The Glowing Edge

Tag: Second Round

  • Signs Your Boxing Team is Coming Together

    Signs Your Boxing Team is Coming Together

    Are you hoping to get in the ring? There’s actually a way to know if the gym where you train will ever have a boxing team that you can learn and grow your game with…

    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…)

  • Sparring Lesson: Use ANYthing You Have

    Sparring Lesson: Use ANYthing You Have

    Our gym currently has not one, but two coaches with injuries. Both injuries mean they can’t use their power right, at all. Not even a little bit.

    Interestingly, on sparring night both of them were in the ring with only one glove. Sinclair can’t even get a glove on his right, it’s so swollen, and Sam could have gloved (his injury was to his shoulder), but didn’t. But they still confidently put on one glove and started moving everyone toward ringtime.

    Since we had a gym full of young, messy fighters, I had been expecting to get more work than usual with my two gloves.  And while I did work with several different boxers in our gym, I was reminded of a few things I hadn’t thought of in a while, and I also learned something I wasn’t expecting at all. (more…)

  • 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

  • 3 Completely Counterintuitive Boxing Secrets

    3 Completely Counterintuitive Boxing Secrets

    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…

    1. Don’t Expect Training

    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.

    2. Miss the Bag

    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.

    3. Finish the Equation

    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!

  • The Geography of Boxing Guts

    The Geography of Boxing Guts

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

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

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

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

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

    And you absolutely will win if you play.

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

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

    The typical sparring order and match-ups

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What happens on a war night

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

    The young kids did not go first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Where boxers stand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Which is perfectly acceptable.

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

    And here’s another piece of that same puzzle…

    Are you ready?

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

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

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

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

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

    The unspoken request

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

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

    The test of fire

    The coach at Second Round is phenomenal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And that’s the most beautiful part of boxing.

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

  • I Love to Fight

    I Love to Fight

    You knew this. I knew this. But periodically I’m reminded.

    Last night I went 4 rounds (at the end of my workout, I must add, because I’m vain. Also a masochist.) with a good friend and freaking awesome sparring partner at my boxing gym.

    Sinclair is a phenomenal peer coach; he’s forever smiling and goofing around with the kids, and yet he moves so fast on the bags and in the ring you’ll wonder if he’s real, and not just a ghost. You punch, he’s not there. Except for that blinding mouthguard-enhanced grin.

    He also spontaneously breaks out and dances. In the ring, in the gym. He just a dancin’ kinda guy. I love Sinclair.

    And yesterday he offered to give me some rounds in the ring and I took them before he could change his mind.

    All my joy comes out when I fight well, but with someone like Sinclair, it comes out even if I’m tired and draggin’ ass, which I was.

    Somewhere in the middle of the second round, Sinclair did a little stutter step, looked off to the left, and before I could pivot he nailed me with a gorgeous stiff right. I stopped in shock — not because the right stung (it did), but because the whole combination was so unexpected and… so pretty! So danceable! And damned effective.

    I immediately demanded that he do it again.

    Well of course he loved that. He laughed and took me to the whupin’ shed again. And this time I tried to watch for it, but he still caught me. Fast boy.

    I made him stop, of course, and insisted he show me the move. He did, patiently demonstrating several times and encouraging me to try it.

    I got it in my mind, we bumped gloves and circled, I launched my offensive and waited for my opening.

    Whoop, I slipped it in, and found myself reeling from his counterpunch. I say counter punch, but he actually anticipated my tricky new move and prevented it! That wily rat. Taking advantage of a mere uneducated girl. (See what cards I pull when I want my way?)

    I shouted my outrage, and dug in for a battle.

    He told me to bring it, and I did. What I had left, anyway. I caught him once or twice with a power right (my fave) and a couple of inside shots in the clinch, but I held off on the tricky new move, instead opting for what I knew worked.

    That and any other slop I had left.

    He shouted for our coach to come over and watch just as the bell for the fourth round sounded.

