No Ego On Her Road To Glory

The Prejudice Against Women In Combat Sports

 

A few months ago, my boxing coach had planned a 3-week vacation to New York and told me that he would be leaving me in the good hands of one of his trainers.  I was not too happy that he was leaving me at a time when I was already struggling with specific technical issues with my jabs and left hook and depended totally on him to work through the drills with me at each training session.  I was even more nervous when I found out that the trainer he had assigned me to was a girl, Nurshahidah Roslie.  I remembered wailing, “A GIRL?!  You got a girl to train me?”  That was it.  I thought then that for 3 weeks, I might as well have taken a vacation myself, indulged in a diet of pizzas and ice cream, and waited for the coach to return.  Of course my good sense took over, and I was assured by everyone who heard about my doubts that Shahidah was a national boxer who had represented Singapore in the SEA Games recently and came with extensive boxing experience.  Moreover, she was also poised to be Singapore’s first female professional boxer when she makes her professional debut at the World Boxing Foundation-sanctioned event, Singapore Fighting Championship, on 20^th February.

 

Fighters’ Ego

 

I could explain where my prejudice against women in combat sports came from.  It was driven by past experiences when I had attempted to conduct interviews for my articles with female boxers and MMA fighters.  Ego was often in the way.  The female fighters I had encountered in the past almost always came into the ring with a chip on their shoulders.  I disliked that, particularly when I often remembered the wise words of my boxing coach who very firmly insisted that we left our egos outside the gym at every training session.  My experience with female fighters just ran contrary to that concept.

 

An example was an interview with an Asian female boxer who had transitioned to MMA in the past few years.  When I contacted her for an interview, she  dismissed me with responses like, “please talk to my PR people as I am busy” and worse, “you can get a glimpse of me training through my Facebook.”   Subsequently, I was not sure whether to feel sorry for her or to feel relief that that story had not been written because she suffered a string of losses in a series of fights after that.   Skills, talents, and experience often spoke louder than Ego.

 

Having been intimately involved with the combat industry through the fight photography and journalism work that David and I had been doing these few years, what was pretty obvious to us was that these fighters needed as much positive publicity as they could get, particularly when their fight opportunities were sometimes far and few in between.  So I would get quite disillusioned when I watched fighters display the more unpleasant side of themselves across media. I have seen that with men, as much as with women in combat sports and idealistic as I might be, I was sure as hell that I was not going to have anything more to do with anyone in combat sports that came packaged with a ribbon colored by Ego.

 
 

Inspiring Women In Combat Sports

 

So when my coach unceremoniously dumped a female boxing coach in the ring with me, I bristled with worry that Shahidah would come into the coaching session with that chip on her shoulder I came to associate female boxers with.

 

On looking back though, and after getting to know Shahidah better, I was quite embarrassed by my prejudice.  I reminded myself that I should not cast a cloak of judgment across the industry just because of a couple of bad lads and divas whom I had encountered.  I should instead stand by my principles and my genuine intent to promote women in combat sports across my social media platforms and even in the articles that I wrote.

 

I particularly had a soft spot for those who had struggled through life and committed their energy and time to combat sports as a positive outlet to inspire young women and children.  It was no secret that I was a big fan of Cris Cyborg in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. She had a 15-1 professional MMA record and in spite of the struggles that she had been through,  had decided to use her talents to inspire young ladies to embrace a life of fitness by launching her Pink Belt Fitness program.  Another inspiring female in combat sports that I admired was American boxer Mia St John who in her career had 22 out of 23 wins with 1 draw and was the WBC super welterweight champion defeating Christy Martin at the ripe old age of 45 years old.  Who thinks age is a barrier in combat sport again ? In her own right, she was not only a successful boxer but also a model and businesswoman, proving to other ladies, that she did not define herself by the opinions of others and made her own way through life with her own bare hands, brains and a lot of tenacity.

 

So my prejudice was inexcusable. 

 

First Singaporean Female Professional Boxer

 

The 3 weeks I spent with Shahidah as she meticulously worked through techniques, speed and agility together with me was an eye-opener.  This unassuming lady who often sat quietly behind the counter at the gym was a dynamite in the ring. No one should be at the end of her extremely powerful jab and left upper cut combination.  I would know, I almost had my jaw dislodged during a sparring session with her. 

