Seventeen young men, most of the court-ordered to be there, are standing with me in lose rows in their boxing stance, guard up. Coach “One Bad Jab” Massey calls the shots.
“Jab, jab, jab, squat. Jab, pivot…jab,” he calls, never raising voice overmuch, mixing up the timing of his commands, and watching us with an eagle eye. The shots are called slowly, with plenty of time in between for Coach Massey to walk among the rows with a boxing glove that is stuffed and taped to one end of a long shovel handle. These are standard tools in boxing gyms.
The trick here is that if he jabs that thing in your face you DO. NOT. FLINCH. You don’t duck, you don’t do anything. Unless he shouts “Squat!” to the group, and then you better get low or risk having your head popped by his glove-on-a-stick.
“I did NOT say ‘squat,’” Massey comments calmly to a young man who saw the glove coming and wrongly anticipated the coach’s command. “Give me 15 pushups.”
The young man drops and the rest continue. This isn’t an exercise in jabs, or squats, or even overcoming the flinch reflex. They are lessons in listening.
In fact, if you were to regularly watch the training sessions at Second Round, there would be plenty of days when you might think the coach was working harder at teaching the kids to listen than he is at making them sweat.
And you’d be right.
Why boxers need to develop an instinctive response to a coach’s voice
There’s a lot of mental work that goes on when you’re in the ring. But then there are times when you’re too fatigued to work your strategy, or you’re under so much heavy fire you just can’t think, all you can do is survive. That’s one of your coach’s most critical jobs — to call the shots when you can’t do it any more. But it doesn’t begin there.
1. Creating safety out of chaos
Second Round held a sparring night for all of the new boxers in the gym recently. Once everyone was geared up and gathered around the ring apron, Massey climbed into the ring and called for everyone’s attention.
Our kids are mostly there by court order. They have a lot of street tough in them. But even if they didn’t, most people come to a boxing gym expecting to “fight.” They have images of brawls, fistfights, and lots of anger and frustration coming out inside those ropes.
Which is a big mistake, and the first one Massey points out.
“What are we here to do?” he asks the kids, who are anxious and jittery, shuffling and bumping each other. But they think they know the answer.
“Fight!” they tell him, and it comes out like a cheer.
“No,” he responds, shaking his head. “We’re here to box.” He doesn’t elaborate, but his point will be illustrated soon, when they see how easily a more experienced boxer will evade their wild, messy, craziness in the ring, and return smart, quick, stinging punches as they flail around.
“I have three commands for you to remember tonight,” he continues. “You’ll hear them from your ref at the beginning of your match, and you’ll hear them during your rounds. If you forget everything else while you’re in this ring, I want you to remember these three words.” He pauses to make sure he has their attention.
“The three commands are ‘box,’ ‘break,’ and ‘stop.’” He fires off each word like a rifle shot, and they pop against the cinderblocks and echo back.
He explains, but I know the real understanding won’t come until much later in their training. Because as they brawl their messy way through those initial rounds, these three commands help put the first, rough boundaries on what they are trying to learn. They keep the kids safe in a very chaotic place.
If you can hear nothing else (and you can’t hear much) during the war of your first rounds, you hear those words, and respond. And that’s where a powerful relationship with a great coach begins.
2. Stopping a new boxer’s tendency to overthink
I’m a thinker. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. And when I was a new boxer, my brain frequently held me back in the ring. When faced with a complicated situation I wanted to stop and carefully analyze all the multiple pieces that were going into my work. But my brain wasn’t boxing-smart. And often there were too many pieces to think of at once, and I ended up paralyzed and unable to move, or else I just looked a mess.
Over and over I would hear my coaches say, “You’re over-thinking it.” And I was. I found that often my body could respond more quickly and easily to my coach’s shot-calls than my brain could make sense of everything, stitch all the pieces logically together, and tell my body to execute the command.
Sometimes you have to cut out the middleman. Sometimes the middleman is your own brain. Use your coach’s brain instead, because it’s boxing-smart.
I was teaching proper form for a jab to a friend recently when I was reminded of this again. She wanted to “talk through” each part at length; it’s a complicated creature, the jab. We’d been going through the motions carefully for a while, but the whole shot wasn’t coming together for her.
Eventually I interrupted her verbal processing, which was getting us nowhere. “Stop thinking about it,” I told her. “Just pop it into my hand on my command.” And an instant later I called, “Jab!”
And damned if she didn’t throw the prettiest bee-sting jab you ever saw straight into my upraised palm.
Your body may be able to learn boxing faster than your brain does. You need both, but more than that, you need a coach to tell you when to shift gears.
3. Getting you through rough rounds against superior opponents
Your coach helps you build your strategy as you prepare to face a tough opponent. And while you may start your bout with your plan firmly in place, sometimes you find yourself outmatched or getting eaten alive by your opponent’s strategy instead.
At some point you default to simply protecting yourself; you become all defense. You stop scoring, and you will lose the fight if you’re all on your own.
A good coach in your corner can turn that completely around for you, in many cases. But you have to be able to tune out the roar of the room, the sound of punches banging against your ears, and the random cheers and jeers of onlookers. You have to have one channel only open, the one between you and your coach.
When she or he calls the shots, you let your body respond. Your coach then has the control, and can guide you through the jagged reefs and safely into the harbor, if you can listen and respond.
As it is in boxing, so it is in life
I find myself saying this more and more these days. Good, clean boxing informs life, and vice-versa. Get a coach you can trust, just like you have mentors upon whom you can depend to guide and train you in the best possible ways.
Nobody owes you training, no matter how much you paid for your gym membership. The best training is earned. It comes in boxing as it does in life, when you develop a relationship with someone who is willing to teach, if you are willing to listen and work hard.
So who comes to mind as you read this?
I’ll bet you have some coaches, mentors, and trainers who absolutely changed the course of your life. I hope you’ll take the time to leave a comment and share your story. And even pass this on to a coach or teacher you’ve deeply valued…
My own fist bumps and grateful appreciation go out to Coach Bonnie “Queen B” Mann, and of course, Willie “One Bad Jab” Massey. Many thanks to both of you, as well as to several other incredible coaches who have worked with and influenced me — Terri “The Boss” Moss, Paul “The Italian Hit Man” Marinaccio, and more. You guys have changed my life for the better!
Image: That’s me, being cornered by pro trainer Xavier “Bad Pads” Biggs during my very first fight.
