I couldn’t get a posse together in time for Friday’s boxing clinic. Justin Bieber wouldn’t return my calls. 50 Cent was working his energy drink game on Ja Rule. Amanda Bynes was getting her forehead pierced. Without a supportive band of thrown-together celebs, my boxing dreams were finished. Or so I thought.
As it turns out, boxing has nothing to do with hype. I mean, if you’re trying to sell seats for a Vegas fight, hype and ego are everything. But for me, and the two other girls I took Dabble’s boxing clinic with, the sport was solely about strength and endurance.
I showed up to Blockhead Fitness, early Friday evening, with a week’s worth of steam to blow off. Boxing, as you may have heard, is a great outlet for stress and anger. But we didn’t get to the punching right away. Our instructor, Andrew, who also teaches Dabble’s Second City classes, made us work for our punches.
The first thing we did was learn to wrap our hands. If you do it correctly, the long strip of fabric creates a shell around your fingers, and prevents your fingers from breaking when you hit your target. As a writer, I was really concerned with this. If my hands break, I am nothing!
Next, we bonded with medicine balls, lifting them above our heads, and bringing them down to the ground in a squat. We stretched our chest, rotator cuff, calves, and anything else that needed to be loosened up.
In the second half of class, we learned to jab, hook, and a combination of the two. Andrew helped us pull on actual boxing gloves and we finally took our turns hitting the 80 lb heavy bag. It felt wonderful. I tend to suppress my anger and only listen to meandering folk music, so letting my fists fly was liberating.
So look, I hate working out. For me to say this class was fun, that it flew by, that I may even box again, says a lot. I left feeling strong, physically and emotionally. I felt tough for the first time ever. I’d recommend this class to anyone who’s short on time and wants a workout that will pack a punch (lol, punch pun).
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Ali Kelley is a 20-something trying to figure out her life one Dabble at a time. She is the Community Manager at social good startup, Zealous Good and the creator of The Cry Cave, a collection of the web’s best videos to make you cry. Be sure to check back each Wednesday to see her newest Dabble class adventure, and cheer her on with words of encouragement through the comments section below or on Twitter @freegiantparty.