The Mighty Boxing Me
WOO! Two boxing classes down!
You know how if you sweat kind of heavily, you get unsightly sweat patches all over your shirt? A good way to avoid that is to sweat completely through every part of the shirt - that way it all just looks one uniform shade darker! (which, incidentally, is what happened during car scenes in Girlfight - the A/C messed up sound recording, so the poor actors were trapped in un-air-conditioned metal boxes in August in New York City for hours on end while filming)
Seriously, my back is completely soaked. And my shoulders - I've never worked out in a way that made my shoulders sweat like that. My hair is plastered to my head, which turns out to be a blessing. When it's dry, I can't tuck the fly-aways behind my ears again because my hands are encased in giant boxing gloves that basically leave me with opposable thumbs and nothing else. At least sweaty hair can be smushed back with my elbow and it kind of stays in place.
It's a whole new way to use my body. I love that. I love learning something this new to me. It's weird to only work one stance though - martial arts got me used to working left and right sides evenly. It's unbalanced!
I was the only one there right at 7:00 when we were supposed to start (okay, actually, I came at 6:40 to practice on the speed bag a little, yes, I am that person). Two other guys rolled in 5-7 minutes late, and one more came in half an hour late. The other three people never showed at all. How can you pay $15 per class and skip some of them?! And WHY? They are awesome!!
OldGuy wasn't there tonight, so AwesomeFemaleBoxer led the class. Awesomely.
I totally win at Being A Student, because the other three guys were not big on self-discipline. Since there were only four of us, we got a lot of one-on-one time with AwesomeFemaleBoxer, but there's still a lot of time where we're supposed to be working individually on the bags. They kept stopping to talk or just stopping all together. Me, I was InitiativeGirl, all about making the most of the hour and a half we had.
Of course, I did stop on occasion, but those times were less "Whew, I'm tired," and more "Whew, am I going to throw up? No? Sure? Okay, get back to it then." I seriously pushed it tonight. We did three-minute rounds, and gosh, that's a heckuva long time. I thought doing sit-ups for two minutes was bad (well, you try it - my neck hurt more than my abs by the end), but three minutes in the ring with AwesomeFemaleBoxer, struggling to translate verbal instructions into actions was intense. On the bags, I resorted to slow-mo techniques a lot, electing to work on form and not throwing up.
Actually, I know I'm doing well, because she kept taking longer with the three guys on each exercise. I'd do mine and she'd say one thing (usually "flex your left leg more" or "bring your right hand back up higher") and that would be it, rather than going through the techniques again, which I saw her do with them. Which is a boost to my ego, but I want to have just as much time with her!
I've improved a lot on the speed bag. Now she's telling me to hit it harder, which makes it bounce back faster, which makes me have to think faster. I am so very close to really getting it, but I keep losing it at the last fraction of a second or something and then the whole rhythm is shot.
One thing I have to work on overall is relaxing my body. I keep tensing up all my muscles, and I get tenser as I concentrate more, and you better believe I'm concentrating hard on this stuff. I mentioned trying to relax more to one of the guys, and he agreed, adding, "Yeah, having a fist come at you is pretty scary."
"Um, yeah, totally," I said. Hadn't really thought about it. The most we're dealing with is the instructors slowly punching toward us with the pads on their hands, but I guess that could be scary. If you're new.
::is totally the badass making Girls everywhere look good ::
I'm jazzed right now. I felt like jogging home, and I never feel like jogging. Anywhere. Woo!
You know how if you sweat kind of heavily, you get unsightly sweat patches all over your shirt? A good way to avoid that is to sweat completely through every part of the shirt - that way it all just looks one uniform shade darker! (which, incidentally, is what happened during car scenes in Girlfight - the A/C messed up sound recording, so the poor actors were trapped in un-air-conditioned metal boxes in August in New York City for hours on end while filming)
Seriously, my back is completely soaked. And my shoulders - I've never worked out in a way that made my shoulders sweat like that. My hair is plastered to my head, which turns out to be a blessing. When it's dry, I can't tuck the fly-aways behind my ears again because my hands are encased in giant boxing gloves that basically leave me with opposable thumbs and nothing else. At least sweaty hair can be smushed back with my elbow and it kind of stays in place.
It's a whole new way to use my body. I love that. I love learning something this new to me. It's weird to only work one stance though - martial arts got me used to working left and right sides evenly. It's unbalanced!
I was the only one there right at 7:00 when we were supposed to start (okay, actually, I came at 6:40 to practice on the speed bag a little, yes, I am that person). Two other guys rolled in 5-7 minutes late, and one more came in half an hour late. The other three people never showed at all. How can you pay $15 per class and skip some of them?! And WHY? They are awesome!!
OldGuy wasn't there tonight, so AwesomeFemaleBoxer led the class. Awesomely.
I totally win at Being A Student, because the other three guys were not big on self-discipline. Since there were only four of us, we got a lot of one-on-one time with AwesomeFemaleBoxer, but there's still a lot of time where we're supposed to be working individually on the bags. They kept stopping to talk or just stopping all together. Me, I was InitiativeGirl, all about making the most of the hour and a half we had.
Of course, I did stop on occasion, but those times were less "Whew, I'm tired," and more "Whew, am I going to throw up? No? Sure? Okay, get back to it then." I seriously pushed it tonight. We did three-minute rounds, and gosh, that's a heckuva long time. I thought doing sit-ups for two minutes was bad (well, you try it - my neck hurt more than my abs by the end), but three minutes in the ring with AwesomeFemaleBoxer, struggling to translate verbal instructions into actions was intense. On the bags, I resorted to slow-mo techniques a lot, electing to work on form and not throwing up.
Actually, I know I'm doing well, because she kept taking longer with the three guys on each exercise. I'd do mine and she'd say one thing (usually "flex your left leg more" or "bring your right hand back up higher") and that would be it, rather than going through the techniques again, which I saw her do with them. Which is a boost to my ego, but I want to have just as much time with her!
I've improved a lot on the speed bag. Now she's telling me to hit it harder, which makes it bounce back faster, which makes me have to think faster. I am so very close to really getting it, but I keep losing it at the last fraction of a second or something and then the whole rhythm is shot.
One thing I have to work on overall is relaxing my body. I keep tensing up all my muscles, and I get tenser as I concentrate more, and you better believe I'm concentrating hard on this stuff. I mentioned trying to relax more to one of the guys, and he agreed, adding, "Yeah, having a fist come at you is pretty scary."
"Um, yeah, totally," I said. Hadn't really thought about it. The most we're dealing with is the instructors slowly punching toward us with the pads on their hands, but I guess that could be scary. If you're new.
::is totally the badass making Girls everywhere look good ::
I'm jazzed right now. I felt like jogging home, and I never feel like jogging. Anywhere. Woo!