If You Want to Swim, You Have to Get Wet

I didn’t start boxing because I wanted to become a fighter.

I’d just come back from a long-term injury and was trying to get fit enough to play football again.

So I started boxing once a week.

Then once became twice.

Then they asked me to spar.

So I sparred.

Then they asked me to fight.

So I fought.

Eventually I’d fought in the amateurs, won a fight, was recognised as a decent fighter and had people around me genuinely buying into the idea that I could turn professional.

It all happened incrementally.

And whether or not I ever box competitively again, I think that process changed me more than almost anything else I’ve done.

If you want to swim, you have to get wet

There’s a phrase I love:

If you want to swim, you have to get wet.

Boxing doesn’t give you many places to hide.

You can talk about your fitness, but eventually you have to do the rounds.

You can think you’re technically good, but eventually somebody is going to hit you back.

You can skip your roadwork.

You can turn up hungover.

You can neglect your conditioning.

You can convince yourself you’ve trained enough.

Then you spar and reality gives you the answer.

It’s one of the purest feedback loops I’ve ever experienced.

And I think that’s where boxing gave me a level of agency that has transferred into almost everything else I do.

You learn that being uncomfortable isn’t an emergency

The first time somebody properly hits you in the face, everything in your body tells you this is a bad idea.

Eventually, it becomes normal.

Not pleasant. Normal.

You learn to think while you’re tired.

You learn to keep moving when someone is actively trying to stop you.

You learn to listen while you’re under pressure.

You learn to come back after having a terrible session.

And you learn that being scared, uncomfortable or inexperienced doesn’t mean you can’t do something.

Sometimes it just means you’re new.

That’s been incredibly useful outside of boxing.

Walking into gymnastics as a beginner? Fine.

Starting acting? Fine.

Being shit at a new skill in front of people who are much better than me? I’ve done that before.

Discipline isn’t doing the same thing every day

Boxing also changed what discipline means to me.

I used to think discipline meant never missing anything.

Now I think it’s more about keeping the promise over a long enough period of time.

There are days now when I’m supposed to train and realise my body needs something else.

Fine.

I’m not quitting.

Maybe the session moves to tomorrow. Maybe the intensity changes. Maybe I do something different.

The priority remains.

That’s different from negotiating with yourself every time something becomes inconvenient.

For years, boxing forced me to organise parts of my life around something I cared about.

Sometimes that meant saying no to nights out.

Sometimes it meant running when I didn’t want to.

Sometimes it meant training when motivation wasn’t there.

That ability to say this matters more has transferred into everything else.

Why I’m probably not going pro

For a while, turning professional was genuinely part of the plan.

Realistically, I don’t think it is anymore.

Partly because I’ve found another path through stunt performance that gives me many of the things I loved about boxing while opening up an even wider range of skills.

Gymnastics. Martial arts. Screen combat. Movement. Acting.

And when I look objectively at the ceiling available to me in boxing, my age, the level I’d need to reach and what I’d have to put my body through to get there, I think my opportunity is bigger elsewhere.

I’m okay with that.

Because becoming a professional boxer was never the most valuable thing boxing gave me.

Boxing gave me agency

I still don’t really go a week without boxing in some form.

Maybe it’s shadowboxing. Maybe it’s fitness. Maybe it’s sparring.

I’m not particularly fight fit right now.

But I don’t think boxing will ever completely leave my life.

It taught me how to be a beginner.

It taught me how to take feedback.

It taught me how to prioritise.

It taught me that discomfort passes.

It taught me that preparation matters.

And probably most importantly, it taught me that you can spend forever thinking about whether you’re capable of something.

Or you can get in and find out.

You don’t have to become a fighter to experience it

That’s also part of the thinking behind the experiences we run at Ogo.

You don’t need to have a fight — or even get hit — to experience some of what combat training can teach you.

Learning something unfamiliar. Working under pressure. Testing your fitness. Being uncomfortable and realising you’re okay. Having to act rather than overthink.

We bring elements of that into 1:1 and corporate experiences, alongside the wider movement and performance work we do.

If you want to experience it for yourself or bring something different to your team, you can explore our Ogo Experiences.

Because sometimes you can talk about mindset forever.

Eventually, you have to get wet.