    Crap. Tired as I was, I scraped the bottom of the barrel and dove back in. I had one goal: pull the new trick in front of Coach Massey and give Sinclair a little party favor to remember me by.

    And I did it!

    I was so overjoyed at catching him clean that I turned around in the ring (don’t ever do that, boys and girls) and demanded acknowledgement from Coach Massey. Sinclair was laughing his head off behind me.

    Massey tried not to grin. “You need to sell that move better,” he commented dryly. “You got to look off in the direction you’re stepping off in. Make him believe it. Then the right.”

    I sighed happily, and plowed back into my round.

    Massey had 6 succinct words for me, as I staggered out of the ring.

    “You gotta get in ring shape.”

    He’s right. I’ve been out, maintaining “normal athlete” fitness levels, but ring fitness is a totally different level, and after my last fight, I took a break from it for a season.

    But damn, people, it just feels so good to fight.

    It’s it’s own motivation, truly.

    If you’re thinking about boxing with any kind of seriousness, I hope you find a great gym, a great trainer, and an incredible sparring partner like Sinclair.

    There’s plenty of joy in there for you, too.

    Image: That’s me in the gold and black, fighting in Atlanta (my second fight).

  • Boxing Win in Wilmington

    Boxing Win in Wilmington

    I had my first fight with my Second Round team in Wilmington.

    It’s always a toss-up, fighting Masters, as to whether I’ll actually get an opponent. I weighed in at an event last month and my opponent didn’t show. Women over the age of 35 who want to compete in the ring are few and far between, then there is the further narrowing of the field because of weight class, experience level, geography, and the random unexpected injuries, family demands and other contingencies.

    Because it’s so difficult to get opponents, my goal has become to get one fight every year. Last year got checked off with my October fight. (The December fight was classified “exhibition” and doesn’t count toward my goal.) This year got checked off with my fight in March. I’m feeling a little gleeful to have met and exceeded my goal for this year now!

    My opponent got connected for this match through a coach in Wilmington about 3 weeks ago. He had let my coach know she was light and we’d have to get our weights closer in order to get the match. I got down from 142 to 135 and I think she came up from 125 to 132. And she drove 6 hours from Virginia to be at the event; I only had to drive two hours.

    We both arrived just before weigh-ins were scheduled to begin. There were only 6 women out of the 44 total boxers fighting at this event, and only one Masters bout; I picked her out immediately. She was really beautiful, and just a bit shorter than me. I smiled and spoke to her.  Not everyone wants to chat with their opponent in advance of a match, but she was entirely polite. We made weight, turned in our passbooks, and parted ways to wait out the endless, miserable hours of the day until we could get our fight.

    I love pretty much everything about boxing except the day of a fight.

    Well, and cutting or gaining weight; those both suck, but they are at least bearable. The endless hours of waiting for a tiny, six minute test of your skill and power are excruciating.

    Everyone has different tricks and coping mechanisms, but there’s no escaping the endless circus of weigh-ins, passbooks, medicals, getting your food/liquid intake right and timed, sitting for hours in metal folding chairs, finding a bathroom (this one didn’t have toilet paper), constantly tamping down your anxiety, keeping an eye on the time, meeting your opponent, staying limber, and maintaining sanity in the loud din of the crowd.

    Every time I go through it I take a paperback to read, but this never helps. There are too many things you must pay attention to during the long hours of waiting. Even having my Shuffle (finally got the playlist right — the quiet stuff from my exhibition fight had failed at fight #2 in Atlanta, so I went back to hard rock) didn’t help much, because I constantly had to take out my earbuds to answer questions, find out what I was expected to do next, help someone find scissors, etc., etc., etc.

    Finally I dressed out and sat for my coach to wrap my hands. I normally love this ritual, but in this case, I was wracked with anxiety because my fight got moved up at the last minute so I felt late, after all that damn waiting. I straddled my metal chair, draped my arms over the back where Coach Massey could reach them, and spent the next 15 minutes staring at the bright silver dog tag on his chest. It says “One Bad Jab.” It was his ring name, from his pro fighting days.

