Ringside did a particularly good video on this, and it’s well worth watching the entire 16 minute video (and there’s a funny treat at the end). (more…)
Since I’m usually officiating, I’m not the one who packs the gym bag to take our competitive boxing team to their events, but sometimes I pitch in to help the other coaches remember everything we need.
And finally I wrote it all down, since that’s infinitely preferable to madly scrambling around at the last minute, trying to remember what all our boxing team will need once they get to the competitive arena.
Btw, I searched the internet and didn’t find ANYTHING to help you pack your competition bag, so if you happen so see something, please link it in the comments. Just the fact that I couldn’t find anything made me wonder if I was missing something…
Of course, this will be the ONLY post on the subject to include toilet paper, sparkly elves, chainsaws, and Nicki Minaj. Read on. (more…)
I train and also volunteer as a coach at a downtown boxing gym that serves primarily inner-city youth. Because the gym is also a gang-related outreach program, the kids have to fulfill certain requirements — maintaining certain grades, staying out of trouble, working hard, showing up regularly, etc. — in order to stay in the program.
As a result I frequently see kids come in then drop out or be evicted from the program before I even learn their names. So we might go months without ever having anything resembling an actual boxing team come together.
Just this week we had an amazing sparring night, and I was once again aware that we’d made it to the point of having a good boxing team come together. It feels awesome, and it’s really satisfying to be a part of something like this.
Here’s how I know when it’s happening at my gym, and it’s pretty much how you can know if it will happen at yours, too. (more…)
If you ask any ten boxers what the most important rule in boxing is you’ll hear things like “wear the right protective gear,” “find a coach you can trust,” or “learn the straight punches.” And all of those are important in learning to box.
But as I work each week with the new fighters at my gym, I see one major factor dividing the up-and-coming boxers from the ones who will never make it far in boxing…
In no way am I trying to diminish the critical nature of the boxing advice you hear online, from other coaches, or even here on The Glowing Edge. Boxing is an enormous, complex sport, and there’s just no way to accomplish much in it without years of solid training and practice. Here’s a list of some great boxing tips, and you’ll get plenty of oil to grease your boxing engine if you follow them:
So day after day I’m in the boxing gym, training, coaching, and watching other boxers. And there is one factor that tells me whether or not someone is willing to do the real work of boxing. One single thing.
And that’s training to the bell.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen guys belly up to the heavy bag, fire off a handful of full-power combos, and then sit back in sheer self-appreciation and deep personal satisfaction.
Of course it feels great to blast the bag a few times. And there are plenty of days when you want to use every ounce of strength you have, play it all out to see what it feels like.
But being able to throw 15 hard punches means absolutely zero, zip, nada in boxing.
Strutting around the gym dabbling here and there is worse than useless — you’re actually in the way of serious boxers and you’re a distraction and bad example to other beginners. It would be better for everyone if you’d just go home and nurse your boxing fantasy in front of your mirror while the rest of us get the real work of boxing done.
(I so wanted to find a picture of a guy posing in front of his mirror at home, enjoying his boxing superstar fantasy. Go find one and post the link in the comments so we can have a good chortle.)
If you can’t go a single full round (2 or 3 minutes) of doing something — punching, footwork, jump rope, shadowboxing, padwork, running, agility dots, slipping, rope work, ring slides, planks, or some other fight-related action — you have not even begun to work at boxing.
There should be a round timer going in your gym most of the time. If there isn’t, get yourself a timer, or learn to set your watch/phone/music player to time your rounds. Do every single training exercise in rounds of 2 or 3 minutes, with 30 second recoveries. If your round timer has a 30-second bell (which rings to indicate there are 30 seconds left in the round before it ends), use that time to double your efforts and power your way toward the bell.
If you take a round off, be back at the bags, on the mat, or in the ring and ready to roll when the bell rings. That bell going off should not be your reminder to put down your water bottle and saunter over to the speed bag to resume your work; you should already be there ready and waiting to get the first shot in.
If you’re running or jumping rope and planning to go multiple rounds, keep going during the 30-second recovery period, but slow down to an easy coast. Then rev back up when the timer sounds the new round.
If you can’t do a single serious round out of the ring, you have no business getting in the ring.
