boxing

I miss my boxing class

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I picked up my boxing workout today for the first time in a year – no exaggeration – and it showed.  I have a 30-minute audio track of a guy calling combos for 2-minute rounds, with a minute of rest in between.  (I have another half-hour track for 3-minute rounds, but I am nowhere near ready for that right now.)

On the plus side, I still remember the combos.  I don’t have to think before throwing punches.  On the minus side, everything else.

  • I’d forgotten how to wrap my hands.  I figured it out again after I got back home.
  • My punches are sloppy.
  • I’ve forgotten how to hit quick and draw back, so the bag was swinging like crazy, like I was pushing it (which is bad).
  • After every single round, I spent the first half of the rest minute sucking in air.  I felt like I sprinted each 2-minute round for half an hour.
  • AND, judging by how my right pinky hurts, I’ve forgotten how to properly twist my right arm on a right cross so as NOT to damage that sad little finger.
  • And let’s not pretend I’ve remembered how to move and duck and block.  I might remember how, but I didn’t have any energy to spare for it today.

I have work to do, but it felt SO GOOD.  This is work I’m happy to be doing.

Stiff and sore

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John and I found a boxing gym not too far away, and we finally went to check it out Wednesday night.   This gym has boxing classes a few times a week (that we might not be able to get to all that often), but better than that, it’s open a good amount of hours, and we can get in any time to work out on the bag on our own or use the weight room.  It’s only been five weeks since our last boxing class, but apparently, five weeks is enough to take away all the goodness we’d gained.  We found that out the hard way.  We took a class at 5:45 Wednesday night that wasn’t that different from some of Nick’s classes at our old gym.  We started with sprinting, hit the bag for a while, and finished with an ab workout.  It was tough, but doable.  And then we woke up Thursday morning.

Oh my god, I was sore.  Stiff all over, too sore to move.  And today?  Not much better.  Here’s hoping I can hobble through a run tomorrow morning.

We’re just going to have to pick up boxing again to toughen up (which we wanted to do anyway).  And hurt a little bit.  Does anyone have any ibuprofen?

Boxing update

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Our chief negotiator, Heather, got Nick an interview with the new boxing gym (Title), and he was hired.  Yay!  For now, he’s just teaching two mornings a week, but this gym gained 12 new members this week.  Very good for them, and good for us that we still have somewhere to box.  It’s twice as expensive as UFC (which may be why UFC couldn’t pay their rent), but we’ll do it for six months.  Nick started this week, so after our super-hard and tiring weekend, we got up early Monday morning to go support him at the new gym (and, you know, work out).  I can’t tell if Nick made the workout harder (to prove something to the new manager) or if it just felt harder to me.  Doesn’t matter much.  The new place is a little farther away from the house, but way closer to the apartment, so it’ll be convenient to us soon.  And it’s nice.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the same good news about Doug.  We worked out with him one last time on Thursday (he still had keys to the gym).  Turns out neither Doug nor Nick had been paid since last September (possibly longer for Doug) – they stuck around because they like teaching, they were going to be working out anyway, and they liked having access to the gym.  There’s definitely no loyalty to UFC.  (And they both have 9-5 jobs, so they’re not unemployed now or anything.)  Finding that out made it much easier for all of us to switch to Title – too bad for UFC if they manage to reopen.

Speaking of nothing lasting forever

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John and I went to boxing this morning only to have Nick announce to the class that today is the last day the gym will be open.  Apparently, they can’t pay their rent.  It’s only been six weeks since the other location closed.  Not cool!  There’s another boxing gym in town – one of our classmates has rallied the troops and we’ve all called the manager trying to convince him to hire Nick.  If he does, he’ll get 10 or 12 new members.  We’ll see how that goes.  In the meantime, we’ve just lost our workout routine.  Sucks.

SO close

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There were 10 glorious minutes this morning when I thought I was going to be able to sleep in.  Right after our alarm went off this morning (for the early early boxing class), I got a text from Doug saying his key wasn’t working and he couldn’t get into the gym, so class was off.  Oh, look!  Sleep is beckoning!  I reset the alarm (for almost TWO HOURS later) and then texted our friend Erica so she wouldn’t show up to the class unnecessarily and be stuck out in the cold.  So maybe I only got nine minutes.  Well, I spent probably another minute considering getting up and going to the other gym or going for a run.  Considered it.  Decided against it.  So maybe I only got eight minutes before the next text came in.  I almost didn’t check it – thought it was going to a reply from Erica.  I think it’s a good thing that I checked it.  Pretty sure.  I was awake already, I’d planned to get up and work out, and I didn’t actually go back to sleep in those eight minutes.  So I checked the text – it was Doug saying he got in, and he’ll be there training if we want to show up.  There was really no question after that.  We went.  There was some speculation about how he got in (back door?  picked the locks?  in through a rooftop vent?), but the answer was much more mundane.  (There are two sets of doors facing the front.  He wasn’t using his keys on the right set.)  I prefer the version where Doug is a cat burglar, able to get in to any locked building without being caught.

