The Glowing Edge

Category: Fear

  • When You Have a Bad First Sparring Experience

    When You Have a Bad First Sparring Experience

    Sparring is NOT boxing for fitness. When you get in that ring, everything changes. It’s not like drills, it’s not like working the heavy bag, it’s not like padwork.

    Sparring is radically different. Someone is trying to punch you in the face, and when you’re new to it, this can be not only terrifyingly alien, it can be downright demoralizing.

    Here’s an email I received recently about exactly that:

    I love The Glowing Edge, and it has been an invaluable resource to me as I begin to take the sport more seriously. I wanted to write to get your take on beginning to spar.

    I have been going to a boxing gym for two years. The structure of the gym is mostly boxing-for-fitness classes. There’s only one other woman at the gym who spars and I finally had my first experience sparring with her.

    I only went three rounds and I was rattled. It’s much more intimidating than I thought. I don’t know this fighter well. I didn’t feel comfortable asking her to ease up, I was worried that it would embarrass my coach and even though I’ve been going at it so hard in classes and training, all of a sudden I felt like there had been a gap in my education.

    1. What can I do to move forward from a first night of sparring that felt sort of demoralizing?
    2. Am I just being a whiny dumbass?

    I don’t want to be one of those types who only shows up to sparring once or twice and then fades out. But I don’t know how to approach my coach about this. I also don’t want to go back to just doing classes for fun.

    Hey, sparring sister. I know EXACTLY the stage you are in and NO you are not a whiny dumbass. This is 100% normal, and many of us have this same experience. More in a sec. First let me say this…

    Sparring takes some getting used to

    It really does. It’s a whole different game than pad work, drills, everything. That you went 3 rounds as a newbie is damned impressive. It’s some scary shit, right?

    You had your first sparring experience with someone you didn’t really know, and I get that you wanted to not disappoint your coach. Sounds like she kinda overwhelmed you.

    Here’s what the BEST sparring partners do for you

    The best sparring partners hold themselves TO or JUST ABOVE your level so that you can get some good work without getting hurt or demoralized.

    Sure, you may be bruised and headachy, but not so much that you’re like, “I don’t know if I want to do this again.”

    The best coaches make sure this happens. But not everybody gets this kind of attention. Just a fact of gym life.

    This is why you might not get much help when you’re new to sparring…

    Boxing gyms do not survive because pro fighters train there. They don’t make money because someone wants to learn to compete in the amateurs, either. The trainers and coaches are not always even boxers themselves.

    Boxing gyms survive financially because people want to get fit, not hit.

    That’s just how it is. That’s where the money is, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    However, that means you have to take some initiative if you want to get your higher-level training and sparring work. SO. Here are a few tips for that.

    The process of finding and getting to know sparring partners takes time and balls (ovaries?). If your gym doesn’t always give newbies excellent sparring partners who know how to do this, you gotta start building your own sparring program…

    How to build YOUR OWN sparring program at ANY gym

    1. Get to know some sparring partners.

    Good sparring partners are SOLID GOLD to have. So make sparring friends. Travel to multiple gyms if you have to. Trade phone numbers. Friend them on Facebook.

    The more you actually know other boxers as friends, the more comfortable you will be talking to them in the ring, letting them know what you need, helping them adjust to you.

    Guys are fine for this. Just because you’re female doesn’t mean you have to only spar women. (That is such a bullshit attitude and I see it now and then from coaches.)

    In fact, befriend some big guys. Charm them. Ask them for their opinion, for tips on certain moves. They are men, they love this shit. I’m telling you, this works every time. Hello men? Am I wrong? No I am not. 🙂

    Let them feel like they are “mentoring” you — because guess what? They actually are.

    Then when they’re getting in the ring, ask for their “warm up” rounds. In other words, you’re making it clear that their “warm up” is your “training.” They stop feeling pansy-ass working with a “girl” and start feeling all helpful to a woman.

    I know, cheesy manipulation tactics.

    But it really does work. Women have to be sneaky-asses sometimes in pursuit of bigger goals.

    There will come a day when your rounds are nobody else’s warm ups, and when you’ll shine in the ring. You will be the one all the new people ask for help.

    2. Don’t wait until “sparring night.”

    Hijack the process and make your own timeline.

    I told you this would take balls. Stop being so damn polite!

    The more you can pass off your sparring as “just working on some tactics with so-and-so” the more pressure you take off everyone involved, including any coach who might be nearby.

    FAKE it till you make it. Pretend it’s all very casual — force it to be. Believe me, that helps SO much.

    3. Be consistent.

    Keep at it. The longer you go without sparring, the scarier it gets.

    I’m still boxing while I stare 50 in the face, and loving every day of it. I love when sparring is magic, and I even love the days when I get my ass kicked (the good kind of ass kicking, not the demoralizing kind).

    There’s so much joy and empowerment in this sport; I really hope you’ll stick with it!

    Let yourself be a newbie for a few years

    You are brand-freaking-new at this. I know it doesn’t seem that way, but boxing takes FOR EVER to get good at.

    You’re going to get better at dealing with the punches. You’re going to get better at moving your head and feet. You’ll learn to control the ring.

    And you’re going to get to know more and more people in the boxing world the longer you stick with this. This may be the biggest, most life-encompassing challenge you’ve ever faced on a daily basis.

    It’s totally worth it.

    Photo Credit: kate.gardiner via Compfight cc

  • What Makes Sparring with New Boxers Really Good, or Really Awful

    What Makes Sparring with New Boxers Really Good, or Really Awful

    Thursday night is sparring night in our gym. Not everyone gets to spar; only the boxers who have been showing up regularly, putting in hard work, listening to the coach, and proving that they want to move up are invited into the ring.

    But all that doesn’t guarantee a good sparring performance. I’m always fascinated about the ways our coach, Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey subtly rewards the boxers who give him what he’s looking for…

    Last night there was a huge crowd; it seems like boxers come in waves to the program at Second Round, and we seem to be in the midst of a heavy influx. I counted four young women (ages 12 to 17, I’d guess), which is fairly unusual; and we don’t have a high retention rate for females.

    So I was surprised when it came time for sparring, when Coach Massey pulled about 6 guys (all of whom I’d seen in the ring before)…and a young woman from the crowd.

    Our gym typically spars the youngest or newest fighters first, and since the young woman was new, the coach didn’t put her in headgear, just gloved her up and put her in to work offense only with me. I noticed that two of the other girls pushed up through the crowd of guys to watch at the ring side.

    Good: A straight, clean jab to the face (and body)

    She had a completely respectable jab. It was straight, fully extended, and powerful. But even though we are about the same height, her first shots were aimed at my gloves and shoulders. “Punch to my face,” I told her over my mouthpiece, and she raised her eyebrows, hesitated a moment, then fired an easy one. I turned it neatly in the palm of my glove and nodded. “Yep,” I said, “Again.”

