The Glowing Edge

Tag: team

  • 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…)

  • How to Spar When You’re Dead-Ass Tired

    How to Spar When You’re Dead-Ass Tired

    I’m deep in training for my next fight, and recently had the opportunity to travel to a nearby gym to get sparring rounds with a group of people whose fighting habits I wasn’t already accustomed to.

    Amazingly (and for the first time in my entire boxing experience), these 5 sparring partners were all women, and they had a range of ability from brand new to experienced competitor.

    My coach was there because he trains people at that gym, and if I had ANY idea that I’d get off easy because it wasn’t my gym, I dismissed that pretty quickly, because he knows I have a match coming up and he was pushing me hard.

    The best way to spar, period

    Here’s my favorite way to spar: I get in for opening rounds with someone who will let me warm up. Ideally, this is a beginner or a less-experienced boxer.

    That allows me to operate at a lower speed, working on evasions and defense, slipping punches and keeping my feet active. I throw a few easy punches — not trying to hurt my opponent, just making touches, finding my distance, and keeping them from thinking they only have to play an offensive game.

    It’s always ideal if you can do your first two or three rounds with someone less experienced than you are, then roll out for two rounds to recover.

    Next comes the good part, and the heart of the workout. Your next three to five rounds should be with someone who can seriously challenge you. This is your chance to work your skills, throw some power, and push yourself.

    Your final two or three rounds should be drill work with a sparring partner in the ring. Go over the specific moves you haven’t been getting right. Work them until they start to sink in.

    Warm up rounds, work hard rounds, drill rounds — best sparring sequence ever.

    But what I got recently at another gym was warm up, work hard, then work hard while exhausted. Then do a few more.

    My coach gets a perverse pleasure from having us fight through the 30-second recoveries between rounds during the last million rounds, which forces us to keep pushing without the breather we’re used to. Sometimes he will keep me in and roll in a fresh boxer, and I’ll start to feel my guard slipping, my feet slowing, and my punches becoming predictable. (Also the pain from getting tagged, derrr! Although mostly that’s felt later…)

    Yes, it’s heinous. But it’s incredibly important to experience this and know what you’re going to do in the situation.

    Because you WILL have this situation. You will find yourself in the ring when you are dead-ass tired. Utterly exhausted. And you’ll have to figure out what to do.

    What tired beginners do wrong

    First of all, you should never quit in the middle of the round just because you’re tired. It’s a bad practice, and shows your lack of discipline and fortitude. If you give up during a competition mid-round, you automatically hand the win to your opponent whether or not they were actually winning the fight.

    In other words, you might win the fight simply by NOT quitting.

    In addition, I see tired beginners hunch over and put their gloves on their knees. This opens you up for a serious knockout uppercut if the ref doesn’t stop the match immediately.

    Several other errors boxers make when they are tired are looking away from their opponent, running from their opponent, and failing to defend themselves.

    So what’s a safer, better way to fight exhausted? You’ll be surprised at how many options you have in your toolbox.

    9 tactics for fighting when you’re totally exhausted

    Only a select few boxers — and by “select few” I mean absolutely NOBODY — gets out of having to box when they are dragging-ass tired. And if everyone else has to do it, you will, too. It’s far more discouraging to be unprepared and end up doing something stupid (see above) than it is to make it, sloppy or not, through those final, difficult rounds.

    1. Mentally prep yourself, Grasshopper

    Much of the sparring at this point is mental, believe it or not. You need to prep yourself in advance to know you are going to find yourself in the ring with a superior boxer when you are utterly spent. Zen the hell up, dude.

    Think about it when you’re at the end of your regular workouts. Watch other exhausted boxers during their sparring. Imagine yourself in their place. Expect it. Being prepared is 80% of the battle.

    2. Build up your meat grinder support system

    If you are there at the edge of the ring calling out support and encouragement for others when they are getting killed, you can damn well bet that they’ll be helping you out when it’s your turn for the meat grinder.

    Oh, and be sure to thank the people who are there for you. Let them know that their voice, their offer of a water bottle, their understanding makes all the difference for you.

    Also, listen to your coach. Your brain isn’t working any more, but theirs is.

    3. Keep your eyes on your freakin’ opponent

    It’s easy — and hell, you’re hardwired! — to look away from someone still slinging shots at you when you got nothing and want to run. Don’t do it. Stare down your opponent. Maybe none of your other body parts are still working, but you can damn well use your eyeballs! And who knows, you might just get lucky and evade a killer shot, simply because you were watching.

    4. Don’t run from your sparring partner

    If you’ve ever been to an amateur fight you’ve seen exhausted boxers “running” in the ring. If there is one thing worse than being dead-ass tired in the ring, it’s being dead-ass tired and trying to run!

    Keep your feet moving. You don’t have the gas to bounce, shuffle, pivot, or move quickly, but you can damn well walk. So do it.

