Giving girls the power they deserve

Boxing coach Daisy Jones launches a class for 13-16 year old girls today, at Hustle Fitness Studio in Norwich. On a quest to help combat mental health and body image issues, she explains why she’s so passionate about getting girls into sport

I’ve been really lucky in my life to be surrounded my positive people. I’ve faced a lot of challenges – anxiety and OCD, eating problems, illness in the family and toxic relationships. Luckily, throughout all of this, I’ve had a really strong support system to get me through the hard times, and I have so many positive memories of fun times with my loved ones. I’ve managed to find reason in all of the struggles I have been through and turn them into something positive. I am in the best place mentally I have been in, ever, thanks to boxing and I want to share this with other females. I struggled badly in high school with anxiety and, to be honest, I hated school and found the pressure to look a certain way really overwhelming! My goal is to change this for future generations.

I’d boxed on and off for about four years and then, a year ago, I discovered Hustle, run by Bobby Harrison, and fell in love with boxing. I’d tried different boxing clubs before but hadn’t found the right one for me until Hustle. I originally started going to the female only classes he ran, as I was intimidated to go alone, but as soon as I got there I felt at ease and the boxing community was straight away so supportive. I also run a drama and sports company so have worked as a coach for years. After going to Hustle for a year, I decided to train as a boxing coach. It was the best decision I made. At the time I was going through a hard time and having boxing to focus on and the support of other coaches training me to become a better version of myself helped me so much. It makes me feel like so independent, strong, sexy and like an absolute superwoman. It’s given me the strength, focus and self-love I needed and lacked. I want to make other girls feel like this and teach them to be a powerful female.

On both a professional and a personal level, lockdown has been a huge struggle. I worked solely in the entertainment and theatre world, pre-lockdown, so as soon as lockdown happened last March, my work was gone. I then had to waitress and do any little jobs I could find, to bring in a tiny bit of income. Paying my bills was a struggle. On a personal level, I went through an extremely toxic breakup and spent most of the year in tears, being told I wasn’t good enough. I lost a lot of weight and completely lost myself. As soon as I started training to be a boxing coach, things changed. My energy become more positive, I started to remember how strong I am, life become more successful and most importantly, happier. Now, a year on, I have more work than I had pre-lockdown, more opportunities and I am surrounded by the most supportive people both at work and home.

Hustle started in January 2020. We were running 10 small group classes a week in a small corner of an independent gym. After just two weeks our classes were sold out, including our regular female only classes. After building our client base we had to adapt to online training because of the Covid pandemic. This became an opportunity for us, meaning we could now teach our classes to more people and other places around the world. In the last year we ran 456 classes, teaching more than 6500 people around the world. During this time, we also had the opportunity to open our own venue which we have just opened. During the last year we also developed our classes, introducing ballet barre, yoga, strength and conditioning and youth boxing classes. We now have a team of eight coaches delivering 25 classes a week as well as personal training.

The classes for 13-16 year old girls start today and I can’t wait! We have a lot of girls signed up and all the girls are excited to discover their inner power.

We have created a community and safe place at Hustle for girls to make friends, discuss matters that are concerning and train to be females bosses without having to worry about what they look like. Boxing gives you the focus you need to put yourself first and discover the strength your body has instead of focusing of how you weigh, what you’re eating and what other girls look like. It forces you to focus on YOU. Exercises is known to help mental health issues, I have always used training as my therapy. It’s a place to go where you can leave all of your mental thoughts at the door and just forget about everything for an hour.

Social media causes an insane amount of pressure on young girls with body’s being edited on photoshop, snapchat photos and the pressure to look good at all time and I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that is to deal with. There’s pressure every which way they turn: outside of school to look good; at school to look good; exam pressure; peer pressure and so much more.

I get multiple messages daily from girls wanting to get into boxing and it’s great to see!

My mission this year is to create an army of strong females. I want to help girls believe in themselves, discover their inner strength and become female bosses. We have exciting plans to turn Hustle Girls into a community where we will have speakers come in to give nutrition talks, mental health workshops and a café where the girls can hang out before and after class. Watch this space!