The Glowing Edge

Tag: passion

  • Top Advice for Boxing Over 40

    Top Advice for Boxing Over 40

    1. No, it’s not a young man’s sport.

    It’s not even a young person’s sport. This sport is for the ones who want it, who are willing to work their asses off to advance in it, and who are able to take the hits and dish out a few of their own. Boxing belongs to you. You dominating the ring is acting your age.

    2. You have passion. That’s sexy.

    Listen, we spent enough years pussy-footing around the world, asking everyone for permission to try things we were curious about or to unlock doors we wanted through. Now you’re the bouncer at the club of your own future. Hell, you’re the bouncer and the show. That’s hot. That’s damned hot.

    3. Figure out your limits. Then bust through them.

    One thing boxers have in spades is patience. Nobody learns to box in 10 minutes. Or 10 months. When you’re over 40, you have perspective, and by gawd you’re willing to claw your way to the level of fight performance you want, no matter how long it takes. Let the kids get discouraged. Let them come and go. We’re still here. We’ve seen problems and overcome them. We’re sneaky as well as badass. Be warned.

    4. You’re older and smarter, so adapt things you need to adapt.

    Physical limitations don’t faze boxers. I don’t do bear crawls anymore — you know why? Because they wreck my shoulders, and I need my shoulders for the ring. There is no shortage of types of exercise. If it takes me out, I don’t do it. If it keeps me in, I’m on it. And that’s all the justification I need, sucka.

    5. Give yourself the recovery time you need.

    Truth is you’d have more aches and pains if you didn’t box. That’s why other people take prescription painkillers rather than just aspirin. God invented aspirin (and icepacks) so that we could go on boxing. But we also know how to work hard, then let our bodies recover. Boxers know that muscles build during recovery.

    6. The turkeys will flap. Let ’em flap.

    E’erbody got something negative to say about boxing. We’re listening, until we’re not. Then we’re boxing.

    7. Eat clean. Fuel your sport.

    When you were 28, you could eat like Honey Boo Boo, drink like a college freshman, and still go out and run a 10k the next day. You still can! But the difference is that now your performance suffers. The other night I came home and found my husband in bed with vegetables. Dayum, that was sexy. Other people can eat powdered donuts in bed; their sport is laying around watching television. Veggies make for great…performance.

    Photo Credit: More Drews than you. via Compfight cc

  • From 5 to 50: Celebrating Boxing Women

    From 5 to 50: Celebrating Boxing Women

    It’s International Women’s Day, and two very interesting things are on my mind.

    The first is this awesome video of a 5 year old girl working the pads with style and power.

    I wish I had more information about her, but I know this: someone, somewhere, has exposed her to boxing and has allowed and encouraged her to build up formidable skill for one so young. You don’t get this good at pads by showing up at the gym a time or two; this is passion and practice, and no 5 year old gets here unless there are some adults supporting it.

    It makes me feel incredible to think that very young women, and not just young men, are being shown the possibilities for their sport — and that those possibilities include boxing.

    In the same way, I salute all the remarkable young women who will compete in the first-ever female division of boxing in the Olympics this year. Here are links to the first two sets of women in line for that honor: Olympic Trials Winners and National Championship Winners.

    Congratulations on being such an incredible part of boxing history! Sorry it took so long.

    The second thing on my mind is the upcoming match between two world-champion boxing icons, Christy Martin (49-6, 31 KOs) and Mia St. John (46-11, 18 KOs).

    For Christy, age 43, this is a chance to secure not only the 50th win of her incredible career and the World Boxing Council (WBC) World Super Welterweight Belt, but also a chance to show the world that the violent stabbing and shooting attack of her ex-husband Jim in 2010 was not the final word the world would hear from Christy.

    For Mia, age 44, this fight is a chance to claim the win that eluded her 10 years ago when she was 26-1-1, and battled Christy through a 10-round war for the WBC world championship. That fight finally secured the world’s attention for Mia, and definitively proved her power and worth in the boxing world. She expects to redeem that loss against Christy and secure the final win of her career.

    On June 19th, 2012, in the highly-acclaimed and long-awaited Final Victory fight, Martin and St. John will box for the last time, and the winner will take home the World Boxing Council (WBC) World Super Welterweight Belt.

    Here’s a video of rounds 2-5 of their last fight for you to enjoy…

    Here’s to boxing girls and women, from 5 to 50 (and forgive me, Mia and Christy, for stretching the ages for the sake of a blog post title!).

