Move for Mental Health with Thai-Boxer Rachael Mackenzie

We are Girls in Sport is proud to be supporting Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week and to round up the week, we are delighted to share our exclusive interview with world Thai-boxing champion, Rachael Mackenzie.

Having only started Thai-Boxing in 2000, by 2006, British, Rachael Mackenzie had topped the women’s Thai-boxing world rankings in two weight categories (50kg and 52kg). Rachael has also taken two British titles, both by knockout and a European title. She later became the first European woman to compete in traditional bare-knuckle Thai-boxing in Thailand and the first woman to fight under full Muay-Thai rules in the UK. Throughout her Thai-boxing career she has had to overcome prejudice from people who do not believe women should compete in contact sports. Her success and perseverance have helped her to improve the profile and opportunities for female Thai-boxers.

We know that a child’s mental health is hugely important, particularly when it comes to dealing with stress and behaviour. According to figures published on the UK charity, Place2Be, around three children in every primary school class has a mental health problem. Many more struggle with challenges from bullying to bereavement.  Girls are facing more mental health problems and reports are of girls feeling less confident, less happy and increasingly concerned with their appearance. Girls’ health and wellbeing is deteriorating and unless we take action now, these negative issues could have a significant impact on them and the women they will become. Sport can be a powerful force to support girls on their journey to being happy, healthy and self-assured young women but to do so, we must start to challenge our thinking in this area to create solutions that will have a long-lasting and sustainable impact on girls’ lives.

Over her life, Rachael has built her own resilience and used boxing as a way to improve her life and her mental health after suffering from an eating disorder in her youth. Rachael spoke to us about how the power of movement is so vital for a child’s mental health. Here is her story:

Rachael, how does sport impact our mental health?

I am really passionate about this, especially as a female role model. For our mental health, when you start feeling physically stronger it can improve the confidence that you have. As you get physically stronger, you start to see that you can achieve things. For example, suddenly you can do a press up when you couldn’t do a press up. The subconscious triggers those thoughts of ‘I can do that, even when I didn’t believe that I could’. Sport impacts the way that you carry yourself. As a neurophysiology specialist one of my key areas of interest is around how movement impacts the brain. 

It’s about changing the physical being to trigger a different emotion for our brains to recognise. I was a typical teenager who walked with her head down, looking at the floor and I had this fake overconfident behaviour. That overconfident outlook was just masking how I really felt. It wasn’t until I had been in the ring a few times, been hit in the face a few times, that I realised I was capable of taking that contact - and getting back up again. Once I realised that, it changed the way I walked through the rest of my day. When you stand up to face an opponent in the ring,  suddenly it gives you a sense that you can stand up and face real life too.

 How was sport for you growing up?

Growing up, I had a great experience in my early school years and even pre-teen years, despite me having some mental health issues; my PE teacher was really influential for me. He could see that sport was a real driver and motivator for me and for my emotional wellbeing. He let us do any sport we wanted, which was great. If we saw the boys playing rugby or cricket, we used to get annoyed as we wanted to do that. However, our PE teacher was a huge ambassador for just letting us have a go, which was brilliant, so he would happily let us play rugby and cricket whenever we wanted. He didn’t really mind what sport we were doing, as long as we were being active and that we understood the value of hard work. He went above and beyond for us and he really cemented a seed that there wasn’t really a difference between boys’ and girls’ sports – It is just sport.

During secondary school, my experience of PE was not as good, and I struggled to find a sport that drove my passion. As a teenager, I just didn’t have the supportive teachers around me to drive my passions and by the age of 16, I had completely given up sport. We see now how there are a huge number of teenage girls who give up sport in secondary school just like I did. A lot of this is to do we how we feel about ourselves, our bodies are changing and if you don’t build a positive relationship with yourself during that transition from pre-teen to teen, that is where we have a concern. That is the challenge.

When I had an eating disorder as a teenager. I recognise that this was just about me trying to disappear from the world, which was down to a huge lack of confidence. I didn’t have any positive physical experiences and had no confidence in just being inside my own body. Had I have not found Thai-boxing I probably would have been in a different place.

At university, my housemate Louise persuaded me to join her at a Thai-boxing class. She just encouraged me to give it a try. There weren’t any other girls, and the coaches didn’t really want us there. We were outsiders and excluded from lessons. The coaches never expected us to fight and I wasn’t allowed to train with the boys.

Photo Credit: Rachael Maxkenzie

How do we encourage girls to try different sports?

I think we condition girls. If you look at the way that we play as girls, my sister and I played very much liked girls because that what we were conditioned to do. We played with Barbies and our brothers played with army soldiers. That’s the way that society is still, really.

We condition girls to ‘be a good girl’, to be nice, to be kind, to be gentle. However, when we are playing, we don’t ever play wrestle with our girls and then when you introduce them to a sport which is a contact sport, it is so far outside of what is what’s comfortable for them. To change that, we have open up our girls to trying different sports that can push them out of their comfort zones. If we expose girls to sports such as martial arts, boxing or rugby for example, it lets them experience how they are able to regulate their emotions despite that physical contact.  It allows girls to regulate their emotion in a much wider context and for me, that is the real beauty of martial arts or boxing or a sport along those lines.

How does sport help our children with their mental health?

If we look at the evidence base, one of the biggest things for reducing stress, anxiety and depression is movement. For our young people, as their brains are developing, we have to get them to move. We have got to get them to move, as it shapes the way that they are able to regulate their emotions. That ability to balance yourself and control your physical being is connected in the brain to the same part that allows you to regulate your emotion. I worry that we are in this pandemic, sitting kids in front of a screen for eight hours a day and not giving them that experience of physical activity. And even when you think the world is an uncertain place, that increases our stress levels. Our brain likes certainty and we don’t have certainty. If we don’t allow our children to move, they will internalise that stress and it starts to shape their response to the world which is not helpful or healthy.

Tell us about the work you do for Youth Sport Trust?

Youth Sport Trust have a team of athletes including myself. It allows us to share stories that connect to young people and that is why role models are so important. If they can see someone share a story, feel engrossed and inspired in that story, it creates a completely different connection to them than just having information. The trust uses that journey not just to inspire kids but to give them tools to use in their childhood and beyond. It is about how movement changes their body, how they can take control of their breathing and how they can manage any feelings of stress or anxiety. We teach them about learning through failure, about building grit and resilience; because that is how we grow as individuals.

Your top tip for exercise in lockdown?

My best advice for getting our kids moving right now, is simply to move. Do something that creates good energy. We need to get our kids up and help them experience joy from movement. Children follow what they see so we, as parents and caregivers, we have to lead by example. Whether it is dancing around the kitchen or going for a walk, every movement counts. I really hope they start to join in and that it helps them with how they are feeling.

https://www.youthsporttrust.org/rachael-mackenzie

Follow Rachael on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rachfmackenzie/