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The wit and wisdom of the sweet science! Check out http://girlboxing.org

It just is

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It just is

My “dharma” teacher, a revered Theraveda Buddhist Nun back at Wat Suann Mokkh in Thailand was always fond of saying “it just is.”   The wisdom of most boxing trainers revolves around a similar refrain.  My current trainer, Lennox Blackmore is a master of such statements.     He has two flavors:  “it is what it is” and “wake-up.”

Thus, if one is training in a crowed ring – it is what it is.  Deal with it.  Get clocked sparring?  It is what it is, move on.  Get clocked again?  Wake-up!

As wisdom for the ages and frankly, as I “age,” I’m actually beginning to see where this all makes sense.  Is my kid, husband, family, cat driving me crazy?  Am I too hot, too cold, tired, hungry, over-worked, under-worked, grumpy, manic, obsessive, distracted, happy, sad, and on and on?  It just is.  Did I trip, forget where my glasses, keys, wallet, iphone are?  Wake-up.

It gets to be a world-wind after a while of “it is what it is” and “wake-up,” but somewhere in the midst of it I am beginning to actually hear the “be-here-now” at the center of the “it just is” and “wake-up” poles of being.

If I am here now, I will likely avoid the punch, or hit the speed-bag with perfect precision or never engage in the fight with my husband or daughter and actually remember where my glasses are.  I won’t be overly anything, but I will not trip on the sidewalk, get hit by a car crossing the street against the light or importantly, miss out on all of the tender moments with my family.   Somehow it’s hard to believe that I can personally go through life without the drama of  engaging riotously and waking-up, but having been “clocked” enough times by life’s travails, I’m beginning to see the wisdom of staying awake as a moment-to-moment way to be.

Up and at ’em

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Up and at ‘em


The sunrise in Brooklyn is at 7:12 AM this morning.  We’ll push the clocks back in a couple of weeks, but those of us with busy morning routines will still be waking up in the dark.  From my own experience it is really hard to get up and out of a warm bed when the only light is the pink glow from the streetlights outside and even the cat is rousing slowly.

Harder still if one is hauling out of bed to hit the pavement on the way to the gym.  On those kinds of mornings, motivation can be low and one’s spirits even lower, especially if it’s cold or rainy or if the time has slipped a bit.  In my case, the morning gym has fallen by the wayside in favor of late afternoons (when I get there) – but I find that a few sun salutations help get the day started without wrecking havoc with my schedule.

My first encounter with Yoga was during a ten-day Buddhism retreat in Thailand of all places at a venerable old Temple called Wat Suan Mokkh.  Mornings there began at 4:00 A.M. with all of us beginning our first morning meditation thirty minutes later.  By 6:00 we were old hands at wrestling with our monkey minds and for those who wanted to, the option to tackle our stiff morning bodies.

Our instructor, a fellow meditation student had found a lovely spot on a slight rise and arrayed out across the grass, we put down towels and began our morning sun salutation routine as the faint ribbon of light began to peak up on the horizon.

By the time we’d finished an hour later, our sleepy bodies were quite refreshed and rejuvenated, ready for our next hour of meditation before making our way to a Spartan breakfast and the meditation schedule that picked up again later in the morning.

City dwellers do not necessarily have such an ideal environment to greet the morning with.  Usually it’s a gym, the living room or at best a park, but it doesn’t mean it’s not possible to take a few moments to give the day it’s due before bounding up and out the door to the myriad of activities that are crammed into a busy day.  Even two “rounds” of sun salutations can help clear the body and the mind and make the morning routine that much easier to cope with.  Lately my daughter and I have attempted to unfurl our bodies with at least one.  It hasn’t guaranteed us more pep in the morning, but does seem to pave the way.

Five Minutes

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Five minutes 

Sometimes all I have is five minutes.  Five minutes to write, stretch, meditate, shadow box, lift weights or as my friend Stephen says, drift.  Those five minutes can be a precious commodity.  Five whole minutes for myself and myself alone.  Sometimes it is five minutes to take a little sleep.  Or five minutes to run downstairs and get an iced coffee.

“Give me five minutes,” can be a refrain when I’m supposed to be somewhere and need to finish something or maybe it’s that I need that little edge.  That moment I use to restore myself and reset my clock before I go on to the next task.

