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.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Frustrations in the Ring... Sunday, August 10

Fight training has officially started for me and just as the increase intensity in my training was made clear with the extra roughness of sparring today so were Snickers' expectations and training regime.  He wants me running in the morning and weight training and boxing in the afternoon.  Currently I'm doing both weight training and boxing, with an intense treadmill run to kick off my training, but he wants me to go back to running outside -- dealing with the ups and downs of the natural terrain and the heat of the sun.  And he also wants me to do the weight training he's mapped out for me which is a lot different than that which I am currently doing.  He's not quite sure on which weight class he's wants me to fight in but I've always fought below my weight, like 7-9kgs below.  

Today I did a 15 minute run followed by 5 rounds of sparring with Snickers and then another 30 minute run.

Sparring was intense today, perhaps too intense.  I caught myself in the fifth round becoming so increasingly frustrated with the shots I couldn't make and wasn't making.  My frustration turned into anger and then I suddenly threw a mean left hook at Snickers.  It wasn't that it was Snickers, my husband, that I was trying to hurt, he just so happened to be the one at the other end of my glove.  He took my mean left hook though and followed through with a brutal liver shot which pretty much knocked the wind out of me.  I knew I was wrong in letting my feelings get the best of me -- "Never fight with your feelings, fight with your hands and your head", a fellow pro boxer friend used to tell me.  Tonight's round five was definitely fought with feelings.  Twice I caught myself letting them get the best of me so twice I took a mean body shot to the liver.  

Sparring ended and I resumed back to the treadmill for more running.  It was then that Snickers approached me and asked me what was wrong with me.  I started to get all teary-eyed right then and there, on the treadmill as I ran.  "I'm just so frustrated", I told him, and I was just so frustrated.  I've got a lot on my mind and he surely can't even begin to understand the half of it because A he's not a foreigner, B he's not a female and C he's not a foreign female boxer married to a male Korean champion boxer.  Everyone expects the best from him, a win, but no one seems to expect anything from me, well surely not his family and I definitely sense this.  I think perhaps in a way they're glad I lost previous games, perhaps they thought the loss and the injuries would cause me to stop boxing... but it hasn't.  Boxing isn't some phase I'm going through, it's very much a part of who I am like me being proud I'm Polish.  

When he asked me what he could do to help, I told him to train me hard and to not tell his family that I have a fight. They've never come to any of my fights before, even when I had a championship title match, so I'm over wanting them to come.  The plan is to win this fight and use the fight money to fly myself to Canada where I'll celebrate my victory with my family -- my real family.  And I will win this fight, you wait and see.  I'm going to win this fight and, when I do, they're going to see it on TV and realize that I am everything they thought I wasn't and nothing they think I am. 

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