 

During our training, we discussed her dreams, her aspirations and her hopes.  We spoke about her past, and how she had worked very hard to work towards her dream of representing the country in boxing at the SEA Games in 2015. We talked at length about each other’s fears, anxieties, and passions.  I truly respected her humility and her dedication to the goal of always being better than her current self so that she could impart her skills and knowledge to others.  I often heard boxers telling me that they wanted to garner that championship belt in a few weight categories in succession, be champions multiple times over, or be the "greatest of them all".  However all Shahidah wanted was to be a better boxer tomorrow than she was yesterday so that she could be part of the  talent development of young boxers.

 

When I told Shahidah about my experience with female fighters in the past, she said, “Before anyone thinks of picking up boxing, perfecting the techniques, garnering fame and glory, he or she needs to have an attitude that is heart-driven and powered by determination.  This attitude is NOT driven by ego and greed.  I am sorry about your past experiences but female boxers do need all the support that they can get.  If they have the right heart-driven attitude, hopefully, the support for female boxers will start streaming in when people like you can see the struggles and sacrifices we have made out of our love for the sport.  I am hoping to see more talented young female boxers stepping into the scene to represent Singapore.  It can only happen if people like you give them as much support and publicity that they need.”

 

Just A Girl

 

When I started boxing, many friends and relatives thought I was suffering from mid-life crisis.  I remembered a friend who said, “Joanna, you have been an over-achiever all your life.  You want to do everything to prove something all the time.  At your age, you have nothing to prove, so why should you start boxing now?”  That hurt.  I had lots to prove.  I wanted to prove that life should never have limits no matter the circumstance.  I thought objections would happen only to those who got into combat sports at a later age, like myself.   However, Shahidah had her fair share of objections as well from her family.  She was after all, “just a girl”.  More than anything, they were worried for her safety but knew that their objections would fall on deaf ears.   Shahidah took her family’s reservations in her stride, and instead of feeling dejected, she threw her energy behind her passion because it was a sport that made her aware of her strength, and was in awe of the discipline it had instilled in her.  She even proved her family wrong about boxing being “a man’s sport” when she started embracing her feminity even more and  became more aware of the fact that as a female boxer, she was inadvertently paving her way to be a role model for young up and coming female boxers too.

 

Obstacles

 

Life as a female boxer in general, was already not easy.  It was even harder when one is a female boxer in Singapore, where fight opportunities for female boxers were limited.  Shahidah spent hours training at the gym for the last 8 years, craving for as much fight experience as she could get.  However, fight opportunities here were far and few in between.  She prayed silently to be called up for matches and “just trained and waited, while bearing with the emptiness.” She was keen to get out there, push the envelope and raise that bar to develop her skills further but she often waited a very long time.

 

Another obstacle she had to overcome was money. Shahidah was practical enough to know that she needed to work to earn a decent living, mindful also that  what she earned had to be enough also to cover any medical costs incurred in the event that she had sustained  injuries  during her fights. However, work sometimes got in the way of her training schedule so she had to strike a delicate balance between work, training and rest. That was one of her biggest hurdles.

 

The Big Break

 

 Shahidah’s big break came when she was selected to represent Singapore in the SEA Games in 2015.  I got another glimpse of her humility and down to earth attitude when she told me that all she wanted to do was to train very hard so that she would not let down those who had invested time and energy on her.  She was keen on putting up a good fight. And her sportsmanship shone through when she said, “Whether I won or lost the fight, what was important to me was that I had given my heart and soul into putting up the fight of my life for my country.  For a start, I felt  honored to represent Singapore and that experience had shown me that the years of sacrifice and hard work was all well worth my effort.”

 

Training With The Best

 

Shahidah attributed the support she got on her boxing journey to our coach, Arvind from Juggernaut Fight Club.  She had a lot of respect for a coach that stood by his proteges “as if they were family.”    She said, “He was the only coach I know who would give more than100% to help his boxers. In the business of fight sports, he went through a lot of struggles, yet he found the means to develop athletes with his heart. There are times we do not agree with each other but at the end of the day, his heart had always been in the right place.” I resonated with that because I saw that with my own eyes with each of the boxers he had trained including the other  national boxers Leong Jun Hao and Tai Jia Wei.

 

Easy To Pick Up, Hard To Master

 

My almost 2 years of boxing training had been a long and difficult journey.  Many times, I wanted to run out of the gym, admit defeat and just give up.  However, David, my coach, and my gym mates had always been my biggest critiques and yet my biggest supporters.  When I shared that thought with Shahidah, she knew exactly what I meant.  Shahidah’s experience with boxing was dotted with an equal amount of joy, tears, hardship, defeat and victory.  In her words, the sport was “easy to pick up but hard to master.”  Her learning was a continuous journey and each time she entered the ring, the bar would be set higher. 

