The Glowing Edge

Tag: cardio

  • 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 You Should Know Before You Spar

    What You Should Know Before You Spar

    I have written about what you can expect the first time you spar, but my friend Amy Scheer — also a boxer — recently asked me what I thought a new boxer should know before getting in the ring for the first time.

    She also framed the question this way: Which Comes First, the Learning or the Doing? You should definitely click through and read about her experience. The post below is my response.

    There are two schools of thought in boxing.

    The first — and the one through which I came into boxing — says that you have to earn the right to get in the boxing ring.

    The second says throw ’em in, knock ’em around, wait to see if they are “man” enough to come back for more.

    I’m sitting here trying to think of a justification for the hard knocks school, and I can’t. I think it’s bullshit, to be honest. I think it’s usually a way for the guys who are already “in” to keep all the others out. It’s all about who’s king of the hill. A boy’s game, not even a man’s.

    But the way I came in isn’t easy either. Anyone who has ever rolled under the ropes knows just how frightening it can be. You don’t know what will happen, how you will hold up; you may not even know who you’ll be in with and whether or not you can trust them. That’s why I say again and again that the single most important thing you can have going for you in boxing is an outstanding, trustworthy trainer.

    A good trainer trumps everything else

    From the outside, boxing looks like an individual sport, but that isn’t actually the case. Not only do you need a great trainer, you also need a crew of boxers around you to encourage, support, challenge, and work with you. But even if you don’t have a team, you must have that trainer.

    My trainer made sure I had several things before I got in the ring for the first time. And since I had such an outstanding trainer and such a great experience coming in to the sport, I’ve naturally copied her in pretty much all of my basic approaches to boxing. (Any mistakes I make, however, are my own!)

    A rant, before I move on

    I need to get this out there. Putting two inexperienced boxers in the ring for the first time together is minimally useful at best (what can they possibly learn?), and dangerous at worst.

    Would you ask someone who doesn’t know how to swim to get in the pool and help your child learn to swim? Of course not. That’s ridiculous.

    Sure, they can both splash around in the shallow end and maybe they’ll be fine, but did they learn to swim? Did they gain skills? Have they moved forward?

    About the only good thing you can say about that situation is that they both got to get in the water. How much better it would be if they both got to get in the water with someone who can teach them something and also keep them safe?

    Okay. I feel a little better. Onward.

    Have some basic conditioning

    Before I began sparring, my trainer ensured I had a basic level of conditioning. I had come to her gym with what I thought was decent cardio (I’d been running regularly), but I didn’t realize that boxing is more like a series of hard, three-minute sprints rather than a lovely string of 10 minute miles.

    She got my cardio up enough to make it through a single round my first time. Ever try to sprint for 3 minutes without stopping? Yep, that’s pretty much what it felt like.

    She wanted to instill in me from the beginning a principle of boxing that sounds easy but is actually incredibly difficult: you fight until the bell rings. You don’t quit partway through. You come out working and you finish the round. Period.

    Bonnie made sure I could go a round before she put me in for one.

    Use your jab

    Before I got in the ring for the first time I had a crappy but dogged jab.

    I knew from repeated drills that a jab was the foundation for all of the punches in boxing. I didn’t yet know how to advance on the jab, but at least I had something to get out there in front of me so that I could force my opponent to stop an advance.

    I know a jab can also be offensive, but most new boxers need some basic defense before they worry about offense; chances are that they’ll be in the ring for their first sparring experience with someone who is — hopefully — much better at boxing than they are. A solid jab will help protect you in this situation.

    Keep your gloves up

    It was the one piece of advice Amy got before she rolled into the ring for the first time, and it’s good advice. “Cover up,” her trainer said. “Protect yourself.”

    This goes with a defensive jab; you need to bring that glove right back to your chin and keep it there, parallel to the other glove. It’s like having two big pillows in front of your face; they will deflect and dilute the power of a punch to your face.

    It’s also good to keep your elbows in and your chin down, but that’s more advanced. Still, a tight guard is what you need for protection, because slips, ducks, and other evasive moves won’t come until later.

