Intimidation... Tuesday, April 8

I approached one of my Hulkies today and asked her about her training, why she has been boxing lately, just weight training.  In her explanation, she mentioned to me that she was intimidated when she saw me training the other day.

She was intimidated by... me?!  I couldn't help but be flattered.

Of course I don't want her to be intimidated and I noted that the beauty of our club is that about 99% of our boxers all started boxing right here, at Hulk's, so they all can relate to feeling like a beginner. 

Intimidation, it's an interesting topic of discussion for me and it's still something that I too struggle with.  I'm still very much intimidated by Snickers when he calls me over to do padwork.  And the fact that just earlier that day I was giggling and tickling me under the bed sheets means absolutely nothing when he approaches me with those boxing pads on his hands and raises them for me to punch.  Instantly he's that Super Light Champion that I feel so far from being at par with and I once again feel like a beginner.  My heart starts racing, my feet fumble and I want nothing more than him to crack a smile and tell me I'm doing good.  He doesn't smile though, nor does he tell me I'm doing good or have done good.  Instead, he tells me to punch harder even though I just gave it all I had.  He raises his voice, moves his hands quickly if I'm late throwing a punch and then continually makes me repeat things until either I get extremely frustrated or it clicks.  It often frustrates me THEN it clicks, which only makes it all that more frustrating!

Tonight intimidation reached a whole new level when our club's main sponsor stuck around after his own training and decided to involve himself in my own training.  He had arrived in the early evening, stuck around to watch his son train, and then he asked me if I was going to train.  I told him I was and so he waited to watch me train -- I started training at 11pm.  By now I'm used to him watching me but tonight he decided to take watching me to a more extreme level by holding my sandbag while I whaled away on it.   So there he was, literally a foot or two, if that, away from my face, watching me go round for round on the sandbag, working my combos and throwing my punches.  

Now THAT was intimidation to me.  

I know he supports us 100% but of course we want to make him proud of us, not only as a boxing club but as boxers too so it was very intimidating to have him all in my face during training.  In between rounds, during my sandbag work, I usually drop to the floor to do ab work.  The break is only 30 seconds but depending on what exercise you do and how many breaks you do it, it definitely gets intense.  Well, I made the mistake of thinking I was in between rounds at one point, after Snickers came over to talk to me about my foot work, and ended up doing a full round, that's 2 minutes, of double-leg lifts (an ab exercise).  Now I can do two minutes of double-leg lifts but I was going on my 8 round of sandbag work so I was pretty exhausted.  Needless to say, that was my last ab exercise done for the night.  I was spent. 

After training we then all headed out to the Sushi Crew's restaurant in Onyoung -- Snickers, our sponsor WOW and his son, the Sushi Crew, and me.  Over an overload of delish meat and grilled kimchi, we dissected our training and talked about boxing till about 2:30am.