    Don’t give your sparring partner a standing target, either. That’s shooting fish in a barrel. Put one foot in front of the other and walk. The more you walk, the less chance you have of taking a hard one, and the more time you have to recover your breath.

    5. Keep your damn guard up

    Even if you can’t throw ANYthing, keep your guard up! Move into a defensive game. If you get cornered (because you’re not walking, see above) and are taking a heavy rain of shots, keep covered up. Gloves up, elbows tight to your ribs.

    6. Close with your opponent

    I know it feels counter-intuitive, but stepping INSIDE your opponent’s range cuts off their power. Their shots are abbreviated, and won’t be as strong or hard. If you can, clench with them. LEAN on them. Do what you can with your weight and body to tire them out.

    7. Fight dirty

    Did you scroll through the others and stop here? You did, you cheater. Well, this one is perfect for you, then.

    What counter-intuitive moves or slightly non-legal tactics do you know? Long clinches (above) are not allowed, but we do it all the time. ALWAYS punch out of the clinch, if you can do it before the ref calls break. (If the ref calls break, you’re required to take a step out before throwing another shot.)

    Posting (holding a stiff arm against your opponent to keep them from moving in) works if you have to use it in a pinch. I don’t recommend shots below the waist, but what about a nice little kidney shot while you’re in tight? Some of those even get counted as legal. Hard shoulder bumps followed by a roll are good, and don’t always get called.

    And stop looking at me like that. A little bit of sneakiness is part of the game.

    8. Interrupt their game

    There’s no power left to fuel your shots, but if you can get your jab out there, even a crappy jab, you’ll be interrupting your sparring partner’s offense and slowing them down. Also if you have a blanket handy that you can throw over their head, that helps. (Hah.)

    9. Hold onto your sense of humor, monkey poop

    Above all, remember to keep a sense of humor about your training. Yes, you look like monkey poop. But better to look (and smell) like that in training than in an actual match. And anyway, you’ll be so damn proud of yourself for surviving it — later, after you’ve showered and eaten enough dinner for three people — that you’ll be putting yourself back in again in no time.

    Been there? Got tactics to share? Leave me a comment, superstar.

     CC image by beasticus on Flickr

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Taking a Knockout Punch

    Taking a Knockout Punch

    I haven’t been knocked out yet, but I’ve been rocked hard plenty of times in the boxing ring. The only reason they haven’t been knockouts is because when you get hit hard enough to stumble dizzily around or hang off the ropes with a head full of stars, a sparring session will pause until you can recover. In an actual fight, your opponent would swing again and you would go down, without a doubt.

    It’s actually pretty important to experience a knockout-strength punch during sparring because you need to be somewhat familiar with how it feels and what happens to your body. With enough preparation and practice you can actually manage pretty well in an incredibly adverse situation.

    Once upon a time I would have been horrified to think about — much less experience — a knockout punch. But this is important information to consider if you are going to pursue boxing with any kind of seriousness.

    The trick is to convince yourself, with whatever wits you can scrape up, that you must and will keep fighting. Periodically when Bonnie would rock me hard she would coach me through the resulting fog, reminding me to breathe, keep on my feet, and not show how bad I was really feeling. Jay, who hits hard and holds back little, also works with me on this.

    I had one of my hardest ever single rounds of sparring recently.

    I had already been in the ring for four intense rounds, but had been out while a couple of others got some work in. We had some fighters visiting from another gym, and they were incredibly good. Fast, strong, ferocious. Very polite and easy to talk to, but massively powerful in the ring.

    We’d had several incidents of blood and rounds paused because of knockout punching, and even a minor brawl when one young man let his anger at being bested get control of him.

    I had already decided, watching them work, that I wasn’t interested in sparring either of the two power players. I was filled with mixed feelings; wanting to have a chance, but also thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to hold my own. And I’m still a bit new at looking after myself in the ring — getting out mid-round if I need to, or telling someone in very strong language to lay off the heat.

    But midway through the session there was an odd pause between rounds, and all eyes fell on me. I looked up to see one of the visitors — Reggie, a peer coach from a gym called Second Round — bouncing in the ring, waiting for another opponent. Our team’s coach tipped his head toward me. “You’re in,” he said.

    I groaned and closed my eyes briefly. Then I sucked in a deep breath and pretended to be nonchalant. I slipped my mouthguard back in and climbed up on the ring apron and ducked under the ropes.

    We waited on the bell and I did a mental check-over. I was warm, the normal boxing jitters had been dispersed by my first 4 rounds. Well, until 10 seconds ago. But I’d rested a few rounds. My body felt okay, even though I’d had an 8 round sparring session two days before and a 4 mile run the day previous. No serious strain anywhere, I thought. All systems go.

