What happened to good old rehab? Table tennis is played everywhere, workouts are organized, trained with Smovey rings, practiced yoga, with Tai Chi  the day started...

And now too Boxing. Does that really have to be the case?

To get straight to the point, this will not be a polemic against rehab sport - it is important and very close to the patient, with their individual needs and difficulties.

Nevertheless, it will be a plea for boxing.

The sporty part of my youth was characterized by playing table tennis and karate, which I had practiced very intensively for 4 years. It was not the form of competition man against man or woman against woman, but the so-called kata, a kind of choreographed shadow boxing.

And now, 40 years later, table tennis and martial arts play an important role in my life again. This time, however, it will not be karate, but boxing, which comes very close to karate kata in its training sessions.

It's not that far yet, because there is currently no opportunity in Munich to train boxing patients suffering from Parkinson's disease. But that will also change in the near future, because I'm in close contact with Nick Trachte, the head of the BoxWerks in Munich, who is very familiar with the topic of Parkinson's due to a family illness.

Elsewhere we are already further, because the Hamburg professional boxer Dilar Kisikyiol, third in the WBA world rankings in her weight class, leads a group of 11 women who suffer from Parkinson's disease and complete boxing training with her.

Skeptics immediately object to the connection between Parkinson's and boxing and recall the fate of Muhammad Ali, who was assumed for years to have Parkinson's disease from boxing. This connection has never been proven, but is nevertheless repeated like a mantra.

But still, why boxing? Dilar then replies very convincingly: “It's about strength and mobility, about arm and leg coordination, about the ability to react. With boxing we can revitalize these skills.

Accident surgeon and sports physician Professor Walter Wagner confirms this: “With boxing training, Parkinson’s patients can train their coordination, speed, endurance and condition in a targeted manner.

This helps them to accept the challenges of the disease. And why not run, bike or swim. Professor Wagner says: "Boxing is probably the most universal of all sports."

It's all about the training, the shadow boxing mentioned above, hits on the punching bag, it's never about fighting against each other. And the women in Dilar's group, 43-72 years old, are very fond of the exercises. The 71-year-old Ute Stender-Killguss says: "These are different movement sequences, much more demanding than physiotherapy and rehabilitation sports. I enjoy putting strength into exercises, I notice that it gives me a lot more physically. When I go home after boxing training, I think: man, you're perfectly healthy.

Jurgen Zender, 11.08.2022

Photography Greta Martensen