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Somewhat unrelated but when I was in school and still naive (sophomore year - US equivalent), at the insistance of my house boxing captain (went to a boarding s
by sgpl 13y ago
Somewhat unrelated but when I was in school and still naive (sophomore year - US equivalent), at the insistance of my house boxing captain (went to a boarding school that had 5 houses/residences), I took up boxing as a sport because it looked fun, and I thought I could win my weight category. Long story short, some senior went on a crazy diet, and entered my weight category, and as luck would have it, I was the one drawn to fight him instead of the other three that I could have drawn against.
On the day of, though we had protective head gear, mouth guards, and other such stuff, this dude banged me up pretty bad for three one minute rounds that was allotted for our bout. At the time I was happy that I wasn't knocked out (we had technical knockouts if one dude was getting banged up pretty badly), but in retrospect that would have been a better outcome.
For the next few days/weeks, though I looked normal, my head felt swollen, and it would pulsate randomly when I put my head down on a pillow or try and take notes (similar the the feeling when trying to find your pulse on your wrist times.10). The school doc gave me some pain killers, but even when not on them, my attention span was gone and I couldn't stay focused at all for the next few days. Foolishly I boxed again next year, but was better at defending my self, so wasn't hit much.
I recently graduated from 4 years of college, and looking back it had a significant affect on my memory/retention my junior and senior years of school, and my focus was never the same and god knows what else was damaged. Perhaps I am attributing my decline in academic performance to that single incident, when there could be a bunch of other reasons (correlation doesn't imply causation), but if I could take those three minutes back at the cost of a year of my life, I probably would.
I recently saw a TED talk[1] by Amy Cuddy, a professor @ HBS, on an unrelated subject, where she talks about suffering head trauma in a car accident, that resulted in her having to take significantly longer to graduate college, because of the accident's affect on her mental cognition.
[1] http://www.ted.com/speakers/amy_cuddy.html http://www.ted.com/speakers/amy_cuddy.html
- Mz 13y agoCorrelation does not prove causation. It most certainly can imply it. I think it absolutely does imply it here. It is not like head injuries are not known for impacting memory, etc.
- Iterated 13y agoBoxing is extremely damaging to the brain. The gloves make it even worse because it allows a boxer to sustain more blows for a longer period of time. If there were no gloves there would be quicker knockouts and less bouncing of the brain around in a boxer's skull for extended periods of time. This is why many posit that MMA is safer than boxing. Smaller gloves mean quicker knockouts. There are also ways to win MMA fights that don't involve direct punching.
- brazzy 13y agoActually, if there were no gloves, there would be very little punching to the head, because that would often lead to broken fingers rather than knockouts. Gloves were introduced because the few punches to the head nearly always caused cuts, making bare-knuckle boxing a very bloody sport. Gloves made boxing palatable to the glamour crowd, at the cost of the fighters' health (and sometimes life).
- coryl 13y ago- We don't know if a quick KO is "better" than a sustained beating. I'm not sure if any scientific evidence helps show this, so that hypothesis is just theory at the moment. (I haven't research this at all though, so if you have articles please do share.)
- BSousa 13y agoI had the opposite experience. My attention and productivity during my boxing years was way greater than now. Could have been the discipline I got from training leaking to other parts of my life. Who knows, but I know I did way better with most aspects of my life when training than not training. But related to your story, your coach was an asshole. He should have refused to let you fight. There is a reason at the lower rankings (pro and amateur) people are matched by similar number of fights. Here in Portugal, you even have 2 leagues. Rookie and Veterans, where your first fights are in the rookie league with people with less than 3-4 fights. Usually coaches try to have only 1-2 fight difference. When you have a certain number of fights (I think 5 but not sure as it was a long ago) you graduate, but even then, you don't really seem more than 3-4 fights difference. Sure, you may have someone that has been training for 6 years and only then taking it's first fight, but that is rare and usually, the idea is to rank similar fighters to avoid having a bloodbath as it happened to you. Again, and specially because this was a school environment, the coach should be fired and prevented from coaching ever again.