    As she began to realize I could avoid all her punches, she gained confidence. Punches began to smack as I turned each one, and a few didn’t make any sound when I began to add slips to my defense.

    Good: Throwing shots with varied timing, doubles

    She started out a bit predictable, her shots coming at me as if they were being fired by the second hand on a clock, but again, once I told her to vary her timing, she immediately adapted, which gave me a rush of satisfaction.

    And she didn’t immediately forget, either. I saw the coach starting to notice her from the side of the ring. “Double the jab,” he said, and after a few tries, she delivered. The tendency, when you’re new, is to not know that you have to bring the jab back to your face before shooting again — you try to throw once, tap twice, and it doesn’t work for a beginner. She fumbled the first few, but then got a double going.

    Good: Finding and maintaining the right range

    I realized she could do more, and I began to add footwork to my defense. She was a bit too squared up (most new boxers are), but I began to pivot and shift, forcing her to come to me to land her shots.

    The first step in starting to move around the ring with a sparring partner is learning how much room you need to land a shot on your opponent. Some shots fall short, some are smothered (if your opponent drives in); you have to find just the right range and work it. She had a pretty decent sense of range for a beginner, and I could tell more would come quickly.

    Once I turned on a little footwork gas, she ended up doing a fair amount of chasing me around the ring, but learning to “cut off the ring” will come later as well. She had basics, and she had…

    Good: Sufficient cardio for at least 1-2 rounds in a row

    It’s not at all unusual to think you have enough gas for a single round of boxing, and be dead wrong. Boxing demands anaerobic capacity, which is only developed with sprint training. That might be running sprints, but it can also be sprints flipping a tire, or doing kettlebells, hill cycling, or any exercise where you can get to your max heart rate and go for 2 or 3 minutes, then recover in 30 seconds and go again.

    This young woman stuck it out for two rounds before rolling out, and I think she had another one in her. Of course, being on offense only is a bit easier, but even so, her ability to work until the bell sounded was reassuring.

    I’ll look forward to seeing her back in the ring again, and I’ll hope that the other new girls will learn from her example.

    After she and I did a couple of rounds, and I worked a few more with two other boxers, I rolled out and let a couple of brawlers in.

    Awful: Brawling

    There are so many reasons why we decide to roll under the ropes, and ego is often a part of it. But mix ego with bad technique (or no technique), and you typically end up with a brawl. We don’t always have two brawlers in the ring, but just one is enough to make a mess of the round.

    And the unfortunate truth is that the brawler often won’t listen to instruction, which means our coach probably won’t waste much energy trying to teach him. Which is a shame, because that leaves the brawler in the same low position in the gym and ring, not improving his boxing.

    Here’s what you typically see in a brawler:

    • Superman-style punch launches, where both feet come off the ground
    • Off-balance fighting, sometimes falling to the canvas
    • Illegal shots to the back of the head
    • Lengthy clinching, sometimes with with knees thrown
    • Sloppy, slappy shots with wide, windmilling arms

    Sometimes you get profanity too, when a brawler feels he can’t get the better of someone. We don’t hear too much of that at my gym because Coach Massey will shut down the offenders pretty quickly, and he’s not prone to let them box again if they can’t control themselves.

    I don’t often get in with beginner brawlers, and prefer instead to let the big, experienced boxers take them on. But you don’t always have that, so sometimes you just end up with a mess. And, it’s there in pretty much every boxing gym you’ll ever be a part of.

    Interestingly, there ARE great boxers who are good at what they call brawling. But you’ll not see the messy stuff in the list above in their style. Instead, you’ll simply see an agressive, powerful, sometimes non-technical match — it can be incredibly exciting to watch.

    What about you?

    What do you see in your gym? Leave me a comment and tell me about what it was like when you started, or boxers and brawlers you’ve seen in the ring…

    Image: Marco Crupi, cc

  • What to Do When You Get Hit HARD in Sparring

    What to Do When You Get Hit HARD in Sparring

    Most of the time in boxing sparring, you’re not working with your full power, because if you were, you’d have a pretty short shelf life. Save that shit for the fight, you know?

    But because nearly everyone spars with people waaay outside their weight category, you’re likely to get hit really hard now and then. The kind of hit that makes your head buzz and your ears ring. I’m not talking about a knockout punch, but close.

     

    When nearly all my sparring partners were heavyweights, I used to get my bell rung about once a month. Lately it’s a fairly rare occurrence, mostly because I’m in with people closer to my weight, and also because I’m less slow on defense than I used to be. If you’re new, you’re just gonna get tagged on a regular basis; there’s no getting around it. (Don’t worry, you don’t stay new forever.)

    Recently I was working with one of my favorite sparring partners; we’re within 5 pounds of each other and very comfortable in the ring together. Our strength is well-matched, and we know how to draw out each other’s best work. We tear shit up, man, and it is awesome. When you’re in there with someone you know you’re safe to work your ass of with, sometimes your power builds and builds and you feel good letting loose some badass shots.

    We were there.

    Unfortunately, I was also consistently dropping my right. Which meant she was amping up her left hook in order to take smart advantage of my lapse. She scored several hits that I should never have allowed, then BANG. I got rocked, pure and simple. Not a knockout shot, but a clean, clear, hard power shot to the chin that put a sweet stop to my game for a moment.

    “I need a second,” I told her immediately, and we both dropped gloves and I walked it off. And you can bet your sweet ass that my coach didn’t even have to mention that sloppy guard of mine because I knew. (He mentioned it anyway. I deserved it.)

    Anyway, every boxer experiences it, and you need a few tricks in your toolbox to deal effectively with it. So here you go.

    1. DON’T shake your head.

    It’s a natural impulse, but it doesn’t help to shake your head to try and clear it. That just sloshes your brains around even more than they already are.

    2. Let someone know.

    Don’t just stand there and take more hard shots on top of the one you just got. It’s totally, completely, absolutely ordinary in everyday sparring to say, Hang on, I need to recover. It doesn’t mean you’re pussy, it doesn’t mean you are quitting, it just means you’re not a dumbass.

    If you got tagged because someone’s going off on you, then you make double sure you tell them to pull the heat. The unwritten rule in sparring is that you match the power of the person you’re working with, unless you agree differently.

    3. Be calm.

    You box; this is normal. It’s not something you want to have happen all the time, but there’s no need to get excited — or angry and upset. I see guys (especially) get incidentally rocked and then fire off a series of punishing bombs, which just escalates the situation and often turns an otherwise normal sparring match into an ugly, messy, pointless brawl. There’s not much to be learned from that kind of slop, but some coaches (including mine) do allow it so that “the boys” can burn off some stupid.

