ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES

I’m a Nice Polite Girl from LEH and it Felt So Mean to Hit People at First

Pro boxer Amy Andrew, Class of 2004, is not content to rest on her laurels as English National Champion. The 35-year-old has given herself a year to become World Champion and works hard to fit in training and bouts in the ring with her job as UK Head of Boxing at Virgin Active.

“I did a lot of sport at LEH – I was on the team for Netball, Swimming and Running. We had the most incredible sports teachers – including Miss Sdao – who was on the England Netball Team. I was very inspired by her. We all went to see her play for England against New Zealand. She was tall and beautiful and a little intimidating, but it gave me something to aim for – a sense that you could succeed if you tried hard enough.

I really loved being part of a team and being active. I’ve always been buzzing with energy and that’s one of the things that drew me to sport – it was a great way of letting off steam. I was just so appreciative of all the space at LEH. It was such a nice environment to be in, with those amazing playing fields, tennis courts and great stretches of grass to go running on in the lunch hour.

I always felt I should have a traditional career; a lot of my friends went on to study law or work in finance, so after leaving LEH I went to Loughborough to study English and Sports Science. Then I did a postgraduate course in newspaper journalism at Cardiff University. I worked as a journalist for eight years, starting off on local newspapers, before becoming a financial reporter for Mail Online. One day I wrote a story about whitecollar boxing and I just felt really drawn to it. I signed up for white collar fight myself and I absolutely fell in love with it – I realised that’s what I really wanted to do. It felt like something I could be really good at.

My first ever white-collar fight was an eye-opening experience. The first time I got hit, I cried. Not because it hurt, but because it was so shocking. And it was so weird hitting other people. For the first couple of years every time I hit someone I said ‘sorry’. I’m a nice polite girl from LEH and it just felt so mean! But you do get over it.

Boxing started out as a hobby when I was 29, just to get my fitness up. I absolutely loved it from the start, couldn’t get enough of it. I spent a while trying to balance boxing with my career, teaching boxing in my spare time, taking advantage of the explosion of interest in the world of fitness. By this time, I was 33, and that’s relatively old for the world of boxing. In the UK, the sport is supported by the National Lottery, and they tend to look for young people, so I was kind of stuck in the English cycle, wanting to improve but not really being able to break into it.

My Mum comes from New Zealand and their system is self-funded, so they didn’t worry about the age so much. I spent a few years trying to get into the New Zealand team and I was hoping to qualify to represent them in the featherweight division in the Olympics. We were on our way to the qualifiers in Wuhan when the pandemic hit, and they obviously had to cancel the whole thing. Instead, they decided to take into account your performance over the past four years so I didn’t have enough experience and didn’t get selected. I wouldn’t have chosen for it to finish like that and I was really disappointed at first.

The first time I got hit, I cried. Not because it hurt, but because it was so shocking.

But that’s when I decided to go professional. There are two kinds of boxing – professional and amateur. The term amateur is very misleading. It’s what can lead to taking part in the Olympics. It’s a points-based system and you wear head gear, and the standards are incredibly high. Professional boxing is more like a business than a pure sport. There’s no head gear, smaller gloves and you’re going for a win by trying to knock someone out. It sounds very aggressive, but you have to be very fit and learn lots of techniques. It’s about

being controlled and technical. Boxing is still a relatively new sport for women, but it’s become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. Now that people are starting to see other women excel, they’re realising there’s a lot more to it than just hitting someone, it’s really technical and requires a lot of skill.

One of the things I love is that you are so completely in the moment. There’s this great rush of adrenalin and you can only think about right now and how to defend yourself. You are so caught up you don’t notice the pain, you’re just thinking about scoring the next point and keeping moving. It’s not so explosive with women and it’s all done in as safe a way as possible.

Obviously, the ultimate aim is to knock someone out, but taking part is more like a game of tag, it’s about scoring points, about catching someone out. In the ring someone is trying to hurt you and you need to think constantly about your technique, keeping your hands up, your feet moving and your brain whirring, keeping a few steps ahead. Foot work is my thing – I’m fast in and out. I’ve never been knocked out and

AMY’S ADVICE TO PUPILS

I’ve never knocked anyone else out, but I have had fights stopped – if there’s too much blood. Once, just before the qualifications for the Olympics, I got a stress fracture at the top of my spine - and that was painful. There’s nothing for it but to rest.

I’d recommend boxing to everyone. I’d say to others – try it out. Boxing is amazing whether you are looking to improve your fitness or take part in competitive boxing.

I’m really keen to support and encourage other girls coming up through boxing. I’ve organised events for young female boxers and helped fundraise for events to promote them. I’m really lucky that I found an incredible club and coaches - Haringey Boxing Club, who produced Nicola Adams, so they’ve been amazing.

Boxing has given me so much more confidence. You have a sense that if you can be in the ring and do that, you can do so much more than you realised outside it. It’s really helped in all areas of my life and I’ve seen a massive increase in my fitness.

My ambition is to be world champion. I’ve given myself a year to do it and I believe that I can make it. I’ve beaten the current world champion in the past, and a couple of the other key contenders. But once I’ve won the title I plan to hang up the gloves. In professional boxing there’s no set path to winning titles. It’s all about self-promotion, you have to get as many fights as you can to showcase your skills. I find it quite hard to big myself up, so I tend to let my fists do the talking. You have to call out the

Women didn’t used to have access to this world. If you step out from expectations, it’s really liberating, you can be aggressive, you can fight. In normal life, I’m quite polite, but that’s not me in the ring at all. It’s a great outlet for stress and a fantastic opportunity to be something completely different. world champion on Instagram, it’s about being in the right place at the right time. It’s old-style boxing and people do get frustrated waiting for it to happen. But if you have a bad fight and take a punch in the face you just need to pick yourself back up and get on it. I’m very lucky to get to do something I love.”