As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).

After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.

Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.

Friday, June 07, 2013

A Little Too Close for Comfort... Friday, June 7

The inevitable happened and it was only fair too, kind of like karma catching up with karma. Someone saw me naked tonight at the club. I say it's only fair because I saw him naked once, when he was showering too. 

Fridays are our "free train days", meaning with the exception of our boxercise and crossfit circuit training classes, there is no one-to-one training with either Snickers or I. It gives us a chance to kind of rest our bodies because, trust me, doing pad work definitely takes it's toll on you as does training so many members. It also gives us a chance to do our own training if we care to. We don't really have much free time, well we kind of do but not in big enough chunks that we can get in a good workout. We'll have 20 minutes here or there but we're still very much preparing the club so our time is mashed between training members and doing the finer details with renovations, like numbering the lockers or working on the shower room tiles. 

Tonight I decided to really kick my own butt at training so I geared up for boxing, got some kettle bells ready for in between round weight training work, and then I cranked up the music. Forty minutes later and I had just completed a non-stop boxing training session with weight training in between rounds and additional work on the pull-up bar. My arms no longer could carelessly reach above my head without them shaking -- they were swollen and all red. I definitely had pushed the work in "workout" and now I was experiencing the out -- out for the count and exhausted. 

By the time I finished my workout most of the members who had been training beside me had left. There was just Snickers, one male member and myself so I simply grabbed a towel and headed to the back shower room. We're in the process of building a girls-only private shower room but for right now we just have the guys' group one. I simply wanted to do a quick body shower and then get out but, upon undressing, I realized I had brought two tops in with me and not a top and pants. No sooner had I made this realization but then I heard someone behind me. I twisted my head around to catch glimpse of that one male member. He instantly went to head back out of the shower room but ended up crashing face first into the glass wall.  I questioned whether I should tease him about seeing me but he only really saw me from the back.  Having said this though, he smirked at me when he said goodbye to me tonight.  

There's been a big nudity trend going on here at Hulk's and it's all too funny. For awhile there our guys' shower room didn't have an extra wall so if any of them stepped a bit too far to the left, the sight of their naked bods would bounce all over the club because of the bombardment of mirrors. The other week all the guys training with me decided that because Saturdays are "days off" this must mean they're "shirt days off". All four of them trained topless. Today our sponsor's son decided to whip off his shirt and train. Not sure what that was all about because he was super shy when I first noticed him. He hid behind the sandbag. I've got Snickers changing his pants beside me behind the juice bar, former teammates dropping their drawers for the weight machine, guys misunderstanding our unisex locker room as being an over-sized change room, and now I've got members wanting to train half naked. So much for thinking Korea is all conservative, woozers.

No comments: