sadly the only boxing house in carlisle is in currock and all the hard bastards go there so i'll probably get my head kicked in during my first lesson
If it's the sort of place where you do get a beating the first time you go, then it's a shit school and I'd go elsewhere, or not at all. They should take you as a beginner and act accordingly.
For example, at our place we're trained by euro and world champions who are indeed double hard bastards but the emphasis is on learning and technique. It's the same on Boxing Academy - some of them have fought before but they're still all just doing light sparring, even when they were training with the olympic team guys.
At my place you're eased into it over time - for quite a while all sparring is light contact with no head contact allowed (in Muay Thai you can kick and elbow to the face). Once I've got another gradings in, then it'll be light contact with head contact. Full contact sparring lessons are optional and to tell you the truth I'm dreading them because they're going to hurt.
I do think you've got to be honest about your motives - you are learning to fight and sooner or later you'll probably start picking up some pain and injury along the way. I doubt that you'll really know whether it's for you until you take a few hits. From people I've spoken to who contact spar, the first full contact hits to the head you get are a big shock and can be very demoralising.
And that's just training....if you ever step into the ring for real then expect extreme violence
Anyway, if you find the boxing place isn't to your taste, you've got the
Dragon's Muay Thai gym in Carlisle - they seem to turn out some fairly good fighters so probably know their stuff.
