Like Prince Harry and Rio Ferdinand, I got a mental-health boost from boxing

As a general rule, civilised gentlemen are not allowed to vent their frustrations on others through violent action. Yet for law-abiding men in mid-life, this presents us with a dichotomy.

It is a period that is increasingly exasperating: we are the buffer generation, caught between the stiff upper lips of our fathers and the over-sharing social media posts of our millennial sons. Statistics say we have less job security, higher rates of family breakdown and are more likely to live alone than ever before, which leaves us stressed, anxious and in need of a release.

Biologically, we are wired to vent physically, because men don’t crack open the Prosecco and have a good chat and a cry with the boys when times are tough. Instead, we are hormonally-inclined to fight or flee. Society forbids the former and our ‘man up’ culture defines the latter as a sign of weakness - so we suffer in silence until something breaks. 

Increasingly, however, middle-aged men are discovering an unlikely answer. As Freddie Flintoff, Leon Mackenzie and now Rio Ferdinand will attest, for a man, nothing on Earth relieves stress better than punching a heavy bag. Boxing is on the rise and, according to figures from Sport England’s Active People Survey, participation is up to 87,300 in the over-26 age group, reversing a decline in older participants seen in earlier surveys.

While former footballer Ferdinand plans to take to the ring at the age of 38 with ambitions of going pro, thousands of these new older devotees are taking up the sport not only for fitness, but mental wellbeing, too.

Earlier this year, Prince Harry explained how boxing had helped him deal with his frustration and anger following the death of his mother.

“It’s a really good way of letting out aggression,” he said, “And that really saved me because I was on the verge of punching someone; so being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier.”

Ferdinand, too, has suffered deep personal loss: his wife Rebecca, the mother of their three children, died in 2015; his mother Janice died two months ago aged 58.

High-profile late-life boxing converts seem to have been plentiful in recent years. Flintoff, the former England cricketer and mental health campaigner, took up the sport after meeting former champ Barry McGuigan. ‘It was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up,” he explained when training for his first fight. “I’ve asked myself why I’m doing it but the hardest things you do are the most rewarding.”

Former footballer Leon McKenzie is the son of former British and European boxing champion Clinton McKenzie and nephew of three-time world champion Duke McKenzie.

His life has been dogged by mental health problems; he has battled depression, and tried to take his life while playing for Charlton.

Twice divorced and almost bankrupt, he was jailed for six months in 2012 for trying to avoid speeding convictions. He is now a speaker and ambassador for mental health charities and retired from competitive football to became a professional boxer in 2013. He fought for the English Super Middleweight title in 2016 and lost by a split decision in a very close fight, retiring from the ring last year at the age of 39.

For him, boxing was a way to overcome his demons.

“I have ‘The Secret’ inscribed on my shorts,” he said. “It’s a secret I hold inside, that given the chance I always knew I had what it takes. The only thing we don’t have is time. But I don’t have anything to prove. Every time I step in the ring I’m a winner.”

Like Prince Harry, Flintoff and McKenzie before him, Ferdinand will have likely discovered what boxing’s new dads army are learning; that while any vigorous exercise relieves stress, for a man, punching things really hard satisfies a deeper, primal instinct.

So while boxercise classes, with their choreographed shadow-dancing and light contact, have been a gym staple and popular with women for many years, the man-trend now is for back-to-basics gyms in which members lose their beer bellies but discover masculinity, self-discipline, respect and control.

I can attest to the power of boxing training. I competed for a while when I was younger after being recruited to the cause by watching Rocky Balboa in the early Eighties.

My first bouts were popular with spectators, thanks to my crowd-pleasing glass nose which bled profusely at the slightest tap. My fighting name was ‘The Covered-In-Claret-Kid’. Mothers who should have known better caterwauled with bloodlust like tricoteuses each time I took a blow to the face and the plasma started to spray.

I gave up competitive boxing soon after but continued to train and in my early forties joined a boxing gym called Spit and Sawdust which was full of men with shaved heads and prison tattoos. Boxing gives you confidence and resilience too, so when I was nicknamed ‘Flipper Boy’ by the intimidating members there, due to a regrettable dolphin tattoo on my shoulder, I shrugged off the insult as harmless banter.  

According to research released this year, boxing burns more calories than any other form of exercise, with 800 calories melting away per hour. And the fitness benefits are just the start: the control, concentration and coordination needed improves mental agility, and the sheer thrill of using explosive force on an inanimate object is a testosterone therapy session. Once mastered, the rhythm of hand against leather and the sound of ball against backplate is hypnotic. You forget the burning in your shoulders and are fixed in the present. It’s mindfulness for men.

For those hovering around their middle years like Ferdinand, age is not necessarily a barrier. Although boxers are not allowed to enter the Olympic Games past the age of 34, many professional pugilists have competed successfully through their late thirties, forties and even fifties. Four-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield retired from the ring in 2014 aged 51 and in May 2011, Bernard Hopkins, at 46 years 137 days, became the oldest man ever to win a major boxingchampionship, breaking George Foreman’s record of 45 years and 310 days set in November 1994.

The writer Joyce Carole Oates described boxing as ‘the fanatic subordination of the self’, while Mike Tyson called it ‘a thinking man’s sport’. But for men of a certain age who may be looking for a release valve, the best words of wisdom come from Floyd Mayweather, Jr. who explains that ‘boxing is real easy. Life is much harder’.