Kickboxing: action-hero workouts for everyone
Kickboxing training is the Cloete family business
One family, three champion kickboxers. They literally kick, well, any body part that’s allowed in competition fighting. Rows of trophies gleam when you walk into Vibrant Sport kickboxing and boxing gym in Ottery, Cape Town, but the Cloete family still have dozens more trophies and medals to unpack. They opened their boxing gym with a ring and a line of punchbags only in January.
Mother Dorothy Cloete takes the morning kickboxing training sessions there. She won a silver medal in Greece in 2003, at the one world championship she could afford to attend.
That was way back, said Cloete, but when she demonstrates a hook kick at face height on a punchbag, it’s clear she still packs power in her size-four feet.
Cloete started the session with skipping. Three rounds, three minutes long, Marked by the bell. Once we’d warmed up she started us on punching combinations in the air followed by punching and kicking drills. Next, we practised these combinations on her — she has pads — or on the punchbags, with minimal rests.
By that time my heart rate was high, and I was sweating. This was high-intensity training. I enjoyed it, because the timing and changing combinations demanded focus and took my mind off the effort. When we got into the ring to practise more moves, I was in the zone.
My heart rate monitor was an average 129 in that session. It barely reaches 100 when I ride up a steep hill. When resting it is about 50.
The kicking added another level of intensity to the exercise. I’ve done boxing training with a great coach, which was tiring, but the kicking seemed to crank up the cardio training. We practised front, snap and side kicks and, as a bonus, the spinning back kick. From the ring we moved to the floor for sets of exercises including planks and squats, to work the major muscle groups.
To finish, Cloete did a stretching session.
The couple have done kickboxing training since
2000. Josh Cloete, who was in the SANDF for 28 years, started with his own gym at
Wynberg military base. When he was transferred to Saldanha Bay they trained more than 200 school students for free and helped set up seven clubs, which still operate.
Cloete said she got into the sport when she met Josh, who was fighting professionally and training six to seven days a week.
“I went with him to the gym to get fit and one thing led to another,” she said. “At one competition, one of the opponents didn’t show up and Josh said: ‘Don’t you want to try?’.
“I tried it and the adrenaline kicked in and I was bitten by that feeling,” said Cloete, who went on to become Western Province champion and competed in the nationals, earning national colours, before going to the world championships.
But kickboxing was not an Olympic sport and Cloete decided to become a boxing pro in 2005.
“I was one of three women to compete when they launched professional boxing in South Africa. I’d always done boxing in my training and had competed before at an amateur level,” she said.
Cloete is passionate about these sports, particularly the fitness benefits and self-confidence they’ve instilled in her. She said six of the 16 people training at night are women.
“We have tried to make the gym a friendly, fun place for everyone.”
They have a daughter of nine, who hasn’t tried boxing, and a son of 19 who is the unbeaten SA kickboxing bantamweight champion and was ranked third in the world in 2014.
Josh senior, who looks more like a stand-up comedian with floppy hair than a top fighter, said they have all worked hard and this discipline is part of his routine.
The man who designed the new Rumble boxing programme, due to launch this month at Virgin Active clubs, said he does one-on-one training from 5am to 2pm at a gym, and then moves to their boxing gym to do group training.
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