If I have any single rule at the very top of the pile, it’s this one. Drill in rounds, practice in rounds, sprint in rounds. Do all your training in rounds, and your transition into the ring will be much faster and better.
Your turn. What’s your top rule for boxing training? Leave me a comment below!
Seventeen young men, most of the court-ordered to be there, are standing with me in lose rows in their boxing stance, guard up. Coach “One Bad Jab” Massey calls the shots.
“Jab, jab, jab, squat. Jab, pivot…jab,” he calls, never raising voice overmuch, mixing up the timing of his commands, and watching us with an eagle eye. The shots are called slowly, with plenty of time in between for Coach Massey to walk among the rows with a boxing glove that is stuffed and taped to one end of a long shovel handle. These are standard tools in boxing gyms.
The trick here is that if he jabs that thing in your face you DO. NOT. FLINCH. You don’t duck, you don’t do anything. Unless he shouts “Squat!” to the group, and then you better get low or risk having your head popped by his glove-on-a-stick.
“I did NOT say ‘squat,’” Massey comments calmly to a young man who saw the glove coming and wrongly anticipated the coach’s command. “Give me 15 pushups.”
The young man drops and the rest continue. This isn’t an exercise in jabs, or squats, or even overcoming the flinch reflex. They are lessons in listening.
In fact, if you were to regularly watch the training sessions at Second Round, there would be plenty of days when you might think the coach was working harder at teaching the kids to listen than he is at making them sweat.
And you’d be right.
There’s a lot of mental work that goes on when you’re in the ring. But then there are times when you’re too fatigued to work your strategy, or you’re under so much heavy fire you just can’t think, all you can do is survive. That’s one of your coach’s most critical jobs — to call the shots when you can’t do it any more. But it doesn’t begin there.
Second Round held a sparring night for all of the new boxers in the gym recently. Once everyone was geared up and gathered around the ring apron, Massey climbed into the ring and called for everyone’s attention.
Our kids are mostly there by court order. They have a lot of street tough in them. But even if they didn’t, most people come to a boxing gym expecting to “fight.” They have images of brawls, fistfights, and lots of anger and frustration coming out inside those ropes.
Which is a big mistake, and the first one Massey points out.
“What are we here to do?” he asks the kids, who are anxious and jittery, shuffling and bumping each other. But they think they know the answer.
“Fight!” they tell him, and it comes out like a cheer.
“No,” he responds, shaking his head. “We’re here to box.” He doesn’t elaborate, but his point will be illustrated soon, when they see how easily a more experienced boxer will evade their wild, messy, craziness in the ring, and return smart, quick, stinging punches as they flail around.
“I have three commands for you to remember tonight,” he continues. “You’ll hear them from your ref at the beginning of your match, and you’ll hear them during your rounds. If you forget everything else while you’re in this ring, I want you to remember these three words.” He pauses to make sure he has their attention.
“The three commands are ‘box,’ ‘break,’ and ‘stop.’” He fires off each word like a rifle shot, and they pop against the cinderblocks and echo back.
He explains, but I know the real understanding won’t come until much later in their training. Because as they brawl their messy way through those initial rounds, these three commands help put the first, rough boundaries on what they are trying to learn. They keep the kids safe in a very chaotic place.
If you can hear nothing else (and you can’t hear much) during the war of your first rounds, you hear those words, and respond. And that’s where a powerful relationship with a great coach begins.
I’m a thinker. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. And when I was a new boxer, my brain frequently held me back in the ring. When faced with a complicated situation I wanted to stop and carefully analyze all the multiple pieces that were going into my work. But my brain wasn’t boxing-smart. And often there were too many pieces to think of at once, and I ended up paralyzed and unable to move, or else I just looked a mess.
Over and over I would hear my coaches say, “You’re over-thinking it.” And I was. I found that often my body could respond more quickly and easily to my coach’s shot-calls than my brain could make sense of everything, stitch all the pieces logically together, and tell my body to execute the command.
Sometimes you have to cut out the middleman. Sometimes the middleman is your own brain. Use your coach’s brain instead, because it’s boxing-smart.
