

6 Amazing Mental Health Benefits of Boxing

I love boxing training because it has seriously amazing physical benefits such as fat loss, muscle building, a variety of training types (heavy bag, speed bag, focus mitt training, sparring) and boxing also has many mental benefits as well. These are the reasons why you see new boxing gyms in your city every other week. Also, after many models (Adriana Lima, Gigi Hadid) shared their stories and how they benefited from boxing mentally, many females also started taking boxing classes as well. 


Let’s start with the most popular mental health benefit of boxing…

1. Relieve Your Stress

In boxing training, you basically punch things in a controlled environment and as long as you have right, protective gloves, hand wraps etc. the injury risk is actually low. So we can push ourselves while training and if you have not punched a thing in your life, you have no idea that how relieving this can be 😉

relieve your stress with boxing

2. No More Anger!

According to Medical Sports Journal, boxing also provides you to get rid of anger and I can honestly say that this is just true. After I had gotten a plagiarism penalty because of my friend in University I was quite angry with him and I seriously thought of beating him since he copied my project without even asking. Anyway, I had my boxing gym classes in that day and after a heavy bag session, I just basically forgave him. It is some stupid story I know but I witnessed that similar things happened to many people who do boxing training. Also as you may already know, there are many anger management programs which involve boxing training and there are many university studies which basically prove this and you can check out the bottom of this page for references.


3. Lower Levels of Depression

Also whenever I feel depressed, boxing training actually helps me a lot.

As any other physical activity, it increases oxytocin so you feel just better. Also, according to Netdoctor, thanks to the physical challenge and a variety of training types, boxing actually increases oxytocin more and again according to the study, many people, who have continued taking boxing classes, showed way fewer signs of depression.

According to my experiences in many boxing gyms, I also have witnessed that many people especially females go to boxing classes solely for managing their depression.


4. Better Sleep Yields Better Mood

As any other physical activity, your muscles face resistance during boxing and thanks to the variation, your muscles face resistance in different intensity levels and from many angles. This is why you feel exhausted after boxing sessions. Also, every training type requires different techniques and strategies. For example, you need to punch a speed bag in a certain way and while you are doing pad work, you need to evade from mitts etc. Shortly, these challenge your mind and reflexes as well.

After you face all of these together, you are guaranteed to have a deeper sleep and having a deeper sleep directly affects your mood positively.


5. Better Version of Yourself

Let’s face it boxing training is not the easiest thing in the world. We try keeping our pace during pad work, so we don’t look like a fool. Even after you get really tired and feel so sore during a heavy bag session, you keep a proper form. We also spar and get beat up, have bruises and other injuries during it. Not only we exert a great amount of energy but also some of these are actually painful.

boxing training provides a better mood

But we continue…

Because thanks to boxing, your body composition, reflex… improve a lot and we also get mental benefits as well. So we just keep getting these benefits.

There are many people including me, who are addicted to boxing training, and this actually explains this whole situation.

So you become more dedicated and after gaining such a great personal attribute, you feel better about yourself. Is not this just wonderful?

We also learn self-defense and once you know that you can protect yourself it helps you become more confident as well.

Let’s face it learning (self-defense etc.) these and having all these benefits make you feel better and as a result, you will become a better version of yourself. This does not only change how you see yourself as an individual but it also affects how other people see you positively. I actually witnessed that many parents send their kids to boxing classes just because of this reason.

Mental Health benefits of boxing

6. Boxing Teaches You Humility

Before I thought that I was a hardworking guy. Well, I still think I am but there are many other people who work twice as hard as me. When I was doing boxing training in my second year, there was a guy who actually just started boxing training during that time. A year later while we were sparring I just knew that he worked a lot and he was just better than me. Sure he might be just talented but after that session, we talked about his training schedule and I learned that he practiced pretty much everything (especially footwork) more than me. Shortly boxing teaches you to be humble and reminds you there are always people who work more than you. Also if you realize it during sparring, I am sure that you won’t ever forget it.

Actually, the University of Wisconsin did an experiment about this very subject and according to the results (surveys, brain signals etc.) after a year of boxing training, people always tended to show more humility in these tests.

A Research: In Miguel’s Gym there are boxing classes for people who want to get mental benefits of boxing and it is actually run by psychologists in London and so far they got amazing feedback.


Let’s Wrap It Up

Everyday many new boxing gyms are opening because there is a demand for it. However, physical benefits are not the only reasons for the huge demand. Some people just want to relive their stress and want to feel better. I also have a friend who did heavy bag training just for relieving his stress. He did not care about boxing at all. However, he was going to a boxing gym religiously to relieve his stress. I also had way fewer depressions after I had started doing boxing training. If you think of start boxing, you can check out these great boxing gloves for beginners. Even if you don’t have the perfect technique these protect you and make sure that you have good sessions. I really hope that you enjoyed reading and if you also experienced mental health benefits of boxing, feel free to share it. I would love to hear your experiences in the comment section.


Image Courtesy of  Official U.S Navy Page, West Point The U.S Military Academy, and nate bolt via Creative Commons License, Some Rights Reserved
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Reader Comments

  1. I love your approach to this subject because you are not treating this a primarily a fight but more a mental and physical discipline which can bring many benefits. In my line of work, I often need to help people with anger issues and it is important to note that we are never trying to get rid of the anger people feel since it is a valid emotion they have. What we try to do though is to channel and divert the anger to change it’s direction and not allow the anger to overtake the situation. I can see that boxing would be a great way of doing that. Thanks for the great post.

    1. Boxing definitely has many good effects and these are not just physical ones. There are also many experiments which are conducted about the mental health benefits of boxing and after reading them, I will add them tonight 😉

  2. Hi Farkan!

    I love this article and the benefits you have listed!

    I have not been boxing for a while, but reading this I consider getting back on it. To me, it was one of the most effective ways to get in great shape and my sleep has never been better.

    Thank you for sharing and keep up the good work!


    1. Many people started doing boxing to get in a good shape and I also started sleeping way better when I first started doing heavy bag sessions 😉

  3. Hi Furkan,
    Great article. You’ve shown how boxing provides many benefits besides just the sport itself. I put my son in boxing lessons when he was a teenager and he loved it.

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