 

Ultimately, Shahidah hopes to be ranked in the world before she stops competing.  She also hopes to be actively involved in the process of scouting boxing talent and training them to be better than she was.

 

Shahidah won me with her authenticity and her humility.  I have developed a better understanding of the struggles and sacrifices that boxers make, particularly with female boxers like her.  Not only do I have a lot more respect for females in combat sports now, I have even more respect for each minute I spent in the ring with my coach.  It may be a long and hard journey for me, but it is even harder for boxers like Shahidah who are committed to making boxing a professional career.

 

Singapore Fighting Championship

 

Shahidah will make history as Singapore’s first professional boxer.  She makes her professional debut at the second instalment of Singapore Fighting Championship on 20^th February.  The event is sanctioned by the World Boxing Foundation.  For more information about the event, do visit https://www.facebook.com/singaporefightingchampionships/

 
Photo credits:  All Photos accompanying this post were provided by David Ash, www.SingaporeMaven.com @SingaporeMaven
 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

 

 

Fighting Fit - My Personal Fitness Journey

This blog post is a reproduction of an article I had written jointly with Aaron  Rolley from IFC | PT and published in Asia Sports Network.  The reason I am reproducing this article here is that many have asked how I reconcile my life as a corporate careerist whilst involved in a sport that seemed "violent".  Firstly, I need to  debunk the misconception that boxing as a sport is violent.  There are rules involved and thankfully, a referee that enforces these rules in the ring.  Moreover, a good coach coupled with dedicated training ensures that we perform in a ring within accepted rules of engagement and in the spirit of sportsmanship.  Secondly, my foray into the sport was the start of an amazing journey that got me towards better health and fitness.

Here is my story, told through my strength and conditioning trainer Aaron and myself.

Achieving My Fitness Goals With Specialized Trainers

For years, I have always been active  in sports as I loved the outdoors.   I spent a few years playing rugby for a women’s full contact 7-aside team.  I enjoyed the training sessions that kept me fit and game-ready and I enjoyed the camaraderie amongst my team mates most.  At that time, I was religiously going for my twice-a-week personal training sessions at IFC PT where the trainers had designed a program to condition me for my rugby games.   I also supplemented my fitness regime by training for a few run events subsequently but as time went by, these activities took a toll on my knee, and drove me right into the surgery room of the hospital where I had to have a Tibial Tubular Elevation surgery just 2 years ago.  I woke up with 2 screws ann a part prosthetic knee cap, and the prospect of not being able to do any contact sports or participate in any run events again.

 The aftermath of the surgery saw  a very slow and painful recovery which threw me into depression, particularly when I saw myself losing muscle over-time and putting on an incredible amount of weight throughout the next few months that followed.  I ditched my rehabilitation program at the hospital just one week into the program because I felt that they were not effective enough. 

 Grappling with a sense of worthlessness, my impatience at the slow recovery,   and the post-surgery pain, which also resulted in extreme pain in my left glute and back, I then returned to the gym about 3 weeks after the surgery in spite of the surgeon’s protest that it was too soon, and started training at IFC | PT with a walking aid.  At that time, my weight was already at its peak of 93kg.  I was dangerously overweight, and was hit with high blood pressure as well.  I was terribly unfit and worse, extremely unhappy.

 The surgeon and the physiotherapist at the hospital instructed me to use the crutches for 6 months.  However, I threw them out in 2 weeks and decided to depend on just a cane.  I was determined to do without the cane in 3 months or less and expressed that to my personal trainers at IFC | PT.  We also sat down to evaluate my fitness goals, which I laid out quite clearly to them.  First and foremost, I needed to recover, and I needed to recover faster than usual as I wanted to be able to run again.  Secondly, I wanted to shed at least 20kg of weight to get myself to an optimal level of fitness and health.  The weight-loss goal was in fact, a goal set by my cardiologist who said that my weight gain has put my health in danger, particularly when my high blood pressure was in fact, caused by a congenital heart defect.  Health-wise, I was a walking time-bomb.  Thirdly, I wanted to get back to doing contact sports.  If I could, I would like to be able to play rugby again perhaps.   If I am not properly recovered, I would be a liability to my rugby team mates.

