Facing the new.

Facing the new.

Marlen Esparza, Photo: Rose Arce/CNN

I liken a fight to a blank page. Entering the ring, a boxer’s body and mind stand at the ready as so many remembered movements much as a writer sits poised with words and syntax.  It’s what happens next that is remembered. The boxer will engage in an improvised pas-de-deux with her opponent while the writer will engage her thoughts and ideas to fashion words into hoped for coherent and readable prose.

Given that I am wearing my writer’s mantle today, I am trying to work through the momentary panic of that blank space.  As with any creative endeavor — whether the improvisation of a boxer’s dancing feet or a trumpeter’s trill — the way thoughts form on the page seem miraculous.  Yes, they are based on deep knowledge of words and syntax and perhaps even a clear “plan” of attack likened to a boxer’s plan to stick and pull back, or the trumpeter’s competencies with B-flat.  However, the blank page of a writer can also represent the open road without a road map.  It is the moment of facing down newness. Words without a plan. A space that can take a writer anywhere the imagination feels like going.

Such is my day today.  My writing has no agenda.  Like shadow boxing on a Monday night without a trainer, I can take it where ever I want it to go.  I can stick with one thing or write tons of fanciful little ditties.  Such is my luck today — even as I swallow back that momentary taste of bile that anxiety always seems to bring!

 

Grabbing opportunities …

Grabbing opportunities …

Moore Sisters

I missed my opportunity to go to the gym yesterday.  Mostly because I’ve so little time it was hard to squeeze it in even though I was actually off from work.

On those sorts of days I’m reminded of how even a few minutes of bathroom mirror sparring or my personal favorite, hook the shower curtain keeps boxing as a focal point of the brain and becomes my opportunity.

This puts me in mind to something my daughter just said to me.  ”I wish I could go to Steve Jobs funeral. At least I could say that I met him.  He really changed my life.”  Out of the mouth of babes …

Sometimes in the extraordinary we find opportunities for epiphanies that are life altering.  It means taking the risks mindless of the fact that we may not have a net to catch us.  That is certainly a truism of boxing.  We leap as part of a practiced effort of skill and heart.  Sometimes that leap places us in an impossible situation — much as Ishika Lay now lies in a coma in a Toledo, Ohio hospital, it should not, however, negate the choice.

For others of us, it means running a marathon and having a baby as happened yesterday in the Chicago marathon. So much for the idea that women are in a “delicate condition” when they’re “with child” — the kind of stuff women in my generation and older were raised on.

I’m not saying be extraordinary every day — but I guess I am saying follow your heart.  There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there.  It’ll add depth and momentum to your life and maybe even put a smile on an 11-year-old face at 6:45 in the morning.

Not exactly on point — but in the “grab the gusto” department, a twitter friend @mjon3105 sent me a link to a film from around 1910 showing two different scenes of a woman boxing. So … yes, the newsreel footage was billed as “Amazon” woman boxing … but, heck, she was boxing! The link is below:

(AMAZONS OF YESTERDAY) – British Pathe.

Pointers for a Saturday boxing workout at the gym!

Pointers for a Saturday boxing workout at the gym!

For those of us who can’t get to the gym as often as we’d like for a serious workout, watching boxing training videos, while no substitute for the real thing, can help us to pick-up some pointers ahead of the next visit to the gym.

The following videos from YouTube were kind of fun — demonstrating “Mayweather-style” defensive moves in the ring with Coach Rick, the “Mittologist” from Southern New Jersey. For more information his website link is here.

Lovely morning.

Lovely morning.

Daughter awake. Yoga routine finished. Kitty fed. Husband comfortably abed. Light full on in the sky. Warmish breeze at the window. In other words a lovely morning.

My work day is huge, to be followed by 12 lovely rounds of pounding on heavy bags, double-ended bags and the speed bag.

All is right with the world.

As for inspiration …

Lucia Rijker on the Speedbag!

Heavy bag – women’s training

Another rainy day in Brooklyn!

Another rainy day in Brooklyn!

Whew.  Really hard to do roadwork today!  So … what to do?  Bake bread?

I’d say, shadow box around the living room and feel happy!

Feel inspired??  Here’s some music to shadowbox to!

Inspiration

Inspiration.

Afghan Girl's Boxing Team

I’ve been in a back to the drawing boards phase for the past couple of days.  I likely should have just put up the “gone fishing” sign, but what I’ve really needed is to draw on some inspiration.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1.  I have a friend in the throes of a tough fight against breast cancer.  She’s ridiculously young to be going through this sort of “shite,” but if you ever needed to move on from a “what’s this all about” moment — take a read through Mandy’s terrific Breastcancerography blog to put it all in perspective!

2.  Life got you down, try heaving 60+ extra pounds around during a four-round fight!

That was Sonya Lamonakis’ task when she fought Gigi Jackson last week — and somewhere from the depths, Sonya brought it forward.  Talk about inspiration — that’s how champions are made.  Finding the place in oneself where one can move past difficulty and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to succeed at the task at hand and if that’s not possible, walking away knowing that one did give it one’s all, which in my book is something to be just as proud of.

3.  Every time I get to the gym, someone catches my attention and I am riveted by the precision of their work and more importantly by their work ethic.  Sometimes it’s a trainer, explaining the nuance of a technique while at other times it’s a fellow gym denizen shadowing boxing in front of the mirror or heaving weights or doing sit-ups for the umpteenth time in a row.

Whatever it is keeps me coming back because I know that I’m part of the chain of a terrific community that inspires by showing up to do the work.  And whether it’s 6:00 in the morning or close to the end of the day, the da-da-da da-da-da of the speed bag gets into my soul like a heart beat that reminds me how much the gym can mean.