    Stay strong and keep swinging.

  • Boxing Training After 40

    Boxing Training After 40

    If you’re over 40 and in the amateur ring, boxing most likely isn’t (and isn’t going to be) your career. But you can pretty much guarantee that it will change your life.

    I’m not trying to convince you of something, I’m mostly reminding myself. It helps to remind myself, because boxing will gobble up your life and body and leave you with little, if you let it. Being an amateur boxer after 40 is sort of like owning an exotic, voracious racing beast. Only weirdos like you love these things, can’t get enough of them, and are willing to put the incredible amount of time and energy into training and upkeep.

    And I’m not even really joking. Here’s what I mean…

    1. Boxing Draws the Intensely Passionate

    In my experience, there are mostly two reactions to boxing: people find it to be sheer brutality they can barely stand to think about, much less watch… Or it gives them a massive jolt of juice, and they can barely tear their eyes away.

    I fell into the first category for most of my life, but when I stumbled into boxing for fitness, then began to watch my trainer, Bonnie Mann, bring amateurs into the ring — I got my first jolt of the juice. It was bizarre, exotic, empowering. It was as if some channel in me that had been blocked up for 40 years was suddenly opened, and I was flooded with energy.

    The intense rush swept me right into competitive boxing, and suddenly the stakes changed. Not only was I a wife, mom of three boys, and full-time corporate marketing person — boxing began to take it’s first fat weekly paycheck of heart, time, and pain out of my life.

    This meant I had to do a lot of re-scripting of the way my personal universe ran.

    The life I thought I had wanted now chafed. I was no longer willing — after decades of doing it — to be at home for my family’s needs every single night of the week. I was no longer willing to give up most of who I was for other people. There was something big, something powerful, something only for me that I wanted, and to get it I had to quit giving everyone else all my time and energy.

    If I hadn’t done it, I don’t know if my marriage would have lasted, and I definitely wouldn’t be the same parent I am now.

    Some days I think I owe boxing my life.

    This is not a small change to go through at age 42. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

    2. Boxing Demands a High Standard of Training at the Lowest Levels

    Part of the reason boxing has such incredible power to change your life is because it requires an intense commitment at even the very lowest levels of the sport.

    You can’t stroll into a boxing gym one day, hop in the ring and spar with someone (any gym worth their leather would never let this happen anyway), and expect to come out well.

    There’s a fairly sizeable learning curve.

    The moves only come after months of practice. It takes time to overcome your basic “flinch” and “turn away” impluses. The tiniest moves (advancing on the jab, basic pivots, footwork) may come easily in practice, but are magically, mysteriously, painfully absent when you’re under fire.

    And basic fitness shape is nowhere near boxing shape.

    Even basic boxing shape is nowhere near boxing sparring shape. And sparring shape is related to, but not the same as, competitive fighting shape.

    If you’re over 40, you definitely want to be in good shape, and hitting the local boxing gym for some regular classes every week will be all kinds of awesome for you. But to get up to sparring level, you’ll need all that, plus serious interval training.

    To spar, you need to be training 3-4 days a week, with intervals, minimum.

    To compete, you’ll need a 6-7 week “training camp.” That means you eat right and train hard and very specifically for the opponent you expect to meet (or to increase your strengths and minimize your weaknesses) for about 2 months.

    You’ll probably be in the gym 4 or 5 days each week, although not all those days are boxing-specific; you’ll work on cardio, speed, accuracy, explosion, power, etc. in addition to hitting the bags and sparring. You have to stay mentally focused, and be extremely careful not to get injured toward the end of that period of intense training. And I don’t mean blood or bruises, I mean the kind of injury that would nix your fight.

    If you’re over 40, you’re not likely to want to maintain that level of fitness for more than just a training camp. Because, you know, you have a life outside boxing. (Sort of.)

    3. Boxing Takes a Physical Toll

    The main reason I’m not in the boxing gym more than about twice a week during regular times is that it takes a fairly large toll on your body.

    No, it isn’t about getting beat up, but yes, Virginia, boxing hurts.

    Even just hitting the speed bags and heavy bags for 10 rounds is going to cause some aches and pains and build up a cumulative pain in my joints. After several years, and plenty of minor injuries (sprained wrist, broken rib, torn rotator cuff x 2) to teach me my boundaries, I’ve learned how to create a boxing training regimen that works for me.

