Boxing, dabbling with a new martial art

Here's a quick story of how a late 50s guy ends up in a new type (for him)  of gym.  Also, as you can see in the top video (round 1), how much fun it is to use the slow motion option on my iphone to see what I actually do.

Boxing Gym

I spent 8 pretty happy years in the martial arts at a blended school (nee Lavallees, now Elite Force) which taught a mix of kickboxing, kempo, muy thai and whatever else they chose to integrate. It was great fun, a great crowd, and great for me.

Happy Days at the Dojo

At some point, my kids had moved on and my hip movement became increasing constrained reducing what I could do and more importantly, making kicking drills detrimental to my back. I stuck it out for two years past when my back could handle the martial arts trying to work-around the ongoing  back problems. Finally, I sadly put my gi on the shelf and have been trying to figure out what to do next for sports ever since.

Rebuilding at Focus Studio

Nicole of Focus: She rebuilt e

You've seen (if you've been reading) that I've spent six months in acute physical therapy, around nine months with a a very tuned-in trainer trying to continue to rebuild core strength while improving my diet and exercise regime to get to a better percent body fat/lean muscle ration (thanks Nicole of Focus Studio), and then this summer, I did a trio of  triathalons culminating with me making it onto the podium after a race. Ironically, that seems to have resulted in a drop in motivation for me in that area. Or maybe I just got bored since I always train solo and it's just very dull.

All of this by way of explaining that I'm now dabbling in boxing.  I have a two tier approach to this. One is that I go to another yuppy gym where there is a boxing fitness class. There's bags and drills and some intense guys and gals, some socializing,  but no sparing. I like the classes particularly since they are close to the house and they have classes 7:45-8:30 in the morning which works well for me.


The other tier is that I've been going to a boxing gym which is on the other side of the tracks (literally and figuratively, which gives me a chance to link to one of my favorite cartoonists).  Luis, who runs those classes, takes me to his gym-in-a-warehouse where he matches me up with guys somewhere near my age, dize, and skill level to spar.  Very exciting and definitely something different..

The real excitement and activity in this gym is about the kids (late teens, early 20s) who are trying to compete at the amateur or professional level as boxers.  Here's what the gym looks like (15 second video)

 Here's what one of the rounds looks like (It's not pretty but I figure this is a base case that I can work.


 up from....)

 



 I got a little tired, here I am between rounds being told to stop dancing and running and to try some boxing. Good advice. I told myself that too. But I couldn't seem to settle down that day...


 





Yes, we did do three rounds. I had handed my phone to someone to film and at the end, there's only two rounds recorded. Of course, I was so much better in the missing round.  Isn't it always that way?

Improved my Defense in Class Today

I love it when I learn something new in class. And with this blog, I can hammer it home in my mind.  This morning was a candidate sparring class. Translation: it was a class only for people trying to earn their black belt or a higher rank black belt this year.

Master KC had some sparring drills where one side plays defense and the other side attacks. Pretty standard. The novelty today was that the defensive players were NOT supposed to back up.  They were supposed to either crowd in or crowd in and angle.  This was new to me and very cool. 

Usually, if someone comes at me, I back up. When I'm superquick, I can back up faster than they can advance or even angle out in ways that befuddle my attacker. More often than not, I seem to back up into an optimum spot for people to kick me.  With this moving-in-approach, when the going gets tough, the idea was to move in closer and then angle one way or the other. By staying real close, it's very hard for the other person to get get off a good kick or even, a good jab. When you stay close, you really only need to worry about crosses and hooks. (Our school doesn't allow uppercuts, knees, or elbows so this get-close defense works exceptionally well).

A great class this morning. The second half of class was pure sparring and at full speed, I found that crowding in a viable defense and a useful addition to my arsenal.

The other big focus of class today was footwork. I like it. I could do a lot more footwork drills. Today was simple step and slides forward and back with a little work on angling with footwork.  There's room to work on how, when shelled up and on your heels, to still have good footwork. It's a challenge for me that I find myself flat on my backfoot defending and unable to move since I'm flatfooted and hunkered down on my back leg. I know conceptually what to do and that starts with, don't get into that position. I'm not sure what drill would help me isolate and solve that problem.


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Staying alive....

I sparred today for the first time in two weeks. What a way to get reminded that I'm not keeping up at the pace I used to. I really was sucking wind today. A few warm-up rounds of no head gear boxing then five 90 second matches. I've been making it to two classes a week with just one additional run. It's not enough. I'm losing cardio. I'm going to try to get to three classes and two runs.

Am I the only one who has trouble keeping up at this pace?

Black Belt Testing - Power Weekend Part2

This morning was the culmination of the black belt testing. We all made it. Not a surprise but a big relief. Aieesa!

It was great. At the finish, it was fun and exciting. It was hard but frankly, there were much harder days of training along the way. The hardest days (for me) were the days with 6 sparing matches plus the timed 2 mile run.

For me, the best parts were doing a series of kata with the team and the sparing. Both represented the culmination of years of effort and demonstrating technique, teamwork, agility, skills, and reactions. The board breaking, partner drills, and physical training outside were fun but didn't have the emotional impact to me of the core curriculum materials of kata and sparing.

The sparing video below (of Jay and me, I'm in the short sleeves) was my final match of the day....I can't decide if I'm proud or ashamed of it but, since it's my only video, it's going up.

It is a great learning tool. I am moving alot, my hands are mostly up where they should be, it's mostly combinations ("punches in bunches") and we're in a nice flow.

On the side of what to improve, I'm mostly circling the wrong way (towards his power side), my kicking is stuck in a pattern of low single roundhouses, I'm never staying inside, I'm relying way too much on my jab, I seem to have forgotten how to hook, and I'm backing out instead of angling. And sometimes my hands are down which Jay seems pretty good at picking up on. This is btw, the first time I've seen a video of me sparing. I'm fascinated (obsessed?) by it.