There are times when I find myself training without a trainer. Today was one of those days and I have to admit I missed Lennox who is up @ Foxwoods to work Sonya Lamonakis’ corner tonight for her 6-round heavyweight bout on the Berto-Ortiz undercard.
Still, as I approached my sweet 16 — I found myself luxuriating in the time I had to focus on stuff at my own pace and in my own sequence.
Lately, I’ve been pretty orthodox with my four-round sets — but today, I thought it would be fun to indulge in the things I like so, I did a total of 8 rounds on the double-ended bag, 4 rounds on the heavy bag, and finished up with 4 rounds on the speed bag before I did my first plus 4 on the sit-up chair.
As I write this I have to admit that my upper arms are leaden not to mention a right knee that is feeling pretty inflamed, but … and this is a big one, as an antidote to a pretty tough work week and the specter of yet another paper to write, I am that sort of wasted “noodlish-body” kind of happy that will even see me through the cart-load of laundry staring at me from across the living room.
I’ve also gotten over that momentary by-myself panic I experience in the gym sometimes when I start to feel a bit lost all on my own.
Today though, I fist-bumped my gloved hands in a boxing salute to myself for a job well done.
I’m a sucker for a good old-fashioned movie, and when it comes to feel good movies, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is one of the best.
The 1941 black and white feature film stars Robert Montgomery as the saxophone playing boxer Joe, Claude Rains as Mr. Jordan, Everett Edward Horton as Angel # 7013, Evelyn Keyes as Miss Logan, and the great James Gleason as Joe’s Fight Manager, Max Corkle. The story is also a powerful one full of hope and redemption. For those who are unfamiliar with the plot line, Joe (Robert Montgomery) on his way to fight in a championship bout is plucked from his airplane as it about to crash by a fledgling angel (Edward Everett Horton). Unfortunately, Joe is pulled from the plane moments too soon — and the rest of the movie is Joe’s fight to be given a second chance at the “title” after having been mistakenly taken to heaven way before his “number was up”!
This enduring story of the human spirit overcoming adversity was a lovely allegory for an America on the eve of World War II, where luck, an indomitable will and great heart would see a generation of young men and women through the difficulties to come.
Seen 60 years later, the pluckiness of Here Comes Mr. Jordan continues to resonate as does its later remakes: Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait and the most recent iteration of the film, Down To Earth, starring Chris Rock.
Still, I’ll always opt to watch the original boxing themed version and hope you will enjoy it as much as I do! We’re talking a near-on 4 Star gem that’s definitely worth a bucketful of popcorn!
(See YouTube for the rest of the episodes or check it out on Netflix!)
Summer and the beach at dawn. The restless sound of the surf pushing towards a new day, expectant and full of promise.
The kind of morning when a long run licks sands at your heels. Dogs and their owners sashaying about as they play chase with drift wood in between small birds flitting in and out of the water.
The thought if reminds me of how much I love summer — and working out at the gym in hot, steamy, sweaty heat. It’s really my favorite time there, wearing as little as I can as I pound away at the heavy bag, feeling it slip towards me, and pushing it back, watching as bits of sweat first bead and then drip down where first my shoulder and then my cheek brushes it back.
My sweet sixteen felt more like The Dirty Dozen yesterday. I worked my butt off — with lots of right to the body, left to the body, straight right combinations during my pad work with Lennox, but was I ever ragged. I’m not sure how I made it through the fourth round of the that set, but I managed it with some pretty pitiful arm punches, but, hey … I got through it.
The double-ended bag was also pretty pathetic, but I rallied for the speedbag and had really nice rhythm through most of it. What helped was peering at some pretty great sparring in the two rings in my line of sight — along with my inner Gonna have a funky good time beat (thanks James Brown) and “legs don’t fail me now” entreaties.
What did work yesterday was upping my sit-up chair time to three rounds. So all in all I was 16 + 3 for the day, if in limp mode for half of it.
In analyzing why my energy was so low, however, I had a true “duh!” epiphany. Yep, the missing ingredient: Sleep!
From no less a source than Harvard Medical School Women’s Health Watch (link here), six important reasons for getting enough sleep include:
1. Learning and memory: Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory through a process called memory consolidation. In studies, people who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later.
2. Metabolism and weight: Chronic sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and by altering levels of hormones that affect our appetite.
