Through the lens of boxing and martial arts, discover how physical engagement serves as a powerful medium for personal and artistic expression, highlighting the intricate relationship between violence and vulnerability.

The first thing you are taught when you come to a boxing training is to never use what you are about to learn there on people who are not from the martial arts world, who don’t know how to inflict violence upon others warily. This part of training is so important because fighting without it can end badly: you hurt someone too much, you yourself get hurt, etc. The same thing is with art - you need to learn the rules to be able to express yourself properly.

Self-Expression Through Sports

Sports, in the same way as arts, allow people to express their feelings, emotions, thoughts, worries, personality, and ideas through the very act of engaging in them. Self-expression happens through participation in something, through doing the activity itself. It’s about thinking about the act itself, and nothing else. It’s about dissolving in the process.

Canadian Olympic triathlon champion Simon Whitfield compared sports to stage performance, where everybody involved has to “carry out random actions” to which you ascribe make-believe meanings and value. He says that you have to embrace this strange situation. That the meaning is in the process, in the expression of the self through movement, not in the ultimate result. It’s in the experience of doing something.

Sports in this ultimate form are not about money, fame, achievements, or social expectations. All this fades when an athlete steps onto a field or a track. It becomes only about them and the opponent. It is like a dance - performance reflects the performer, their skills, emotions, passions. It is a reflection of the athlete’s true self, unbound from any earthly restrictions. It is (artistic) freedom.

Self-Expression Through Boxing and Martial Arts

Thus, further questions arise. Can boxing and martial arts be an outlet for artistic self-expression the way other sports are? Can athletes express themselves via fighting, let their feelings out, show their true selves? Can different fighting styles fit different emotions better?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I think boxing or any other martial art is as much of an art as painting, basketball, writing, running track, or dancing. Boxers step into a ring and express themselves via throwing and avoiding punches, circling around each other, looking into each other's eyes. Michael Timm, head coach of Germany's Olympic boxing training center, said that boxing is ‘about coming up with ideas.’ It’s about ‘annoying the opponent so that he doesn't land a punch.’

During the fight, boxers elevate above their physical conditions, forget about their imperfections and injuries. They might get physically hurt, but mentally be in a completely separate place, isolated from the burden of their body. They channel their feelings, their minds, their souls into the fighting. They express themselves through this violence.

Although there isn’t a correlation between different martial arts and personality types, there are fighting styles that fit more and less aggressive people, more and less competitive people, etc. Such fighting styles as boxing, Kenpo, Karate, Tae-Kwon-Do, and Kung Fu are more suitable for aggression and directness. They channel strength during fights. Aikido, Judo, and Tai Chi Chuan are less aggressive, and more patient and gentle. Opponents engage with each other as little as possible, thus every move is calculated, thought-through, and filled with meaning.

Through their very actions, boxers and martial artists continue the primordial tradition of fighting, they do what people did for thousands of years before them, and will do long after them. Boxers are part of something incredibly ancient, something that is much bigger than them, but that is also a part of them. Probably, by now, everything there is to be invented in boxing was already invented. It seems like there will be no new ways to hurt people with bare hands - but for the sake of art, I hope to be wrong. Thus, it is interesting to look at how physical violence in general - not limited to martial arts and sports - can serve as a way to express oneself.

Self-Expression Through Violence

Physical violence is an outlet for artistic self-expression. It is a form of communication with the outer, as well as with a person’s inner worlds. Violence lets out underlying thoughts, desires, and feelings that we (or at least some of us) are incapable of expressing in any other way. As Philip L. Tite (2015) said, “violent behavior - directed either at oneself or at others - is a creative process”.

Violence can function as a symbol, a token, an expression of communal feelings. An example can be found in the final third of Do the Right Thing (1989), as inhabitants of a neighborhood in Brooklyn erupt with violence, tired of racism, police brutality, and insufferable heat. Here it is a way to express emotions that can no longer be held inside.

However, more often violence is about the expression of one person, about their identity. It can function as a transmitter of feelings that have various origins: personal trauma, insecurities, healing, etc. Philip L. Tite (2015) calls it ‘expressive violence’. It allows us to reflect and act upon the parts of our identity that are normally suppressed deep inside.

Violence is a way to express oneself. It can be unreliable, dangerous, unwelcome in civil society - if the person perpetrating it is not in control. However, if they are, violence can be as effective and cathartic as a method of self-expression as dancing or painting. It allows us to communicate with other people as well as ourselves through a channel that is normally closed. Violence allows us to express ourselves creatively and unexpectedly; it opens us up to ourselves, shows us aspects of our souls we were not familiar with before. To quote Philip L. Tite (2015), ‘expressive violence is an act of worldview building.’

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