    “Do you miss fighting?” I asked him.

    “Hell, no,” he responded, laughing and flashing his gold tooth. For just a moment I felt entirely aligned with his sentiment. Why would anyone want to go through this misery on a regular basis?

    “I miss sparring though,” he continued, and I nodded in understanding. All the guts and joy of boxing without the hellish hours of a fight day.

    Once you’re wrapped and gloved, you become entirely dependent on your coaches. I had to ask Coach Mandy to find my headband and put it on me for the short period before my match. She gave me a drink of water. She found my mouthpiece (in my sock — this is a great place to keep it in the hour before you fight, btw) and checked my laces.

    I made my usual joke: “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said as I stretched out and began to move. The big gloves make this impossible, unless you have a reeeeeallly close friend.

    “Can’t help you there,” she said quickly, and we both laughed a little.

    I continued to chatter nervously, almost mindlessly: what I should remember, how I should move; combos, tactics, offenses and defenses.

    At some point she stopped me quietly with a hand over my gloves.

    “You’ve already trained for this,” she reminded me. “You’re overthinking it. Just let your body perform.”

    She was absolutely right, and it was the perfect advice, the best possible thing I could have heard.

    The match before mine was finishing. I stood ringside amid the din of screaming onlookers as the two fighters ahead of me battled. I couldn’t hear Coach Massey’s advice anymore. He held pads for me but I couldn’t hear the combos. I shuffled like an anxious racehorse, frustration rising in me.

    Finally, the closing bell.

    Massey held one pad. “Gimme the power,” he said, “Jab, right.”

    I sighed in deep relief. If there is one thing I can do, this is it. My jab was fierce, and the right was at full-scale knockout level. It was like a pistol shot: bip-BAM.

    “Again.”

    Bip-BAM. Bip-BAM! I could hear it echo in the rafters.

    “Keep going.”

    Six more combos in a row I gave him, every one as perfect and loud and solid. He grinned and shook his head, and his gaze did a slow circle of the crowd around us; all eyes were now on us.

    Later I realized that the eyes of my opponent were probably also on us. Massey knew what he was doing, letting me show my power like that. Letting me go in confident in my own strength.

    Outside of the actual fight, it was the best moment of my entire night.

    I rolled under the ropes and felt the deep satisfaction of the ring settle around me. Time to do what I do.

    My opponent surged out with a flurry. I tapped out measuring jabs and began to circle, assessing what I was up against. It’s probably better to go ahead and claim the early part of the first round, but I wasn’t really expecting such a long, light string of flurries. She had punches in bunches, no doubt.

    It didn’t take me long to see what I would be doing. Her hands were busy, but she was staying squared up a bit, giving me a sweet little pipeline down the center to her face. An invitation to my power right.

    Bip-BAM, bip-BAM, bip-BAM. Yep, those were actually gonna work.

    My jabs weren’t connecting every time, but my rights were absolutely solid, and every single one was on target. I suppressed my glee and put my brain back in gear. She was not bringing pain, but she might be scoring with the sheer number of shots she was throwing.

    In the amateurs it doesn’t matter if you can throw a bomb; a hard hit scores the same as a medium hit, so long as it connects. Bombs are intimidating, but they aren’t 3-pointers.

    I had to shut down her scoring machine. I clinched, got my arm around the back of her head and squeezed and leaned, hard. The ref nearly decked me himself, breaking the clinch and yelling at me for my patently illegal move. But it broke the onslaught and didn’t cost me. They’ll warn you before they take a point.

    I glanced over to see how my opponent was taking it. Her face was flushed from the power rights already. I absolutely had to keep her on the end of my jab and prevent her inside game.

    She rushed back out and we worked hard to the end of the round.

    At the break both of my coaches told me I was ahead, but I wasn’t confident about it. I knew I wasn’t moving my feet and I thought the judges might be counting her shots higher, even though they were coming mostly from the sides. I felt like I’d only taken one or two solid shots to my head — nearly everything else was on my arms and shoulders, which meant my guard was good, but I wasn’t moving around enough.