    Actually mixing it up in the ring during training has a lot of potential for damage, and it’s good to learn to minimize sparring damage early on.

    Interestingly, the chances for getting injured during your actual boxing match (if you are competing in the amateurs, not the pros) are far lower than your chance for getting injured during training.

    Mostly that’s because you are only there for a very short period of time. Amateur rounds are typically 2 minutes each, and you only get three of those. Even though you’re both fighting all out, looking for the knockout or at least for blood and damage, it’s over before you know it, and there isn’t really enough opportunity for someone to get seriously hurt.

    Several things to know if you’re over 40 and interested in competing in boxing…

    First, everyone you fight will be within 10 years of your age, so you’re likely to get harder ring work at your gym, where everyone is 20 years old!

    However, everyone you fight will have given up just as much as you have, and may have trained harder.

    Maybe they don’t have kids still at home. Maybe they have not avoided interval sprints like you did. Maybe they’ve been training longer than you have.

    You can get beat easily.

    But you can also win.

    And that’s pretty damn good.

    Photo Credit: OfficerGregcc

  • 7 Reasons Your Trainer Can Make all the Difference in Your Sport

    7 Reasons Your Trainer Can Make all the Difference in Your Sport

    1. She has chops.

    I have had many coaches over the years who didn’t actually compete, or hadn’t competed in the sport they were teaching me, but the very best ones did. My skating coach (woah, whole ‘nother set of stories) had made the Olympic team. My basketball coach was a top-notch player. And my boxing coach won a world title. Just because you’ve done something like this doesn’t mean you’re a good teacher, but sometimes that experience mixes beautifully with a teaching heart and you get a winner who trains other winners.

    2. She takes the sport seriously.

    I have absolutely nothing against the casual enjoyment of a particular sport. I was a casual runner for a while. Played a little bit of workplace and subdivision softball too, and it’s fun. But nothing sucks worse than coaches or trainers who are consistently late, distracted, or unprepared, and that goes for all leaders, across the board, for me.

    3. She cultivates the newcomers carefully.

    I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of boxing trainers with something to prove who gave each new kid a whuppin in the ring just because they could. There are times when a newbie needs a careful lesson on controlling power or paying attention, but for the most part, it’s not a great idea to prune a seedling. Instead you keep the weeds away and give it a little extra care. This is particularly important in boxing, and even more so for women new to the ring. The first time I got in the ring was with my trainer, and she didn’t throw a single punch. Instead she let me feel what it was like to move around the ring and encouraged me try my first awkward jabs. Later she put me in only with experienced boxers, guys who knew how to meet me at my level. She didn’t unload her wicked straight right the first time I wore headgear without a facebar; she pulled her punches until I started to understand both how to protect myself better and how to take a punch. She let me experience the joy of the sport before I took on the punishment.

    4. She makes the team work as a team.

    We all train on our own in addition to training with the team, but when we’re working as a team we train together, starting on time, working at the same pace, helping each other and offering encouragement and support when we can. There isn’t a lot of chitchat or social stuff going on in our training; it tends to be more serious. But that doesn’t mean a heartfelt call to finish well or a sympathetic groan of misery isn’t heard on a regular basis.

    5. She protects her people.

    Don’t let her catch you stretching before you’ve warmed up. And if you aren’t training hard, she’s not going to allow you in the ring. If you’re in the ring, she looks out for you and calls it off if you’re in danger or calls you out if you’re putting someone else in danger. Inattention to these things in boxing means serious injuries and people leaving the sport.

    6. She’s incredibly tough.

    She knows you are cursing her name the day after she kicked your ass really badly in training. She knows not everybody will agree with her decisions. She doesn’t expect to win popularity contests, she expects to train winners. And she doesn’t ask you to do what she won’t do (and she can usually do it with her eyes shut and hands tied).

    7. She goes the extra mile.

    You know these coaches — they’re the ones who drive long distances to take a group to a meet or event. They spend unpaid hours working to find matches for their fighers. They respond to emails and share information that might be helpful to you; they let you draw on the contacts and connections they’ve spent a lifetime building up. And they are happy to do it. When you find someone like this, you know it’s different. It’s wonderful.

    Did I say “7 Reasons”? Well I meant eight. Because this last one seals the deal.

