How boxing became a new kind of couples therapy

A dimly lit room, the sound of heavy breathing, minimal clothing strained across sweat-flecked male and female bodies...

Enter any boxing class these days and you’re likely to witness happy couples doing battle in the ring. Where your sparring partner might once have been a cauliflower-eared bloke missing his front teeth, you’re now far likelier to be knocking the stuffing out of your beloved. Indeed, one reason for the current spike in the boxing’s popularity might be that it offers an energetic spin on couples’ therapy. 

“Sparring gets any aggression you might have against your partner out in the open,” explains 31 year-old Laura Cox, a financial consultant from Ireland. Cox became “obsessed” with the sport two years ago and quickly drafted her husband, Mike, in too: the pair now attend boxing classes together every week, and she says having her spouse along for the ride is the biggest incentive of all for improving form, and vice versa. “My being there pushes him – if I’m punching better than he is, he wants to keep up. Competing against someone you know really drives you on,” she says. 

Something about having her husband present brings out her merciless streak, Cox adds. Having brought her sister along to classes at Kobox, where Jourdan Dunn and Ellie Goulding train in pursuit of the perfect right hook, she admits she doesn’t have the “same drive” unless she is facing off against the man she is married to.

“If he’s annoyed me, I can pretend he’s the punch bag,” jokes Scarlett Yianni, a 32-year-old HR manager. Her husband Jack suggested they give boxing a go last June – the pair are now considering getting boxing pads at home in order to practice out of hours. “It’s good for stress relief,” she says of the classes at Outrivals, a fitness studio in east London, and “I’m learning a skill for which you have to think.” 

Plus, having someone to drag you out of bed and into your Lycra skivvies is good for your health. Couples who sweat together really do stay together, according to research, as participating in a shared fitness challenge has been found to increase levels of satisfaction within a relationship. All lifestyle changes, in fact, stick better when made with a loved one – research published in 2015 found that one half of a romantically involved pair was far more likely to pursue positive health habits if the other did so, too. 

It is unsurprising, then, that boxing is the latest sweaty pursuit to be given the his ’n’ hers treatment. According to Sport England, the number of women who participated in some sort of boxing-based fitness at least twice in the last 28 days was around 380,000, with females now accounting for nearly a quarter of participants in the sport. 

One such proponent is Michele Lamy, the French creative (and other half of fashion designer Rick Owens) who, 35 years after first entering the ring at Los Angeles’s Wildcard Boxing Club, has brought a colourful appreciation of the sport to Selfridges’ flagship London store this month; For the past few weeks, shoppers have been following the curious grunts and rumblings to Lamyland: a popup boxing gym (and accompanying clothing range), created in partnership with BXR, the luxe studio fronted by world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, which is situ until tomorrow.

“Boxing is right now, it’s very fashionable,” says Lamy, 73. “I have lots of girlfriends of my age who are almost shy to say ‘I started boxing six months ago’. Everybody is boxing.” Severely outnumbered when she first started boxing, Lamy believes that while it “used to be a male thing where women were the underdogs, it’s now becoming more equal.”

That gender balance is undoubtedly being boosted by co-exercising couples, and not only when it comes to sparring: from HIIT classes to spinning, the battle to best your other half continues apace. “Competition can be fun and you can measure your fitness against your partner’s”, says Duncan Leighton, cycle instructor at fitness studio Another_Space, who says that you can always spot a couple keen to face-off.

“It usually starts with one of the pair coming alone, and then you see they’ve dragged their other half with them the next week,” he says. “Their partner’s reluctance is palpable, but then you see them both coming every week. In time, the partner they’ve introduced to the studio will start coming alone to extra classes, just to get a further leg up.”