    Never mind about footwork

    I’d love to say that a first-time sparring student should have footwork, but it isn’t likely that they will. You might have practiced some footwork, and you should certainly understand the basics of stance, balance, and how to move without crossing your feet, but chances are that once you get in the ring for the first time all that will fly out the door and you will mostly forget about your feet because you just have too many other things screaming for your attention.

    The four biggies, and knowing what’s coming

    So there are basically four things I think a boxer should have before getting in the ring: a good, trustworthy trainer, some basic conditioning, a jab, and a tight guard (gloves up, chin down, elbows in).

    The thing for a new boxer to know is that they are going to hit and be hit.

    That is a crazy thing to get your head around for someone brand new to the sport; especially if they’ve never hit anyone in their entire lives up to that point.

    Bonnie didn’t actually throw any punches at me the first time I was in the ring. She just let me throw them and feel what it was like to be in, moving hard, working my jab. The second time she threw easy punches, let me feel about half of her power. It was terrifying at first, but once I realized I could take it — and give it! — I was amazed. It was invigorating. I loved it!

    Sticking with it

    It got harder, of course, and I nearly always dreaded sparring nights, but I went.

    Because I knew what every boxer knows after a while: you can work the drills and train for cardio all you want, but the real learning happens in the ring.

     Image by Steve Tolcher

  • Agility Dot Drills

    Agility Dot Drills

    Light, agile, lightning-speed footwork can make the difference in winning and losing in the ring. Great boxers have the ability to win a round on footwork alone, and if you have ever been put in the ring with a newbie and instructed to use defense only, you’ve had to power up your best footwork in order to bring the best workout to your sparring partner.

    Agility dot drills can help you increase the speed and balance of your footwork while also increasing your cardio. Try setting up a series for yourself and see how quickly you can run a set of drills. Be patient with yourself as you work; these drills might feel simple going forward, but going backward will really challenge you.

    The best thing about these drills is that you don’t need any equipment to practice them. Yes, you can shell out cash for agility dots and agility dot mats (I found both online for $50 each — I refuse to even link it, that’s insane), but you don’t need them! Use a piece of chalk or a bit of masking tape to mark your five dots and you’re up and working. You can increase the size and spacing of the layout if you are taller, or as you increase in speed and ability.

    Check out the dude in the video below, or scroll on down for a list of drills you can set up and try on your own.

    Agility Dot Drills

    X Drill. Start with feet split, one foot on dot 1 and one on dot 2. Jump to dot 3 with both feet, then to dots 4 and 5 with feet split. Repeat the steps jumping backward.

    X Drill Hopscotch. Start with feet split, one foot on dot 1 and one on dot 2. Jump to dot 3 with ONE foot, then split feet to dots 4 and 5. Repeat jumping backward with same or alternate foot landing in the middle.

    X Drill with Turn Around. This is the same as the X Drill or X Drill Hopscotch except that when you get to the top or bottom, you turn your body around to go in the other direction.

    Z Drill. Form a Z pattern (4-5-3-1-2) using one leg or both feet together.

    M Drill. Form an M pattern (4-5-3-2-1) using one leg or both feet together.

    Figure 8 Drill. Form a figure eight (4-5-3-1-2-3-4) down and back, keeping feet together or on one foot only.

    Big Arrow, Little Arrow. Keep feet together, start at 1 and jump diagonally to 5, then back to 1. Now jump 1-4-1, 1-3-1, 1-2-1. Start over with the big diagonal jump.

    Box Drill. Keep feet together and hop the perimeter of the square (1-4-5-2-1), facing the same direction at all times.

    Single-leg Triangle. Hop on your left leg to form a triangle in a counterclockwise direction (2-3-1-2). Make five triangles then switch legs and make five triangles. Repeat the drill moving in a clockwise direction (1-3-2-1).

  • How to Know If Your Boxing Is Improving

    How to Know If Your Boxing Is Improving

    Coby and me sparring

    Sometimes after you get in the ring you want to debrief, talk with other boxers about how you did. So most nights after the team is finished sparring I’ll ask some of the newer boxers: “How did you do tonight?”