Time and the clock

Time and the clock.

My daughter’s alarm clock is blaring through her door as regular pulses reminiscent of the loud echoing blasts announcing a prisoner escape.  How she is sleeping through it amazes me.  Her strategy is to have multiple devices yell at her land of nod until one or another pierces the veil of her dreamscape enough for her to join the world of the awake.  She then stumbles up and out of her room towards the bathroom and the beginning of her morning.

It puts me in mind of how much of what we do is regulated by time.

We have the “masters” of the industrial revolution to thank for that one; having invented mechanized devices as the means of production, they needed a “regular” workforce to man and woman those machines.  Hence our alarm clocks which still beckon us (more like rip us) from the delicious warmth of bed and dreams into the world of work and dare I say a bit of drudgery???

Not so the boxer’s time clock!  Least ways not in my estimation.

Those intervals of time feel more like the explosions of musical notes with three minutes to blow your ax before resting and blowing again.

Shadow boxing around my living room gets to feel like an improvisational dance, throwing punches this way and that as I circle my way left then right, hop skipping forward or to the side, my arms flailing at the air to their own rhythm.  Then the dead s-t-o-p before repeating it all again — and yet different.

A jazzed solo, the improvisation of a boxing performance has all of the nuanced grace of a horn pushing out its notes in a staccato rhythm all its own and yet timed and lovely and full of melodic undertones, the dance of the body fluid and full of the momentum that pushes it from one posture to another for three full minutes before the ding of the bell signals the end of the round.

My gym day

My gym day!

Saturday is my gym day.

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.

 

 

 

My own sweet 16!

My own sweet 16!

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!

Life in snippets

Life in snippets

I had my annual visit to the accountant yesterday.  He’s a friend, but one I only see 45 minutes a year managing to catch-up on our lives in between questions about expenditures and dividends.

Those kinds of snippets of conversation; however, can be very affecting.  This year’s catch-up was no exception. He’s gone through the break-up of a long-term relationship and I’m in still in that one year period following my mother’s death.  That’s a lot of momentous change for one year, and yet I observed that he was happily going about transforming his life in wonderful new directions — just as I have found new outlets for expression.

It got me to thinking that gym life is kind of similar.  We make friends and share wonderful emotional moments, but only in small intervals.  Life in a boxing gym is no exception, yet the pursuit is often solitary.  Sure in a boxing class, their may be a circle of a few people all warming up together; but the majority of time for a boxer is spent moving in and out of contact.

Shadow boxing, pounding on a heavy bag, bobbing and weaving around the double-ended bag, and moving along the slip rope are all fairly solitary experiences.  The interactions tend to have to do with keeping out of each other’s way as on a busy evening, four, five or even six boxers shadow box in the ring, each carving out a bit of solitary space while dancing around without colliding or impeding the others.

And yet those conversations happen.  In the locker room; in the intervals between rounds; and in the occasional acknowledgment in the mirror as both boxers bang away at imaginary opponents.  It’s one of the things I have come to love about going to Gleason’s Gym.  The chance to feel embraced by a community of friends I may or may not see for periods of time, and yet are always there in my corner as I am in theirs.

 

 

 

Yoga mama shadow boxing around my living room

Yoga mama shadow boxing around my living room

Having fallen “off the wagon” so to speak, I’m on day two of my renewed daily yoga routine what with being a bit hit and miss over the last two weeks — with an every 3rd morning routine.

What can I say — my arms are straining from plank pose, my hamstrings from downward facing dog, and my whole body from the Warrior 1, 2 & 3 sequences, but hey, I’m sitting taller while breathing nice and deep and full.  Even the kitty is excited, finding in my unfurled yoga mat a fun toy she’d apparently, really missed.

Next up, three rounds of shadow boxing around the living room to James Brown’s “Funky Good Time” before prancing my way around the kitchen to make some breakfast for the family.

It’s good to be back.

 

 

 

Boxing connections

Boxing connections

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!

 

 

Gaining “umph” in “limp” mode

Gaining “umph” in “limp” mode

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.

Cardio, cardio, cardio

Cardio, cardio, cardio

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.

Sometimes you win …

Sometimes you win …

Brooklyn Bridge at Night, 1948 Gelatin Silver, by Andreas Feininger

 

 

I managed to crawl out of bed at my usual ridiculous weekday hour in the morning today.  My head is still spinning a bit from being tired and I’ve been fighting off waves of didn’t-get-enough-sleep headaches — not to complain, which I’m not, but to state that the inconveniences of those feelings are out-weighed by the suppleness my limbs feel after my third downward dog pose and all the other stretches these creaky bones held this morning.

While I may or may not get to four rounds of shadow boxing when I finish this piece, the hiss of the steam, wanderings of the kitty and the sounds of the house as it reverberates with the slow morning echoes from the street below gives me something else.  A kind of serenity as I greet the day before the stresses and hustle and bustle of all the have-to’s begin to settle on it.

When one has a busy life with a tons of constituent parts that demand time, attention and thought, it’s so very nice to have the gift of a few minutes that aren’t in competition.  Rather, they’re just for oneself.  A little piece of the world one can own — if not quite the room Virginia Wolfe envisioned where one could state, “I am,” this place has more to do with a gift of quiet.  And sure, predawn self-ministrations get “old” by Thursday morning when the accumulated hours of missed sleep are wearying, however, the idea of finding a part of the day for quiet doesn’t.  I’ve been keeping to this schedule for six weeks now and have to say that occasional grumpiness aside these moments of quiet have truly given me something I didn’t expect:  a place of peace that’s a little of my own.