    8. She’ll have a beer with you, too.

    Trainers are people, too. As an adult, the more serious you become about a particular sport, the more enjoyable it can be to share some off-the-clock time with your coach, either as a team or one-on-one. Even if it’s just taking a look at pictures of a recent concert together after team training is over, or enjoying a beer ringside at a fight, it builds trust because it builds the relationship.

    I want to give a special shout-out to the trainers who have been such a gift to me over the years: Coach Buddy, Coach Poppenheimer, Coach Yates, and Coach Bonnie Mann: you guys make all the difference. Thanks for everything.

    Who were the trainers who made a difference in your sport and in your life?

  • Why I Box

    Why I Box

    I box in a suburban gym. Everything is branded “LA Boxing” in chirpy red and blue. The branding makes me think Hollywood weight loss, and in fact, most people are here to lose weight or get fit. It’s clean, carpeted, and full of sunshine most days. There are no cement floors, wooden pallets, musty lockers. The lockers are tidy cubbyholes like you would see in an elementary school.

    None of this fits with my fantasy of being part of a dark, cramped boxing gym with big, quiet Rocky types or ropy bantamweights and their arthritic old-man trainers. But it’s certainly reflective of my life, none of which ever took place in New York or inner-city Chicago. I’ve lived most of my life in the suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee or North Carolina. Mine is a universe of shopping malls and bedroom communities, two car garages and Saturdays mowing the lawn.

    Contrary to my initial experience at LA Boxing, there are actually plenty of women at the gym, I just never see most of them. It seems like most of the women go to kickboxing classes and rarely come to a boxing class. It reminds me of the seventies, when great waves of women suddenly decided to sign up for jazzercise and self-defense classes. I never did that, not because I thought anything was wrong with it, but because I was motivated by different things.

    I love having discovered how orderly boxing is. In boxing you have a stance, there are ways you move and duck and punch that remain the same, no matter what. There’s a purity about it that I love.

    I also love the sense of heart and tradition. There’s a lot of theater and drama here, but also a lot of incredibly difficult work, endurance, pain, and even legend associated with boxing.

    Boxing engages my competitive spirit, my desire to be good at something that not everybody wants to do, and my desire to learn from masters. The sport demands my strength, my intellect, my focus, and my patience.

    I train in a suburban gym, but I’m a part of something with history and passion. I don’t box to lose weight. I don’t box in order to be able to defend myself. I box because boxing is beautiful, difficult, and inspiring. There are heroes here, and I want to know and be a part of their greatness.

  • The Best Moment of Christmas Day, 2006

    was the Maker’s, age 6.

    The way Christmas morning works in our house is that everyone waits on me. I’m not a morning person, in comparison with the rest of my family, all of whom have actually witnessed the sun rising in the east. However, I’d like to point out that I was up past midnight, making sure Santa had no difficulties with anything. I’ll also mention, since it’s my personal blog, that when we got home from church around 9 pm, the Husband said, “I’m exhausted, wake me up later and I’ll help you.” I charitably and without a hint of sarcasm replied, “Oh sure, honey,” and rolled my eyes after he looked away. The night belongs to me. And why shouldn’t it? I live in a household with all males, and don’t even get my own bathroom. A woman has to create her space somehow.

    But as I was saying, I had gotten to bed pretty late (1 am) and at 4:50 am (after precisely 3 hours, 50 minutes of sleep for Yours Truly) I heard the distinctive rapid-fire Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump of a water buffalo galloping down the stairs of our suburban domain. This mom-alarm was followed by a tiny “tink” as the Christmas tree lights were turned on (we have a Marvelous Magic Snowflake), and silence.

    Since the silence remained unbroken by the sound of ripping paper and shouting, I went back to sleep. They can wait on me. Meanwhile, plenty of time to hand-squeeze Mom some fresh orange juice, right? Heh.

    I was willing to be drawn from my toasty comforter by 7 am (precisely 6 hours, minus the Thump-Thump-Tink interval, of sleep), and the circus commenced. The boys all received tool boxes and padlocks (remind me to post on why this was a great gift), and they saw those immediately, since they were not wrapped.

    The Maker, being the smallest and quickest, was the first to pounce upon his biggest present, which was under his toolbox, and about twice the size. He levered it up onto the couch (my dias), and excitedly began to gesticulate and exclaim, “Oh, oh, oh! I hope it’s something I really, really want!” To which I replied out of actual curiosity, “What do you really, really want?” “I don’t KNOW!” he cried gleefully, ripping paper from the roughly 12 x 20 inch cardboard box, “…A bike?”