First Day Update!

Josh here.

While Daphne had her fair amount of things to say about the different styles of boxing for today, my first true post will focus more on how our first day of boxing went and what we did.

After a bit of struggle with traffic and directions, we finally arrived at Boston Boxing as a group of 5 scared students afraid of what the day will hold. Our fears weren't in vain as, after a comprehensive stretch, we were immediately put to a jump rope marathon of nearly 15 minutes. Personally, having had very few athletic commitments or motivation in the past year, I was out of breath by the end of the warm-up and was not at all ready for what happened next. 

Wrenched from our tranquil lives of laziness, we were put through an exhausting workout that left most of us wishing for a reprieve of any sorts. Through a series of simple exercises repeated in many sets (oh so many sets), our arms and legs were left with no strength to dangle at our limbs, all the while sweat poured down from our faces. We hadn't even gotten to the boxing part of our class yet, but there we were, more than willing to let our interests in boxing be a passion of the past. However, we held strong in hopes of dragging ourselves through until the end and it certainly did pay off. 

When the time came to put on our boxing gloves, we each borrowed a pair from the studio and began our first technique training. Everything was rather standard in that we practiced our "one-two" punch quite extensively. The one-two punch is simply a a term to describe a two punch jab, one from each hand. We were taught the stance and told to practice in front of a mirror for a bit to make certain our dominant foot and hand were slightly behind the other and were told to keep our knees bent at all times. I had a particularly hard time remembering to constantly keep my arms at head level to defend any incoming shots but other than that, our forms seemed to all line up pretty well.

After a bit of practice, we then launched into some actual punching with punching bags. A mini circuit of sort was created as we rotated through about 8 different punching bags with the 9th person getting personal training for a few minutes with one of the coaches in charge. A rather tiring process but one that really allowed some stress to be relieved and I must say, punching a bag for fun, really is fun. 

We may not have learnt many fancy techniques yet but we're still working on the basics. The last part of the day came from our cool-down of mainly ab exercises and bits of stretching and we were done! 

The day may have started off looking extremely grim from the intense and challenging warm up but we all left feeling pretty darn good, excited for the next lesson. 

Love,

Josh

xoxo