    The second round was where I began to rely on Coach Massey’s strategy. Once you’re in and have tried your game, it’s unbelievably helpful to have someone calling your shots and guiding you through the hard mental work while you do the physical work.

    My attempts at longer combos were not scoring all the way through; my hooks often missed because I wasn’t getting in position and getting them off before she moved. She was fast, and seemed to throw four and five shots at a time.

    Massey 86’d my hooks. “Straighten it out,” he called from my corner. “Give me the straight right….Thank you.”

    The right was scoring and I still had all bars in my power meter. I wasn’t gassed. My feet were not moving, but my one-two continued to hold the fort.

    She was slowing and starting to pant. The left side of her face was beginning to swell. I felt like a robot, an automatron, an idiot on repeat. Surely I could do something besides this, surely. Lord I wanted finesse, grace! I wanted to move less like a wooden toy; I wanted to show beauty as well as power. Why can’t I be pretty in the ring??

    “Go to the body,” Massey called from the corner.

    I sent up a mental thank you, and suddenly had something new to do.

    “Double the jab,” he called, and I did. I did lots of things, but there was one thing that worked every time…

    At the round break, I had the feeling we were going change gears. I don’t remember what either of my coaches said (other than their reassurance that I was still ahead), I mostly only recall going back out, still feeling slow but strong.

    Massey held me back, over and over again, with a steady call of “Wait for her…” She was struggling now, and I could stand and deliver. If I could time it just right each time, she would come forward into my shots.

    “Don’t advance,” he warned, “Hold…”

    It was hard, because I felt I had to advance to score, but he was right, she was coming and with a surge of joy I realized I was beginning to see her shots arriving. Midway through the third I ducked a spectacular all-in jab-right, and she went sailing past me; the crowd roared. Belatedly I realized I should have come up with a quick left hook.

    I sighed inwardly. Someday I may finally put all the pieces of this game together, but not today. Today I was a particularly skilled kindergartener, and my rights would have to carry the day.

    And they did.

    My opponent was wonderful. She never quit, she barreled forward and burned energy at a ferocious rate. She threw far more combos than I did. She didn’t let the hard power put her out. She gave game to the very last bell.

    I deeply respect that. ANY woman — or man, for that matter — willing to go through what a competitive boxer goes through deserves the title Bad Ass. Sara (I never heard her last name), I salute you. You were awesome.

    I was happy to be handed the gold medal, and once again I was stunned at my instant “I want to do this again” response, even though I’d spent the 24 hours before my glorious 6 minutes in pure anguish.

    There’s no rational explanation.

    Only the challenge to be better. Only the relentless push to master my body and make it perform in concert with my brain in the complex intricacies of this sweet science.

    And the sheer, brutal pleasure of a fight.

    Image: Coach Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey with me after the win. Thanks to Cathy Linkous for the photo!

  • I LOVE Not Being the New Person in the Gym

    I LOVE Not Being the New Person in the Gym

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It’s usually only the new kids who puke.

  • Hey! Boxing Training is Not Killing Me! Isn’t That Nice?

    Hey! Boxing Training is Not Killing Me! Isn’t That Nice?

    I took a month —  five weeks, actually — off of boxing training this summer. I ran a time or two, hiked one week, but I was entirely out of the gym, out of the ring, just out, period. For multiple reasons which are blah blah blah.

    So it was with some trepidation that I headed back to my gym last Wednesday; I was pretty sure payback would be a bitch.

    I was actually quite relieved to walk in and see that Coach Massey wasn’t there. I figured I’d get to train on my own and sneeeeeak back into team training later.

    Nice thought, anyway.

    Another team boxer’s father was there — actually he’s always there; he’s a wrestling coach and has boxing chops as well — and as soon as I walked by him he told me to fall in with the other three or four members of the boxing team as soon as I had a chance to warm up a bit. I nodded agreeably, figuring I was still safe. This man almost never gets up from his position in the spectator’s chairs, although he does drive his kid pretty hard from the sidelines. Which has paid off, I might add — she has 7 national wrestling championships, and is fast rising in the boxing world as well: she’s 15 years old and soon she’ll be able to kick my ass with both hands tied behind her back. She might could do it now.