    And I’ve found that many of them have trouble answering in a way that satisfies themselves. They’ll say, “I didn’t do as well as I wanted,” but they have trouble defining it further. Or else there are so many things that need improvement that they’re overwhelmed by it all. I find myself thinking, and often saying, the same things.

    First, remember that it takes years to get any good at boxing.

    You can’t get in the ring for the first few months and do anything worth remembering. Really. Because you did pretty much everything wrong: your guard was down, your shots were sloppy, you telegraphed your every move, your feet were slow, you looked away, you had no cardio, and overall you looked about as sturdy as a newborn kitten in the path of a bulldozer. It was probably embarrassing to everyone who watched, but everybody starts there, period.

    A lot of kids come in and think it will go like it did when they first picked up a skateboard, or a basketball, or a frisbee. They messed around with it for a day or so and pretty quickly they could get in the game. Not so with boxing, which demands a baseline bit of skill but a fair amount of cardio and a wheelbarrow of guts just to get through your first rounds. And that’s after you’ve convinced a coach or trainer that you’ve paid enough dues in sweat to be allowed into the ring.

    The best way to know if your boxing is improving is to set small, clear, achievable goals.

    Here are a few examples.

    Tonight, I want to (pick two or three):

    • Keep my gloves up
    • Move my head more
    • Not square up with my opponent
    • Make it through 3 rounds without sucking for air
    • Throw more shots than I take
    • Maintain control of the ring
    • Not look away from my opponent
    • Throw a solid double jab
    • Move my feet more
    • Not get locked against the ropes
    • Throw both head and body shots
    • Get some power behind my right cross
    • Work on my inside game
    • Regularly slip or block punches
    • Throw three excellent left hooks in every round
    • Work on my uppercut
    • Keep my balance between my lead and rear foot
    • Commit to and fully extend my punches
    • Utilize my pivot
    • Finish each round strong
    • Score shots heavily in the last 30 seconds of each round
    • Land ___ shots per round (you’ll need a punch counter ringside)
    • Work on my  _______ (jab-hook-pivot, right cross – left hook, etc.) combination.

    Sometimes I even tell my opponent what, specifically, I’m going to work on.

    Yes, they’ll then be on the lookout for my left hook, but at least they understand that I’m going to throw a boatload of them, and I may even ask them to stop mid-round so that I can go through some slow-motion in order to tweak my form, or ask them why a particular move keeps falling short of power.

    Your trainer will pick good goals for you.

    Recently I was in the ring with a guy who was my same height, but every single time he threw his jab, he brought his glove back to his shoulder rather than his cheek or chin. So I had easy pickings on a right cross to his face, and was taking them on an intermittent but regular basis. But between rounds, my trainer told me to take every single one of those shots in the coming round. I wasn’t to let his jab return — ever — without shooting my right cross into his face. “And put a little more power behind it,” he told me.

    Midway through the next round my opponent realized, without anyone having to tell him, that he needed to work on one specific thing, which was getting his glove back in the correct position after a jab. He knew very clearly at the end of the night what had improved in his boxing!

    And I’ve been in his position plenty of times. If you don’t pick a goal, your opponent or trainer may pick one for you, and you’ll discover it the hard way!

    Sparring is your absolute best opportunity to learn and improve your boxing, so you want to focus on and optimize that time as well as you can. Choose a goal (or two) and make them your priority.

    You can even keep track of your goals in a notebook.

    I know I’m going to be in the ring every single Friday night, so sometimes I’ll write my goals on a post-it and stick it on my computer at work so I’ll be thinking about it in advance. Then, when I’m in the ring, I know what to work on. And I’ll also know, coming out of the ring, just how I did that night.

    You can’t work on everything all the time.

    But you can box on a baseline, and focus hard on a few choice skills or techniques, so that you’ll be able to see clear improvement over time.

    Stay strong. Train hard. And box smart.

    Photo of me sparring with Coby by Ken Hall Photography

  • Basic Boxing Workout

    Basic Boxing Workout

    It comes and goes in waves: you get in really good boxing shape and stick there for a while, then you suddenly remember that you have to parent, your job heads toward overtime, you get behind in the universe, and one day you are in the ring wishing you had one of those oxygen canisters and a little plastic tube to blow it into your nose so you could finish this round without passing out.