Today I gave myself five minutes to write.  Not unlike the boxer’s three-minute round, those five minutes were my little bit of space that I reveled in as a little secret to myself.  My five minutes to do with what I wanted.

You can go home again!

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You can go home again!

Coming back to the gym after a long break is always a challenge.   Least ways, I usually find it that way.  On the one hand I sweat like crazy and find that my muscles remember what they’re supposed to do despite all the neglect.  And it does feel as if I’m coming back home.  Not that there is a brass band playing, but the “hey, how ya’ doing,” from gym-mates is nice.  The re-discovery of the contents of my locker is also fun especially since my boxer’s locker is filled with long-forgotten paraphernalia and equipment, the odd favorite pair of socks, and the reminder, yet again, that I’m running low on deodorant.

The hard part of coming back to the gym is how out of shape one can become in a short period never mind if it’s been weeks or months!  In my case, if I’ve been boxing steadily for a while, a hiatus feels like being in a fight with the Three Stooges, except that I’m Shep or Moe or Curly.  I’m the one with awful timing that feels as if I’m in the middle of an out-of-sync movie.

To save some “face,” there’s nothing like hitting the gym late on a Sunday afternoon.  By then, there are only a few folks around – and in my case, no trainer to say, “come-on girl,” when I begin outright panting during the second round on the pads.

For a first day back in a boxing gym, I’ve found the best thing to do is to attempt a short run to get loose followed by a tour of my hit-parade of favorite things to do.  My regime consists of a few rounds of shadow-boxing to warm up, followed by a round or two or three on the double-ended bag and a finish on the heavy bag for no more than an additional three rounds.  By the end, I don’t need an oxygen tank and I’ve gotten a decent work-out without pushing myself to a point of absolute misery.  More to the point, if I follow that up with one or two more short training sessions on my own, the sensation of working out in mud dissipates and I find I’m ready to get back in the ring with my trainer with at least some modicum of dignity!

Why I love the jab

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Why I love the jab

I love the jab.

If I throw the punch enough times I can actually find the sweet-spot.  Not unlike a perfectly hit baseball, the sweet-spot of a punch has similar a meaning: the place where the fist perfectly percusses with the object.  Some days it takes three rounds of shadow boxing, four rounds of work with my trainer and I don’t know how many on the double-ended bag before  I find it.  And other days, well, you get the idea.

When I think about the jab, I’m reminded that all things come down to the fundamentals.  For the jab that means stance, arm position, and the actual mechanics of how the jab is thrown.  The jab is also foundational to the sweet science itself.  Try to box without one and you’re really not boxing anymore.  Every trainer also has a story or two about a boxer who “fought twelve rounds with nothing but the jab and won.”    And it is a pretty cool punch to throw.  It establishes your pace, helps you find your range, and keeps your opponent at bay while you ready yourself to let loose with your hammer hand.

The jab also teaches an economy of movement.  A boxer’s body has to be aligned so that when the punch is thrown it’s not just the fist, but the momentum of the entire body that connects. The “boom” is the fist finding its target, but its fueled by the feet, legs, hips, chest and shoulder in one brilliant moment.  If you throw it and the body is misaligned, the punch doesn’t pack any power.  Sure it might look good, but it’s a waste of energy, or as Johnny used to say, “nothing but pitty-pat.”

And I guess that’s what I find I love most about the jab.  The possibility of its allowing me to find a moment when all things align.  My body for sure, but also my mind because in that moment, I’m not there, I’m in the punch; somewhere close to what the Buddhist’s call not-self.  Not to say that boxing is an aspect of Nirvana, but losing oneself in an instant of physical perfection is a nice way of tasting enlightenment.

 

You might also like:   No pitty-pat or Learning to box

The daily something

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The daily something.

In the last years before my mother’s death this past June, she read from the “Daf Yomi” – a nearly seven and a half-year cycle of readings and commentaries from the Babylonian Talmud. (For the uninitiated, the Talmud consists of the Torah or first five books of the old Testament plus commentaries by learned Rabbis from around the year 400 onward.)

She described it at first as an inquiry into something that had been denied to her as a young girl. Rather like forbidden candy, the mysteries of the Torah were intriguing to her, akin to wearing your older sister’s jewelry or sneaking out after dark (with a please pardon for the religious out there who might feel offended by the comparison).