 So Aaron Rolley, who helmed IFC PT, got his team of specialized trainers together to design a fitness and nutritional program that was catered specifically to my needs and my goals.  In doing so, he introduced me to a new sport which quickly became my passion for which I have been working the rest of my life around. 

To do justice to the efforts of the team at IFC PT, I would like to introduce its head trainer, Aaron Rolley who had kindly detailed the steps he took to getting me back on the straight and narrow with regard to my health and fitness.  Over to you, Aaron:

 

Getting Jo Back On The Straight And Narrow

"Before letting Joanna get back into training, we first consulted her post-op physiotherapist who gave us a break down on training guidelines, Jo followed those rules for about 3 seconds before declaring them boring and demanding that we stopped training her "like a pussy".

 Jo’s training kicked off with a lot of single leg limited ROM movements to get her leg strength up and to keep her knee stable, progressing over time to back squats, lunges, and full dead lifts, coupled with upper body exercises. At this point we were still trying to get Jo’s weight down so she was doing a lot of circuit style training.

I starting advising Jo on what to eat for weight loss in 2005, lots of vegetables, fruit, and lean animal protein, minimise alcohol, and drink lots of water, she started paying attention in 2014, did I mention that she’s stubborn?

Before Jo was introduced to boxing she had always trained hard.  Sure she would complain a lot and dictated what exercises she wanted in a workout, but always gave it everything. Unfortunately we never achieved the desired weight loss.  She thought eating healthy was boring and considered a glass of wine a serving of fruit.

A New Passion

Then we introduced Jo to Dave Macanlalay, a certified kettlebell specialist and a martial arts coach.   Dave got Jo hooked on boxing by the way he broke down the techniques. He  had a traditional approach to martial arts, which, beyond the drills, technique, strength and conditioning work, he had also taught discipline and respect.

Jo was finally ready to fuel her body properly and combined with her ramped up training schedule,  her body began to transform  before our eyes. Inspired, she approached us with a goal to take boxing to a competitive level and she was determined to do it within a year and a half. 

On her own accord, she searched and found a fight academy that could take her boxing to a new level, Juggernaut Fight Club.  Arvind Lalwani, the head coach of Juggernaut Fight Club also assessed Jo's current fitness level as well as her goals before taking her on board.   In Jo's words, " I chose to be trained by Arvind because he is one of the coaches for the national boxing team, and he has been developing champions in the sport."  That's how serious she was about boxing.  As Arvind  worked on building her skills, techniques, form, strength and speed, my team and I at IFC | PT shifted the game-plan by redesigning a regime for Jo that is tailored to her goal to be a fighter.   Jo was so fired up by her new passion that she was not willing to take a break even on weekends. So, she now runs every Saturday morning, to a neighborhood gym, The Right Fit, about 3km away to do some pad work and boxing drills with the trainers there.

Jo's New Fitness Direction

Jo’s training and nutritional requirements have now changed. She now has specialized coaches from IFC | PT,  Juggernaut Fight Club and The Right Fit who work with her on different aspects of her fitness,  At IFC | PT,  Jo works on strength and conditioning, for example hang cleans and push presses, with a specialized weight-training coach, Gregory Pink to develop explosive power. and a movement specialist.  Our movement and corrective exercise specialist, Mark Stentaford,   designed a program to help her with agility and flexibility, and also uses his skills to make sure Jo’s body can handle the rigours of her training schedule.  At Juggernaut Fight Club, Arvind continues  to hone her fighting skills and technique.

Jo now trains 6 days a week religiously and sticks to a very healthy and balanced diet.  I have personally seen Jo getting stronger and fitter.  Since post surgery till today, she has lost a total of 17kg through sheer hard work and commitment to her health.  Jo's perspective on health and fitness has changed.  In the past, she trained hard with that one thought to look good. Today, she trains hard just to get stronger, fitter and faster.  The  entire team of trainers watching her grow in her fitness journey, cannot be more proud of her.  

Her fitness journey is proof that multiple trainers from across different specialized gyms can work together to help a client to attain her fitness goals."

 

No Egos, No Barriers, No Limits

 

I have learnt throughout this journey to better health and fitness that when there is no ego, there would not be barriers. When there are no barriers, then there are no limits. My fitness journey is on-going. If anything, the best thing I got behind a healthier and fitter me, is my renewed passion for life which has enabled me to balance the demands of a career as a marketing and public relations professional, a hobby as a freelance sportswriter and my training schedule.