    Hello, that’s me.

    And last week I was working on the heavy bag and my trainer strolled by with her arms folded, evaluating. I immediately sucked in my gut and racheted up my punch count. Bam! Bam bam bam! Dance to the side. Three killer combos in a row, fast. Hope she quits watching soon, cause I need to suck for air. My jabs were dropping down to oh, about waist level. If only my opponents would lay on the floor, maybe I could stomp on them; it would be easier.

    She said nothing of course; she didn’t need to. I confessed on my own, later: “Ahem, my cardio’s down a bit.” As if she were my priest and could give me penance. She knows boxing is its own penance. You get in the ring with low cardio and you aren’t going to go very far. Your opponent’s gonna chew you up and spit you out and you’ll just be grateful it’s over with.

    She gave me that half-smile of hers and shook her head. “It may be boring, but you just gotta get in here and do the same thing, over and over again. It’s how you get back.”

    She’s completely right. You can come up with all the new diet plans and cardio exercises (run, elliptical, skate, row, etc.) in the world, but in the end, it’s about boxing. Round after round of it.

    So today I got back in the gym during my lunch hour and spent some time working the hell out of the basics. Since my cardio is low, I set the round timer on 2 minute rounds with 30 second recovery. And here’s what I did, and plan to do again for the next several boxing workouts, pushing up my numbers and moving eventually to 3 minute rounds.

    • 2 rounds jump rope; sprint the last 30 seconds of each round
    • 1 round stretching
    • 2 rounds shadowboxing
    • 5 rounds on heavy bag; speed punches the last 30 seconds of each round
    • 2 rounds on the speed bag
    • 1 round shadowboxing for cool down
    • 10 minutes on the spin bike to finish

    Grab a shower and get back to work!

    Photo by Wootang01

  • The Body Forgets, The Body Remembers

    The Body Forgets, The Body Remembers

    The first week in December I got a little overzealous about increasing my number of unassisted chin-ups and wrecked my shoulder. It’s an old injury and I’ve been through the re-healing process before, but this time one of the pro boxers in my gym suggested I come see her to help get it taken care of. I looked at her, baffled.

    “I’m a physical therapist, you know,” she laughed.

    Sometimes I forget that the boxers at the gym have jobs, families, lives. But the thought of a trained medical person who wouldn’t berate me for boxing and who might actually speed the healing process had tremendous appeal, and I found myself booking the appointment.

    So for two months I stayed out of the ring and off the heavy bag and worked through an intense physical therapy program to heal my shoulder up as much as I could. I missed boxing horribly, and consoled myself with running the shame line at the “normal” gym and becoming fiercely competitve in everything cardio. Slightly depressed, I ate garbage and became nostalgic about push-ups, but by God, I ran. And threw sprints on the jump rope, and cranked up the elliptical machine.

    By the time I could move my shoulder again without spikes of pain I felt like I had forgotten the ways of moving in the ring. I started standing in front of the mirror and sending out slow-motion jabs: is this how it works? Is this still right? Jabs seem like such a simple punch, but they are stunningly complex and there is a galaxy of difference between a good jab and a crap one. A good jab can save your ass in the ring, warding off your opponent’s punches or breaking up her combinations. They can measure distance, letting you know whether you’re in range or not. They deliver most of your messages, front your bombs, secure territory, and with power they can beat a tattoo of pain into someone’s face. You can’t think about your jab in the ring, it just has to be there, ready to fire. Boxing without a good jab is like swimming without arms and legs.

    You gotta have a good jab, and I feared my body was forgetting mine.

    My feet were forgetting, too. I stood balanced in my stance in the middle of the bedroom floor, and tried to recall how it felt to train on the tractor tire that sat on the loading dock behind the gym: rocking my weight quickly, lightly, back and forth between my feet to allow me to move with balance and speed.

    I stood in the bedroom and looked down at my forgetful feet and sighed.

    When I finally began to shadowbox again I knew my form — which is still a novice’s, even after nearly two years — had grown blurry, but there’s really no simple cure. There’s only the long, repetitive road of work ahead.