    “Let’s do it,” I said, as the bell rang and he surged forward to bang down my glove in the boxer’s salute.

    He stayed in my range as we circled, so I accepted the opening and fired off a rapid series of testing jabs. He sent them back with incredible speed, but didn’t dance out. So I slammed in my first combination, putting the bulk of my power behind it: one-one-one-TWO, slip to avoid the returning punch.

    A grin bloomed on Reggie’s face. “That’s some shit!” he crowed. “I like that shit! Bring it on.”

    I couldn’t supress my own grin, even as I bobbed under his jab and set up a left hook-jab-two combination. All my power was loose and available in my body; I could feel it thrumming in response to the challenge — a race car fully fueled, warm, and accelerating.

    Reggie stayed in range.

    We began to exchange a furious series of punches; I’m not sure I’ve ever worked so hard and fast. My feet and head seemed willing to move for me so that my brain was free to formulate strategy. His shots were hard, but so were mine. A minute into the round he commented, perhaps with a bit of surprise, “You kinda loading up, aren’t you?”

    I was in full-on kickass mode. “Too much for you?” I inquired, slamming him with a double right power shot. He slipped the first, but the second clipped him nicely above the eye.

    “That is some shit,” he called happily, and we bent to our work.

    The best thing about working with him was not only that he made me fight my absolute best, but also that he didn’t hold back too much on me. He let me have it, but it wasn’t more than I could take. And even better, he didn’t stay constantly out of my range. Sometimes a superior boxer will simply not allow the less experienced fighter to land a punch. It’s exhausting for the newer person, and irritating as well. You want to get work in the ring, not run a race.

    With a minute to go he landed the mother of all rights to my unguarded chin. It powered straight through in a split second. I didn’t slip it even a little bit, but took the full brunt of the knockout punch. My head spun to the right and my body followed. I staggered toward the ropes, and muzzily heard him saying over and over, “My bad, my bad.” I felt his two muscular arms wrap around my waist and hold me upright.

    I struggled to find my balance, but with him holding me up, my body could coast while I worked to clear my head. Slowly the world quit swinging madly from side to side and the grey mist cleared. I pushed him off me irritably. “I wanna finish,” I slurred. “Just gimme a second.”

    He withdrew to a respectful distance and I made myself walk the ropes, straight line, straight line, to my corner. Everything was shockingly silent. I felt like I was wrapped in wool batting, but I also felt pissed, and I was hungry for the rest of my round.

    I shook my head gently to clear it, and motioned with my glove for him to engage. He nodded solemnly, put up his guard, and stood his ground. He was going to give me some free shots in payment.

    So I launched every bomb in my arsenal, as fast and as hard as I could. He shouted encouragement and sent out a handful of combinations, careful with his power. His shots increased in intensity as my own faded. The thirty second bell rang.

    My feet gave up before my arms did, so I shoved him into the corner, pinned his shoulders and laid into his midsection. I began to hear calls from ringside, my teammates getting into the action and eager for the hard and bloody finish. I drove my fist savagely toward his liver and heard him grunt; I felt a surge of satisfaction. He was banging me with short, ineffective punches to the head and shoulders, but I refused to give up the dominant position. He didn’t use his weight to push me off and pivot out of the corner, although I know he could have.

    The bell sounded, and I had my victory. I staggered off of him, but he came toward me and threw his arms around me in a fierce hug.

    “That was some good shit, I’m telling you!” he shouted.

    It was.

    Image by JD Hancock on Flickr.

  • The Body Forgets, The Body Remembers

    The Body Forgets, The Body Remembers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I smiled, remembering.

    Image by isabel bloedwater

  • Afghan Women to Train for Olympic Boxing

    Twenty-five women from Afghanistan are training to box at the 2012 Olympics; the International Boxing Association has approved the wearing of hijabs beneath their headgear and clothes that cover their bodies in order to meet Islamic religious requirements. “We want to be as inclusive as we can,” an IBA spokesperson said in a recent article published by the Times Online. Oxfam is sponsoring the Afghan team in a program designed to promote peace and women’s rights.

    I’d say the women’s toughest battle so far has been just convincing their families to allow them to fight. Cultural changes happen slowly, and they begin in small pockets of people who agree to a change. I expect that these women and everyone connected to them will be facing increased pressure in the coming months as word gets out. Theirs is a country where women can expect to face serious opposition, threats, harassment, and even serious bodily harm for simple freedoms that we in the U.S. have taken for granted for several generations. The ability to wear what we want, play on a sports team, or speak in public are choices our daughters have always had. The 25 Afgan boxers will have to show tremendous courage not just in the ring, but more importantly at home and in their communities in order to make their dreams a reality. I imagine they will run a tremendous risk, and my heart goes out to them. As Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said, “Their courage deserves to succeed.”

    Image credit: Ivanatm

  • 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?