    I’m pretty sure it’s a guy thing, hah.

    4. Keep moving.

    For the most part, you want to walk it off. Keep everything moving, operating, and in motion until your neurons start firing normally again.

    5. Take a drink of water.

    When this happened to me recently my coach had me roll out and hang out ringside (it was somewhat a punishment for the sloppy guard, I think) while my sparring parter finished the round with someone else. My coach instructed me to get a drink and cool off for a round. It’s annoying to have to do this, but finding your water bottle and getting some liquid in you gives you something else to focus on. Dammit.

    6. Fix what went wrong.

    In this particular case, I knew what I’d done, and I was already pissed at myself for letting my right drop like that. If you don’t know exactly why your bell got rung, your coach will clarify, and you should immediately start thinking about patching up the hole in your form. Which leads me to…

    7. Get back in. ASAP.

    You don’t want to end your sparring session on a rough note like that if you can help it. Get back in with someone you trust and concentrate on fixing the problem you had in the first place. In my case, my sparring partner and I laughed a little at how few rights I was throwing when I got back in. My right was practically duct-taped high and tight to my headgear. I wasn’t letting that hand down for ANYthing, not so soon after getting rocked.

    If all you do is work on protecting yourself, good for you. Everyone needs to work some defense-only rounds now and then. If you feel up to raising the power again, let your sparring partner know and go for it. But no matter what, get back in.

    8. Know when to stop.

    I just did one more sparring round after my bell-ringer. I’d already had a good workout and that was all I needed to finish on a positive note. But sometimes you get hit really hard and need to roll out and not spar at all for a day or three. (I don’t recommend hard sparring more than once or twice a week, anyway.)

    Pay attention to your body and do what it tells you. Get rest and take aspirin when you need to, because if you don’t pay attention, you run the risk of getting injured and really taking yourself out of the game you love.

    9. A note on “faking it.”

    For me, none of the above applies if you’re talking about an actual fight. I mean, except being calm and fixing the problem.

    My first trainer Bonnie is famous for her incredibly tight guard. NObody gets through that guard, boys and girls. She’s never been knocked out, or even stopped. But she came close, once…

    She used to tell me the story of how she got tagged so hard during one of her fights that her vision blacked out. She stayed on her feet, though, and worked like a fiend to not give ANY indication of her status. She was flat not going to a) allow a ref to step in and possibly stop the fight, or b) give her opponent any reason to come barreling in for the kill.

    And she pulled it off. And every time I got seriously rocked during our sparring sessions, she would remind me to not show it in a fight if at all possible. To keep boxing, to keep working to the very best of my ability. To fake it, hard, until I was back in the swing.

    Ever been rocked?

    Got a story to share? Leave me a comment and let me know how you handled a hard-ass punch. Tell us your pointers for taking a bad one, and not letting it hold you down.

    Stay strong, fighter.

    CC Image by kizette on Flickr

  • Don’t Give Your Brain to Boxing Zombies

    Don’t Give Your Brain to Boxing Zombies

    It’s been a busy week. I spent most of it on the road, driving the seven hours to Atlanta for the pre-fight press conference and photo shoot for Atlanta Corporate Fight Night. Before that, though, I scrambled madly to make sure I had all my work sent out to clients, so when I hit the road I was already a bit spazzed.

    The multiple days of shenanigans in Atlanta went fine; I drove back home, had a glass of wine and jumped in the hamster wheel to catch up — no time for workouts, barely even time to breathe. In the end, I went an entire week with no solid workouts (I did run a few rounds of steps when I got into town in order to pull the worst of the road kinks out), and certainly having never entered a boxing gym for anything other than a photo shoot.

    Your brain on fear

    So I was facing my regularly-scheduled sparring session with a fair amount of gut churn. Here’s what was going through my head. No filter, no prettification, my actual thoughts:

    • I can’t spar.
    • I’m going to get my ass kicked.
    • I won’t be able to breathe.
    • I’m fat.
    • I shouldn’t go.
    • I suck.
    • Cancel, cancel, cancel!
    • Red alert! All systems shutting down.
    • I’m not feeling so good.
    • My ________ hurts. (fill in with anything from eyelash to toenail)
    • I hate boxing.

    When I caught that last one flying past I did a double take. WTF, self? You LOVE boxing, you’re practically married to boxing, you have a fight coming up in January, and you’re writing multiple books about boxing. What is your problem, dumbass?

    The problem was that I had willingly handed my brain over to boxing zombies who promptly ate the offering and left me with a giant head sticky with brain remnants and crawling with fear maggots. (Disgusting enough for you? I got more.)

    How fear multiplies

    My single biggest problem is that the longer I’m away from the gym, the higher my fear factor goes.

    It doesn’t seem to matter how long I’ve been doing this boxing thing, I still want to hand over my rational mind and operate on terrified reflex when it comes time to get back in the ring.

    Here are some of the other issues that go into the fear factor:

    1. There are a lot of unknowns in boxing.
    2. Sparring demands a great deal, physically and mentally.
    3. Performing poorly can get you in trouble.
    4. There’s always the potential for injury.
    5. You don’t always remember what your specific goals are.
    6. An emotional setback is hard to overcome.
    7. There’s no crying in boxing! (Hey, just like baseball.)
    8. You demand a lot from yourself in boxing (or your coach demands a lot).
    9. It’s critical to “fight until the bell rings” at the end of a round. Can you make it?
    10. Your gear may or may not be in great shape, clean, or performing well.
    11. Your sparring partners are depending on you to give good game.
    12. You don’t always know who your sparring partner will be. Can you trust them?
    13. People are watching, dammit!
    Add up just a few of those, and suddenly you are out of your game. Which sucks, because the longer you’re out, the harder it is to get back in.

    What really happened

    So I took my freshly de-brained head and drove (very slowly and carefully, like a heavily sedated geriatric asylum escapee hoping to avoid the attention of the fuzz) to the gym.

    I stretched, loudly bemoaning my limber-as-a-stack-of-timber muscles, making sure everyone in earshot would be hearing my (excellent!) excuses well in advance. I got through jump rope rounds, ring slide rounds, rope slip rounds, and shadowboxing, and then the time was at hand.

    And I was fine.

    A brainless idiot, but fine.

    I did three or four rounds, starting seeing the specific things I needed to work on, and took a round off with my partner in order to do some drills, then got back in for some more rounds.

    And I drove home, mentally rolling my eyeballs at myself and feeling sheepish.

    How to avoid this mess in the first place

    I’ve written before about overcoming reluctance to train, but the zombie days are a particular challenge. Here’s my take on it today.

