore, it should be of no surprise to learn that most of the mentally strong boxers over the years have also been some of the most successful.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important psychological aspects found in successful boxers:
Confidence matters, right? You bet. Without confidence, a boxer will never make it out of the gym. Confidence in everything from your abilities to just how far you can go is necessary in a sport as tough and testing. The ability to take a punch, to get back up off the canvas, and to overcome every single challenge that comes your way derives from confidence, in one way or another.
When we go a little deeper into the role confidence plays in a boxer’s life, it is apparent in even the smallest details. For example, a confident fighter can land the right punch at the right time, committing to a shot they would perhaps avoid if they were feeling unsure of themselves. If you have ever seen a fighter return to the ring following a brutal knockout, you might have noticed that something is missing. Confidence.
Motivating yourself when things are going well is different to pushing yourself through the dark days. Conversely, a fighter who has achieved almost everything there is in the game must dig deep to keep themselves hungry. This is the life of a fighter and motivation is one of the first things that can be learned but also one of the first things that can be lost.
Discipline is certainly one of the most important mental attributes for a fighter to possess in their arsenal of weaponry. Can you call discipline a weapon? Yes, absolutely. The fighter that has great discipline can use this against a fighter that cannot control themselves or quits too easily.
When we think of self-belief in boxing, no one quite sums up what it means to trust in the power of one’s self than the late, great Muhammad Ali. The “Louisville Lip” was an incredibly gifted boxer with an exceptional ability to empower himself with words. The charismatic and pioneering Ali trusted in himself and his own abilities, even when those around him doubted him.
Against the formidable heavyweight knockout artist, Sonny Liston, Ali (then Cassius Clay) knocked out the heavily fancied Liston to win his first world title, in 1964. Ten years later, Ali – again, a heavy underdog – knocked out the monstrous, unbeaten George Foreman to win his second heavyweight title. None of Ali’s great achievements would have been made possible without his incredible self-belief.
Staying calm under pressure is not for everyone. When you are stood opposite a man (or woman) that wants to literally punch the head off your shoulders, it takes composure to keep yourself together. For some professional boxers, the pre-fight mind games also pose a challenge. When it comes to trash talking, things can often get heated. Words get exchanged and some opponents buckle under the pressure.
Over the years, boxers like Ali, Tyson, Hopkins, Roberto Duran, Naseem Hamed, Ricardo Mayorga and many more have used verbal warfare to throw opponents off their game. By encouraging their rivals to hate them, they can capitalize on mistakes and stiffness that comes from a fighter losing focus of their gameplan in favor of beating the trash talker up. By staying composed, other fighters can remain impervious to trash talk, no matter what is said.
Mental toughness is important in boxing. Sometimes, a fighter might feel as if the whole world is against them. Perhaps they have suffered a couple of losses on the bounce and are trying to reestablish themselves as a contender in the division. For others, they might be used to breezing through their opponents only to suffer a devastating loss for the first time. A resilient fighter will get back on track a lot faster than one without such toughness.
In boxing, most fighters will encounter a number of battles along the hard road to the top. Some will be knocked off course and will struggle to find the will and determination to keep fighting. Others will not be deterred and will relish in the challenge of proving everyone wrong. Take, for instance, Tyson Fury’s extraordinary comeback from addiction and mental health issues to re-establish himself as one of the best in the heavyweight division.
It is laughable to hear some critics of boxing describe it as “mindless violence,” or “two fighters punching each other in the head.” Boxing is as much a psychological sport as it is physical. While high-level fighters need to be in tremendous physical shape in order to compete on the world stage, they also need to be mentally durable and psychologically solid to get anywhere.
As such, boxing and psychology go hand in hand. Those who do not appreciate the true art involved in the sport will never understand just how tough it is, ironically enough. Boxing is more than a knockout punch or an impregnable defense. It is more than 12 rounds in the squared circle. Boxing is the “sweet science,” and every competitor deserves more than to be seen as a walking, talking Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot.
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