me & my girl. ok, so maybe she's not old enough for the fight yet, so i just got the wi-fi password from this dude...
(the boss)
..and she was happy as pie just to play on her phone while her mom sweated it out.
I was actually a bit nervous going into this class. First of all, i always am. Just the idea of a boxing gym, where people train to knock each other out, is a tad intimidating. Secondly, i wasn't sure if they'd let me in, it's been so long the package deal of classes i'd purchased a year ago must be expired. Thirdly, i had no idea who this female instructor was, except for what i'd read on the site, that she'd already been in four amateur boxing matches, at Durham's Bull City Brawl.
So, as i was joking on the way there with my daughter, we were both imagining some kind of hulk named Bertha...
(and pardon me as i have just a little too much fun with google images!!!!)
(like the name Blubbery Bertha my sister had given me as kids, where she would call herself Wiry Wilma and then proceed to whop me down on the living room floor, face rug-burned into the green shag carpet again and again. I'd credited it to her gymnastic finesse, but really, now i think it's because fighting is a mental thing, and since she always controlled me in so many other aspects of our sibling rivalry, i think she just intimidated me so much that i almost let her win. but NO MO!! Now I'm singing my fight song... but i'll get to that later..)
anyway, so we go in and the girl is just your average sweet, slender chick, chillin' with her phone, waiting for her students. only way i knew she was the "teach" was the timer hanging around her neck, ready to time our sessions of torture.
yes, torture: after a jogging warm-up, (thank God, no jump roping today) we lined up and did sprints across the floor, usually involving inhumane ways of locomotion such as bear walks and spider man crawls. then russian dancer-style squat kick thingys, etc.
(by the way, this instructor did have some cool tatts, including one all the way up her calf, a full-size, full-color smiling Jesus giving a thumbs-up. Also a cross, a smiley face, and a mickey mouse. interesting what you can try to read into a person by their ink. but anyway...)
next we grabbed 5-pound weights in our hands, and she gave us a good lesson on footwork. how to stand, balanced, one foot behind, weight on back foot, then moving forward or backward in a smooth motion, no bouncing, just smooth control from the torso. back and forth, and how to quarter-turn, keeping up our guard, eye on our opponent. add shadow boxing with the weights, for quite some time.
i liked that lesson. i love learning new things. Robb, my Body Combat instructor, always says that the best exercise or class is the one that you will DO... and for me it's anything that teaches me new things, new physical techniques, like boxing or dancing. not sport techniques, never been a team sport person, never find me cooperating with a team throwing a ball around, guess i'm just too individualistic, not very cooperative, ha ha. so this was fun, and then when we gloved up and started our hitting sequences, she threw in some of that quarter turn move, which my girl captured in a vine, right here:
Check out my post on Vine! https://vine.co/v/eHgbOlaY9r7
(not the greatest, i know, but it's hard enough to tear a teenage girl off her phone to be her mom's videographer, how embarrassing for her, right?)
I think the reason i enjoy learning boxing footwork is, because it's similar to dance, and i love to dance!
anyway, back to that fight song. i've been going through a lot these past 2-1/2 years, a lot of growing up. leaving behind some childish ways, breaking out of my self-imposed prison, finding my voice, dealing with issues and taking my life back. becoming my real self again. so when i heard this song, and then looked up the lyrics, it really resonated with me.
just like going to the boxing gym revs me up physically and gives me mental confidence when i learn new skills that i could apply in real life situations if needed, i am also encouraged by words like these, proof that i'm not the only one who has a fight going on inside of her. cuz even if nobody else believes me...i've still got a lot of fight left in me!!
so here ya go...
yeah, love this feeling.
till we return to the cage, friend.
