After an Attack Changed Her Life, Kimberly Voch Built a Gym for Women Like Her

Kimberly Voch was a 34-year-old Israeli ad executive when a violent attack by her ex-boyfriend changed the course of her life.  Her path back wasn't what people expected. She found boxing in Thailand — and then came home and built her own gym, a place for women who'd been through something similar to get strong on their own terms.  Kimberly shares her story: what the attack took from her, what boxing gave back, and why she believes women shouldn't have to wait for someone else to make them feel safe.

_______________________________________________

Is Israel the Front Line of Western Civilization? Israelis are helping make your daily life easier and healthier and safer. 

🎧 All episodes + every platform: https://pod.link/1585604285

📺 YouTube: @israelitrailblazers | 📧 Substack: findinginspiration.substack.com 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Podcast: GET UP OFF THE MATT

Jennifer (Host) (00:02):

Hello, welcome to this podcast called finding inspiration. It's a 20 or so minute weekly podcast where we interview someone with an amazing story. After the show, I know you're going to feel energized, invigorated, and inspired, and Jennifer Weissman. Welcome to finding inspiration. Mike Tyson said everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Welcome to finding inspiration today. I'm here with Kimberly vac, a female national medalist boxer in Israel at age 28, she entered the ring to spar against men, much bigger than she a fearless martial artist. Kimberly was extremely confused with her opponents. Unfortunately, all her hard work did not pay off because either the men walked her butt or they were just too dainty to hurt a little lady either way. Kimberly did not feel she got a fair match. Adversity eventually led to ambition and Kimberly opened her very own Oasis, a martial arts just for women and legacy gyms was born in 2019.

Kimberly (Guest) (01:15):

So I guess it sort of started five years ago. Like I said, I was living a very unhealthy lifestyle, like smoking, eating junk food, not really working out, but I was making a lot of money in the job that I was making. I was working in advertising and I felt like I needed something more to life than just what I was doing. But like, I was just you know, going through the motion every day and as boxing gave me, like, it gave me so much confidence. It gave me abilities that I never thought I had. It gave me like, it gave me a purpose. I never really intended on fighting or being a boxer originally. I was just looking for something interesting to do and a funny story. I never intended to quit my job, but while I was in Berlin, all of a sudden the company I'd worked for shut down after five years that I would work there. Wow. And I was looking for something interesting to do that I couldn't do while I had that job. So I found a training camp in Thailand where a lot of UFC fighters go, a lot of pro boxers go.

Jennifer (Host)  (02:11):

You had never boxed before. And you just decided you were going to jet off to Thailand and learn to be a boxer. 

Kimberly (Guest)  (02:17):

I boxed for two weeks and I did maybe like two lessons a week, something like that. But yeah, basically more or less, I was just like, I'm going to try this.

Jennifer (Host)   (02:26):

That's very inspirational. I don't know many people who would just leave their day job and jump on a plane and become a boxer in Thailand. It was really

Kimberly (Guest)  (02:35):

Wild. It, it definitely had a lot of conversations going and people were like asking me, what are you doing over there? They saw my stories.

Jennifer (Host)   (02:42):

People were tracking what you were doing. You were on Instagram or you were on some social media telling people what you were doing?

Kimberly (Guest)  (02:48):

I was just uploading stuff all day long. There was just a lot of footage that other people were taking and I just thought it was cool.  I was so unhealthy, mentally unhealthy how just overall I was overworked and I didn't really feel like I had a purpose. I felt like a lot of my life revolved around how much money. I mean, how much success I had in advertising. And when I got there, you feel like the playing field is like level for everyone. You know, it doesn't matter how rich you are or how successful, how famous, like if you don't have the skill and then that's it, you don't have the skills.

Jennifer (Host)   (03:22):

So you had to learn to count on your body to move you to the next place.

Kimberly (Guest) (03:30):

Not even just your body, it's like you have to have this blind faith that at the end of the process, you're going to have some sort of skill and then start another process. While I was there, I met a girl that I had never met before, also a boxer in training. Yeah. So, she sort of did it as a hobby, but she decided before she went to college, she wanted her first fight. So she went there for a month to do a training camp and she had her first fight there. And me and another girl, we basically helped her through the process. And it was just so inspiring to see how driven she was, how much he wanted it. Like she would wake up every day at 5:00 AM to run. She would train for like three hours a day technique. She was devoted to the weight cut, which is really not easy. And you know, she did all of that for a whole month for like 15 minutes in the ring. For me, it was just like a high seeing or go up there.