I was teaching proper form for a jab to a friend recently when I was reminded of this again. She wanted to “talk through” each part at length; it’s a complicated creature, the jab. We’d been going through the motions carefully for a while, but the whole shot wasn’t coming together for her.
Eventually I interrupted her verbal processing, which was getting us nowhere. “Stop thinking about it,” I told her. “Just pop it into my hand on my command.” And an instant later I called, “Jab!”
And damned if she didn’t throw the prettiest bee-sting jab you ever saw straight into my upraised palm.
Your body may be able to learn boxing faster than your brain does. You need both, but more than that, you need a coach to tell you when to shift gears.
Your coach helps you build your strategy as you prepare to face a tough opponent. And while you may start your bout with your plan firmly in place, sometimes you find yourself outmatched or getting eaten alive by your opponent’s strategy instead.
At some point you default to simply protecting yourself; you become all defense. You stop scoring, and you will lose the fight if you’re all on your own.
A good coach in your corner can turn that completely around for you, in many cases. But you have to be able to tune out the roar of the room, the sound of punches banging against your ears, and the random cheers and jeers of onlookers. You have to have one channel only open, the one between you and your coach.
When she or he calls the shots, you let your body respond. Your coach then has the control, and can guide you through the jagged reefs and safely into the harbor, if you can listen and respond.
I find myself saying this more and more these days. Good, clean boxing informs life, and vice-versa. Get a coach you can trust, just like you have mentors upon whom you can depend to guide and train you in the best possible ways.
Nobody owes you training, no matter how much you paid for your gym membership. The best training is earned. It comes in boxing as it does in life, when you develop a relationship with someone who is willing to teach, if you are willing to listen and work hard.
I’ll bet you have some coaches, mentors, and trainers who absolutely changed the course of your life. I hope you’ll take the time to leave a comment and share your story. And even pass this on to a coach or teacher you’ve deeply valued…
My own fist bumps and grateful appreciation go out to Coach Bonnie “Queen B” Mann, and of course, Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey. Many thanks to both of you, as well as to several other incredible coaches who have worked with and influenced me — Terri “The Boss” Moss, Paul “The Italian Hit Man” Marinaccio, and more. You guys have changed my life for the better!
Image: That’s me, being cornered by pro trainer Xavier “Bad Pads” Biggs during my very first fight.
Boxing doesn’t always work like you might think.
Last night I was training at Second Round, my home gym. The afterschool crew was working through their paces with Sinclair, so I did my jump rope rounds, stretching, and shadowboxing alone. Mostly I thought hard about very specific moves I was working on, particularly my (nearly non-existant) left hook.
Over and over again I stopped, moved through the motions, and tried again at speed. Shadow rounds, then heavy bag rounds. It wasn’t coming together. I slipped left, hooked, feh. No power. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was.
Then it all changed in a way I never expected.
And I realized there are secrets to advancement in boxing that generally no one ever tells you about. Here’s what I learned…
Don’t expect your training to progress just because you managed to get your ass to the gym. In this game, you have to earn it.
I spent an hour last night in the gym, failing to secure a left hook. I must have stopped 30 times in the course of six 3-minute rounds of shadowboxing, plus multiple rounds on the heavy bag, trying to slowmo my way into that hook. Nothing.
But my trainer, Coach Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey, standing quietly by the ring at the outer edge of the gym, saw what I was doing.
He saw the sweat running in rivers down my neck and shoulders and dripping off my nose. He saw me stop repeatedly to work the one specific combo. He knew I couldn’t find the left hook.
Four rounds into my heavy bag work he came over.
“I see you working really hard to land that hook. Let me show you why you’re not getting it,” he said, in his low-key way.
Gratefully I stepped back from the bag and watched him slowly show me the move, first in his natural southpaw stance, then in the orthodox position. There are many subtleties.
I was keeping my guard glove too high during the slip (couldn’t see my opponent), and not getting my shoulder behind the shot. Not keeping a solid 90 degree angle.
In a regular boxing gym, you go and train on your own most of the time. Nobody is going to hold your hand and tell you every little thing to do. If you decide to slack through, you will be allowed. If you prefer to spend your time jacking around rather than sweating, you can. You’ll get little or no attention, and your form will suck. Practice doesn’t make perfect form. Good coaching plus practice is what solidifies your technique.
