I finally started going to the gym again last week. I went during the day when the place was empty, and I got a decent workout, but decided I would do better in a full class so I went again on Tuesday night. Frankly, I think it went far better. The instructor for that particular class only teaches at the gym for that one class, and he was a good teacher, so I'll try to go on Tuesday nights a little more frequently.
Boxing, although in decline as a sport in and of itself (although mixed martial artists are more and more using the style as a striking base), is on the rise as a form of exercise. The secret of its popularity is that it requires the use of the entire body to generate the force needed for its punches. The kinetic energy in each punch begins in the legs, is transferred through the torso into the punching arm and fist, smashing into the target. Further, in order to make sure the boxer can hit and defend properly, they must remain balanced in their stance at all times. Needless to say, this requires a great deal of grace and agility on the part of the boxer, about as much as any other martial art, most dance forms - boxing is often compared to dancing - or even *cough*gymnastics*cough*. ;D The actual techniques aren't difficult to understand...but they are a little difficult to perform properly at first. But once you get them down and programmed into muscle-memory, you can pretty much rip them off pretty easily; indeed, this is another of boxing's secrets - some boxers can fire off their combinations as fast or faster than many kung fu masters.
The usual pattern for a group-style boxing class is warm up-shadowboxing-heavy bag work-ab work-cooldown. The warm-ups are pretty pedestrian; a few laps around the heavy bag "tree" (the big steel framework from which four or five rows of heavy bags are hung for classes), jumping jacks, mountain-climbers (ugh!), etc. Shadowboxing, important to working technique and build muscle-memory, is next. It's a little tedious, but it helps make sure you're doing everything right (and gives the instructor a chance to walk around and correct flaws).
Heavy bag work is the big attraction of these classes. Everyone wears handwraps and gloves, and the wraps are almost always put on before class as the process of properly wrapping one's hands is time consuming but very important and necessary to help protect the hands; anyone who tells you different deserves to have a heavy, blunt object bashed into their skull for endangering your safety, thank you very much. The gloves are put on just before bag work, and are, for most people 12-ounce "super bag gloves," which are designed specifically for hitting a heavy bag and are just slightly heavier than professional fight gloves, which are usually 8- or 10-ounces, just to protect the boxer's hands while still transmitting the full force of a punch to an opponent; this is opposed to sparring or training gloves which are usually 16, 18 or sometimes even 20 ounces and are designed for hitting sparring partners without chopping their bodies completely to pieces. Incidentally, if you watch any of the boxing events in this year's Olympics, you'll note that the gloves (12-ouncers, FYI) they use have white "scoring" areas on their knuckles to help the judges keep track of landed punches. Amateur-boxing is more like fencing; the judges are interested in the quantity of landed punches whereas in professional boxing the judges are interested in the quality.
In bag work, the instructor gives the class one combination to work for a full round while they come around with target mitts and have you try to throw the combination at the mitts properly; incidentally, in the class I went to on Tuesday night, the instructor, instead of bringing the mitts, put on a pair of sparring gloves and came around to folks who seemed like they knew what they were doing and had them do a little light contact sparring with him, focusing on body work, giving some good pointers in the process. I kept getting tapped in the chest, but I managed to parry a few shots and even land a few of my own. :D Naturally, bag work is the big stress-reliever, because once the gloves go on you can finally release all your aggression on the bag instead of the bum giving you static at work or around the neighborhood. After bag work, it's on to everyone's least-favorite part of the workout, ab work, featuring crunches, push-ups, leg lifts, bridges (double ugh!) and the dreaded bicycle-crunches (can someone tell me who invented those so I can hunt 'em down?). After that, it's cooldown, stretches, and time to go home, usually quite exhausted and feeling quite a bit better...at least that's usually how I feel.
The first class I ever took was at a now-defunct Bodies-in-Motion facility in 2004 near the debt management agency I used to work for; at the time it was a "presale gym," designed to give potential members a taste of what the full gym had to offer. The teacher, a cute and friendly but hard-as-nails redhead named Keren, was actually mostly a kickboxer, trained in the esoteric (to most Americans anyways) French kickboxing style known as savate. The class itself was supposed to be a kickboxing class, but due to a typo on the schedule it ended up that the people who came to take the class, like me. were expecting straight boxing. Keren taught the class anyways as straight boxing at a blistering pace, even more so than other classes I've taken, and even working out with us. I still...mostly...remember the jab- and cross-series she taught us for conditioning and especially the stretching series she taught me, which I still perform at then end of my workout. The last round of her workouts (before ab work) was always preceded by the command "Knock 'em out! All boxing!" (at which I always put myself in the right state of mind by doing the late Chris Benoit's "thumb-across-the-throat") and was two minutes of just unloading everything you had into the bag - Keren's goal was always to make you had nothing left - until the time ran out and you switched to working your abs. Keren's goofball personality and ass-whipping classes (not to mention her easy-on-the-eyes figure) made me a loyal follower for quite a while. She later told me that it was "a pleasure to teach someone who actually gets (the techniques)." Incidentally, Keren is the reason I recently joined Facebook after a great of holding out. I did a Google search of her name and her Facebook profile turned up. She's in Colorado now, I think, having married her longtime boyfriend AJ, a U.S. serviceman, who I believe served overseas either in Afghanistan or Iraq; I'm not entirely sure which. Nice guy, too; I met him when he came to the gym to visit her while on a furlough.