Over time, the process of her daily readings went from breaking a taboo, to duty and on into a realm of grace.  The daily reading of two pages of text and commentary became a punctuation mark of her twenty-four hour cycle.  Both a beginning and an end, the cycle of readings brought her closer to assuaging the spiritual hungering that had walked along side her most of her life, as well as an opportunity to order the disordered world of illness and increasingly diminished physical health.

In thinking through the idea of a daily something, it struck me that so much of our lives is lost to the constant interplay between the “have to’s” and the “need to’s,” as in I have to wake-up, have to get to work, need to pick-up the dry cleaning, have to make dinner, and so on.  What’s left then for a quiet space of being?  Of dwelling in the mind or the body.  And if not a daily reading of a spiritual work — a Daf Yomi, what then?

It’s a question many of us lose sight of.   And resolvable in a myriad of ways; as a daily dose of shadow boxing in the mirror, a morning run, a meditation or even a daily write.  The point is to find a space — an “n” length of time that can mark a beginning and end of a twenty-four cycle.  A punctuation mark that belongs to oneself and oneself alone.  And maybe it’s nothing more than singing one song every morning, but in the end that span of experience represents a moment unlike all the other moments in the day.  Multiply that times a number of days, weeks, months and years, and one can really be on to something.  A sacred space that is bounded by all the junk out there, but from which one can find great solace and even joy.

Writing it down

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Writing it down

When I first started boxing I kept a punch journal.  There was something very cathartic about keeping a record of my activities.  I was able to measure my progress and relive the nuances of unspoken emotions.

What I was most struck by was my own vulnerability.  When had I ever let anyone give me water to sip or tenderly mop my brow of sweat.  There isn’t much one can do for oneself in oversized puffy gloves – and yet, when I first started I did try to do it all.

Writing down my punch log also led me to write down other things.  How I was feeling that day.  The things that were bothering me.  The things that crossed my mind during the parts of my day’s training when I was on my own.

What you have is the chance to let your feelings flow in the same way that they can in the ring.  And whether those feelings flow out in short punches, or in staccato stats on a notebook page, what you end up with is an abundance of self-expression, that once started is like a floodgate.

I’ve been journaling in one form or another since I was twelve years old, but the focus of my boxing journal has led to a self-awareness I had not encountered before.  The truth is if you’re not honest in the ring, you’re going to get “clocked”.  And what that means is you must put 100% of yourself into what you do – call it being 100% present.  Without that, you will be so busy running in your head between what you think the experience is and the actual experience, that there will be no time to react.  And by then you’ll be on the canvas.  The same can be said of your journaling.  You can be present with what you write down, and find some truths you may not have been aware of or been ready to face.

What I love about boxing is that I never know where it is going to take me.  And whether it is finding a comfort zone for my jab or more self awareness stemming from what I’ve written down in my journal, it makes every day a little happier and more joyous, and that is a very good thing.

The “afternoon” gym

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The “afternoon” gym.

A gym at 6:30 in the morning is a place in motion.  Every action seems purposeful with little time wasted in the niceties of even a “good morning.”  The early AM hours in a boxing gym are no different.  People work out as seeming little islands encased in their mirror work, in how they jump rope, hit the heavy bag or run on the machines.  Even the interactions between boxer and trainer are encapsulated by a purposeful economy.  One just does the rounds and gets out.

Working out in the afternoon is something else entirely.  There is a languid spirit that pervades.  Even the sunlight agrees, flooding in through windows and not as pinholed beams of light.  Afternoon is also the time when with little else to do trainers group together to play checkers or dominos or sit sprawled out reading the paper over coffee and take-out.

To train in that atmosphere is to take things slow.  There’s no pep in walking from place to place.  And while one can work-out hard even harder than in a “morning” gym, an “afternoon” gym seems to demand that you tarry; take the extra round to figure out a problem or to push through the threshold of your next goal.  I like to think that an “afternoon” gym is saying this is your place now – and because it is “your” place, there is no place else you need to go.

No pitty-pat

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No pitty-pat

My first boxing trainer had an “old school” sensibility that consisted of two things:  impatience for “pitty-pat” and a dislike for using boxing pads.  For the uninitiated, boxing pads are used by trainers to help their fighters practice fighting in a “mock” fight.  The trainer calls out punches and the fighter responds.  Once it gets going, the boxer throws punches wherever the pads are in the hopes that they’re thrown correctly, if not, it’s usually a swat and another “wake-up, girl,” moment.