    Train regularly. Obviously, my main goal is always to keep my training up. Going more than two days without moving my ass off the couch is verboten. It doesn’t have to be furious interval training, but I can’t sit around and suck on Tootsie Pops while the boxing zombies lurch nearer and start to salivate over the giant slimy loops of brain I’ll soon be handing out, for free!

    Get a goal! Even if it’s just a small goal. You don’t have to trade a non-essential body part for one, goals are lying around unused EVERYwhere. For me, it was as simple as finally remembering (while doing slip rope) that I needed to explode up from a dip with a ready shot. So I worked on that.

    Keep your gear in shape and ready to use. Mine is sweaty, stiff, and stinky. I haven’t washed my mouthguard in so long it tastes like Dempsey Dumpster. But everything works. Eliminate the gear excuse in advance.

    Make a Reese’s Pieces trail. Put on your workout clothes (or underclothes) before you go to work. Promise yourself that if you just get your ass to the gym, you don’t necessarily have to spar, you can just do a good warm up and some rounds on the heavy bags. Tell yourself that you only have to do one round of sparring. Because once you do that one, you might just feel good enough to do two. And so on. Lead yourself a merry little chase, straight into your workout.

    Develop solid relationships with great sparring partners. The more you trust your sparring partners, the better your really horrible zombie-feeding days will be. Which reminds me: Thanks, Alex, for the good sparring work today, even after the boxing zombies ate my brain.

    Celebrate your wins. I’m having a giant bowl of steamed kale (which is a personal fave, and a damn fine zombie repellant), a glass of red wine, and a couple of Paleo chocolate-peanut butter balls (If you’re subscribed to The Glowing Edge you’ll get the recipe! If you’re not already subscribed, click here, get a free book, the inside story, recipes, workouts, and more embarrassing stories about boxing, monsters, and such. Yay!). And just to cap my celebration, I’m writing a post, which makes me happy even though I’m willingly exposing my grade-A idiocy.

     Your turn to spill your guts

    But not to zombies, hah! Leave a comment below and share your stories about having given your brain to boxing zombies, or how you masterfully took out a shambling pack of them with your beautiful, brutal, and efficient zombie-conquering skills.

    It means SO much to hear other people’s stories, doesn’t it? They remind us that we are not alone, that we ARE fighters, and with just the right chainsaw, we can WIN, by Buffy.

    Wait, she’s vampires, isn’t she…?

    Awesome CC image by Juliana Coutinho on Flickr

  • What Happens When You Get Punched in the Face

    What Happens When You Get Punched in the Face

    It’s easy to work out in a boxing gym, pounding the heavy bag, focusing on your combinations, power, footwork, and cardio. You can do round after round on the speed bag and double-end bag, getting your timing and coordination right. But when you get in the ring and get punched in the face that very first time, pretty much everything you’ve worked so hard to learn flies straight out the window.

    Mike Tyson said it well. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

    When you’re working with newer boxers, it’s not hard to accidentally tag them hard. Even if I’m pulling punches, working for touches rather than hard hits, sometimes they walk into one. And it is no fun, I know from experience. That damn glove pops you bam! on nose and you think, Shit! What the hell was that!?

    You immediately drop your guard, your plan, your everything, and try to figure out whether or not you’re bleeding, whether this is important, whether or not you intend to keep boxing.

    I did this to a friend in the ring recently, so it’s fresh in my mind. And I’m remembering my first few (dozen, hah) sparring rounds and how much of a shock it was to actually be hit, hard. Not necessarily because someone has it in for you, but come on, this is boxing. It’s going to happen. I knew that. My sparring partner who took two heavy straight rights from me this week (in the very first round, ugh) knew that. But it can still put a hard stop on operations.

    What happens in your head, when you take your first hard shot

    The first thing you experience is outright shock. You know you’re boxing, but being punched in the face is just not something we’re used to. How could it be? The shock is what causes you to falter, to stop working and stand there in disbelief.

    This is the first and greatest hurdle to get over in boxing, and of course there are lots of people who say “Why would I want to get over that hurdle? What an insane sport.” And I understand those people, I truly do. But the simple fact is that learning to take a punch taught me a much bigger lesson about myself, and about life.

    Let’s admit it, life is not an insulated little nursery school play yard. If you don’t grow a pair (ovaries or balls, you choose) NOW, you are actively, knowingly putting at great risk all the good gifts you’ve been given and the future you deserve to have. There are things in life you must fight for, or they’ll be taken away from you by force.

    Learning that I could take a punch and not be stopped in my tracks by it was one of the most empowering moments of my entire life.

    The pain sets in a second after the shock. And it’s tempting to let pain derail your plans the way shock can. Pain is powerfully persuasive. A straight shot to the nose stings, makes your eyes immediately well up, and sends a jolt of sparks across your whole face. Your nose feels squashed, although it won’t swell for another minute or so. Sometimes you bleed, sometimes your nose simply drips. It’s hard not to believe you’re seriously injured, but usually you aren’t. You simply aren’t used to it.

    What happens to the rest of your game

    Nothing, that’s what. You drop your guard and paw at your face. You stare at your sparring partner as if you’ve never actually met before. You shake your head and try to figure out what to do next. You swear over your mouthguard.

    If you have a good sparring partner or trainer, they’ll pick up the slack for you by telling you to get your guard back up and get your ass back in the game. The bell hasn’t rung, and it’s your job to keep working until it does.

    Why it’s important to get punched in the face, hard

    If you intend to box you are going to take some hard damn shots. It’s a thousand times better to experience this in the ring with a trusted partner than it is to learn it for the first time when you’re in a real match against an opponent who really is trying to knock your head off.

    The simple truth is you get experienced at taking shots. You find out what it is going to feel like, you begin to understand how to avoid the worst of the pain, you learn how to deal with the shock and keep fighting, blood or no blood. That’s a hugely valuable lesson.

    One time I was driving on the interstate when I saw a powerline suddenly snap loose and drop down across the highway, and a policeman on a motorcycle (right in front of me) hit the cable and went flying off his bike, right into oncoming traffic. It was a damned miracle that he wasn’t killed outright. I immediately pulled into the central lane that divided the highway and came to a quick stop, as did several other cars whose drivers saw it happen.

    I distinctly remember standing in the middle of the highway in shock, staring at the downed officer laying in the middle of a lane of traffic. It was exactly like being punched hard in the face. I was in complete shock when I should have been working with the other people jumping out of their cars to stop traffic, get to the officer, and call for help.

    Fortunately, others on the scene were more experienced than I was, and the end of the story is that the officer and the motorcycle were banged up but essentially okay. There were no other wrecks. The power line was taken care of.

    If I were to be in a similar situation now I know I would do a better job of shaking off the shock and working through a plan. Maybe I wouldn’t perform with style and grace, but I’d at least have a chance at it.

