I spend Friday nights hanging out with colleagues and friends at Hai An Cheng, which means “Ocean Port City”. It’s basically a huge plaza, with a street going down the middle. The place is a two minute metro ride from where I work. Its got lots of great restaurants, tea shops, KTV booths, and a nice hang out area where you can enjoy the breeze and watch people walk about.

One day as I finished dinner with friends and sauntered home, I walked by a recently opened boxing gym. Through my food coma stupor, I leaned on the gym’s fence and stared at all the commotion. A girl in gray boxing gloves punch through a routine with a trainer. Their fistic dance captivated me as I noticed subtle details of boxing skills. Her opposite hand protected her face as she punched with the other hand. Her chin, being the knockout target, is tucked in neatly. She’s moving constantly on the balls of her feet, as it is the catalyst for boxing defense.

I inquired and was met by a nice sales girl named Gao Zi Hui. She’s from ShanDong, which is North of China. We bargained back and forth, until we settled on an agreeable price for twenty four one-on-one sessions. But first, I had a vacation in Japan waiting for me.

I started training the week after I got back from Japan. I bought my own boxing gloves, a pair of Windy 14 oz boxing gloves. The gloves offered by the gym were for public use. Everyone uses them, and would leave their stench and sweat to mark their territory. The sweat mixed from a dozen people of all shapes, sizes, and genders really gives off a potent reek. After you wear them once, the smell on your hands will knock you out. Thus, having my own gloves was essential to my well being.

There were a handful of coaches. They were all professional boxers from the Philippines. The more notable ones were Drian Francisco, and Ricky Sismundo. I was assigned to Joel, an IBO champion belt holder.

Training Regiment

The classes come in two flavors.

One is a group class, where a few coaches will train a group.
The other is one-on-one where they torture you to death. Being an adventurous guy, I chose the latter.

The one-on-one sessions consist of a workout schedule which goes something like this:

You come into the gym, change, and warm up with a 10 minute run. Then:

3 rounds of jump rope.
3 rounds of shoulder exercises. You hold 2 pound dumbbells on each hand and punch upwards on a fast pace.
3 rounds of Shadow box with 1 pound dumbbell.

note: 1 round = 3 minutes, rest = 30 seconds

These exercises are to build up your foot/calf muscles and shoulders.

The foot/calf muscles are so that you can bounce around on the ball of your feet often. This is to facilitate fast and quick movement because in boxing, everything (defense and offense) always start with the feet.

The shoulder muscles and abs are to build punching power and durability. The most tiring thing during a round in boxing is to throw a fast, strong punch. If done in quick succession, it can tire you out quickly. For me, whenever my coaches have me throw three punch combinations in quick successions, my flabby gut coils in mercy and submission. So for all you armchair boxers out there, stop yelling at the TV for your man to throw more punches. That shit is tiring ok!

Then, Joel will lace up my gloves to hit the mitts. He’ll hold each mitt up to signal which punch he wants. Jab, straight, hook, uppercut. He’ll do it in a combination and you just gotta start throwing. You throw fast, and you throw hard.

The purpose of these combinations is to find an opening. Usually an opponent will block, slip, or parry your punch. But if you throw combinations, the opponent will usually get hit somewhere. Working the mitts is to also simulate a real fight, so that you know what it feels like to throw hard, fast punches for 3 minutes.

After you learn how to punch, they’ll start working on pressing your opposite hand close to your face. This is because boxers will sometimes punch each other at the same time. When you throw your punch, your opponent also throws, so its imperative you hold your other hand up to protect yourself.

Another thing they get on your case about is your chin. The chin (jawline) is connected to your skull in a way such that if it gets hit, you will lose consciousness. Your opponent will be trying to target it so that’s why you always want your chin tucked in between your gloves. Most beginners like me will naturally start raising my head as we get tired because we’re trying to get more oxygen. But through training, you slowly develop the habit of tucking in your chin.

Round one, most students are like turtles, their necks are nowhere to be seen as they tuck their chins nicely behind their gloves. But in our gym, we’re all a bunch of beginners, with the cardio of a pig. By round three, most students got their heads sticking out like a giraffe. You could walk into our gym, close your eyes, randomly swing, and you’ll probably knockout a few students like a bowling ball knocking over some unsuspecting pins. Steee-rike! Yup, we’re that bad.

The Spar Game

Many students step into a boxing gym and really want to experience what fighting feels like. Sparring is the only way to do that. Usually students would say they go fifty percent in sparring so that everyone can learn technique, and get acquainted to fighting. However, you’ll soon realize that it’s all bullshit.

