Teachers brag about their students, parents brag about their kids, and both Snickers and I brag about our Hulkies as if they are our family. An interesting series of events lead up to one amazing situation today and long after the club had closed Snickers and I bragged about those involved.
Our Hulkies rock, it's just an obvious fact.
A big part of boxing is sparring and sparring is by far one of the best exercises to improve your boxing. Sparring is where all your hard work with pad work, image training and working the sandbag really are put to the test without actually stepping into the ring for a sanctioned fight. I've been trying to encourage many of our members to box but with WOW super eager to nominate random Hulkies to step into the ring with him, I've also been keeping some of them out of the ring. I know WOW is only trying to help and that his intentions are good but he's much bigger than many of our boxers, more skilled and definitely more experienced in sparring. I don't want my boxers to be injured by getting hit by someone that has +20kgs over them and really knows how to use his body weight to hit someone. An injured boxer is a discouraged boxer and a discouraged boxer may be a soon-to-be former member. I want to keep my boxers encouraged and keep them injury-free so I've been working on going through our membership list and matching up members with who I think would make appropriate sparring partners.
There are three young boxers of particular interest to me and who I think would spar well with each other. They all have very similar experience and boxing skills and are around the same weight and same height. They're all around the same age too actually. I've approached two of the three last week, introducing them to each other and telling them that I've matched them up to be sparring partners. Both were hesitant about the idea of sparring because both have never sparred but I encouraged them, telling them that that's all the more reason why they'd be great together.
Tonight they sparred.
Honestly, there isn't much expectation when it comes to a boxer's first time sparring because it is such a new experience and it's usually clouded with overly hyper nerves. Consequently, usually their hands and feet lack in coordination and they don't really think of what they're doing, the punches their throwing and their defence. It's usually just go-go-go with offence. But tonight's sparring, wow... woozers!!! They were weaving, throwing combos and their feet weren't all over the place. It was as if they had sparred behind our back, without us knowing, and then had stepped into our ring.
I was so impressed. Snickers was so impressed. Everyone was so impressed.
"That was fun", one of them commented as he stepped out of the ring. It was definitely not the comment a week earlier he himself would have ever imagined him saying but low and behold it came out of his mouth today.
After work tonight, Snickers and I headed out for an after hours late night date and our Hulkies, specifically those who sparred tonight, were all we could talk about. We sat there for a little over an hour, bragging about who this fight threw this combo and how that fighter came back with a counter punch.
We felt like the proudest coaches ever.
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