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.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Suns Out, Guns Out... Saturday, September 16

A big perk for me with coaching the Empowered boot camps is I get to test drive some ideas, try out new exercises, and play around with creating a kind of boot camp template for me to continually tweek.   In Round One of my boot camps I realized quickly that the ladies really liked the boxing session I coached them through in the second week of the four week camp.  

TWEEK:  Make every second week a boxing boot camp.

This week it was a spin-off of traditional boxing; I've called BoxHIIT.  Because the boot camps are hosted outside at Ayala Triangle, I'm not able to incorporate heavy bags into the workout.  And though yes, perhaps they could hit the tree if they really wanted to, the gloves and all the equipment used in the workout are mine.  I pack it in my bag and carry it to Ayala.  The equipment is mine and I use it also for my own personal training so I can't afford to have them damaged, for various reasons. Damaged gloves could possibly cause me to injure my own hands, a risk I really can't physically and financially afford.  

I've created two boxing workout types: BoxHIIT and Boxercise.

EMPOWERED BOOTCAMP
Wk1   Fullbody Boot Camp
Wk2   BoxHIIT
Wk3   Fullbody Boot Camp
Wk4   Boxercise

BoxHIIT
Incorporates boxing punches and combos with HIIT (high intensity interval training) but what adds extra intensity to the workout is the fact that the participants are holding hand weights.

Example:  Round One =  40 seconds of jabs, 20 seconds shadow skipping... x3 (= 3 minute round)

Boxercise
Participants are paired up in partners.  One partner wears gloves, the other wears mitts.  The coach calls out the punches and those with the gloves on have to respond with hitting the mitts.  You can either play around with counting down the punches, calling out simple combos, and incorporating defensive moves like weaving and slipping.  After X number of rounds, the participants switch roles. If I had enough gloves, I'd put everyone in gloves and have them simply use the paw of the glove as a mitt. 

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