    One last truth, one secret joy

    My husband is reading Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis. (You may have seen the movie with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.) The author talks about how the major leagues are great at chewing up and spitting out hitters. You might be able to hit in the minors, but when you come up to the show, every pitcher in the game has studied your weaknesses, and if you don’t like ’em high and inside, that’s what you’re gonna get. They’ll find out exactly what you can’t hit, and pitch it to you.

    Sound anything like life? It’s definitely true in boxing. You have to get good at being punched hard in the face, because that’s exactly what someone is going to be doing to you. And the better you can shrug it off, slip it off, let it slide past without stunning and stopping you, the faster you’ll move up in the game.

    And the secret truth that every boxer holds tight in his or her soul? It’s empowering. It feels fucking awesome to be able to take a hard shot and keep fighting. No other way to say it than that.

    It’s a high cost, perhaps, but well worth the pay out.

    What do you think? What was it like, the first time you took a shot, in the ring or in life, and how did you do? Would you do better now? Leave me a comment and share your story!

    CC image by ennuiislife on Flickr

  • First Time Sparring: Last Minute Advice

    First Time Sparring: Last Minute Advice

    You’ve done your heavy bag work, your partner drills, pads, and roadwork. Now you’re getting your chance in the boxing ring. It’s going to be your first time sparring and when you’re not thinking about puking, you’re stoked.

    And a thousand questions are running through your head. How hard should you hit? How many rounds can you go? Will you suck? Will you embarrass yourself? Will all your hard training pay off? Will you be able to take a hit and keep going?

    Congrats on a huge milestone in your training. Sparring is the holy grail of boxing; it’s even better than a fight, since you get to do so much more of it. Here are a couple of articles I’ve already written that may be useful to you:

    What You Should Know Before You Spar

    What to Expect the First Time You Spar in Boxing

    So. Last minute words of advice? You bet.

    1. It’s not about how hard you punch.

    Remember, if you hurt your sparring partner, you don’t have a sparring partner any more. First time boxers tend to let their fear power their shots; do what you can to calm yourself before ringtime so that you don’t drain your energy with nerves and so that you don’t throw hard and wild.

    2. Gloves up, chin down, elbows in. Keep a jab going.

    If you can do nothing else, do these four things. The first three keep you from getting hurt, and the jab should keep you working on some kind of offense. Jabs and straight rights are enough for your first time sparring. Don’t sweat it if that’s all you can remember to do.

    If you can remember all this and still have room to think and work, then keep your head and feet moving so you don’t eat every punch that’s thrown. (But that’s advanced.)

    3. Tell your partner it’s your first time sparring.

    Your trainer should let you go in with someone much more experienced than you, so that your partner can evade your wild stuff and bring the game to your level so you can get good work.

    Unfortunately, not all gyms are so careful. In that case, here’s what you do…

    4. Set the bar — go in punching with about half your power.

    That should elicit a response that is at about the same level.

    If your partner ignores your “bar” — i.e., the level of power you’ve set — then you can either tell them to turn down their heat OR you simply return the power. Careful here, this is how inexperienced people get hurt.

    5. Decide how many rounds you’ll go in advance.

    If you regularly train on the heavy bag and have no problem making it through six rounds in a row, you can most likely make 3 decent rounds in the ring.

    If you’ve been doing Tabata workouts (I like mine with 40 seconds of ultra-intense exercise — like a sprint — with 20 seconds of rest, 4 times in a row) three times a week, you’ll have the sprint capacity you’ll need for 3 rounds.

    Some people say if you can run a 5k in less than 30 minutes you’ll be able to go 3 rounds — NOT the case at all!

    What you need is anaerobic conditioning, not aerobic conditioning. This means your body has to perform without enough oxygen. So measure yourself with sprints or hard 3 minute rounds of any exercise where you go all out, then recover 30 seconds, then go all out again.

    For your first time sparring, don’t go over your round limit because you’ll be boxing exhausted and you are more likely to get injured.

     6. Be willing to roll out after one or two rounds, if needed.

    Be friendly, thank your opponent, but avoid injury! Injuries suck, because they keep you out of the ring. Ring time is the holy grail! And you can always wait out a few rounds and roll back in.

    7. Pace yourself.

    If you come out guns blazing, you aren’t going to make it to the end of your first round. If you throw several flurries in a row, you’re gonna get gassed.

    Throw singles, doubles, flurries (if you can), and intersperse them with some defense and good footwork. This is really important because you don’t yet have a sense of how much energy sparring will suck out of you.

    Later (not your first time sparring!) when you’re practicing, include 30 second sprints at the end of every round. My current sparring partner and I go toe-to-toe for inside fighting at the 30-second bell at the end of every round. This helps us build capacity for 30 seconds worth of flurry work. You can also do it in shadow boxing or bag work by using the last 30 seconds of every round for one-two punching as fast as you can until the bell rings. Killer.

     8. Fight till the bell rings.

    This is crucial. You really do want to try and make it to the bell, no matter what. Train that way, think that way, fight that way. This is the sport we’re in, and finishing the round is a major indicator of your ability to make it in the sport. Unless you have an injury, fight till the bell rings.

    9. Final word: It’s normal to be afraid. Fight anyway.

    Everybody’s scared. I’ve been doing this for years and I still get gut churn when I’m sparring with someone new. It doesn’t take a hero to fight when you’re not scared; the real champion is somebody who will be terrified but roll under those ropes and get to work anyway.

     Congrats on your first time sparring! I hope you’ll report back here (or email me at Lisa [at] The Glowing Edge [dot] com) and let me know how it goes for you, whether any of this advice was useful, and what lessons and advice you have to share as well.

    And a huge thanks goes out to Michael Smith, a new boxer who emailed me to let me know he was about to have his first sparring session and got me started thinking about this again. Be sure to check out his boxing blog over at The Road to Pugilism. Kick ass, Michael!

    Creative Commons image by Fabio Macòr on Flickr

  • The Geography of Boxing Guts

    The Geography of Boxing Guts

    There is a visually simple way to understand where you are — and change your position — on the fear scale in boxing.

    Sparring can be scary, of that there’s no doubt. And there’s always dread to overcome when making the decision to roll under those ropes. But there’s actually a very physical way to shift yourself forward and make it into the ring.

    The first thing you need to understand is the difference between a regular sparring night and a hard sparring night, because if you are going to see the absolute truth about where you stand and make real progress in shifting yourself forward in boxing, you need a hard sparring night.

    On a hard sparring night, things get very clear, very quickly.

    A single look at the gym will tell you everything, and you can make your decision about whether you decide to fold and watch or play and win.

    And you absolutely will win if you play.

    Because just being willing to get in the ring during a session like that will move you forward, no matter how you actually perform during your sparring.

