Five years ago, I never would have imagined martial arts would become one of the defining parts of my life.
At the time, I was simply looking for something to focus on. Like many people in their late teens and early twenties, I was trying to navigate a difficult chapter as I finished high school and entered college. I was searching for an outlet, and in the process I stumbled across the world of martial arts and the UFC.
At first, it was just a distraction. It gave me something to look forward to and a way to spend time with friends during a period when both consistency and enjoyment were hard to come by. What felt like a small decision at the time ended up changing the course of my life. I thought I had found a distraction. Looking back now, I had actually found a new direction.
I Walked Into a Martial Arts Gym on My Worst Day and It Changed Everything
After watching my first UFC event, UFC 261: Kamaru Usman vs. Jorge Masvidal 2, I was hooked. I had started loosely following the UFC in 2020, largely because it was one of the first major sports to return during the pandemic.
At the time, my knowledge of the sport was limited. I knew who Conor McGregor, Jon Jones and Khabib Nurmagomedov were because I had heard classmates talk about them in high school, but that was about it. I loved the sport so much though I dove in head-first I started learning about the legends of the past and how the sport came to be. The growth, the dark ages, the legal battles and more.
Five years later, I am still a relatively new fan compared to many lifelong followers of the sport. Yet martial arts has become one of the foundations of my life. It is how I connect with friends and family, the field I hope to build a career in and the reason I eventually stepped into a gym and began training myself.
I first walked into a martial arts gym, New England Taekwondo, in September 2021. A close friend picked me up from my house completely unannounced on a day when I was feeling pretty low. He put me in his car and told me we were going to train. A short drive later, I was inside my first martial arts gym.
My first exposure to martial arts was a full contact kickboxing class. It was brutal.
I had always considered myself athletic. I grew up playing sports, baseball from age 4 to 14, cross country for a couple of seasons starting at 13 and tennis throughout high school, though I never took it too seriously. But none of that really prepared me for what I walked into that day.
Even though the session was overwhelming, I was able to throw a few punches. The kicks were harder to figure out and I had no idea how to deal with clinches or takedowns. Still, I fell in love with the experience, the burn, the challenge and the feeling of getting through something difficult.
Every session felt like a war with my own body. I was winded, exhausted, sometimes close to throwing up and sore after nearly every class. On top of the group training, I began doing personal sessions with my coach Shawn Mackisey because I wanted to improve as quickly as possible.
Within my first few months of training, I started incorporating jiu-jitsu into my regimen. I wanted to be as complete as I could be. Grappling, striking, weight training and running soon became the normal rotation, and within six months I was starting to understand just how challenging it all was. Still, I kept showing up.
But martial arts always finds a way to test you. One day I had an extremely hard session with my coach. I got absolutely wrecked. I walked out of that session feeling dejected and frustrated with how poorly I performed.
At the time, I thought I was making steady progress, but I was still lacking a bit of mental fortitude. That is part of why that session happened. My coach didn’t know if I would come back after that, but I did and I was proud of myself for it.
I knew I had been beaten up and that I still had a lot to learn. I was upset, but I took it as a learning experience and an opportunity to improve. My mentality toward martial arts, and honestly toward life, changed that day. I began to look at challenges and setbacks not as a poor reflection of myself, but as opportunities to identify what I needed to improve. That is how tenacity is built, through the understanding that growth is not always comfortable, but it comes from the willingness to make mistakes, adjust and keep moving forward.
The lessons learned inside the walls of the gym have shaped my mentality, my discipline and the confidence I carry with me today. I have applied what martial arts has taught me to nearly every part of my life, both inside and outside of training. Looking back now half a decade later, what I thought was just a way to pass time turned into something much larger.
Martial arts did not just fill a gap in my life. It slowly became part of how I think, how I approach challenges and how I understand discipline. In the process, it ended up changing the path I was on entirely.
