One-two punch
WHEN I was a kid, my dad used to watch a lot of Rocky movies. If you haven’t heard of them, it’s basically a series of movies about a boxer, played by Sylvester Stallone. I wasn’t sure what the storylines were, but there were plenty of boxing scenes where someone was always beating the pulp out of someone else, and in the end Rocky Balboa always won and walked away looking like he needed a nose reconstruction surgery.
My dad would watch it with a lot of awe, and I always ended up wondering why on earth would someone want to punch and be punched that many times voluntarily.
Fast forward many, many years later, and I found myself, last month, standing in the middle of a boxing ring, wearing boxing gloves in a loud, sweaty, Muay Thai gym while getting asked to punch the pads attached to my coach’s body.
Of course there is a backstory to this. I had signed up for a major hiking trip this September, and what it means is that I have to make sure that I am well trained to accomplish it and stay as physically fit as possible. While doing research, I found that there are so many types of exercise that would be able to give me the level of stamina that I wanted. While I have already tried a lot of them, I came across Muay Thai kickboxing, a highly recommended regime for building strength and stamina.
Kickboxing is something I’ve never really thought of doing, or known much about. In a brief history, Muay Thai can be traced back to as early as the 18th century. Used as a practical combat technique during warfare, it grew into a much-loved sport across the nation, and with the progress of time, it spread across the globe where today, you can find thousands of Muay Thai gyms everywhere.
But recently, it seemed to be getting a lot of attention in the fitness sphere, even for women.
To further convince myself that I should be giving it a shot, I Googled and found out that even Victoria’s Secret models are practising kickboxing to keep themselves in top shape. Wait, you mean that’s what Adriana Lima has been doing to get those legs? I was sold.
SHIELD YOUR FACE
The gym turned out to be exactly how I imagined it would be. And my imagination was deeply fuelled by those downtown, old school boxing gyms portrayed in the Rocky movies my Dad watched. The one I found myself in was owned by a local, retired Muay Thai fighter and run by a few coaches.
Tournament belts lined the shelves, all won by the fighters who trained at that gym. Loud music played in the background, the sort that is supposed to keep you pumped up throughout your training. There were endless sounds of punching, kicking and adult men groaning. The air felt heavy and sweaty.
I looked around and was immediately intimidated. There was a professional fighter in there that day, doing his usual training. He was ripped and glistening with sweat, and his abs looked like he had not been eating Burger King for years and his legs looked like they would give metal poles a run for their money.
Most of the people there looked so strong and lean, and this made me feel like I had the strength of an asparagus left in the fridge for too long. I was asked to do a timed warm-up, consisting of jumping jacks, skipping ropes, push-ups, sit-ups, shadow boxing and the like. The coach stood there and watched us like a hawk to ensure no one was cheating or stopping for too long.
It turned out that much of the training sessions are focused on these things, instead of my initial impression that we merely learn how to punch people. The warm-up was long, arduous and made me fantasise about a big glass of iced Milo.
My gut was hurting and I was sweating so much I looked like I had just climbed out of a pool.
Towards the end, we shifted to sessions called pad training, where you’re required to punch and kick pads attached to the coach for a given duration of time. There were jabs, punches, elbows, knees, uppercuts and kicks to learn and practice on. I was so tired in the end that I couldn’t even focus on my coach’s directions — doing it in the middle of the ring with everyone watching did not exactly help, either.
IF YOU DON’T TRY, YOU’LL NEVER KNOW
By the end of the class I went ahead and signed up for more classes. Why? Because it was so much fun. Aside from the fact that I went to work the next day with a bruise on my foot and knuckles and feeling like I had dislocated a pelvic bone, it was fast-paced, exhilarating and a great way to release stress.
I had some minor concerns about risking a nose deformation, but it turned out that professional gyms have safety equipment to ensure minimal risks, especially for newbies like me.
I suppose the lesson here is that sometimes, we should not fall back on an impression we may have of something if we haven’t really given it a fair chance. Okay, boxing and Muay Thai are different disciplines, but initially, they looked the same to me. Now I know they are not.
In other words, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Kickboxing turned from being something I found ridiculous into something I kept coming back for, bringing friends to join in the fun.
I later found out that in some parts of the world, places like these are responsible for keeping kids off the streets and into healthier communities such as the ones you would find in these laid-back boxing gyms, where everyone is focused on helping each other build strength, physical endurance and eventually, a more balanced state of mind.