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.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Some In Between Round Action... Wednesday, June 11

I've decided that I really can't leave my boxing till later in the evening, hoping that I've saved adequate enough energy to not only get through it but make it a productive training session so I now train before club opening.  I train from 11:30am/12pm to 12:55pm, eat, and then from 1pm to 2pm I clean the club with Snickers.  Snickers then deals with the early members while I shower and get ready.

I started this new routine this week and it's been going really good except for the fact that later in the evening when I'm working, around 9pm, I hit a bit of a slump with my energy.  I need a pick-me-upper, a second wind to get me through to midnight.  I have successfully escaped back to my bedroom for random power naps and this with a cold glass of water seems to do the trick.  I don't actually fall asleep but instead flop on the bed face-first and just lay there in the darkness, it's nice and it seems to do the trick.  Another helpful pick-me-upper has been to excuse myself and sit out back on the step in the pup's corridors.  I think just a break in the constant loud music and a pause from the hectic juggling of training so many members at once is all I really need.  Even if it's just for a few minutes, a brief disconnection has proven to do wonders.

And while training in the morning has been quite nice but challenging in that I don't have the energy of others around me and Snickers is quite tough on me, Balboa and Pacquiao have been my biggest obstacle with.  They've created a strange and deranged habit.  As most know, we train according to the boxing round bell.  Rounds are set at either 2 minutes or 3 minutes and the rest time in between rounds is 30 seconds.  However I don't take such rests, instead I drop down to the ground to do ab exercises, push-ups or squats. [Side note here, if there were ever such a thing as magic, squats would surely be it!!!!] I do my jump rope, shadow boxing, padwork, and sandbag work all to the round bell, with body weight exercises done during such "rest times".

The other day Balboa saw me drop to the ground to do some ab crunches in between my sandbag work so he decided to run over and sit on my tummy while I continued.  Pacquiao, being the jealous boy that he is, ran over to join Balboa.  He flopped down onto me, pushing Balboa off my tummy, and the two stayed there until the bell rang again.  When the next round finished and I returned to the floor to do butterfly kicks, again ran over Balboa and Pacquiao.  Today marked the third day in a row that this has happened and they haven't missed a round yet.  I really should set up my camera to record this, it's absolutely hilarious.  Snickers sat at the juice bar today and watched in pure amusement.  He was particularly amused at me doing push-ups.  Balboa likes to stand on my back and do a downward dog yoga pose while I do push-ups, nice.

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