Tag Archives: musings

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.

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.

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.