 

For more information about the trainers responsible for getting me back on track towards better health and fitness, do visit:

 

IFC | PT - www.ifcpt.com

Juggernaut Fight Club – www.juggernautfightclub.com

The Right Fit – https://facebook.com/therightfitsg

This post was written jointly by Aaron Rolley from IFC | PT and myself, and was recently published in Asia Sports Network at http://asiasportsnetwork.net/my-journey-towards-being-fighting-fit

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Muay Thai and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

No Barriers, No Fear, No Ego - The Juggernaut Fight Club Way

Falling In Love With Kickboxing

If you have been following my blog, you would know that health and fitness ranked very high on my list of priorities.  Many have told me that time constraints and conflicting priorities prevent them from doing more to get healthier and fitter.  I felt otherwise.  Having to juggle a very fast-paced life as a marketeer at a financial MNC, running a business in between, and managing the demands of family,  were the very reasons I gave 200% to my health and fitness.  I had to be fit and healthy enough to juggle these priorities as effectively as possible.

A big part of my fitness regime was kickboxing which I had fallen in love with when I was introduced to the sport a few months ago after my knee made full recovery post surgery.    I was so fuelled with passion for the sport that I even enrolled at a Muay Thai gym in Phuket to undergo training with a pro-fighter and Muay Thai coach in June this year.  I have also lined up plans to go visit my Thai coach for intensive training sessions  in Phuket every 2 months.  Having survived my first training in Phuket, with nothing more than a bruised elbow and a sprained foot, I fell irretrievably in  love with the sport enough to want to be better at it.  I came back to Singapore with a conviction to lift my fitness level with a 5-day-a-week work-out routine that combined strength conditioning, cardio-fitness and kickboxing training, and I briefed my personal trainers to design a regime that focused on helping me become a better kickboxer.

Juggernaut Fight Club

David and I talked a lot about my interest in kickboxing and the support I needed to sustain my interest and better myself in the sport. He was naturally worried and his concern centered on the fact that I was older. I developed my interest in the sport at an age when most were careful about long term impact to their bodies. Having had numerous health issues and a knee surgery 2 years ago did not help my cause.  So he called his contacts in the industry for whom he did a lot of sports photography work to get advice while I did my research to find out more about some of the specialized gyms in Singapore that offered functional training in kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).  That was when I chanced upon Juggernaut Fight Club. If I had the courage to walk into a Muay Thai training regime in Phuket with my eyes opened,   I was not going to allow the more intensive training and the younger, fitter folks who had pro-fight experience under their belts at Juggernaut Fight Club intimidate me.
  
Before signing up with Juggernaut Fight Club, I read the reviews on it and checked out their videos on YouTube.  What was important for me, was that I picked a coach who was focused on my interest, my development and my safety.  That was why I picked Arvind Lalwani.  Okay, I could not lie but his instagram profile was reassuring too.  It described him as “ Head coach at the best fight gym in Singapore…national wrestler, loves cake and produce fighters.”  That won me over.   I then contacted Arvind to prepare him for the  heart attack of potentially having in his hands, a much older and crazy woman with a plastic knee who wanted to be trained to fight like Ronda Rousey in one year.  I swore, when Arvind met me for the first time, my psychic mind saw a huge question mark in his head that read, “How did I end up with this fruitcake?”  However, he was so reassuring and took the time to understand what my fitness goals were and what I had been doing so far to get there.

Arvind The Juggernaut

Through my research, I found out that Arvind was a highly decorated fighter. He was the first Singaporean to snag a gold medal  in an international wrestling competition, and he competed in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) as well as the MMA arenas. He fought professionally in 2010 in the Mettle games and had also headed the national boxing team. When he established Juggernaut Fight Club, he produced winning fighters who represented club and country at the One Fighting Championships  (OneFC) and Pacific X-treme Combat (PXC). He was constantly training his fighters for competitions.  As I wrote this, one of his fighters just returned from the OneFC fight in Taipei and more were getting trained for the upcoming Rebel Fighting Championship on 1 August.

His list of achievements was enough to make me sprint out of that door, the very first day I visited his gym. To make matters worse, when I glanced around the gym for the first time, I realized this was for real.  It was a serious fighters’ gym.  Training was in session then. The young blokes who were rolling around the floor, while throwing punches at each other, were all in “fight-prep” mode.  I wanted to turn and run but Arvind’s frame was blocking the doorway.   A little voice of in-confidence within me crept up to whisper a disconcerting question, “What are you doing here, Jo?  This place is not for you.  You are old, unfit, soft and completely not suited for the sport. Go downstairs for a beer.”

