Work it girl

Greetings, Ruttites.

I do not why my spacing is off tonight, sentence and paragraphs all jammed together. I apologize.

I am late, I am pleasantly tired and full after ingesting a huge plate of healthy food post-workout. For those of you who do not know, I am one of those people who must exercise nearly every day to remain sane. Mainly it saves me from growing anxious, or from becoming so rested that I can dwell on my perpetual horniness. But I also like it.

Let me paint a picture of a typical workout. Not long ago, after a week grappling with recent work changes and post-coital melancholy, I spent an evening grappling with several young lads at the boxing gym. The class had been divided into the tall and not so tall, and I was the only female in the tall group.

We are beginners in fight class, sometime boxing, at times kickboxing or MMA. As beginners, our main job is to get in good enough shape to learn how to fight so we can survive three-minute rounds in the ring, three times. We also have to get used to close physical contact with others that does not involve affection.

We were practising the clinch. This is two hands locked around the back of the other’s head and elbows in tight, pulling them into your shoulder to throw them off balance. The clinch frees you to throw knees into their exposed side, knocking the wind out of them and bruising their kidneys. In short: you control your opponent’s head, you control the fight.

The task was to break the clinch by snaking one arm at a time through the inside of your opponent’s arms and thus gaining position. The boys were apprehensive, in varying degrees of adolescent shyness. Being old enough to have technically birthed most of them, I felt it incumbent upon me to precipitate the clinch.

They were adorable, and did not manhandle me as much as they could have, and let me have pleasant little victories. It was nice to see gallantry not dead. They were likely terrified of a) hurting me inadvertently or b) grabbing a handful of Gretchenboob while trying to break the clinch. I almost wanted to line them up and make them grab a boob, so they could get over it. I realized this action would mortify them into banishment and so was not a wise option. I should just take the victories they were allowing me. You control the head, you control the fight—who cares how you got there?

If there’s one thing fighting teaches you, it’s to pay attention. Those in yoga call it “being present” or in even more spiritual terms, “being mindful”. These kinds of words speak to a sense of sanctimonious smugness that has driven me away from yoga and pilates, time and time again. Ladies, you are stretching. You are building core strength. You are not praying to a many-armed goddess or saving street urchins in the streets of Mumbai. Wake the fuck up. Any place where broads encased in head-to-toe Lululemon bop out the door cooing how amaaaaaaazing they feel is not for me.

At my boxing club, we scrabble for our shoes at the door, dripping with sweat. We file out panting. It smells like balls. A windowless basement, with a ring on one side and punching bags hanging from beams. Unfurled hand-wraps are stored inside a tire hanging off a beam, skipping ropes dangle off a nail. The walls are adorned with pictures of past local fighters and ugly-sexy UFA fighters with improbable stripper names like Randy Couture. There are usually no paper towels in the bathroom. It’s barebones. It’s not a place where you hang out to chat, or come in to use the bathroom in a pinch. It’s a place you come to work and be humbled.

A typical session starts with skipping rope. Yes, it is daunting to come into a gym where everyone is blank-faced, skipping with relentless rhythm and no discernible effort. It is not something you can ask for instructions on, you just do it until you get better. And you do get better, as the rope bites into the tops of your bare feet when you miss, so by the end of each warm-up it looks like a hobbit has taken a cat o’nine tails to them.

(Prior to boxing. my last skipping experience involved chanting “Cin-de-rel-la! Dressed in yella! Went upstairs to kiss a fella! Made a mistake and kissed a snake, how many doctors did it take? One, two, three…: etc. Perhaps you played this game too. That little song takes maybe 15, 16 seconds. Try skipping rope, albeit silently, for a straight minute and see how you feel.)

After the skipping, the workout begins. Sprints, lunges, backwards running, burpees—are you familiar with the evil of the burpee? It was invented by a humorous sadist. Burpee: sounds so innocuous, the fifth Teletubby. It is a push-up you spring up from into a standing leap. Try doing five of them. They are vomit-inducing.

Standing jumps onto boxes in sequence. Push-ups with a partner, slapping opposite hands on the uprise. Abdominal crunches, leg lifts, neck strengthening exercises which cause my upper vertebrae to click annoyingly. Stretching. More push-ups, ab work. Take a drink of water. Get on your hand-wraps. More push-ups, more crunches. Put on your gloves. Now punch the bag for a full minute—jabs, hooks, uppercuts, repeat—and switch with a partner.

Go, go, go, yells the guy. At this point you are so soaked with sweat you don’t even notice. Your hair is wet right to the bands holding your pigtails, your sports bra and underwear are drenched, great droplets of sweat are dripping off you and puddling onto the floor. This means you are working. You regularly pack a bath towel to mop up after yourself.

In the summer, you cross the bridge and plunge into the river immediately after each workout, and bob along with the seals. It is bliss.

Go, go, go. Left jab, right cross, left hook, again and again. Most times we don’t even punch, as the beginners’ class is for the most part in woeful physical conditioning and the gym owner is mean, training to go to Thailand to work out with the masters. No cheeseburgers and hardcore training for him equals no mercy for schoolboys with fat chests and piss-poor cardio. I’ll fix that, he says with a smile. Go, go, go.

Clock ticks time. Good job! Before you go, give me 50 pushups, 50 crunches, 50 jumping jacks and 50 lunges.

I love this man.