3. Safety: Sleep debt contributes to a greater tendency to fall asleep during the daytime. These lapses may cause falls and mistakes such as medical errors, air traffic mishaps, and road accidents.
4. Mood: Sleep loss may result in irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness. Too little sleep can also leave you too tired to do the things you like to do.
5. Cardiovascular health: Serious sleep disorders have been linked to hypertension, increased stress hormone levels, and irregular heartbeat.
6. Disease: Sleep deprivation alters immune function, including the activity of the body’s killer cells. Keeping up with sleep may also help fight cancer.
Oy. Who knew.
I mean, yes, I knew, but like many of us, I continue to blow-off the importance of getting those zzzz’s in favor of all the seeming have-to’s, not to mention the dumb want-to’s (like watching really bad TV) that get in the way of a decent night’s rest.
Put another way, getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis is no less important to health than eating a balanced diet and doing all that cardio in the first place — and may in fact, help with curbing the pounds and upping your energy in the process. Least ways I sure hope so!
Gleason’s Gym – All Female Boxing Clinic on April 28, 29 & 30, 2011!
Gleason’s Gym will host its first All Female Boxing Clinic on April 28, 29 and 30, 2011 at its headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.
The three-day event will include two-days of boxing training and will culminate in Gleason’s first USA Boxing Metro amateur-sanctioned All Female Boxing Show to be broadcast live on www.gofightlive.tv.
The two-day clinic will focus on a range of boxing skills for beginners and will feature the Gleason’s World Champion talents of Alicia Ashley, Jill Emory, Melissa Hernandez and Belinda Laracuente as well as boxing trainers Mark Breland, Juan LaPorte and Hector Roca.
The clinic is open to anyone with a desire to learn the fundamentals of the sport — and for those who have more skills, opportunities will be offered to perfect your talents.
Having first walked into the door at Gleason’s in 1997, I can personally attest to the genuinely supportive atmosphere of the gym, which has always been particularly inviting to women. It’s also meant that I’ve had the chance to observe first hand the explosion in Women’s Boxing — as well as the chance to applaud the prowess of Gleason’s many boxing alumni!
Girlboxing recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Gleason’s Gym’s owner Bruce Silverglade about Women’s Boxing (see video below). As an early proponent of the sport, Bruce has been a champion in his own right through his strong advocacy for Women’s Boxing and continues to provide opportunities for women in the sport from Saturday boxers on through dedicated pros.
Spaces are still available for the chance to perfect your boxing prowess or take the plunge into your first foray into the ring. If you are interested contact Bruce Silverglade at Gleason’s Gym. The telephone number is: 718-797-2872 and the email address is: info@gleasonsgym.net. The cost of the clinic is $299.00. You can also sign-up to participate in the All Female Boxing Show by contacting Angela Querol @ 718-797-2872.
My notion of roadwork came from watching the movie Rocky. There was Sly Stallone huffing and puffing his way through Philly, until finally, the meat hanging in the processing plant conquered, he was able to run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum in triumph. From his old-school converse sneakers to his gray sweats, Rocky was an everyman (everywoman) kind of hero that sought to over come adversity to get back into the ring.
The image of Rocky running up the steps remains iconic and in many ways continues to inform boxing’s notion of roadwork: rising well before dawn to don sweats, boxers the world-over will run 5 – 6 miles through the streets before hitting the gym. A lot of boxing gyms also have running machines and boxers will do their roadwork in the gym adding a component of interval training by alternatively running fast and slow along with changing inclines. In a gym environment, the running will often occur after regular training is completed, though this varies widely, as do the beliefs on the relative benefits of running in the wee hours of the morning on through evening runs.
The bottom-line is that running is used as an important training component to build stamina and conditioning — and knees aside, the idea is to increase muscle efficiency and aerobic fitness to improve performance during the short burst intervals of the ring.
On the Saturday boxing side of training – a brief jog/run can also be a helpful way of loosening up before stretching and commencing training.
Given the state of my knees, hard-on running is kind of beyond me, but having run for distance earlier in my life, I can attest to the physical conditioning that comes with a regular program of running — as well as its merits as a training tool. Still, old school running for boxing is not without controversy as some trainers have switched from straight-on roadwork to other forms of interval training or using the controlled environment of the gym for running in place, running sprints, jump-rope intervals and other forms of conditioning.