    But there’s more to it than that. Let me see if I can explain…

    The typical sparring order and match-ups

    In most of the gyms where I’ve trained the littlest boxers typically go first in sparring. Maybe it’s because they’re small or young, and their parents will be waiting to get them home, fed, and off to sleep.

    After the younger ones have their ring time, the rest of the team begins to work, not necessarily by rank, but simply based on what the coach wants to achieve with each boxer. I might get paired with someone who is a fast puncher because the coach wants me to practice my defense, for example. Or a heavyweight will get put in with a visiting heavyweight because the home boxer rarely gets a chance to really unleash as well as experience the power and pain that another person of the same weight brings to the ring.

    If a boxer is behaving poorly, refusing to take instruction, and allowing their emotions and issues to cause them to brawl rather than box, the coach might put them in with someone who is technically better and who can pound a physical lesson into them. Incidentally, that lesson is called “get yourself under control, boy” and it’s still hard for me to understand, but my husband says it’s a guy thing. It looks like a street fight, and it’s often bloody, but it seems to be a part of the way boxing works.

    And as I mentioned earlier, there are also different kinds of sparring nights. Some are more easygoing and filled with stops and starts, and some are all-out war.

    War nights are good to have on occasion, because a real boxing fight is not about patty cake. It isn’t you and your buddies, messing around. It’s serious hard work, and it can be  brutal.

    Every gym has war nights. My gym had one recently, too.

    What happens on a war night

    There were maybe 15 to 18 boxers training in the gym when the coach sent everyone to gear up and went and took his place ringside on a painted wooden stool.

    The young kids did not go first.

    Instead, Coach put in two of the top boxers in the gym, instructed everyone to ignore the bell, and calmly uttered the one word that causes every fighter’s engine to roar to life, “Box.”

    Those are the first two clues to a hard sparring night. Different order of business, no bell boundaries. Your gym might keep to the bell, but no bell means you’re about to work quickly all the way to failure (and then you’ll work some more).

    The top boxer stayed in the ring as multiple fighters rotated in and out. I’ve been in that “stay in” position in other gyms (with less skilled people than Second Round) and it’s something everyone should experience once in while.

    When the coach puts you in and makes you box to the end of your ability with a string of fresh fighters, you not only feel great to be in that position, you learn a lot about your strengths and your limits. You find out what areas of training you’ve been neglecting. You discover how long you can last. You learn how to defend once you’re played out.

    The top boxers at my gym went in, one after another. The shots were not training level. No one pulled punches. No one messed around. Everyone threw full power, all out.

    About 5 minutes in, someone went over to the boom box and turned the volume way down until all we could hear was the relentless slam of leather against flesh, the bright pop of a glove against headgear, and the dull thud of a perfectly executed body shot.

    The church of boxing had been called to order, and the supplicants focused all their attention on the ferocious litany in the ring.

    This is the time when you can see, visually, exactly where you are on the fear scale.

    Where boxers stand

    On a hard sparring night like this, the unspoken code is: watch or leave.

    Every heavy bag hung undisturbed. The constant chatter of speed bag was silenced. There was no intermittent clang of weights being racked. No one skipped rope, or shadowboxed, or chatted aimiably on the ragged, garage-sale couches at the back of the gym.

    And if you find yourself in a holy moment like this, look around to see where everyone stands. Physically.

    Most of the fighters were ringside, leaning up against the ring apron, watching the action through the lower two ropes.

    One man stood, jump rope in hand, about 6 feet back. Periodically he would wander over to the heavy bags. I was fairly certain he would not get in. (He didn’t.)

    A thin young teenager stood nervously next to the freestanding pull up machine. I thought he might not get in, either. (He didn’t.)

    Anyone further back than that is most likely doing their best to avoid the battleground and stay out of the fight.

    Which is perfectly acceptable.

    But the phrase “know where you stand” is particularly useful here. If you want to shift your fear, you need to walk forward. If you want to tell your body that regardless of what your brain says, you intend to spar, you need to stand where you are actually touching — connected to — the ring.

    And here’s another piece of that same puzzle…

    Are you ready?

    Last night I suddenly realized, during this moment, that although I was leaning against the ring apron, peering intently through the bottom two ropes at the action, I had not geared up.

    In fact, neither had the guy with the jump rope in hand, by the heavy bags.

    It’s true, I was late coming in, and was only warming up as everyone else was getting ready to spar, but now that the game was on, what did my relative unpreparedness say about my willingness to get in the ring?

    It was clearly a war night. I’ve been here before; in fact, the first time I experienced it I bailed. I needed to take stock and make a decision about how much I would allow my fear to rule me.

    I turned and walked to the back of the gym, quietly gathered my gear, and returned to the side of the ring and began to gear up.

    The unspoken request

    If you expect to be put in the ring on a night like this, you have to mentally request it. Your posture, your attitude, your engagement level all have to tell your coach that you are willing to get in if he calls your name. He’s not going to call everyone, because the stakes are higher, and there needs to be room for people to keep themselves out of the fight even if they stay in the gym.

    This is about eye contact. About listening intently to whatever comments and instruction the coach is giving the fighters. It’s about leaning in, both mentally and physically, no matter how much the edge of the ring feels like the edge of a blade.

    The test of fire

    The coach at Second Round is phenomenal.

    A former pro boxer himself, Coach Massey completely understands the dynamics of fear, and the geography of boxing guts. He works with, rather than against his boxers. He rarely raises his voice, but instead trains us to hear his voice anywhere in the gym (no matter the din) and respond to his instruction. He will take me farther than I would go on my own, and I can count on him to judge accurately when to push and when to leave be.

    Last night there were many other issues to be worked out among our top fighters before I could get a chance to box, but I was ringside, I was geared, and I was mentally asking to fight, despite my fear. I knew he would call my name, and finally I heard him say, without even looking in my direction, “Lisa. On deck.”

    I swallowed hard, levered myself up onto the ring, and waited outside the ropes for his signal.

    As it happened, I was in pretty good shape for my challenge. I’m keeping up with my workouts and doing my sprints. Earlier in the week I had gone 6 rounds or so with no bell, working on inside fighting only. Trey, a beautiful, powerful light heavyweight had given me plenty of hard work, forcing me to stay knee to knee, leaning into me and making me bump him off with my shoulder and dig in with right and left uppercuts before finishing with a left hook to his head. Over and over. Slowly I shed my fear of his powerful shots to my body, and quit hopping backwards to my more comfortable outside fighting position.

    On war night my gas was good, I wasn’t already tired out, and I felt mentally as solid as you can in these situations.

    My first opponent was a fierce young man named Shaq. He’s fast, but he’s smaller than I am, so I knew I could take his power. I intended to give him a taste of my hard right, and I was primed to stick with the inside game if he forced the issue. I planned to employ every illegal tactic I could (our coach is pretty lenient on this issue) to tip the scales in my favor. I’d already seen some damn messy (and bloody) brawling, and I’d heard the coach tell us  that just because a shot was ugly didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. I was ready.