Jennifer (Host)   (04:15):

So that was maybe your inspirational model. Like this girl can do it. Maybe I can do it.

Kimberly (Guest) (04:21):

That for sure was the inspiration, hands down the second that she did it, I had no intention of ever frightening before I saw her get in that ring. And then I looked at her and I was like, that's what I want. That's what I want to do. 

Jennifer (Host)   (04:30):

You had said early on that you lacked confidence and your life lacked purpose. So do you say now some years later that boxing has given you purpose confidence, what else has boxing given

Kimberly (Guest) (04:43):

Boxing has given me so much, it's given me like you said a sense of purpose. I was very clumsy as a person. Like it gave me a lot of coordination. I feel like I have more worth as a person if that makes sense. So self-esteem for sure. Self-Esteem the weird thing about learning this kind of skill is when something external happens to you, a lot of times it can affect everything that you feel about yourself. And now I feel like nothing external can hurt me anymore. Wow.

Kimberly (Guest) (05:21):

Like nothing anyone can say or do, I don't feel like something external can hurt me or destroy me. And before that really wasn't the case.

Jennifer (Host)    (05:30):

Did you felt grounded?  Like you are comfortable in your shoes, you're grounded.

Like you just have a type of faith in yourself. Like you just believe, like when you see yourself go through a certain process like that, and it's literally, it's just blind faith. It's like the way that you believe in God, you have to believe that, what you're doing is going to take you somewhere. And that is true for getting into a ring and sparring with men who are much bigger than you. And I assume it's true for women fighting against a woman?

Kimberly (Guest)   (05:58):

There's for sure. A big difference. I remember when I used to spar before I'd go, I would have like mini panic attacks guy would be like really afraid to go because I wouldn't know what happened to me. I had scratched cornea once and I had like, my eye closed shut for like a week. Wow. Had my nose broken twice?

Jennifer (Host)   2 (06:17):

And, and none of these injuries deterred you from your dream.  You were never afraid to get hurt?

Kimberly (Guest)  (06:22):

I was never that afraid to get hurt. But you know, you do deduct sort of conclusions from it. Maybe I'm not training correctly. Maybe the person needed to calm down. Maybe I needed to calm down. You know, you sort of have to take a step back and see, or I, it's not healthy. What happened? Professional boxers. You know, when they get paid a lot of money to step in the ring, it's fine for them to get her. But even when they train, they want to keep their body at an optimal level. So that when they go into the ring, they're not hurt. They're not injured. They're not like with a nose that, you know, that was busted way before they hit the money time.

Kimberly (Guest) (06:52):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a learning process and you kind of walked us through the journey in Thailand, but what happened to you when you returned home? Where was home for you at that? Oh,

Jennifer (Host)   (07:02):

Homeless was in Tel Aviv. Okay. So you, you left Thailand after a month. This purpose, this confidence. You came back to Tel Aviv and then what happened?

Kimberly (Guest) (07:10):

So I was very confused. I didn't know that this was what I was going to do as a profession. I just thought I really wanted to fight. And I got accepted to a job, another advertising job. And I was so ridiculed for being a funeral, a boxer like I asked for a vacation to go to a training camp in advance. And that was like one of the conditions of me signing the contract. And when the time came, they were like, listen, you're not going to be Mike Tyson or whatever. Like, it's not a career. Like you shouldn't be putting so much weight on this. 

Kimberly (Guest) (07:46):

It's not even that it's like, you're wasting your time and wasting, you're wasting your time after work. You're not doing something that's really going to take you anywhere. And I have to say like a lot of people around me was also like very confused and not all of it was negative feedback. I got a lot of really good feedback.

Jennifer (Host)   (08:01):

When you say confused, what do you mean? What were they confused about why you were doing this?

