Boxing Evolution™ (BE).
I devised Boxing Evolution™ (BE) to help turn around the lives of young people who became involved in crime, especially with knives and guns. Boxing Evolution’s core principles are based on an understanding gained from my experiences during my middle teens. I am now 28 years old living in Maidenhead, Berkshire. It sounds a nice place to live but there are many tensions between people from different housing estates and different ethnic backgrounds. Of course I got involved in gangs to fit in, gain some ‘identity’ and to form mutual protection. We did some irresponsible things, but no-one was ever seriously hurt.
Because I was smaller, I was bullied at school. It made me realise that I had to learn to look after myself. I was introduced to boxing when I was 17 and this eventually helped me to transform my life. I say ‘eventually, because what it did initially was make me a better fighter; so much so that I gained a bit of a reputation, at least enough to make alot of people think twice before having an unecessary confrontation with me.
What I realised I needed to help me change was a change of location. I went to Portsmouth University having scraped 2 A levels. I didn’t like University except I had a lot of free time. Luckily I decided to start up a Boxing Club at the Uni, which had stopped due to lack of interest. I found out that the Royal Navy had a great boxing coach and I persuaded him to get involved. His name is Quentin Shillingford, or ‘Q’.
What Q did was to inspire me to think about how confidence enables you to do anything, and simply observing Q in different situations opened my eyes to a lot.
Although I was successful in running the club, I wanted to do more. I had always been interested in psychology, philosophy, spirituality etc, and I started to think about how I could combine boxing with an approach to getting better emotional intelligence. In other words I wanted to help people make better decisions by using boxing as a medium of connection and communication. To do this I created a specially designed course, which I named the ‘Boxing Potential course‘.
I knew I was on the right track, and over the last couple of years I have been testing parts of it with different individuals and groups of young people. It seems to be successful in the small trials that I’ve done.
Because I know what made me and others go off the rails, and know one way of getting back in charge of your life, means that B.E could be a valuable project to change lives for the better.
The course is based upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The programme then takes the participants through the various levels of the hierarchy.
Communication is a very important part of how the project will be presented and B.E makes use of modern techniques such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and EMT (Emotional Freedom Technique) for example.
It is the combination of boxing training and personal development that makes Boxing Evolution™ unique.
I am involved with other organisations such as the Princes trust. The Prince trust gave me funding to start up in business and I would not be where I am now without them. With the money they gave me I ran a pilot project called the ‘Boxing Evolution summer camp‘ which was a huge success. I hope to be an indication of the potential of this course. I have now run my third boxing summer camp which went extremely well and enabled me to gain some brilliant feedback.
This is just the beggining of something that I hope can make big positive changes to people lives, keep your eyes peeled to the website or my facebook page (www.facebook.com/boxingevolution) for the latest events.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Flavell Flave
E-Mail: flave@boxingevolution.com
Mobile: 07980986484