    No bell, just the word from the coach. I rolled in with guns blazing, and Shaq let me dominate the first minute or so.

    He’d already been fighting and I was fresh, but I started to suspect he was “going easy” on me, so I pinned him to the ropes and growled at him. “You better bring me something to work with, dammit,” I told him, and before I could finish up with a suitable threat, he had spun out and rocked my head back with the most beautiful, crispest jab ever thrown.

    “Nice.” I commented, “Thank you.” And we were on.

    We worked a couple of rounds I think (no bell, hard to figure it), before the coach switched up fighters again, and I ducked out feeling wonderful. I knew he would put me in again (he did, with a very tired Trey), and I might not look as fresh or fight as well, but I’d already won the real victory.

    I’d gone forward. I’d shown I was ready. And I got in.

    And that’s the most beautiful part of boxing.

    Photo by Official U.S. Navy Imagery, creative commons license

  • Sustaining Damage During Sparring

    Sustaining Damage During Sparring

    A boxing sparring session is radically different than an actual match. If I had to choose between the two, sparring wins every time. It can be unbelievably beautiful to watch, particularly when the two boxers agree — implicitly or explicitly — to maintain a certain flow, to match and challenge each other but not overwhelm.

    You see this kind of beauty in many professional fights, although not as much in amateurs since both fighters are jazzed on nerves and gunning for the knockout. It’s rarely as controlled.

    Dave G. sent me the link to this incredible sparring session between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Vanes Martirosyan, and I’ve watched it several times now, just soaking up how fabulous it is.

    But it’s clearly between pros who are at the top of their game and ungodly strong. Did you see all those uppercuts Martirosyan landed? Holy sh*t. Of course he got his nose bloodied by Chavez, but I’d rather have the bloody nose than have to take those punishing uppercuts.

    And these guys are working for the cameras… This is not your average-Joe sparring session. (I’m fighting the urge to add “Do not try this at home, kids.”)

    Dave asked a question about sparring, as well:

    What is the damage you sustain after an average sparring session?

    I sustained a bloody nose and again a bruised lip this week. Since a lot of the fighters matching my skill don’t show up anymore, it’s slim pickings. People tend to drop out a lot in martial arts I noticed. 🙂 Anyway, if I want to spar I have no choice but to fight against the competitive fighter who is always around. I outweigh him about 30 pounds, but he sure is fast.

    I am aware that you seldom get out unscathed from a session, maybe I should switch to headgear with a nose guard but those seem way too bulky.

    I’d love to hear your take on this!

    The main injuries are fairly simple.

    I often have a headache the next day after a hard sparring match, but it’s usually treatable with an ibuprofen or three. I don’t really count that as an injury, but it’s part of the package.

    My single most common issue is bruised lips, which isn’t surprising, since your lips and nose are the least protected parts of your face when you’re wearing headgear.

    I have a friend (Hi, Eric!) who seems to get nosebleeds a lot, and that’s not too unusual for the same reason. We both hate the headgear with the bar across the face because they are so bulky and they obstruct your vision more, but it’s an option.

    The black eyes are less common, but I’ve had a few. I would guess that heavyweights get them more than lightweights like me; our punches just don’t pack the same kind of power. I got every single one of my black eyes when sparring with a heavyweight partner.

    I also got my broken rib during sparring, but that was more unusual. I’ve only seen that happen two other times in the years I’ve been boxing.

    There are several things that go into determining how much injury you commonly get during a sparring session.

    1. The weight match of the sparring partners. I typically expect bigger partners to control their shots so that I don’t get hurt, but it doesn’t always happen that way.
    2. How hard you both agree to work. It’s best if you can be explicit, but sometimes you think you have an agreement, but one person starts to increase their power. You have to continue to communicate — either with words or with force — or you can get in trouble here…
    3. Experience level (whether or not you have good control of your punches). Newbies are notorious for causing damage, but more experienced boxers should be able to move faster and avoid the damage. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.
    4. What kind of gear you’re wearing. Like I mentioned, I hate the face-savers, but I love a no-foul. You can see that both boxers in the video above are wearing groin protectors and both of them got shots that landed on them. These take the edge off rib shots, too, not to mention the dreaded liver shot.
    5. The number and length of rounds you spar. I like being a part of a team session where we’re trading off rounds; you can endure for longer and get a lot of learning in. But there’s great value in sparring the same number and length of rounds you do in a fight, too. I almost never get to do this since I’m usually the only woman in the gym, and men’s rounds are 3 minutes rather than 2. But when I’m getting ready for a match I insist on 2 minute rounds so I can get used to the rhythm.
    6. What kind of trainer you have. Sometimes one or another coach who is overseeing the sparring is out for blood, and is urging their fighter to rip you to shreds. I hate being in that situation, but I’ve definitely been there. I try to avoid this kind of session and this kind of trainer; I don’t respond well to being screamed at. But you do see it in boxing gyms, that’s for sure.

    The truth is that I try to avoid bad sparring matches, although I’ve had a few, and I will go out of my way to set up sessions with partners I know I can trust and get the best work with. I’ll travel to another gym if I can’t get good sparring where I am, and I really try to maintain good relationships with several area gyms so that I can do this.

    I also don’t spar all that frequently, since it’s pretty hard on the body. At my last gym we sparred every Friday, and you better believe there were plenty of people who showed up once or twice for a Friday, then dropped out completely or only came on other team nights.

    There’s a huge (huge!) difference between training for boxing and actually boxing, and it’s definitely a big hurdle for people. I completely understand why lots of people would not want to spar; I really do. It’s not for everyone.

    But I think it could be for more people if gyms would set the right tone, and help make the matches better.

    I’d love to hear what everyone else has to say; leave a comment below and let’s mix it up!

  • I LOVE Not Being the New Person in the Gym

    I LOVE Not Being the New Person in the Gym

    It is so incredibly hard to claw your way up the learning curve — and I’d rather say the straight-up learning cliff — in boxing. You can put years into it, and still feel like a beginner.

    But once you’ve gotten solid enough in boxing to get in the ring and spar (for me that took a few months), you’ve made it to the first big ledge. You can stand there for a minute and try to catch your breath.

    Every time you spar is an exercise in overcoming fear, but it actually gets easier (did I just say that??) if you are doing it regularly with people you know and trust.

    The next ledge up is your first official fight. What a life-changing experience. I was terrified for the ten days leading up to my first match, and the fear multiplied by about seven bazillion once I actually rolled under the ropes and took my place in the blue corner, waiting for that first bell to ring.