I miss her to pieces.
After Keren left, my next teacher was Erin, a pro-boxer and mixed martial artist. She was tall, well-built and tattooed but attractive nonetheless. You see, boxers are NOT 'roided-out bodybuilders by any stretch, instead being lean, mean, and toned. Bulky boxers are slow boxers, and slow boxers eat canvas. She was more into technique than Keren; while Keren still taught proper form, Erin was into making sure folks had it down right than just throwing stuff at the bag. Incidentally, if you've watched American Gladiators this season, you may have seen Erin yourself. She was cast as the "strong, silent" Gladiator known as "Steel." They didn't make her that because of her voice if you're wondering; she has a pleasant enough speaking voice, and she's a sweetheart with most folks, including me. It's just that, besides having a bit of an aggressive streak (which serves her well on Gladiators), she's an insufferable trash-talker. In interviews promoting the show, she has already called out her Gladiator teammate, fellow MMA uber-hottie Gina "Crush" Carano, the photogenic face of women's MMA. Further, one of her most infamous losses during her pro-boxing career was to none other than Laila Ali, the female host of Gladiators.
You can see the logic of effectively gluing her mouth shut. (Sorry, Erin. Nothin' but love for ya, but you know I ain't lyin.' :D)
There was a period when Bodies-in-Motion was shut down to be transformed into the complete facility, and I briefly trained at the original L.A. Boxing gym in Costa Mesa (which I believe is shut down now; they moved it to a newer facility matching the rest of the now nationwide chain's various storefront style gyms) hoping to find Erin there (IIRC, she got her start in boxing there), but instead trained for a month with a gentleman named Jason (whose classes were the only ones to compare in terms of pace to Keren's). Sadly though, I had to give it up for a while (L.A. Boxing was too expensive at the time as well as too far and Bodies-in-Motion was a shell of itself until the full gym opened).
When the full gym opened, I started going again. Keren was back by then (but only doing one class which I attended almost religiously), but I was out of work at the time, having been laid off from the debt management agency job, so I started going to the gym more frequently. Besides Keren, there were two instructors I trained with. One was Shane, a charismatic former pro middleweight. Out of all the instructors I took classes from, Shane's were the perfect balance of fast pace and technique instruction, and I'm sad I didn't take more of his classes. The other was Joey, who was primarily a karate practioner (and a motorcycle rider; I remember him having messed up his foot at least once in an accident while I took his classes, but that didn't stop him from teaching the class), but he knew enough boxing to teach the class properly. He was a prince of a guy and a good teacher - I still miss his line-up-and-hit-the-focus-mitts drill - but a lot of his class (a small noon-time class) was just running about the heavy bag room and hitting random bags with rapid salvoes of straight shots, which I hated because everyone treated it as a race, and because everyone went so damned fast, it promoted crappy technique which makes for a not-so-hot workout, IMHO. I miss the boy anyways; he was a good dude and I hope things are going well for him.
I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to pay for a membership for a while, but then I got my casino gig and I had the money...but not the time (for those unaware, my usual shift at the casino is from 10PM to 6AM; at the time it was from Wednesday to Sunday, presently it's from Thursday to Monday). I just didn't have the time to go all the way down there, so I sadly had to give up my membership there. I briefly tried a membership with a smaller gym in Santa Ana, but it too was too far for me, based on my schedule (on top of that, for the second class I went to, the instructor didn't even bother to show up; it's a little hard to motivate oneself to take a class taught by a fool who doesn't even show up to his own class).
My mom later pointed out another L.A. Boxing gym closer to me, this one in Fullerton, near the county courthouse. This is the one I go to now; initially, when I started going there in mid-2007 I went early in the morning when the gym opened for the day, just I got off of work. The instructor was T.J., the gym's manager, and by his own admission a former Army sniper. He actually was a lot like Keren in that he actually worked out with the class which was pretty small; a dude who exercises with you and is still motivated enough to teach you properly is a fellow to be reckoned with, IMHO. I stuck with the class for a while...until August, my little week-long sojourn to Las Vegas with the Ruly Mob (my nickname for my circle of friends; another friend who lives in Phoenix also joined us). I was hoping to take a class at Randy Couture's gym in the area, but I had too many other things on my mind to do at the time, so I missed out, and once I got home, it was too easy to just push boxing to the side and do other things. I did go to one class, but the instructor sucked (and the new boxing shoes I had bought to wear were too tight).
I finally motivated myself to go back in the last month or so; July was not a fun month for me for some reason the customers at work are starting to wear on me, so I decided it was time to try and punch out some of my blues on the bag, so to speak. So I got a new pair of sneakers (which fit much better) and started going to the gym again.
And I do feel better.
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