Boxing and the lightbulb moment

Boxing and the lightbulb moment

The first light

I've been in and around boxing for many years now and during these years I've had 3 main moments that around here we reference as lightbulb moments.

The last one occurred about 4 days ago which is what has led me to write this.

The first time I experienced it I was very new to sparring , I had started working with Stephen Ivory who was and probably always will be my favourite sparring partner he has a gift of knowing how to push me , make me pay for my mistakes and challenge me while still not making me afraid to try things out . When I used to spar everything moved so fast , it was as if they world had sped up , I couldn't process everything that was happening and I felt like I was purely trying to survive rather than actually do or achieve anything , sound familiar?

The advice I was constantly give was "relax , just relax" I find myself saying the same things to the new sparrers I train now.

" Alright I get it just relax , I'm trying to relax" I'd mutter inside my head 

Well I just kept on getting in there , the world would get faster and I'd just try to survive , one day I got tired of being so fearful or stressing out so much during the sparring and with a sort of shrug of my shoulders and an air of giving up I said to myself " fine you win I'm just going to relax , I give up , just relax that's all I have to do relax who cares if I get it" so I did I relaxed and guess what the whole world slowed down , right there and then mid spar in the second round , I started to see openings , I could see what was coming at me and make plans , I could breathe , the warehouse itself got brighter it truly seemed like a lightbulb had been turned on . Did I spar flawlessly that round? No not at all , but I sparred better. My coach that was watching it saw and knew that something had changed in me at that moment.

There was a beautiful quote I had found at the time that I really related to the experience but it was many years ago and I've long since forgotten it but in a very simplified way it was along the lines of everytime you learn something new the whole world changes.