    But once you get to this stage on your climb, it gets ever so much better, I promise. It is never, never easy — this is boxing, after all — but it does get less terrifying, and it’s that first fight that really makes a significant difference in your mental attitude about the fight sport you hate and love.

    There’s a certain amount of boxing cred you get when you’ve been in the ring, particularly if you’ve had official fights. And that cred goes such a long way in helping overcome the natural suspicion and stress involved in shifting to a new gym, getting a new trainer, going to spar at another gym, or having another boxing team coming to spar with your team.

    Twice this week I’ve enjoyed the peace that comes with not being the new kid in the gym.

    On Wednesday I traveled up to NBS Gym to spar with Amy, who is a 25 year old technical writer who will kick your ass for you if you let her. Amy has had a couple of fights like I have and helps condition the team at NBS. I have sparred with her once before, and I really like getting ring work with her because she’s pretty near my weight (she’s actually 10 pounds lighter, so I actually have an advantage, which is nice for a change) and she has a fantastic, let’s-go-get-em attitude.

    But the absolute best part of our work, which included me finally getting my first good sparring in a while, was that I wasn’t a bundle of nerves walking in this time.

    I wasn’t a new boxer and I wasn’t unaccustomed to the ring. Damn, but that’s nice.

    Last night I went to train at my own gym and noticed the same general effect.

    I drifted in around 6 pm, and saw that there were three new guys training with a team boxer. A couple of my teammates were getting through their stretches and I fell in with them. After a few minutes, the coach put us all to shadowboxing 6 rounds together in front of the two old busted mirrors that are leaning against the cinderblock wall opposite our ring. The new kids were sloppy and tired by the end of the 6, which didn’t bode well for them. Shadowboxing is the warm-up.

    And at the end of the 6 rounds, the coach called everyone over. “You, you, and you,” he said, jabbing his hand in the direction of each of the new guys. “Far end of the gym. Heavy bags. Work some jabs. Team, get on your circuit. You know the drill.”

    The new kids eyed us enviously — and maybe with a little resentment — as we went our separate ways.

    And I felt that silent thrill that I wasn’t banished to the shadows, and the parallel misery that comes with knowing that I would be working with no round breaks for the next 15 three-minute rounds under the eagle eye of the coach, being constantly evaluated, hounded, and corrected.

    And it was miserably, damnably hard work. At the end of 15 rounds (heavy bag, angle bag, headache bag, rope ducks, and toe-touches on a medicine ball) with no round breaks (did I mention the “no breaks” part?), we were put into the ring for mitt work rounds. After which we were graciously allowed to rest by jumping rope for four rounds.

    Thanks be to all the boxing deities that I can do this without puking.

    It’s usually only the new kids who puke.

  • Fighting the Dread of Boxing Training

    Fighting the Dread of Boxing Training

    Having just moved to a new boxing gym, I’m once again reminded of how hard it is to make inroads into a new gym, a new team. I don’t mean overcoming the reluctance to train, but rather the simple and profound fear of boxing itself, and all the insanely hard work it takes to stand in the ring.

    Part of my newly re-awakened dread has to do with moving up several levels to train with a much more intense, powerful, competitive crew. I really did think I was in shape until I showed up at Second Round, and I’ve been struggling for several weeks to be able to train there two days in a row, without at least one or two days in between to recover.

    So my first tactic in fighting the dread of boxing training is — crazily enough — to train harder.

    My husband thinks it’s ironic that I run several miles, jump rope for 20 minutes and do hurdles on my “off” days. But we’re both starting to understand that some of that off-day training has to do with a mental leap that I’m making every time I show up at the new boxing gym. I need to know that I’m capable of working hard on my own, that I can endure the heat and the struggle without someone urging me forward; I need to believe that I’m doing this because I choose to do it, even on the days I don’t love it. The power is mine.

    I also maintain a fair amount of mental radio silence.

    Every day that I plan to go to the new gym I start to get gut churn around noon. I could give myself pep talks, but I’ve found that there really isn’t anything I can say to convince myself not to sweat it so hard. Boxing training is not about talk, it’s about work.

    You would think that I might have learned this life lesson by now. It’s true in my writing, which I do both professionally and recreationally. I don’t waste much time telling myself that I should write, or that I’m good at writing. I don’t spend much time planning my writing, either: I write. I sit down, power up my laptop, and do it. I make mistakes, I edit, I polish, I publish; that’s how it gets done.

    Unless I’m actually prepping for a fight, it doesn’t help me to think about boxing training in advance. Instead, I have to jam the channel. I mentally tune my brainwaves to a smooth light hiss, not unlike the sound of the ocean. And I trust myself to be able to face it when I’m actually stepping into the gym.

    It can be difficult to accept all the unknowns in boxing.

    If there’s a sparring opportunity, I get in the ring. It’s the hardest thing in boxing to do this, over and over again. And everyone who has ever rolled under the ropes understands firsthand how terrifying it can be to not know anything about the person you are about to fight. But there are other, more common unknowns as well.

    For example, I’m still learning how training happens in my new gym. There doesn’t seem to be a regular way of doing things (regardless of any schedule that may or may not exist), but team training does come together under the direction of a coach sometimes; it’s almost like the conditions just have to be a certain way for it to happen — and you have to be there at the right time to catch the wave.

    You also have to be willing to drop in on the wave when it happens.

    I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up. I don’t know if I’ll hold back the entire team, or be able to give my drill partner the kind of work they want and need. I don’t know if I’ll slip the right way or get repeatedly punched in the face. But I’ll never know unless I jump in and take my place with the team. No one invites me to join in; I have to do it myself. But every time I’ve stepped forward, I’ve won another small nod of respect from my teammates and coaches.

    I’ve learned that I perform well under pressure.

    Channeling fear into energy takes practice. There are always plenty of fighters who are better than you. There are four boxers currently in the Olympic pre-qualification process at my small urban gym. Four! They are extremely skilled and they work far harder than I do, every day. It can be intimidating for me to walk in and share a heavy bag with one of them, or join their training rotation, but I do it. I work very hard to channel that intimidation into training energy in the same way that I let faster runners spur me on. And while I might find that I don’t measure up to someone else’s level, I have discovered that I consistently perform better when I’m challenged.

    More and more I’ve come to wonder if boxing imitates life.

    And I’m laughing, because boxing is so much gentler. There are rules, and safety precautions, and coaches. You get to leave the gym any time you want. You might be bloodied and bruised, but there are no broken hearts, or terminally ill friends, or moral dilemmas in boxing. There are no looming deadlines or financial disasters.

    But every day you step forward and fight, despite the dread. Not to win a prize, or build a record, or turn back the clock, but because it’s what you do. It’s how you live.

    It’s who I am honored to be.

    Image by jnyemb on Flickr