A Gym to Call "Home"

Through email generated by this website, people often enquire, "where can I learn to box?" If I can’t answer through first-hand knowledge, I forward the question to Melanie Ley, who runs the most comprehensive and serious website for amateur boxers, amateur-boxing.com. I have been at local shows where young boxers approach Mel with a mixture of respect and affection for all she has done for them and the sport.

Boxing gyms, or more accurately, places to practice boxing, come in various forms. The November 2001 issue of Men’s Journal notes "your health club likely offers a boxing class, but its more inspiring to study the sweet science in a hot, musty, threadbare gym with a veteran trainer who knows the ropes." The article cites the well-known classic boxing gyms in Denver, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Detroit. These boxing meccas are great, but for the ordinary youngster or adult novice going to these places would be like trying to enter graduate school out of kindergarten. You just aren’t ready and will probably not be wanted because you will just get in the way. Face it, establishments that cater to professionals, those soon to be through choice or destiny, or those affluent non-pros who have marquis and can afford the freight for the genuine article, don’t want us around. Yeah, these clubs will be happily sell us a t-shirt or ball cap, but to them, boxers represent an investment or raw material to be converted to wealth. Most of us don’t fit those requirements. Looking at the accompanying image of me, I certainly do not.

What to do? Many health clubs have a heavy bag, usually hung in some dark corner with all the other cast-off equipment that members no longer find trendy. As I workout, I am constantly amazed by the number of people who come in and wail on the bag for about 30 seconds before they are either bored or exhausted. Having exhibited little talent and even less style, these folks then strut off like they put Tyson down for the count in the first round.

The trouble with these places is that the bag is added as an afterthought, because the owner believed that a gym needed one, not because he or she has any interest in having a program. Of course, the more trendy the gym, the less likely that any boxing equipment will be found. Some gyms offer "boutique boxing" with the accouterments of a boxing club but no contact is allowed and the instructors are basically aerobics leaders who happen to own a pair of boxing clubs. Aerobic boxing is a great activity, but it is too boxing what a water pistol is to a charged fire hose.

Ironically, the owner of one gym that offers aerobic boxing/kickboxing classes, LA Workout, related that he would not install boxing equipment in his gyms, not even a heavy bag, because it raised the cost of his liability insurance. Still, when I use their vacant aerobics room for a couple of rounds of shadow boxing, they don’t mind. LA Workout’s Ventura club franchised a boxing program only to have it fold because the area where the activity took place was not authorized for occupation under the building codes. Too bad, I worked out there for two weeks and it was a nice operation.

I have been without a boxing gym for about 10 months. After leaving Washington to return home to California, I engaged a private trainer for a boxing conditioning program, but eventually gave that up when it became too difficult to make the workouts. So, I set up a small workout area in my garage and used it for training.

I now have a new boxing gym to call "home" thanks to the efforts of a couple of trainers. A few weeks ago, Randy, whom I met three years ago at a now-closed boxing gym, called to let me know he converted his Thousand Oaks, California garage in an intimate boxing gym. to Randy, which he provides for a modest per hour fee.

Coach Randy teaches private or semi-private boxing lessons for a modest fee and invited his already-trained friends to stop by and work out. In turn, we help out if and when we are needed. The image shows me doing ring movement drills with one of his students. A great arrangement for everyone concerned. I now have a boxing gym to call "home."