Kickboxing: packing emotional punches

Journalist Otje van der Lelij has always wanted to take up kickboxing. Now she finally takes the plunge and, in the process, discovers that ‘fighting’ involves a lot more than just punching and kicking.

It’s time for an assertiveness exercise. First, I will attack and try to knock Nicole Anthonissen, lifestyle and kickboxing coach, over an imaginary line, and then I have to defend myself when the roles are reversed. “If you start to feel uncomfortable, just yell ‘stop’,” Anthonissen says. I start jabbing, left and then right, and she pushes me back farther and farther. Even when we’re standing nose to nose, I keep fighting as hard as I can. Giving up is not an option. I have to keep going. “You’re a real go-getter,” Anthonissen says when I really can’t go on anymore. And that’s when I break. “This is exactly what it’s like at home,” I tell her, in tears. “It feels like I’m always fighting. I have a busy job, a family, a full schedule. It’s so hard to juggle it all. I force myself to push through it, keep working away, even though sometimes it all gets to be too much.”