A good coach will gravitate to the boxers working hard.
Nobody will give you your training in boxing. You earn it.
This is what finally clinched the hook in my workout. I watched Coach Massey, then slipped and fired a few. Still no go. I pulled my guard hand down, put my shoulder behind the hook, but it didn’t feel consistent.
Massey stopped me, and held up his hand opposite me, near the heavy bag.
“Stop working the slip as the lead-in,” he told me. “Go ahead and fire your two past the bag to my hand, then throw the left hook.”
“Past the bag?”
“Yeah. That’s gonna put you in just the right position for the hook. You’ll see.”
And I did. The leading right popped smartly into his palm, and I was in perfect hook-loaded position, so I was able to turn that nicely into the bag. Pop-bam, two-hook, sweet as you please.
Working on a heavy bag is nothing like working with a sparring partner, but it’s great for practicing technique. And it’s very counterintuitive, but you can use the spaces around the bag to work as well as the spaces on the bag.
After Massey left, I continued to work that hook by shooting my two past the bag, then throwing the left. And it worked very nicely.
And that brings me to my third boxing secret, which isn’t as counterintuitive as the first two, but follows nicely from those points.
Like I said before, working the heavy bag is nothing like working in the ring. The bag does’t slip and dodge, duck and pivot, or otherwise respond smartly to your offense. It’s always in range, and it always takes your shots — so you don’t have to maintain your balance, keep your feet moving, or avoid an opponent.
In order to really advance in your boxing training, you need to take what you learn on the mats and at the heavy bag and translate it into working in the ring with a sparring partner.
Even if you just box for fitness, finding a trustworthy partner who will let you work lightly through some rounds in the ring will completely revolutionize your training sessions. You’ll be forced to move more, work harder, and you’ll get an incredible calorie-eating workout.
So finish your boxing equation and get in the ring to try your freshly-minted (or solid bread-and-butter) skills, because everything is different in the ring.
Got counterintuitive training tips and secrets of your own? Share ’em in the comments, and gimme goods to post about next!
Stay strong!
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…
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 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
I’m making my way back from the Christmas holiday slouch — a much-needed break — and I’m doing okay. And the first challenge of the new year was sparring with a group of young men from the UNC boxing team (yep, they have a boxing team! No women, though.), who joined us recently at the gym.
Sparring with the UNC Team
It is admittedly nerve-wracking, having a bunch of big, muscled, fit young college men show up at your ring. You never know how all-out the mix-up will be. The first time I ever experienced this I completely bailed out, the level of testosterone and terror was so high.
And that’s precisely what happened for our younger and newer team members. This time, though, I was determined to stick in there.
The UNC guys came in with almost no entourage and a good attitude, joining in our warm-ups, joking and friendly. And even though there were some politics and a small amount of drama involved, we had some good sparring together.
Sparring with the Second Round Team
So I was feeling much better when a week later, another boxing team showed up at our gym unexpectedly (detail mix-up) for sparring. This team’s rather extensive entourage arrived before they did, and it completely set us all off guard. We eventually learned that this was the team we were expecting to meet the next morning at another location for a three-gym sparring session.
But, given that our two gyms were here on the night before, we did our best, and amazingly (given my discomfort and nerves), I boxed well that night. I worked primarily with my own team mates, but also did three rounds with one of their up-and-coming young female boxers, as well as a very memorable round with their 6-time national champion Olympic hopeful (male).
I was confident and strong, and I went home at 9:30 pm, showered, changed, and went out to for a few drinks and some local rock music with my husband.
The next morning he woke up with a fever. One of our sons had just been sick, and so I braced myself for the inevitable domino effect to run through my family. And I checked myself constantly — was my headache due to boxing, drinking, sleep deprivation, worry, or was I getting sick too? Was my muscle soreness from the hard workout the night before or did I feel feverish? I had promised to be at the 3-gym sparring session, but was I well enough?
I went anyway. I was nearly an hour late, arriving dehydrated, exhausted, and anxious. Bad mix.