They can’t close it without telling us!

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As we pulled into the parking lot of the gym this morning, we realized two things.  First, Doug’s car wasn’t there, and second, the lights were off inside.  Not a good sign.  We pull through our normal parking spot and saw Doug’s car across from us.  He came running over to the driver’s side window to tell us that the gym was closed.  “Closed closed?  Like, forever closed?”  “Yeah.”  “Well, that sucks.”  We’re not at all annoyed with Doug – it wasn’t his call.  But the owner, who has everyone’s email addresses, could have let us know.  That’s kind of obnoxious.  John and I could have gotten an extra hour and a half (or more!) of sleep this morning, if only we’d known.  It was nice of Doug to show up to tell us.  The other location (our M/W/F class location) is still open, so Doug gave us the owner’s number so we could petition to have Doug teach there Tuesdays and Thursdays instead.  Which I promptly did.  Well, not promptly, but same day.  I called early afternoon and talked to him.  He said he’d work on it.  I’m hopeful.

Update: I got a text from Doug (because he has our info NOW) – he’s lined up to teach at the other location now, Tuesdays and Thursdays, same time.  Yay!  I’m not taking credit for that.  I have a very high opinion of myself, it’s true, but I’m fairly certain one phone call from me can’t save someone’s job.  If I have that kind of power, I should probably be more careful.

The rules don’t apply to him

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It was SO COLD Tuesday morning when John and I got up to go to boxing.  I think the temperature was in the teens.  God awful cold.  But we bundled up (sweatshirts over normal workout clothes and I was wearing ear muffs (not the fuzzy kind – my ears get cold, so I have some that don’t get totally gross when sweat is involved)) and headed out.  We were a couple of minutes early, so we sat in the warm car before attempting the short walk from the car to the gym.  We should have stayed in the car.  Instead of walking into a reasonably warm gym, we walked into more freezing temperatures.  Doug said he had the heat cranked up to 80, but no warm air was coming out, and the thermostat was stuck in the low 40s.  We did our warm-up fully bundled up and didn’t lose the sweatshirts until 20 minutes in.

This morning, not as cold as Tuesday, but still plenty cold (right around freezing), there was a sign on the door: “No classes today. The heat is broken.”  But the door was open and the lights were on, so we went in and found Doug on the weight machines in the freezing cold gym.  So again, we stayed bundled up and warmed up with him and had class anyway.  We mentioned the sign at the end, and it turns out Doug never noticed it.  It wouldn’t have mattered, not to him.  He says he’s going to be there to work out those mornings, every week, and we’re welcome to come work out with him, class or no class.  It’s like we’re his playmates.  I am totally okay with that.

Sometimes, they’re really truly asking for it

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I hit someone yesterday.  Lots of times.  With my fists.  He asked me to.  Insisted, in fact.

Oh, hey, background: I’ve been going to the M/W/F boxing class since that first time I went in early August.  I like it.  A lot.  But that’s not where I hit the guy.  I mean, yes, it was in a boxing class, but not that one (because yesterday was Tuesday, not Monday, Wednesday, or Friday).  John and I both go to the  M/W/F class, with this one instructor (Nick), and a fairly stable group of regulars.  John has been going to the T/Th class with a different instructor (Doug), and for a few months now, he’s been the only person there.  (The class is at 5:30am, it’s at the other location, not everyone likes Doug’s teaching style…)  John has basically been training one-on-one with Doug twice a week, and he really enjoys it (now that he’s convinced Doug that he really doesn’t want anything to do with kickboxing).

Too much background?  I like to explain things.

John has told me a lot about Doug, a lot about how his class is very different from Nick’s, and he’s invited me to go along many times, but I didn’t feel ready.  I feel more comfortable now that I have some basics down (kind of), so I decided Tuesday was the day (since Tuesday was Veteran’s Day and I didn’t have to go to work).  The first thing Doug did once it was my turn on the mat (John and I traded rounds with Doug on the mat, and then in the ring) was stick out his chin and tell me to hit him.  My first jab was somewhat tentative.  “No, HIT me.”  So I did.  Right in the mouth.  Doug: “There.  That’s what it feels like.”  Then he put his hands up, and he let me hit him, sometimes blocking, sometimes not.  I think he was trying to get me recognize openings and also stop dropping my right hand (’cause then he’d tap me on right side of my head).  Early on, I hit him with a left hook to the ear, HARD, said, “OH, I’m sorry,” and he said not to worry about it.  That I can’t hit him hard enough to hurt him.  I know I’m new at this, but he says the same thing to John, who has a powerful arm.  And seriously, guys, I landed that one.  ON HIS EAR.  And he didn’t even blink.  His head must be stone.  After that, I got over my fear of hitting him and took him at his word that I couldn’t hurt him.  You want me to hit you?  I’ll hit you.  I’ll try, anyway.

So that was fun.  I’ll go back.  I just don’t know if I can take boxing five days a week.  Plus, if I’m boxing every morning, when will I run?  John hasn’t been running at all, and he’s missing it.  We’ll have to figure this out.