Kimberly (Guest) (08:05):

Yeah, because I think that, you know, from someone looking on the outside on martial arts and boxing, it's like, well, why do you need this? You're a woman who want to give birth one day and you have a pretty face. Why would you want to mess up your head? You know, people don't really understand that. It actually said this to you. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. A lot. Ooh, ouch. Yeah. You know, I've heard also like, you know, martial arts, aren't really for women. A lot of times, like people, will also walk up to me, they'll see my boxing gloves and they'll be like, oh, like, where do you do? Like bag work? And I'm just like, I don't do bad work. I'm a national medalist. Like I, I do the real thing. I'm probably doing it more real than you. I'm a serious contender in the beginning. I felt like I needed to correct them. Yeah, sure. Whatever I'm doing. Kickbox whatever. 

Jennifer (Host)   (08:49):

Sounds like at the end of the day, the confidence, the purpose, all of that came from boxing, from your studio, from your students, and in the end, what would you say if we were looking back on today in three years? So it's three years from now and you're looking back and we're having coffee and you say this was an incredible last three years because how would you finish the sentence?

Kimberly (Guest) (09:11):

First of all, I'm already looking at getting a bigger gym, more women. I would love for there to be more trainers, more types of martial arts. I would love to keep competing. I want to take the national championships. It's very, very important to me to keep the, keep advancing as a fighter so that I can be a better teacher to all my students. And, you know, I would love for it just to be like normalized martial arts, Zumba, and TRX and all that.

Jennifer (Host)    (10:11):

I like it. So I have this sensation that you're bringing your advertising background into the legacy gym.

Kimberly (Guest) (10:22):

For women. When you see the gold standard, I don't care if I'm the gold standard or if a bunch of other women decides to open up their own gym for women, for martial arts. And you know, it becomes a convention out of that because at the end of the day, you know, it could be that someone will come to my class and not because anything's wrong with me or the gym could mean that they just don't click with me on connect. Right. And then when that happens, this woman will just leave martial arts completely because she doesn't have a second choice. See, that's unfortunate. So I'm actually completely pro other women opening up martial arts gyms because that woman doesn't have to just leave the field because she didn't have a connection with me. She can go to it with other people. Well, so you're really

Jennifer (Host)   (11:35):

I'm excited to have you share this time with me. And I hope lots of women and men listen to this podcast. Amen. A serious female boxer at age 28. When you got into the ring, Kimberly to fight a man and spar, were you more disappointed if your opponent either beat you up or if they let you off the hook too easily?  

Kimberly (Guest) (12:02):

Definitely, when I first started, it was, it was more of a letdown when someone easy on me, a lot of times you don't really know if sort of your gender, your weight, or your skill set is what's letting you down, especially in the beginning when you're not really sure what to make in general of martial arts, you know, no one really tells you what to expect when men, you know, they sort of either hit me late or they wouldn't aim to my face. It w definitely frustrated me. It made me feel sort of like, I wasn't as good as them and I never really understood what's right. And what's wrong when you're dealing with inter-gender sparks. Okay.

Kimberly (Guest) (12:54):

In the beginning, when you don't have a lot of experience, you don't really know what to make of it. So you just kind of roll with it. You say, okay, maybe I wasn't fast enough. Maybe I wasn't good enough. I think like over time you sort of developing maturity when it comes to hitting each other. If that makes sense, you kind of learn what kind of boundaries other people have and what your boundaries are. And when you feel uncomfortable, you absolutely can tell someone to take it down a notch. Or if you feel like the person isn't challenging you, you can also tell them to take it, take up the pace a little bit, but it's definitely something that comes with maturity. And I think that you know, someone that comes in entry-level and has no experience, it's very hard to understand what's right. And what's wrong because you're letting someone hit you. Like you don't know if it's supposed to feel that way, or if it's wrong after

Jennifer (Host)   (13:42):

You matured a little bit, and you were able to take the punches or realize that you are actually a very strong, solid, capable boxer, did you decide at that point, I really need to start thinking about doing this on my own female-only focused environment for sparring, or was that always a dream of yours to sort of creating an Oasis for women to learn this skill?

Kimberly (Guest) (14:08):

First of all, I still spar until this day, there are a few strong females in boxing in Israel, but there's just not enough. If you go and seek out any other podcast like MMA fighters and boxers, they'll say the same. There's not enough, not just in Israel in the world. So a lot of times we default to men, basically, the whole point of legacy was that women would have the advantage of that. I never had meant that they wouldn't have to go through sort of the trial and error that I had to understand what was okay, what was not okay. You know, just to have women train with each other and feel comfortable. I'm just going to put a number out there. I don't know if it's a real number, but it's something that someone wants to tell me. And I don't think it's very far off.