    Tangent: Here’s a fascinating difference between Second Round, where I train now, and LA Boxing, where I used to train. At LA Boxing, if there were ever any parents there, they were there to make sure the coach was working hard. At Second Round, parents are there to make sure their kid is working hard. Interesting, no?

    I stretched, jumped rope, and casually dropped in with my team for shadowboxing rounds. Six rounds later Coach Baker hollered for us to hit the stations near his chair and we dutifully lined up:

    1. Heavy bag – Standard station – you punch it. Everyone knows the drill.
    2. Angle bag – I really, really like this bag because it’s a bit lighter, therefore it swings around a lot so it’s easier to get good footwork, pivot, and slip practice.
    3. Wrecking ball – Tough bag for me, ours feels too high (which is saying something, because at 5’8″ or so, I’m not short). I can easily duck under it, but have to strain to land uppercuts. Also I hate when it hits me in the head, which is why it’s also called the Headache bag.
    4. Medicine ball – This is for toe touches. You stand and hop lightly from one foot to the other, touching the toes of one foot to the top of the 12-lb ball each time. We work all around the ball, toe-touching with the ball in front of us, behind us, and also hopping over it side to side. These are pretty hard for me; very strenuous.
    5. Rope – We have a rope strung between two poles just below shoulder height. You have to duck quickly under it, throw a flurry, duck back under, throw another flurry. Pivot at the end, return with same. Don’t touch the rope, ever. Be fast.

    On the face of it, these are actually pleasant stations — no sledgehammer, no sparring with one foot inside a tire, no sprints, no bazillions of push-ups or mountain-climbers. This is really not training hell. You stay at one station for 3 minutes, get your 30 second round break, then move to the next.

    Just a nice quiet day at the beach, eh?

    Maybe, for the first time through. But before we even began the first training round we learned that we weren’t going to get the 30 second recovery period — Coach Baker told us just to work through that.

    Do you know how much I depend on that round break? How much I’m deeply, deeply in lust-need-desire with every one of those 30 seconds? Like a junkie, I love that break.

    But truly, even without my (snif) 30 second round break, I was okay for the first 5 rounds through the stations. Even when Coach Baker told us there was no walking in the gym, and we were to run from one station to the next, I was okay.

    The second 5 rounds was a bit more painful. Quite a bit.

    And I may have cried on the third time through, but by that point it was hard to tell what was blood, what was sweat, and what was tears.

    When he finally released us to our final 4 rounds of work — always jump rope at our gym — I had to stop myself from collapsing in sheer gratitude. Oh, thank you for jump rope rounds, thank you! What a merciful coach!!

    Seriously, after 21 training rounds like that, jumping rope is a chance to breathe again. None of us had spoken during the rounds, there simply wasn’t enough oxygen for it. After 5 or six minutes on the ropes, we started to look around again, smile at each other. We’d survived it! There wasn’t much rope tricking (crossovers, sprints, fancy footwork); we were too fatigued. But we began to chat amiably and remember that we were humans. One nine-year-old, one 15-year-old, three seventeen-year-olds, and me (age forty-five). We made it.

    And while I thought I might be in pretty bad shape the next day, I wasn’t! So I went in again on Friday and did the exact same training routine with six team members and Coach Baker again.

    Except this time we only did 20 total rounds, rather than 25, glory hallelujah and pass the Gatorade.

    And yes, during the jump rope rounds at the end on “easy” Friday, there was quite a bit of celebratory tricking.

    Image by atoach on Flickr.

  • Fighting the Dread of Boxing Training

    Fighting the Dread of Boxing Training

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

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

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

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

    I also maintain a fair amount of mental radio silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I’ve learned that I perform well under pressure.

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

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

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

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

    It’s who I am honored to be.

    Image by jnyemb on Flickr