For Johnny, however, pads were another form of pitty-pat.  He wanted his fighters to hit and hit hard either at a bag or at another person, but not at pads.  “What’s it giving you?” he’d extol.  “I’ll tell you what, nothing, that ain’t how people fight.”   He’d then shake his head and grabbing a long swaying heavy bag which he’d pummel with left hooks he’d say, “you gotta get in close like Joe Louis, and hit.”

I was new to boxing and figured that if Johnny wanted it that way, it was okay by me.  Where it got difficult was in actually throwing those hard punches.  Johnny would hold a giant heavy bag and have me throw nothing but lefts, or throw 6-, 8- or 10-punch combinations over and and over till I was so tired I’d want to drop – all the while cajoling me with his, “now I don’t want no pitty-pat, you hit hard.”

It got to be that I could actually throw 18-punch combinations complete with jabs, hooks, upper-cuts and body blows, my arms so tired I’d want to excise them – and none of them a “pitty-pat” throw.

Years later I moved on to a trainer who used pads, speed-bags, double-ended bags and whatever else he could think of in his arsenal.  He also spent a lot of time teaching me good mechanics and fighting techniques, but those earlier crazy training sessions still came into play.  I never could throw a pitty-pat punch and that desire to fully commit to each throw that had seemed so hard to the point of tears in my early days had given me something after all, the understanding that in boxing it really is about the commitment.  There’s nothing half-baked about what you can do in the ring – or should do, ’cause otherwise it’s “you” fighting “you,” as you pick yourself up off the canvas.

Missing the gym

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Missing the gym

I miss the gym when I don’t go for a while.  The physical part of its huge, of course, but its the mental stuff that seems to count for more of what happens.  Perhaps it is the intimacy I feel in connecting to myself, to how my body physically connects to the world around me.  Sure I hit things too, but in order to do so, I have to own the space between me and the object which can be a powerful thing.

When I’m shadow boxing, it’s more gaining a sense of how the punches feel as I release them in relation to how my body moves through space.  Mostly it’s a kind of fluid dance, body moving through space to an inner rhythm of pop-pop, pop-pop-pop.  At other times, all I can think about is how silly it is to shadow box in front of a mirror.  When that happens it’s nothing but mind movies and perhaps losing focus for round after round.  And if it happens in the ring, my trainer will cuff me in the head and say, “wake-up, girl, wake-up, you’re dreaming.”

My gym time reminds me to wake-up when I’m in the world.  And if not, the cuff in the head might translate into a stubbed toe or a missed train or any of the myriad of things large and small that one misses when one doesn’t pay attention.  The funny part is as a parent, I’m the one who gets to say, “wake-up and pay attention” but the truth is, I’m really saying it to myself.

Life at three-minute intervals

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Life at three-minute intervals

When I first started boxing, I found the three-minute time clock intimidating.  “What if I can’t make it to the end of the round,” I wondered.  This was especially true when I got to the third and forth rounds of whaling on a bag or hitting the pads with my trainer.  By then my breath would be ragged and my punches less and less poppy.  I’d get laughed at of course.  And given a look that said, “who are you kidding … as out of shape as you are, it’s amazing you’ve gotten this far.”

 

The process of three-minutes on and one-minute off; however, got me to thinking about what it was possible to achieve in those moments.  Here was this finite amount of time that I could fill with anything I wanted.  I could be slow and purposeful, working through the mechanics of my movements, or work on speed and dexterity.  And then, with that precious minute off, I got to rest, rehydrate, and even drift in my thoughts before beginning the next round.

 

The concept of a boxing round also reminds me that everything has a beginning and an end.  And however one chooses to experience that interval, it is finite; bordered by the experiences that bring one to the moment and by what comes after.

Learning to box

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Learning to box

I was about 12 years old when my Uncle taught my brother and I how to box.  He showed us how to stand like a boxer and how to throw a jab, but he didn’t call it that.  He just said, “hey, stand like this and then throw a punch.”

There was no bobbing and weaving, upper-cuts, hooks, counter-punching or much beyond the old one-two.  He just showed us how to punch out straight with the fist turn at the end and how to get the heck out of the way.  He’d then have my brother and I do mock fights that looked something like the mechanical dolls at the amusement park, very jerky and never quite connecting.