Sparring with Second Round and LA Boxing Raleigh
There were a ton of boxers there, mostly experienced and strong, but a few greener boxers as well. It was probably one of the highlights of my boxing career to date that when I was called into the ring, my coach told me to “hold back” and the opposing coach told their fighter to “go all out.” It’s so rare that I get to be the superior boxer! But I felt like crap, though, and even before the bell rang I knew I was in for a whuppin’.
And I took my licks. The two boxers (both women) that they put in with me were certainly greener, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hitting me with every ounce of power they had. I stumbled once, early on. My feet refused to move. My head refused to think. My gloves rode low and I took hit after hit to the head. Once I was so ungainly that I got head-butted — her head to my chin — and I have a whopping bruise and a sore jaw as a result.
Absolutely 100% of the damage I took was my own damn fault.
I was slow, tired, and unprepared. I am easily the better boxer and yet I let the newer boxers take me down. I barely made it through four rounds. I deserved every bit of my pain, and I’m doing my best to call it a lesson well-learned.
Here’s my recap:
Lesson One: Hard sparring two days in a row is advanced.
If you decide to do it, you need solid cardio, good sleep, no drinking, and plenty of hydration. Eating right is essential. Fuel your body in all the right ways in advance. As one of the coaches ringside said to his miserably flagging fighter, “Anybody can box when they’re in shape.” Avoid the misery. Be ready.
Lesson Two: Sparring with another gym takes a greater toll than sparring with your own team.
People are scared and uncertain and some have things to prove. Everyone fights harder; there’s never “light” sparring. It’s often harder than an actual fight, because you’ll have more rounds and more opponents. Be aware that the next few days you will need to pamper yourself and recover. Also you’ll want ibuprofen.
Lesson Three: Always protect yourself.
If someone is throwing heat in their rounds, you need to be able to tell them to cut that shit out before you start your own rounds with them. Don’t mice words, don’t be polite. Be direct and forceful. I only did it once with the UNC boys, and it was entirely effective. He pulled the heat and after we sounded each other out, he gave me good work.
Yes, your coach or trainer is also looking out for you, but frankly, you should be doing this for yourself. Boxing is a dangerous sport, no lie. It’s also very individual-oriented. There’s no team of players in there with you who can protect you if you falter. You can’t call a time-out and ride the bench for a few minutes — you’re in there until the bell rings. Every boxer has to evaluate the danger and operate within risky boundaries. You don’t want to screw around with this, or leave it to someone else.
Lesson Four: You can learn a shit-ton of new things if you are willing to do it.
The young up-and-comer from the unexpected sparring night was incredibly fierce. She constantly came forward on me, bringing me game. She had a high punch output and made me use a little more power than I should have in order to hold her off of me. I want to work with her again in order to practice blocking more of her shots.
The Olympic hopeful dude was a sheer joy — his coach put him in on defense only with me (which I often hate, as it makes me feel like a baby) but he was so good that I could hardly lay a shot on him. His foot speed was great, but he really shone when he stood still and let me throw combos; his ability to evade my shots with fades, slips, leans, and ducks was amazing. Once I tried to pin him in a clinch and he simply wrapped my arms and turned me neatly 180 degrees with a quick spin. Utterly illegal, completely hilarious. I loved it.
And damn, I can hardly wait to get back with those girls from the three-team day of sparring! One of them was incredibly effective at pinning me to the ropes with her wide hooks. She was shorter than me but she was great at using her extra weight to wear me down. The other was quick with her right, and I don’t think I blocked a damn one of her power punches. I want her again, too. Both of those girls would make me use my feet and responses to evade their combos.
Lesson Five: Facing fear needs practice.
It’s incredibly useful to go spar with new people because it lets you experience the adrenaline dump, the fear, and the nerves, which are all a part of an actual fight, and a part of life. Part of me thinks that if I can just go through it enough in boxing, it will quit having so much debilitating power over me. Who knows.
I do know that I have some mental work to do, to build myself back up after sucking so bad on that third sparring event. Mental and physical. But for now I’ll take a couple of days off, ice what’s sore, and take another dose of aspirin. I have new lessons to assimilate before I go hunting for more.
North Burnaby Boxing Gym on Flickr.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with my trainer outside of the gym, and she shared a little bit with me about how she got started in boxing and the one woman and two incredible men who have made all the difference in her 14 year professional boxing career.