    Last week I finally got back in the ring again. It was after team training — my first in more than two months. I had substituted legwork for all the training that directly hits the shoulders (mountain climbers, push-ups, burpees, etc.) and with that and the fact that I’d maintained my cardio, I realized I still had some energy left. Our trainer closed down the session and I looked around at my drenched and winded teammates. My shoulder felt okay: no spikes of pain. It wasn’t strong, but it didn’t feel injured any more.

    “Anybody want to give me a couple of light, easy rounds in the ring?” I asked. “I’d really like to test out my shoulder. Nothing serious, though,” I added, knowing everyone else had worked much harder in training than I had.

    A couple of them groaned and declined, heading for the showers. But one of the newer guys offered to stay. Because he’s new and doesn’t have much experience in the ring, I got permission from our trainer to spar, and we both geared up.

    The gym had cleared out and it was late; the headlights on the cars headed out of the parking lot flashed through the windows. Someone had turned down the volume on the ever-present thump of hip-hop, making the bell that starts the rounds sound incredibly loud. I moved out to the center of the ring, shivering with anticipation and nerves. I was more flat-footed than light and balanced, but I was in the ring.

    We had a satisfying five rounds. No one cornered, no one watched. He was too inexperienced to know how sloppy my form was, and my jab wasn’t so out of practice that he didn’t feel it. Like most newbies, he apologized once he began to land some power punches. They felt great. I was remembering. He kept his gloves in front of his face against my jab so I repeatedly hooked to his head: around the guard, straight to the ear. Connection. My shoulder held up. I began to feel exultant.

    The next day I had a slight headache and my neck and shoulders were sore from the tension I’d carried in the ring. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you absolutely must relax when you box, just like you relax on the landing of a long fall, in order to transfer the shock through more of your body and allow the impact to flow on through without breaking anything. My body was reminding me of the patterns and necessities of boxing.

    I pressed my fingers to the slightly bruised and tender bridge of my nose; I ate a healthy serving of punches from the newbie. Dude was quite promising, much better than I was when I began boxing. He had some power, too, as my nose was telling me. There was a tender spot on the underside of my jaw as well. I laughed; he’d fired quite a few uppercuts and at least one of them connected. Uppercuts! From a newbie.

    I smiled, remembering.

    Image by isabel bloedwater

  • 4 Reasons Why Your Workout Isn’t Working

    4 Reasons Why Your Workout Isn’t Working

    1. Low, slow cardio

    I see this in the gym all the time. People on the elliptical or treadmill who are going so slowly that they can comfortably page through a magazine and even talk on the phone. That’s fine if it’s getting you where you want to be fitness-wise, but if you’re dissatisfied with your progress, look here first. If you are trying to be faster, stronger, and heart-healthier, you need pay attention to your heart rate.

    To get a general estimate of your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. Your best cardio work will typically be when you get your heart rate up to at least 60-80% of your max heart rate. I try to keep my cardio workouts at 80% of my max, and because boxing requires me to work anaerobically for short bursts, I make it a point to push my heart rate up to the max at least once every 5 minutes or so. As you get in better and better shape, you will have to work much harder to achieve the 60-80% and to touch your max.

    2. Same ol’, same ol’

    If you do exactly the same workout every single time, your body begins to adapt. It gets good at that particular workout, and you may not see progress toward your fitness goals. So change it up. Get off the elliptical and try rowing. Stop running the same route around your neighborhood and start swimming laps at the community center instead. Get off the bike and give the treadmill a shot. Find three or five new weightlifting exercises and retire some of your old ones for six weeks or so. Not only will your body begin to respond to the new challenges, but you might find you don’t get bored with your workout so quickly, either. In fitness, change is good. Make it happen!

    3. Your diet sucks

    Exercise has to be supported by good food choices, period. This takes some planning ahead, prepping ahead, and contingency plans as well. My fast-and-dirty rule for eating to support boxing is “one-third, two-thirds.” This means I eat one-third lean protein and two-thirds low-density fruits/vegs (and throw in a little of the good — that means monounsaturated — fats/oils) at every single meal or snack. I also keep power bars (the ones made by The Zone are perfectly balanced already) in my car and in my desk drawer so that I don’t get tempted to drive through the Wendy’s or overload on M&M’s. The good news is, even if you screw up a meal or snack, you can always start fresh with the next one.