For an excellent article on the science of running for boxing on Rossboxing.com click here.
I walk my daughter to her Aikido Dojo — where she usually does her three hours split between the open and advanced classes — and make my way over to Gleason’s Gym for my own sweet 16.
Today’s practice will entail a straight no-chaser kind of morning: four rounds of shadow boxing, four rounds of pads, four rounds on the double-ended bag with four rounds on the speed bag to finish the circuit. Then it’s off to two-rounds of easy crunches on the sit-up chair as I mentally drift into a nice tired feeling in between catching glimpses of folks sparring in one of the boxing rings.
It’s become a kind of bliss. My shirt half-soaked with sweat. My face flushed. Perspiration matted in my hair. My legs a little shaky as I make my way into the locker room to change; today kind of special, because instead of three hours, my prodigal will be spending her day at a seminar so free until 5:00 PM, I can tarry at the gym before taking my time walking home.
Reflecting as I walk; I know I’ll feel like summer: slow, deliberate, easy. My body supple and warmed and ready for anything on my lazy meander up the hill near Gleason’s; smiling at the tourists under the Brooklyn Bridge overpass and finally returning to my usual self somewhere near Cadman Plaza where the rush of people will start to catch me back into the flow of a busy Saturday.
I was not one of those girls that had a sweet 16 or a sweet teenage anything for that matter. To put it charitably, my adolescence was challenged, and of course, it was the late 60’s so the best of circumstances were fairly topsy-turvy.
Flash forward to my future — 2011 and here I am touting the joys of my Saturday gym days where my sweet 16 consists of four rounds of shadow boxing, four rounds of hard work with Lennox Blackmore on the pads, four rounds circling and boxing the double-ended bag, and four rounds to wind things up on the speed bag.
We are talking the perfect morning. Not to mention seeing the likes of Sonya Lamonakis and Belinda Laracuente going through their paces. Inspiring to say the least — not to mention the countless men and women, old and young working their hearts out!
This is all a long way of saying whatever may have brought you down in your life — you have it within your power to reinvent it all to give yourself a sweet life. And really, why not, what have you got to lose except some bad crap that happened so long ago it doesn’t matter anyway. So be a champ to yourself with your own special brand of sweet 16, you deserve nothing less!
When the soul is willing but the body’s on the “blink”!
This past Saturday, I was at Gleason’s figuring that I’d go full-bore into training mode. Something about my walk to my daughter’s Aikido Dojo, however, should have tipped me to the fact that I was going to be dragging!
Once I got to Gleason’s admittedly fairly spry on the stairs, I was in sweat-stinging-my-eyes mode by my third round of shadow boxing – and grateful for the end of the fourth and the one-round break I had before the double-ended bag was up and ready for me to use.
The killer, though, was when Lennox called out to me and said, “step it up,” on the second round of the double-ended bag. Sure, I’d been throwing combinations and had dedicated the first round to mostly jab-jab-hook sequences as I worked my way around the bag in right and left circles, but what he wanted was to see me move around the bag, as in “push-it-girl” kind of move. And that’s when the dog-pant started to kick-in and the flashbacks to my doctor saying – “you need more cardio”!
Okay. So I got through those four rounds – kicking butt, so to speak and after my one round break started in on the focus pads with a “can-do” spirit in force if ever I felt one. My body, however, was in a different mode. It was saying, “Are you kidding me or what???” Still, I tried, pushing myself even as my muscles were caving. And here’s where the interesting thing happened. In the third round, I didn’t have as much “pop,” but having dug deep into my core I was using my abs to throw cleaner, crisper shots at a faster rate. It’s as if by ratcheting back just a little in terms of absolute “punch-power,” I was finding another kind of throttle on my engine – with breath that started to sound like breath again instead of the ragged tortuous sound of the previous round.
By the end of the fourth I was no longer “dead on my feet” at all as I had been after the four rounds on the double-ended bag. And yes, while I was a bit slow during my first speed bag round, the other three were down right peppy, and I even had enough energy left to do three rounds of abs on the a small abs bench, not exactly the deepest sit-ups ever, but enough to feel it.
So where did this leave me? Good question. Perplexed for one, because I’m not sure why my energy was so low on Saturday, but glad that the way around it was to remember that adjusting my stance to take advantage of my core strength not only leveraged the energy of my body, but allowed me to pull back from the edge of my rapidly depleting muscle energy stores that meant I couldn’t enervate my breath never mind a left hook.