Beginnings in Baseball
She was always an athlete, she told me, and was the first girl to play on the formerly all-boy team in Grasshopper Baseball when she was 7 or 8 years old. She laughs and relates the story of her coach telling them all to be sure and get a “cup;” information which she promptly and obediently relayed to her mother once she got home that day.
She played Little League, then switched to fast pitch softball, and even did a stint as a pitcher and shortstop with Raleigh’s Women’s Professional Baseball Association. But after more than 20 years of baseball, she grew tired of it, and dropped out of the scene. She found herself messing around in gyms trying to occupy her mind and body by lifting weights, but the horizon looked empty; she was bored and restless.
A Chance Encounter with a Female Pro Boxer
One day she found herself interviewing for a job with North American Van Lines, thinking to put her strength to work to earn a paycheck. Her interviewer seemed eager to hire, and threw a sweetener into the deal to draw Bonnie in: “If you take the job,” he offered, “I’ll introduce you to Teresa Arguello. She was a pro boxer in Texas and California.”
He’d gained her interest. She took the position.
It wasn’t long before the two women met, and Bonnie indicated her curiosity in finding out what boxing was all about. Arguello told her to meet her at a warehouse one night after work. She gave her an old pair of boxing gloves and when they both arrived Arbuelo put her through a workout for about 30 minutes. The next day Mann was so sore she could hardly walk. And she was hooked.
It was new, it was incredibly difficult, and the challenge drew her in like a wounded surfer draws sharks.
The two women went to a baseball field in Morrisville, to a tiny 4×6 concrete slab, where Arguello made Bonnie jump rope in the 100 degree heat. Then she would hold the mitts and have Bonnie work them. They utilized outdoor spaces, garages, and warehouses; wherever they could get permission to spend an hour or so working together.
A Run-Down Gym, a New Friendship
Mann eventually found a hole-in-the-wall gym in Durham that someone had mentioned to her. It was on the second floor of a building that looked to be condemned. There was no sign or any indication that somone had knocked out cinderblocks to enlarge an interior space, constructed a makeshift ring and hung two heavy bags upstairs. They had power for the lights strung across the ceiling, but little else. There were no other women, of course, and Bonnie didn’t have the first idea how to even work a bag. So she lingered on the fringes, watching and learning.
If you follow boxing much you may know the name Paul “The Italian Hit Man” Marinaccio (23-3-3). In those days he was working out at that same tiny gym, working his own business during the day and training for amateur boxing matches with whatever time and places he could find in the cities where he traveled. Marinaccio is an imposing man at 6 feet, 5 inches tall, with dark hair and shoulders that fill a doorframe. Paul was the first one to approach Bonnie at the makeshift gym where they both were training, and his fierce love for the sport, along with his kind manner and willingness to accept Mann as just as serious as he was, made for a friendship that would flourish during the amateur and professional fighting careers of both boxers.
One story that Bonnie loves to tell is how they both were on the card for a World Boxing Federation event; his fight was a headliner and hers was a featured event. Her opponent withdrew, which meant she was able to watch him win the heavyweight title that night.
She also fought her World Boxing Empire title fight on his birthday, and dedicated her win to him.
A World-Renowned Trainer
The two have also shared a trainer. Paul and Bonnie had been working out in a small gym of their own, born of an extra space not being used by Paul’s girlfriend’s dance studio. A ring had been installed, heavy bags hung, and a sign which pronounced it “Jawbreakers” made it the official place where Paul’s trainer, Coach Anthony Bradley, would come to put him through his paces.
An Army Middleweight World Champion boxer himself, Bradley has won respect around the globe as a three-time US Olympic Boxing Coach (1996, 2000, and 2004) and US Olympic Committee Coach of the Year.
Bonnie asked Paul if he thought Coach Bradley would consider training her as well. Marinaccio wasn’t sure, since at the time he didn’t know whether Bradley was willing to work with a woman. But he determined to find out, and together they concocted a plan. By their arrangement, Bonnie was training hard in the gym when Bradley arrived to work with Paul. Coach Bradley couldn’t help but notice this dedicated woman, working her heart out in the small space of the gym, and Paul casually introduced her as his friend and training partner. Just as they had hoped, after Paul and Bradley began to train, Coach Bradley called Bonnie over and worked them both.
