I was a chronic overthinker – until I took up this one hobby

This is really for all the overthinkers. If you’re one of those people who can flashback to a teenage party incident and forward to a road accident that hasn’t happened yet, within minutes, then please buy yourself a punchbag.

I bought my Body Power free-standing striketube for around £250 during lockdown. The pandemic had dismantled all my usual routines and left me with an abundance of thinking time. I was in a hugely privileged position, surrounded by my family in a spacious home with a garden, but free time is not good for thinkaholics.

I’m a lifetime exercise enthusiast and vigorous hard workouts are my go-to, but I was finding that my runs and my dumbbells still allowed my head to wander down some dark alleyways and rock-strewn paths. Nothing was sufficiently absorbing.

I had previously spent two nights a week at a kickboxing club. I had worked my way up through the belt system but never shown much aptitude; there was no question of entering competitions. I’d started late in life and was held back by a reluctance to be punched in the face.

However, what I had experienced was total immersion in the moment. While sparring incompetently, I forgot who I was, I forgot what I was, I was pure movement, living completely in that second, trying not to be punched in the face. I never forgot that feeling. It was the least overthinking I’d ever been.

It was this memory that led me to buy the big black vinyl tube that still sits somewhat controversially in our garden, a kind of primitive Dalek invasion amid the flower beds. (Not everyone in the household appreciates its minimal beauty.)

When I’ve had a lot on, or not enough on, when I’ve found myself lost in past humiliations or future crises, I pull on my extremely cheap, bottom-of-the-range boxing gloves and I punch and kick my bag. The base is filled with water, there’s a single spring and a padded cylinder that recoils backwards and rebounds at me in response to my blows.

The effect is instant but builds as I keep working. While not the same as having a well-trained human throwing roundhouse kicks at your temple, if you concentrate on your moves and keep moving, you lose yourself. That’s when the transformation happens. Instead of spinning off in three different but equally unhealthy directions, your head is there, in the present.

Steve James is founder and CEO of The Cornermen, a mental health and suicide prevention initiative based at South Moreton Boxing Club. He’s a mental health professional who uses boxing training as part of his treatment for men suffering from a range of conditions.

He’s also a keen punchbag user himself. “I think people assume it’s all about aggression and getting out aggression, but actually, what I’ve found is, especially as some of the jobs I have are quite stressful – I’m listening to lots of dark stories all day – it’s quite mindful. With the bag, you can just switch off and concentrate.”

There is such a rich culture around boxing that sometimes it obscures the real benefits of the training. I personally hate the pre-fight press conference charade of mutual loathing and aggression. Tennis players manage to generate ticket sales without pretending to hate each other, so why do these astonishing athletes have to undertake this unconvincing performance? In reality, as James says, the magic of punchbag training lies in the flow.

“I’m not imagining beating the crap out of anyone. I’m not a particularly aggressive man, to be honest. I find it clears my head. Rather than thinking, ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that,’ I just zone out. There’s a kind of lovely rhythm to it. I find in your one-twos and your hooks, you can kind of get lost. It’s similar to a dance in many ways.”

Dance is exactly how I feel. The masculine framing provided by boxing makes it easier to access than simply clearing the lounge and improvising my own contemporary ballet, but the effect is similar: dissolving my worries in pure movement.

This is partly why the punchbag is such a useful tool in James’s mental health and suicide prevention work. “I had a guy who was having a rough time and he came to see me, and we were kind of sat there, so I said, ‘Should we just go on the bag?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’. He couldn’t verbalise how he was feeling, but we could go over to the bag and he could show me how he was feeling.”

Academic research supports the power of boxing training as a tool for managing mental health. A review of studies that touched on boxing and mental health carried out at the University of Toronto found, “there is some preliminary evidence that non-contact boxing interventions may have mental health benefits for symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Non-contact boxing appears to provide a cathartic release of anger, aggression, stress, and the dissipation of anxious energy.”

The benefits are accessible without the need for technique. Hitting a padded surface while wearing padded gloves is a very safe way to exercise. It’s worth briefly looking online at wrist position for punching, but set yourself some rounds on a timer and give it a go. Try to keep moving for the whole of your round and, in time, you will find yourself in a very peaceful, absorbed state.

I recommend four, one-minute and 30-second rounds with 40 seconds rest as a starting point – the final 90 seconds will feel like a week, but try to keep throwing something. The physical benefits of boxing training are many. If you work hard using the rounds system, this is effectively a Hiit workout, (high intensity interval training) proven to boost cardiovascular health. You are also improving your balance and co-ordination. Judging the distance between you and the target and moving around the bag, engages your entire body: it’s very hard to hit a bag without involving your lower body to steady you and gain leverage.

A study carried out by a team in Chile and the US found that six weeks of boxing training – 10 three-minute rounds, three times a week – reduced blood pressure in the trial group of young adults with hypertension. The study concluded: “These findings suggest that boxing training is an effective and time-efficient exercise for improving vascular health and managing early hypertension in young adults.”

But for me, the real benefits are psychological. The calming effect has never diminished and although the bag has sprung back alarmingly now and again, so far it has never hit me in the face. And if you want to play “Eye of the Tiger” in your headphones, go ahead, just don’t tell anyone.