I looked around for girls, hoping that maybe with another female nearby who looked equally like a deer in the headlights, I might have felt quite at home.  However, everyone there at that time were blokes and the gym was not a regular gym with “pussy stationery bikes and half-assed cross- trainers”,  it was a functional training gym focused on fight training and well-equipped with everything that a pro-fighter needed to get fight-ready. 

After speaking to Arvind, I connected enough with him to understand his training style, and I caught a glimpse of his rapport with the guys he had been training at the gym.  That was the rapport and trust I was looking for.  And he said to me very firmly, "At Juggernaut, there are no Egos."   So, I summoned the nerve to commit myself to serious kickboxing training at Juggernaut Fight Club and I have not looked back since.

Training with Arvind had been such a breath of fresh air.  Every minute of it was about perfecting the technique, right from the start of getting me into the right fight stance.  We went back to the basics of every kickboxing move in spite of the fact that I had been training for a few months prior.  He made me re-learn everything ...his way.  He explained each move with precision and stressed that the importance of getting the technique right was to prevent the potential of my getting injured while delivering a powerful blow. He was unrelenting.  When I was near frustration or thoroughly exhausted in between drills, he continued to egg me on and challenged me to push past my pain barriers.  He would not accept anything less than full commitment to a training session and he made it very clear that he was with me all the way no matter how difficult it got.

My Fitness Goals

"So what are my fitness goals?", Arvind and everyone who mattered asked me.  

When I started out playing rugby in my younger days, everyone told me that a prop forward could never and should never attempt to score a try.  I should stick to my role as a prop forward and clear the way for the back row to score that try.   I proved them wrong and I did score tries after all at tournaments.

When I came out of a knee surgery with everyone telling me that I would never be able to run again, I proved them wrong and completed my half marathon last year.  When my knee made full recovery and everyone told me that I should just stick to doing safe exercises like swimming and basic gym work, I proved them wrong and picked up kickboxing.  

When I picked up kickboxing, everyone told me I was crazy as I had a less than perfect knee, and I was too old and not fit or fast enough.  I know for a fact that I am too old for amateur boxing competitions perhaps but I told Arvind that he had to get me into a ring one day, no matter what it took, even if it was just white collar boxing or exhibition fights.  I wanted to prove to everyone that nobody should be limited by barriers, by fear or by ego.  I am not afraid of pain, I am not afraid of taking hits from anyone, I am not afraid of falling and I am definitely not afraid of working hard towards my goals.

I felt the Universe had  guided me into Juggernaut Fight Club, smacked me with a bit of a shock when I realized what I was in for, and then salved me with the assurance that Arvind was the man who was going to get me to my goal.  I believed that I could not have picked a better coach.  Arvind produced fighters.  He ran a serious fight gym.  Yet, he gave me his time and commitment, and he made me feel that I deserved to be a good  kickboxer one day.   I truly respected Arvind for what he had done for the sport and was proud to have him as my coach.  However, the biggest reason that I committed myself to Juggernaut Fight Club and his training was that like me, he had so much determination, a never-say-never attitude, and was always ready for a challenge no matter how big or small it was.  If he could commit his time and effort to me as someone so new to the sport who was completely way past her prime, then I was committed to ensuring I gave 200% to my training with him.

I am a firm believer that in life, there are definitely NO BARRIERS.

I will leave you with an article I read that inspired me to follow my dreams and work towards my goal regardless of age, fitness level, injury and other limitations: http://news.distractify.com/people/17-important-life-lessons-that-martial-arts-will-teach-you/?v=1

You can find out more about Arvind Lalwani and Juggernaut Fight Club at http://juggernautfightclub.com/

The photos accompanying this blog post was taken by my very talented best friend, husband and sports photographer extraordinaire, David Ash.  You can find out more about his photography work at  www.singaporemaven.com

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a 44 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketing professional at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, her passion for kickboxing and her family which includes a 20 year old son and 3 dogs with personality disorders.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" which when translated, has labeled him one with “ginger hair”.  And you know what we all thought of gingers right?  He thinks he is blonde, but in a certain light, I think he is more a ginger.  Together, we create a home made up with more nuts than a fruitcake but filled with plenty of love.

I hate push-ups but I was told they were good for me.

Trying to avoid dislodging my coach's nipple.

My coach Arvind, and I.  Today, he is in a good mood.

Training with that nuisance of a band on.

Making that elbow work harder