Bonnie recalls how she would have killed herself to please the Coach, and in fact she did win his admiration, and later he became her official trainer. He watched her respond to his commands that day and told Paul, “Now that’s how you train.”
My newest sparring partner is 6’4″ and two hundred and please-don’t-hit-me pounds. Monstrous. And wonderful in the ring. We had a very respectable five rounds in the ring this weekend and he taught me a lot.
Obviously a guy this big has to work with care when sparring a skinny chick like me. So we did what you do when you know it’s not evenly matched: you warm up a round or two, then begin to work on some very specific skills. In his case, defense, and in mine, getting past his defense. So I started out working my way past his ridiculously long reach to land a punch to his head or body, and being deeply satisfied when I could land something solid without taking too many of his jabs in exchange.
But after a while I began to notice how much chasing I was doing in the ring. We were circling at a pretty high speed, and I could feel myself wearing out. The constant advice from my trainer and my corner was to keep moving, keep moving. It was imperative to slip and dodge as many of his punches as I possibly could. And I was pretty damn motivated to do so, but was starting to really get winded by the third round.
On the bell I heaved my mouthguard out and panted, “I feel like I’m having to chase him all over the ring. I can’t figure out what to do; I have to keep moving.”
“You do have to keep moving,” my coach replied, “but you need to quit chasing him. Move your head, slip his punches, but stay in the center of the ring and let him come to you for a change.”
You would think this would not be so difficult, but I feel like I’ve been diving after my opponent since the first day I stepped into the ring. I’m not sure why I do this, but for the first time ever I forced myself to put all other systems on auto-pilot (keep the jab out there, move the head), stop circling, and try to wait for my opponent to come to me.
It’s agonizing, the waiting. And it wasn’t working right, I could tell. At the end of the third round I groaned my frustration to my trainer. And she gave me a magic word that made it fall into place. “Pivot,” she said. You can’t stand there and get pounded, you have to move. But you don’t want to burn up your energy circling all over the ring. So stay in the center, throw your combination, then pivot away so that his returning fire hits the spot you just left. And then he has to come to you to throw again.” Suddenly everything came in to sharp and immediate focus. I saw — literally, as if someone had projected it on a screen — how this tactic could work. I bit down on my mouthguard, banged my gloves together, and when the bell rang I surged to the center of the ring.
It worked. Throw, pivot. Throw, duck, pivot. I was awkward and sloppy, but onto something. Coby grunted encouragingly when I got it right, and we worked the round three more long minutes, swinging, sweating, and making our brains teach our bodies new patterns. The fourth round passed in a haze of hard labor.
At the bell I poured water over my head and asked for help again. I could feel it coming together, but was having trouble keeping command of the center of the ring. “Why am I still losing control?” I asked, working to recover my breathing.
“Because,” she said, “you are moving at the same speed as your opponent. You’re running less because you’re pivoting, but he’s able to circle the ring on the outside enough to keep wearing you down. You have to cut him off, and to cut him off you’ll have to move faster than him for a minute. Dart in front and force the confrontation. Punch and pivot. Recover while you wait for him to come to you. If he starts circling again, cut him off again. Dart ahead, throw, pivot, rest. You’ll get it. Keep working.”
How did I never realize I was constantly matching, but never exceeding, the speed of my opponent? But it was totally true. And I found that the short darts, the burst of energy, served me well. There was no finesse left in me, no secrets, no subtlety. But new knowledge buoyed my spirits and I pushed myself on, finishing our fifth and last round feeling like a rock star.
Stop chasing and pivot. Wait for him to come to you. Cut off the ring by moving faster than your opponent. Three new lessons, and dozens of sparring sessions stretching ahead of me in which to practice and learn them. It feels awesome to be growing and learning in the ring.
And it’s even better knowing I have incredible sparring partners and trainers there helping me become a better boxer. Exuberant and grateful fist bumps to all of you: Coach Bonnie, Lisa (in the corner), and Coby. You guys rocked my week.