And here we are again. Back to the fundamentals: stance, core strength, stamina and conditioning … and yep, C A R D I O !
While focusing on my prana breathing this morning the Yogic term for unifying the body through the energy of the breath, I got to thinking about how boxing seems to energize people in the same way. And yes, I was off in a mind movie about boxing, but figure that the “connection” on “connections” was all within the spirit of the breath!
So what do I mean — mostly that the community is small and practitioners from living room shadow boxers on through elite athletes, share a love for the sport, a passion for the practice and derive inner satisfaction from all of the hard work. Not to say that every boxer would articulate it that way, but the community, especially among women boxers from 8-80 seems to derive a lot of strength from knowing that there are other women out there boxing their hearts out.
Case in point: I do not know Christy Martin at all, but reading last night that a rib injury in the gym might sideline her from her March 12th PPV fight on Showtime really bummed me out. (See Boxing Scene.com story here.) We’ll know more today, and yes it will be news, but my relationship to it feels personal. As if a close friend is at risk for a huge disappointment. And I’m not talking as a fan per se, but as person that understands what it takes to step out in the ring and thus I feel a connection to what she’s been trying to achieve.
This blog is teaching me as well. It’s connecting me to folks I’ve never met or spoken to, and yet through language and an evolving understanding of shared experiences, I feel it’s made me some friends, and “virtual” or not, whether I ever meet them face-to-face or not, working hard in the gym has a language all its own that you can share across huge divides. Now I’m not going to get all sappy here, but the point is, the work has a language all its own that only needs the step of the doing to be a part of. And no, I cannot share what it feels like to have the jitters before a championship match, but I can relate it to the experience of sparring for the first time, or putting gloves on for the first time and realizing that the itch on my nose would go unscratched unless I asked for some help.
The key perhaps is just that. Boxing is not a solo experience. In the end the connections are essential. Without them there’s no tango, no intricate dance whether between two fighters in the ring, boxer and trainer, or friends goofing around in the locker room. So even if you are shadow boxing alone in your room, you’re still dancing with your shadow and that counts for something too!
Well I didn’t exactly have the greatest workout ever yesterday as my head throbbed from a pretty intense headache, but I did manage to eek out 10 rounds. The point was to “punch” through it as best I could — and with Lennox’s help who slowed down to my level of crawl by the forth round of focus pads, I got through that part of my circuit and still managed to hit with some “umph” as we worked on right-left hook-right and left-right-left hook combinations.
The great thing about getting to Gleason’s yesterday in “limp” mode was feeling the energy of everyone else’s work. It is the true contagion of the gym and when one is feeling less than stellar getting there anyway is one way of pushing oneself to get over whatever ails — not to urge anyone to go to the gym with a 103 degree fever or anything that overwhelming, but when it’s fairly minor stuff, call it the “walking wounded” feeling, working out, even a truly modified one can help put a little extra something in your step on the way out the door. In my case, all that sweat and effort helped ease the throbbing, and by the time I got home, my headache was pretty much gone.
One more thing, if your aren’t feeling all that well during your gym time, the double-ended bag can be a nice way of easing into your workout. It is my preferred warm-up method after some gentle shadow boxing because it is a whole body work-out that can be paced.
I came across a couple of videos for a group called Bad Girls Boxing out in Indio, California. Bad Girls Boxing opened its doors 15 years ago as boxing club for young women from 8 – 35 and uses boxing as a vehicle for teaching empowerment while developing basic and advanced skills. In addition to individual and group training classes, the organization sponsors women’s boxing training camps with the likes of Laila Ali as a coach and mentor at those events. For more information about Bad Girls Boxing click here. You can also “like” them on Facebook here.
I had my annual physical yesterday. All looks good so far, though my doctor recommended upping my cardio. It got me thinking how I would fit that in when I’m already at my max on time — not to mention the fact that I box on Saturdays which is about the best cardio I know!
Then it occurred to me that I wasn’t being consigned to an hour on a treadmill or the nordic trak. I’m free to be as creative as I can while accomplishing the benefits in short spurts like climbing stairs in lieu of elevators (where possible), taking a faster pace when I walk and throwing in a few rounds of shadow boxing using my handy iPhone timer app whenever I can! Dancing to three butt-buster songs from YouTube can also do the trick! Or as my husband suggested going back to the idea of an evening “constitutional.”