    4. No goals

    This is probably the number one reason people fail at fitness. Quantify what you want to achieve! Put a number on it and set a timeline. If you want to become a runner, sign up for a 5K and start building your mileage for race day. Then set up a gold, silver, and bronze medal goal: Bronze might be “Finish the race,” Silver might be “Finish in under 30 minutes,” and your Gold medal goal might be to beat your top time. The clearer your goals are, the easier it will be to see and celebrate your progress.

    Image credit: colros on Flickr

  • The Shame Line is Open


    Three months ago I picked up a jump rope for the first time since I was eight years old. Watching me try to manage a few hops was probably like watching a drunk steer stagger around a corral, except with cursing. I couldn’t believe something so simple, so universal, so obvious could be so impossible. Elementary age girls all over the world do this!

    But that’s how it was, and there was no getting around the fact that if you are a boxer, you also will jump rope. There’s a good reason for this correlation. Jumping rope incinerates calories (up to 1000 an hour); improves your posture, timing, and coordination; powers up your heart even better than running does with less impact on your knees; and costs nearly nothing fifty dollars.

    I should say more about that I guess.

    After three or four humiliating sessions of attempting to jump rope, I did what any middle-class American woman would do. I tried to purchase my way out. I watched my trainer and several other team mates effortlessly skip their way — without misses — through round after round of jump rope drills. Their ropes had shiny silver handles and whistling clear tubes for the “rope”. I could tell something was helping the rope swivel without twisting. I decided that if I had one of those jump ropes, I would be graceful and skilled, too. Har.

    So like many others before me, I got sent to the Buddy Lee Jump Rope website, and I paid my (cough) fifty dollars, and my path to success arrived in the mail about a week later. During the intervening time I did my best to convince my husband that fifty dollars was a reasonable price to pay for a glorified string with handles. It didn’t go well.

    And I learned what everyone learns. Jumping rope skills take time and practice to build, no matter how awesome and ridiculously expensive your jump rope is.

    Eventually my drunken, cursing steer act evolved into a mildly irritated and slightly graceless steer act. Then, in the space of a week or so, I left behind the bovine analogy all together. I am now a pretty good jump roper.

    In fact, I can jump rope for half an hour straight with a few misses, throwing in the occasional twist-the-rope-in-front trick, a running sprint, and the standard pogo. I’m not yet as graceful on the “boxer shuffle” but I’m gaining ground daily.

    So. When I’m not at the boxing gym I go to a regular fitness center, and for two months or so I’ve been taking my diamond-and-ruby-encrusted jump rope with me and doing my thing.

    Until I started jumping rope at that gym, I NEVER ONCE saw anyone jumping rope. After a couple of weeks I noticed I had set off a trend of guys (and guys only) who suddenly decided to do so. And now there’s an interesting pattern that I bear witness to nearly every single time I go.

    It goes like this.

    I get to the gym and post, in ink that only guys can read, a sign that only guys can see, on the front of the huge glass-walled aerobics room where I typically jump. The sign says: “The Shame Line is Open.” This draws them in, one at a time, for a whuppin. During the 30 minutes or so that I’m calmly jumping rope and making it look easy, they come in, pick out one of the barely-used jump ropes hanging on the rack, flex their muscles a bit (neck rolls are a favorite, I’ve noticed), then proceed to whip it for about eight jumps.

    Whereupon they invariably miss, glance over to where I’m serenely running my routine, and start again. They NEVER try to Just Jump Rope. They have to throw a trick, or sprint, or double jump, and they fail. This is frustrating to them because they remember in high school how they could do this, at least a little bit. And they were cool, yes they were. And darn it, they still are.

    They never last an entire minute. And honestly, I never lasted at the beginning either. But jumping rope is absolutely nothing like riding a bike; it’s a skill you have to develop and maintain.

    I feel some sympathy, in an amused 43-year-old woman kind of way. But I’m not closing down shop or anything. Somebody’s gotta run the Shame Line. Might as well be me.