Richard Gibney's 365 Days of Fitness: Day 138
Day 138 I'm getting this one in a little late tonight. Just came home from dinner at some friends, which was great, but hopefully I can get this posted before midnight.
Well after talking about it for a couple months now, I finally managed to do some boxing. This morning my friend Goitom who is a competitive boxer took me to his boxing gym, the Bowmount Boxing Club. I had a great time. I was worked pretty hard but not, oh my God I'm going to die hard. It was really quite technical, which makes sense. After all, boxing isn't called the sweet science for nothing.
Goitom is in midst of training for a fight in a weeks time, so he got right into some heavy duty sparring. Meanwhile, I joined a bunch of young boxers outside for the warm-up and a little bit of footwork.
For the first warm-up drill about 10 of us gathered in a fairly tight circle, while one of us stood in the middle. We started by shuffling to one side around the circle. While the shuffling went on a soccer ball was thrown at the person in the middle. They either had to block the ball or duck out of the way. The ball would sometimes bounce off the persons forearms or head or miss them entirely. Regardless of where the ball went, the person in the middle had to move in such a way that they were always facing where the ball was coming from. We each took a turn in the circle.
After the soccer ball drill the coaches brought out these wooden batons with duck tapped padding around the end. Like the first drill they had us shuffle around in a circle. This time they would wave the batons at our heads, forcing us to duck while moving. They also forced us to jump over the batons by waving them at our legs. You don't typically see a lot of jumping in boxing but you do have to be light on your feet, which I think was the point. About every 10 seconds the coached would have us change directions. After a while we also added a forward movement followed by a shuffle backward and to the right or left into the footwork pattern. I was prepared for my shoulders to be tired, but after 10 minutes of the warm-up drills my calves were killing me.
Having gotten the blood pumping the coaches brought us back inside where the actual punches were going to be thrown. I was set up with one of the coaches initially to help with some fundamentals. I was naive enough to think that throwing a punch was some sort of innate man skill that all men had. I was wrong. Apparently I punch like a gorilla, fun I seem to ski like a Gorilla as well. We spent a little bit of time on my stance, then on how to properly transfer my weight. It was until I looked balance and centered that we added punching. I could write a lot about how to through a proper jab but that would take up a lot of space and time. The gist of my feed back was to keep my hands up, the seems to be a pretty standard instruction for most beginners, and punch by extending my elbow and turning my fist with my wrist. I have a habit of turning my fist with my elbow which I guess really telegraphs my punches and makes them less effective.
After getting a lesson on the basics I joined in with the bag work. The gym has a timer running the whole time. 2 minutes of work followed by 1 minute of rest, used to simulate fighting a round in a fight. I worked away on my punches with some very basic combos. The real tricky part was trying to maintain a proper boxing stance and also trying coordinate the footwork with the punches.
Goitom would takes breaks from his sparing now and then to give me a new drill to work on. One of the drills involved hitting the punching bag with my shoulders instead of my hands. I guess the idea is to teach how to use your hips, legs and torso to create power during punching. I actually was too bad at this one, but I did find the balance difficult. One of the things I will definitely remember from Goitom today was how important balance is in boxing.
On top of the bag work, shadow boxing in the mirror, and hitting the bag with my shoulders, I also found a skipping rope and did about 15 minutes of skipping. It was really cool to skip in an actual boxing gym. Something about boxing gyms really speaks to me, they're very real. There is no question as to why people are there, they're there to work hard. You don't see anyone riding the bike and reading the paper. Everyone there really has a desire to get better. They crank the tunes and the sweat starts to pour.
Going with Goitom to boxing was a lot of fun. I have a long way to go technically but I think I'm hooked. I would love to get better at boxing. I might see if I can go once a week. I imagine that as I become more proficient I will be able to get more out of the training session and really test my fitness. Tomorrow there is no plan. I might try a longish run. The K100 race date is getting closer, which means this cardiophobe will have to get out there and hit the pavement.