When I started to learn boxing in earnest as a woman in my 40’s, that early sense of pride and strength came back to me.  Sure, I couldn’t slip or throw a body punch or use the speed bag, but I did remember what it felt like to feel physically confident.  And when my trainer Johnny would say, “don’t give me none of that pitty-pat,” I really could break through and give it my all.

Learning to box was and remains an exercise in patience.  Sometimes the jab really is a jab, and sometimes it’s nothing more than a lob into the air that goes nowhere and has no power.  If I’ve learned anything in this process it’s that the best thing to do is not to worry about it and think of being a kid that didn’t put names to things, but had a lot of fun.

Boxing rings

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Boxing rings

I’m starting a paper about the territoriality of sacred space.  It got me to thinking about boxing rings.  We enter them to do combat, and yet with all the trappings and rituals of a religious rite.  We wear sanctified garments, observe specific intervals for actual fighting, and even as we fight, we observe rules.  We fight a “clean” fight, so as not to do permanent harm.  We touch gloves at the beginning of the rounds and often embrace at the end.  Thus each fighter is mindful of his or her place in the pomp and circumstance of the experience.   It seems that the boundaries of the ring are what creates that sense of its being a special place.  Look at fighters before a fight and at what happens to them once they are in the ring.  They are no less eager to win, but the form counts for what fighters do and how they feel about themselves as they box.  Just think of our horror when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear.  The act not only broke the rules of the fight, but some fundamental agreement on the boundaries of the ring.  Certainly one can fight a tough fight, but again, the ultimate idea is that the ring equates to a ritualized process.  Biting someone’s ear broke that covenant, just as loading someone’s gloves with weights or even badly mis-matching a fight breaks that boundary.

Boxing everybody

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Boxing everybody

Ever feel as if you are just boxing everybody?  As if every single thing is a fight?  Spouse, kid, your body, folks on the street, the subway, the job, the “yuck” that comes across as news or mind movies at 2:30 in the morning?

And it’s not even a matter of its being one of those days.  Rather, it is a state of mind.  Active, alert, and punchy; always ready for the counter punch; for the stick and jab, for how one seemingly has to move from zero-to-sixty all the time.

My whole life is like that lately.  Somebody is always in high drama mode around me.  Spilled milk becomes an exercise in life at defcon four – and I think to myself, imagine if there was a real problem.

I’m boxing my past too.  The flutter of memories and stories and things that did not happen that comes with losing a parent.  Only one can’t box the dead.  And really not the living either.  It just is.

What the gym gives you

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What the gym gives you

The first day is always the hardest.

You’ve made the resolve to do something. To work out. To take yourself where you want to go even if you’ve never worked out before. And what’s getting you there is your resolve. Your first step on your journey to affirming yourself.

My first step was into Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, New York. I was 42 years old and had recently undergone 8 1/2 hours of neurosurgery on the nerves that fed my right shoulder and arm. I wanted to feel strong again and let a lifetime’s worth of fascination with the “sweet science” propel me over the threshold.

Gleason’s is the quintessential boxer’s gym. I took in the gym smells, heavy bags being pounded, men and women pummeling each other in the ring, the “da-da-da da-da-da” of the speed bags and found it all scary, daunting and in the end quite exhilarating.

While your gym might not be a gym as steeped in boxing lore as Gleason’s — that first moment is no less daunting. The people you meet in the gym have all arrived before you. You watch them going through their routines and think, I’ll never be that good. And then it clicks in. You are there. You’re there to work. You’ve crossed the divide and staked your claim on what it is you want to try for yourself.

And that’s the thing. There is no judge and jury. There is just you and the hard work you bring to what you do. Each workout is as challenging and unique as you are. And if you miss a day, a week, or a year, that’s part of the challenge too. What you learn is that the challenges are no less mental than they are physical.

Don’t kid yourself either; the challenges for women are particularly unique. We’re trained from childhood precisely not to hit things. In my own experience, the first time I hit someone in the ring I started to cry. That’s how hard it was to break through my own barriers. And it was not much different on the bag.

What you have to remember is that there is something in you that wants to work it out on the bag. That wants to test out your physical stamina and mental resources.

And what has propelled you in the first place is the beginning point to a brand new world. You are a boxer now. And a woman boxer at that. And wherever you go in the world, you can walk into a boxing gym, stick out your fist in a boxer’s salute, and work out with the best of them.

Congratulations, you have arrived.