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, November 29, 2013

A Knock-Out Busy Day... Friday, November 29

Busiest Free Train Friday ever, and I do me E-V-E-R!! 
 
Yup, that pretty much sums up the greatness of today at work.  I could and would end today's homepage entry right here and now but I won't. 
 
In busyness of today, one of the club toilets broke down, we ran out of coal for the coal thingy-a-ma-jiggy, a pesky parker parked diagonally and took up three spots, an overflow of food deliveries arrived, visitors flooded the club, and some how the music went from blasting Notorious BIG to Brittney Spears and then Justin Beiber. 
 
Running Hulk's has turned me into somewhat of a Jack of all trades and I've had to learn how to do things I never imagined I would have to.  I managed to unplug the toilet without a toilet plunger, figured out how to juggle the remaining coal, played a round of Parking Poker with the pesky parker and won, mastered arranging the club freezer like it was some kind of magically jigsaw puzzle, turned into quite detailed tour guide, and just let the music do what it wanted with the playlists on 8Tracks. 
 
The father of one of my highschool boys came to the club today for what felt similar to a parent/teacher interview like they have at school.  It was a bit intimidating in that he showed no mercy with me not being a native Korean speaker -- his questions were long and indepth.  I tried my best to answer but it's hard to give an intelligent, insightful answer with what feels like a beginner's hold on the language.  Some of my members sitting by the juice bar, listening to it all go down, seemed to be amused though and I got rave reviews and thumbs up from them for my answers, thanks guys. 
 
I had a lot of random visitors drop by the club, interested in touring Hulk's and asking all sort of questions.  I always love giving tours and amusing the younger visitors, especially the young Korean girls.  Most of them are up front and blunt about why they want to train at Hulk's -- they want to lose weight.  But it's not just losing weight that they're interested in, 7 out of 10 times it's a specific weight they are aiming for.  I'm all about breaking preconceived ideas and images and I've found that the thing that really shocks the young Korean girls and sparks their interest is when I tell them how much I weigh.  Many young Korean women have this preconceived ideal weight and for a vast majority of them it seems to be 49kgs.  I don't understand how setting an "ideal weight" of 49kgs across the board doesn't raise yellow flags in their mind because it surely does in my mind.  The flags it raises in my mind though are red.   I'm by no means tall, I'm only 5ft 2", but in the past couple of years I've been down to 49kg.  At my lowest I was almost 46kgs but I was super thin and so uncomfortable.  All my drops in weight were for fights and getting down to such a low weight meant I lost my chest and my so-called "ghetto bootie" was pretty much nonexistence as were my energy levels. 
 
I really don't think it's appropriate for people to shoot for a specific weight unless it is based on a body fat percentage or unless they are doing it for something like a weight-sensitive competition, like a boxing bout.  The number on a traditional weight scale really means nothing and reveals nothing, and I am really trying to make my members understand and accept this.  They need to shift their focus from the number on the scale to that of their body fat percentage.  Case in point, a 51kgs young girl I train whose body fat percentage is borderline unacceptable health wise.  I came to Korea weighing in at 56kgs with 33% body fat -- a body fat percentage of over 32% for women, according to  American Council on Exercise (ACE), is obese.  I usually weigh about 52kgs but now weigh the most I have in 7 years because of my increase in weight training.  I weigh 55kgs.  And though the difference between now and 9 years ago is only 1 kilogram, I look completely different because my body fat percentage is roughly less than half it once was. 
 
Today I talked about this with four young female visitors.  I know they listened to me, smile and nodded, but I don't know if they really 'heard' me.  Regardless, they all seemed very much interested in joining so, if they do join, I'll have the chance to continue this discussion with them. 
 
Later on in the evening, I was pleasantly surprised by the delivery of dinner -- chicken curry.  I loooooooove chicken curry.  I love anything chicken actually but this chicken curry was super spicy.  It was like a kick to my senses, super delish!!!  Not only was it a super delish dinner but it was a free dinner and it was delivered to me by two very handsome Korean men -- Snickers and WOW President.  Snickers had the day off but had met up with WOW President for dinner.  At dinner, Snickers had tapped into our security cameras, seen just how busy the club was, so he then decided showed up with take-out for me.  What a sweetie!  I was cooking dinner when he arrived -- a massive pot of chicken, spinach and rice -- so I ate the chicken curry Snickers brought me and, after their training, I let some of my Hulkies feast on the meal I was cooking.  They loved it, cool.
 
It had been a super busy day and with everything I had juggled while managing the club and all the unexpected extras to deal with, I also had promised two members I'd train with them.  It had totally slipped my mind though and no sooner had I just finished my own upper body weight training workout but one member showed up and reminded me. I had promised her tonight I'd train shoulders and triceps with her so that's what I did; we trained shoulders and triceps together.  Later in the evening, it dawned on me I had also promised another member, so I trained abs with him. 
 
Arrived home from work around 12:30am and was completely spent.  I had some dwindling energy left over from the excitement of such a busy Free Train Friday and the contagious positive vibes I had caught from our Hulkies, but by 1am it was lights out for me.  I totally passed out right in the middle of the family room floor with all my clothes and make-up still on.  I even had my bag still looped over my shoulder too.  Now that's what I call a K.O.-of-a-day!!!

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