The point is — once you reach a certain age you are pronounced an official medical grown-up which means it’s all about prevention! And while strength is important for healthy bones, stretching for flexibility and stress reduction, the aerobics are necessary to keep your heart healthy.
I had a terrific morning yesterday working out with Lennox Blackmore. We spent four rounds on the focus pads on such fundamentals as clean doubled-up jabs which brought us all the way back to the beginning — the stance. Yep, by sitting lower in my stance with my body angled forward, my jabs were crisper, my slips more economical and rights in the pocket with a nice hard “thwack” sound every time it hit the pad.
Once on the double-ended bag for my second set of four-rounds, I worked more and more on keeping my stance low and thereby really pushed out punches from my core. And that, I realized, is the entire point of the stance. Sure, a proper stance provides a boxer with the right amount of balance, but more fundamentally it allows a boxer to use his or her core energy and strength to throw punches that are swift and sure with an economy of movement that saves energy and shaves milliseconds off the time needed to connect.
Talk about a wow.
And that’s the thing about boxing. Many training sessions follow a rout pattern of warm-up, training steps such as shadow boxing, focus pads, sparring, slip rope, heavy bag, double-ended bag, speed-bag and so on in whatever combination is being worked on that day, however, every once in a while, it all connects and boom — it comes together again in some new more fundamental way.
A lot like life, no? One wanders along doing the same thing day after day and suddenly a thunderbolt hits and the pathway seems clearer. And while it might be nice if every day was greeted with an epiphany of the day, the fact is there’s something down right sweet about finding it buried deep within the work. Leastways, I find it to be the case.
I admit to being somewhat of a Mac head … meaning that I am all Mac’d up with an iPad, iPhone, Mac Book, numerous iPods not to mention an iTouch. I’ve also come by all this Mac stuff somewhat honestly in that I also still have — and will occasionally use — my original Mac SE with all 4 MB of RAM! That old museum piece has a small black and white cathode ray tube for a screen (that’s a small TV!) and a sleek (for then) all in one body. We are talking 1986 when I first got mine — and what an amazing beauty this bad girl was for her time what with her 20 MB internal hard drive!
So fast forwarding to my 32 G iPad — I am truly in techie heaven what with the world literally at my fingertips as long as I can find 3G or internet, and if not, I can dig deep and find all of the stuff I’ve got loaded up including books, movies, and those blessed apps!
This week I’ve been discovering fitness apps — in my world that means I found a few and have been sticking to them. My two favorites are the My Boxing Trainer app (available as an iPhone app, but terrific on the iPad) and the Pocket Yoga app (available in iPad and iPhone versions).
The My Boxing Trainer app contains a terrific series of “how to” videos on such topics as boxing safety, hand wrapping and the boxer’s stance on through boxing tips for the ring including a video of Floyd Mayweather boxing “in the pocket.”
The other cool thing about this app is it contains a workout section that allows you to sequence your own training or follow a series of pre-defined training regimens. Once you select a sequence, the user clicks a timer button to set the number of rounds you want for each part of your training, as well as the the length of each round and rest period. The app also contains a straight boxing timer if you just want to use that. For the end of your workout there are some pretty nice boxing conditioning videos — everything from ab exercises to tips on stretching, using a medicine ball and keeping your shoulders in great shape. This app costs all of $1.99 and is highly recommended!
Pocket Yoga - iPad App
My other favorite app is Pocket Yoga. This app has three general areas: practice, poses and history. The practice portion has 30, 45 or 60 minute classes or two sun salutation sequences that allows the user to program the number of reps from 2 – 30. As a further refinement, each class and sun salutation sequence can be selected for a beginner, intermediate or expert level.
Once you choose a class type — the class or sequence you follow is animated with voice over narration. I followed the 30-minute beginner class this morning and had quite a workout. One other nice feature is the history tab. It will keep track of your yoga practice listing the date, sequence/class you used and the level of difficulty.
While this app doesn’t exactly replace a live-action class, it can work well in a hotel room, during a break at work — or even at the boxing gym if you want to follow-up your training with a little yoga. The app itself is $2.99 or $3.99 for the HD version and to my mind, well worth the cost.
Girlboxing 
