Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I thought I’d emerged unscathed but no… More than 24 hours after my first Box-on class, my abs were so achey that I could barely turn over in bed last night. Which made me laugh. Which hurt. Which made me laugh more. Which hurt. You get the pitcha.

But the pain confirmed two things: one, that there actually are abdominal muscles down there underneath the stubborn flab and, two, that I’d actually put serious effort into the class workout.

Attending Box-on at the Y was my friend Kelly’s idea. She’d spotted the class recently, when she was upstairs on the treadmills, looking down on the gym. She told me she saw the boxers just milling about a series of punching bags set up around the room. “That looks like it could be fun,” she told me. I said sure–I was open to trying it. God knows there are enough days when I get home from my commute and I’d like to punch something.

Kelly’s new membership at the Y has been just what I needed. She’s gotten me involved in not just the Box-on but also aqua-jogging (I didn’t realize it was possible to work up a sweat in a pool!) and the various and sundry exercise machines that I have been studiously ignoring until now. When she starts eyeing the bellydancing class schedule, though, I’ll start to get a little nervous…

Anyhow, after a few weeks of forgetfulness and/or unavailability on my part, the stars finally aligned and we went to our first Box-on class this week. It was led by Kathy, who is wound tight by muscle, sinew, energy, and humour (and not one single ounce of excess body fat, from what I can tell).

And, clearly, Kelly must’ve seen only the latter stages of the class when she saw the students standing around that fateful night a few weeks ago. There’s no way she saw the first half-hour of it. That first half-hour is why I ended up moaning and laughing and then moaning again whenever I tried to roll over in bed last night.

The warm-up almost knocked me out before I’d even put on any boxing gloves! We were paired up with vets who’d been in the class since September and we spread around the gym at a bunch of “stations” where different workouts were posted on the walls. (There were punching bags set up at each station, too, but those were for later.) Most of these workouts seemed to involve some kind of jumping. The only jumping I normally do is up or down a curb when I’m out running (and we all know how coordinated I am at that). Other than that, there’s really notta lotta call in my life for jumping. But. The first station I was at, the exercise was to jump as high as I could as often as I could for two minutes straight. Two minutes seems like a really short period of time, doesn’t it? Well, it’s fucking not. When those two minutes were up, I ran to the next station–where the exercise was to jump rope. Good grief, I haven’t jumped rope for perilously close to 40 fucking years! And I was never all that good at it, anyway. (I was always more of a baseball-type tomboy, rather than a skipping-type girly-girl.) I managed to get through the two minutes without tripping or strangling myself and then ran to the next station. Where I hadda do jumping-jacks. Sweet jayzuz! I mighta started out doing recognizable jumping jacks but by the end of the two minutes, I was mostly just hopping a couple inches into the air and flailing my arms. On to the next station, where I… hopped on one foot from side to side along a line on the gymnasium floor. Then I turned around and hopped back on the other foot. Then I hopped in my two-footed boxing stance from side to side along that line on the floor. Back and forth. Ding! the two minutes were up and I stumbled on to the next station. Jumping jacks again! WTF?! “No fair!” I wailed. All this time, there’s music pounding and Kathy is running from station to station, yelling encouragement and insisting it wasn’t all that bad to only hafta do these things for two minutes at a time. The fuck you say, sez me, under my breath. Then, hey!, a station where I don’t hafta jump! I get to do push-ups instead! Oh joy! Not just any old push-ups, either. I hafta get down in the push-up position and sorta crab-walk a few paces from side to side. Then I do normal push-ups. Then I have the option of doing those push-ups where you (not me) clap in the middle of the upstroke.

After about half an hour of this, we were done our warm-up. Kathy handed me a pair of boxing gloves (not pink). My partner had demonstrated the various kinds of punches (jab, power, hook, uppercut) and now we were instructed to go from station to station, where the exercises had been replaced with punch-combinations. And these weren’t just simple two-punch combos. These were, like, jab-power-jab-hook-uppercut-power.

Do you remember those (horrifying) days in public school gym class when we hadda learn dance steps? Lawdy, I was so fucking talentless at that. I could not remember the steps well enough to put them together intelligibly. I could watch the instructor with undivided attention and still look like a complete spaz when I tried to reproduce the dance steps.

And it’s the same with the boxing routines. I’d stand there at each station, eyeballing the instructions on the wall, mouth agape, forehead furrowed in concentration. There were mats hanging along the walls, and we could use those to practice the routines if we didn’t want to use the punching bags. I hadda use the mats because that’s where the instructions were taped. Read-punch-read-punch.

Kathy ran from station to station, holding up her own gloves for targets for us. She’d hold up her right glove and I’d reach out a left jab. Her left glove would go up and I’d aim a power punch. She’d sweep her arm up over my head and I was supposed to bob and weave under it and then aim a hook at the glove she’d proffer. It really was just like dance class.

When the class was over and we staggered to the change room, Kelly and I wondered how we’d feel the next day. But it turned out we both felt fine. She warned me, though, that the after-effects of the workout might take 24-48 hours to show up. The following night I went for a very enjoyable 9k run in the mild evening air. Still felt okay when I got home and showered.

But when I tried to roll over in bed that night… whoa.

I hafta trust I’ll get better at it. I definitely wanna keep at it, ‘cause it was an absolute hoot and certainly the best workout I’ve ever had. And ‘cause I can’t run every night. And being able to punch something that doesn’t punch back could prove theraputic.