A technical spar escalates to 100% real fast. I’d say within a minute. Thus, if you are to spar, know that you have to be ready for anything and everything. You have to be ready for the speed, and you have to be ready for the power of your opponent.

Hence, when it comes to sparring, I always look for females or the elderly. Although not necessarily in that order, and preferably, a female elderly.

KO-ing a forty five year old

We got a bunch of guys in their forties in our gym. We call them the seventies generation. And we got a bunch of females too. Most of them are young, and join to get in shape so that they won’t get old by themselves. Unfortunately, none of them wanted to spar me.

…what a bunch of spineless cowards.

But, there was hope. A beacon of light shone through and blinded me as one brave soul stepped out of the group. His name is Brother Zhao, and he is forty five years old. I honestly have no idea what the hell he is doing in a boxing gym. His movement is very, what’s the word, uncoordinated. Now, if you’re fit and have been boxing for a while, okay, no problem. Hell, even 70 year old boxers can outfight 99% of the population. But Brother Zhao wanted to spar just because he thinks three months of training will ready him for a fight. What he doesn’t realize is that boxing isn’t a game. If you’re unlucky enough to be paired with someone who just doesn’t care, you can be seriously hurt.

Brother Zhao has sparred against another guy in five rounds of depressing failure. Brother Zhao won because his opponent gassed out after two rounds and accidentally tripped over himself. The opponent landed on the canvas and couldn’t get back up.

Yes, I’m younger than Brother Zhao, but honestly, not much. Maybe around seven years. So brother Zhao and I agreed that we’ll do some technical sparring. My coach thought it was an excellent opportunity for me to practice dodging, weaving, and sipping some punches.

So for the first minute, I would gently tap. But one minute into the sparring session, the fifty percent speed and power agreement went out the window. For the rest of the first round, he thought he was Muhammed Ali reincarnate. He was floating around, throwing these quick short jabs that stung, and shooting out these long body shots that vibrated the cellulite spare tire around my waist. It was my first time sparring, and all this commotion was scaring the crap out of me.

Alright, no more touch tagging. I can’t go on lightly tapping him while he was throwing these quick punches at me. My tender self will get hurt! Let’s see how this guy deals with a normal punch or two throw towards his direction.

Play Spar

So I learned something in the midst of my first spar. And that is, in a sparring session, there’s no such thing as a “play fight”. You can’t slow punches down in order to “learn”. Here’s why:

Say you jab at the guy at slow speed. Soon, to show you how much of a badass he is, he’ll punch over your slow jab. So you can’t just slow jab again, because another faster punch will hit you before your jab gets to its destination. So you speed up your jab. Well, power comes with speed. And when your jabs hit your partner, he’ll then punch back a bit quicker. Turn by turn, you and your sparring partner will quickly escalates to 80% speed and power. That is why “play spar” will never work.

Hence, even though my coach kept saying “keep jabbing..”, I couldn’t slow jab because I see these fast punches flying towards my face. So I rolled up my imaginary sleeves, and went to work. I parried some of his jabs, and threw out a straight. It barely missed him, and he recoiled. I then threw out another straight…

Unfortunately, and to my evil delight, my second straight knocked him down. There wasn’t all that much power behind the punch, just speed. He came flying in low because he wanted to punch my mid section. I could feel the wind from this punch as it was mere inches from my mid section. But by then, I managed to zip my punch before his punch can land. I heard a thud as I he blocked my punch with his face. His body paused mid-air in a half-squat. As he fell from impact, he looked at me solemnly. He then landed on his behind, with a thud.

Even before I recoiled my punch, I was trotting backwards, and asked him if he was okay. My trainer was analyzing and looking at Zhao’s eyes, making sure he was okay. The girl taking the video of our spar quickly turned off her phone and asked him if he was okay.

Okay, so he was okay, okay!

Our coach made him sit a while, and he took a nice cool drink of gatorade. We continued on to round 3, where we basically measured distance, jabbed a bit, and I took the initiative of trying to avoid his punches. This is something that I told my coach I wanted to do. To just get used to seeing punches coming in, and how to react.

All in all, we sparred for five rounds. In my opinion, it was a very successful spar because no one got hurt, and we gained a ton of experience. Even though it was only fifteen minutes, all the action, reaction, and movements really stayed with me. I learned a lot and was really thankful to my trainer for all the hard work he put in. But I was most thankful that my tender self wasn’t hurt. I will always treasure and remember my first spar as the time where I knocked out a forty five year old.