Get your bum down!’ In a slick east London gym, I’m one-and-a-half minutes into a two-minute plank, surrounded by 20 women in the same position. Ramla Ali is shouting at me to ‘plank properly’, though she quickly loses her authoritative tone and starts laughing. It’s a fitting end to a session that is tough and sweaty but, above all, fun.
For Ramla, planking comes easy. She’s a professional boxer, Dior muse and UNICEF humanitarian but, today, she’s in full fighter mode. I’m at Sisters Club, the initiative she launched in 2018 to provide a safe space for women to learn boxing and reap the mental and physical health benefits. Initially, she designed the free classes for Muslim women and minorities. Ramla, who is Muslim, understood the lack of women-only spaces where, regardless of their background, women could work out free from the male gaze and not worry about taking their hijabs off – or keeping them on.
‘We get so many messages from women saying how amazing the classes are, especially for their mental health,’ Ramla tells me after the session. ‘That’s one of the main reasons for starting Sisters Club. Yes, it was about creating a safe space for women who don’t necessarily get access to sport. But it’s also about making them feel good through the power of exercise.’
Following the high-profile killings of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, among many others (at least 81 women have been murdered in the UK since last March), there has been a rising appetite for self-defence classes. ‘It’s empowering to know that you can defend yourself and I want women to feel confident, knowing they can box,’ says Ramla. ‘But there is this huge conversation happening about how women should be more vigilant, and be this and that, but why does responsibility always fall to women? Men need to stop attacking us.’
Ali won’t be at the next Sisters Club as she’s about to fly out to the Cayman Islands for a training camp. In the run-up to a fight, she trains six days a week and has regular sessions with a nutritionist and psychologist. She hands over the reins of her social media accounts to her husband Rich, who also happens to be her coach. Everything that’s not connected to the fight goes out of the window.
The next match will take place in the US, and will be her first since the Olympics, where Ramla represented her native Somalia. Her family fled the civil war when she was a baby and arrived in the UK as refugees. Although she has not yet been back to Somalia, in 2018, Ramla set up the country’s boxing federation and switched allegiances to fight for Somalia instead of England. Ramla wanted to put the country on the map in a positive light and share an alternative narrative that wasn’t about war and corruption.
Making it to Olympic level was a huge moment for her and the Somali community all over the world but, sadly, she lost her first fight. ‘I was devastated,’ she says. ‘It’s taken a while to get over it.’ To accept the loss, Ramla had to change her mindset.
‘The way I see it now is that I got to the Olympics, all on my own, with no funding. I’m pretty sure a lot of people couldn’t have done that, and it’s something to be proud of. I was the first boxer from Somalia to make it to the Olympics, male or female.’
While she would have loved a medal, Ramla’s main goal has always been to pay it forward. She knows her boxing career won’t last forever but, through her success and her Sisters Club initiative, she hopes to inspire the next generation. ‘The next Ramla in Africa who wants to be good at something or take up a career in sport: I’ve shown her that we’re from the same background. If I can do it, you can do it too.’
Ramla has mastered the art of using her failures to fuel her future performance. ‘Setbacks are part of life, nobody is a winner 24/7. Losses happen, you just have to own them.’ She knows the importance of self-care and, after fights, gives herself time to celebrate or commiserate. If she’s feeling down, she avoids social media. ‘People only post their wins and never their losses, and that’s really fake.’
Wellness has become an important part of her life. Ramla battled long Covid last year and recently discovered the power of breathwork. She’s become a regular at The Wellness Lab, where she gets Hyperbaric Oxygen sessions; a purified oxygen treatment that enhances the body’s natural healing ability. Then there’s apnea breathing, or ‘holding your breath underwater for a really long time’. She believes this has had a transformative effect on her mental health. ‘[After the Olympics] I was feeling bad for a long time,’ she says. ‘Learning these breathing techniques has been life changing; it’s calming and energising and it has helped me so much.
‘The last two years have been tough for everyone,’ she continues. ‘People have been furloughed or lost their jobs. I’ve seen so many couples break up. A lot of people feel like they want their year back, but we shouldn’t dwell on the past. Now is the time to look forward to the future and create better habits for ourselves. That way, you’re moving in the right direction.’ She acknowledges there is no shortcut to fitness, but the benefits are worth it. ‘Put yourself in uncomfortable situations,’ she says. ‘Say you’ve fallen out of love with exercise or being healthy, you need to force yourself into that situation: go to a class or to the gym, and that love will come back when you see how much better you feel.’
Four years ago, Ramla put herself out of her comfort zone when she did her first photoshoot, for Nike. ‘I was so nervous,’ she remembers, ‘but modelling has allowed me to discover a different side of myself. I learned to enjoy it and now I feel as relaxed in front of the camera as I am in the ring.’ Using modelling to fund her boxing, Ramla has a career straddling two worlds. She starred in campaigns for Coach and Cartier and featured on the cover of Vogue as one of Meghan Markle’s ‘forces for change’.
Recently, she caught the eye of Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, who invited Ramla to the Dior S/S ’22 show. ‘It was amazing because some of the clothes were boxing-inspired,’ she enthuses. ‘I wore this incredible silver look – proper Missy Elliott vibes!’ Ramla met Maria backstage and the two discussed the intersection of boxing and fashion. ‘She’s going to design my next fight kit,’ says Ramla. ‘We talked about what colours and styles I liked; I can’t wait!’ From the runway to the ring, Ramla is spearheading a world where the strength and empowerment of boxing blends with the creativity and beauty of fashion. ‘Why shouldn’t the worlds of boxing and fashion mix? I’m living proof that they can.’
Photographs: Lara Angelil. Styling: Molly Haylor. Dress, £2,560, leggings, £610 and boots, £1,050, all Dior. HAIR: NAO KAWAKAMI AT THE WALL GROUP USING BALMAIN HAIR UK. MAKE-UP: AMY WRIGHT AT CAREN AGENCY USING DIOR. NAILS: RAYHANA OSMAN USING DIOR BEAUTY. PRODUCTION: JESSICA HARRISON. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: CAMERON WILLIAMSON.