Kimberly (Guest) (14:46):

One out of seven women is assaulted throughout their life in Israel and a shocking number. It's a very shocking number. And based on my experience, it's a very believable number. I don't know if it's very accurate, but I think, I think so. And just think about how traumatizing it can be for someone like that to want to box. And for the first time, you know, to train, to have a manly, a hand on him, her, and let's see in jujitsu to have a man choker or to have a man pull her hair in Krav Maga. So it's a very, very big issue. I think that you know, that does need to be addressed. And even if it's not a man physically pulling out someone's hair or kicking or anything like that, just having a man's presence in the room, it sort of changes the whole dynamic and makes everyone feel a little less comfortable, no matter how like supporting and nice and professional, they may be. There's nothing like training with other women early on.

Kimberly (Guest) (16:01):

Whenever I've made the majority of the sales calls for the gym and the first phone call I make, the first question is, am I going to get hurt? I'm very gentle. You know, I'm not, I'm not very strong. And then they come to the gym and within a month they basically destroyed the whole gym. You know, they start punching each other just for fun. Sometimes I'll like to walk through the gym to like, I don't know, get something that I forgot. I don't know. A girl will take me down. Like, it's, it's really funny. They feel very empowered after since like a very short period of time, they

Jennifer (Host)    (16:54):

You're inspiring the next generation. What part of your story are you most proud of? I mean, you, you still spar with men, but it sounds like your focus and your emphasis is on Legacy Gym. 

Kimberly (Guest) (17:16):

So I think my focus does shift from time to time. It's, I can't say that it's always on Legacy. Like it's always one of the top priorities for sure, but I still want to compete. I think that like, you know, a lot of women, they come and they're like, oh, I'm not so strong. Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm old. I have never done fitness in my life. I smoked cigarettes for like 14 years. Did you? Yeah. I led a very unhealthy lifestyle. Like I would eat a lot of junk. So mentally very unhealthy lifestyle, like something that revolved around like money and sort of greed working in advertising. And there are some girls that like come up to me and they're like, oh, well, you know, I'm not going to be like the next Mike Tyson or whatever. And I'm like, listen, I started, you know, at 28, there's no reason why you can't box. There's no reason why you can't learn how to defend yourself or not a kick have some fun, you know, you're not going to get paid for it maybe, but who knows? Like there's so few women in Israel that there are some categories that you can just go up to national championships and just like get a medal for just showing up because no one else would, what

Kimberly (Guest)  (18:29):

So I had one girl that came for a trial class and I think every woman can sort of identity with what I'm going to say. She said, listen, I've never had anything bad happen to me. But sometimes when I get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, I'm afraid that someone will attack me. I think like every woman can identify with that. And she's like, I think this is what I need right now. Confidence. How horrible is that? But it's something that I think I've also felt a few times in my life, even though it wasn't rational, just to know, like, if something does happen, you can defend yourself. Absolutely. That just to feel safe. Right. You know, just that feeling of security. It's something that women don't really have nowadays. It's sort of like privileged nowadays

Jennifer (Host)    (19:12):

Boxing gave you confidence and it gave you purpose and it kind of sounds like your students are telling you the same thing. Like they feel it, they have a sense of security and an unmet concern that they hadn't thought about before. Something was frightening. Them walking down the street at night and maybe they not, they're not worried now. They don't have to look over their shoulder because they know something happens. They can stand on their own.

Kimberly (Guest) (19:35):

It's the crazy feeling that you know, you can't mess with my girls, you know, they know how to kick. They know how to punch. They know how to choke. They know how to stab. We have like a knife fighting. Also, love it. Like you can't, you can't mess around with my girls.

Jennifer (Host)   (19:48):

I might become one of your girls. Your story is very inspiring. At 26 start to start boxing in a serious way and then go on to open your own private gym just for women. I think most people in my experience would talk about doing something like that, but very few people would actually go and lease space and, and rent equipment and actually make this a reality. Your story is totally irresistible, and it speaks to the power of tenacity and dreaming big. And I really appreciate you being here today and helping us find inspiration. Thank you for joining us this week on finding inspiration. Hey, I would appreciate it. If you would click on that subscribe button and share this podcast with a friend, see you next week. I'm Jennifer Weissmann.