I love it because it is fun. It revs up my heart rate, challenges my balance, tests my agility and demands a very different sort of concentration (than radiology, that is). Probably what most enchants me about boxing is the badass factor. When I wrap my hands and wrists adeptly then don those big red puffy gloves, I become a fighter (if only in my imagination). I feel powerful. I catch myself with the gloves drawn up to protect my face, my lip curled and my eyebrows furled, and my heart swells. The coaches usually bark corrections but sometimes they nod approvingly and add "You'll break the floating ribs with that knee!"
I have never, not once, in my entire life, ever, ever been in a fist fight. In my imagination, however, I have been the victor of many unlikely brawls. Usually the scenario is some sort of attempted abduction where, through my strength and cunning, I escape, leaving my assailants in a bloody pulp. I clearly have a chihuahua complex.
So, it makes absolute sense that boxing would be my kind of sport...at least insomuch as my opponent consists of an overstuffed bag. I am not quite ready to show up at the hospital for work with a missing tooth or a black eye, so I'm holding off on the heavy sparring for now.
Class the other day was particularly exhilarating. I was a bit disappointed to discover that the coach for the class was this baby-faced Asian man with a permasmile. We were in for a Mickey Mouse class, I thought. But, no.... Coach Smiley proceeded to lead us through one of the most exciting series of combinations, topping it off with the move to end all moves: the Superman Elbow.
What's that, you ask? Well, imagine a regular boxing elbow - you know, where you cock your bent arm at shoulder height, like a chicken, and you whip your body around at the waist to plant your forearm squarely and bluntly on your unfortunate target.
Got that? OK, now add flight.
There we were, every one of us, lurching through the air and whipping our elbows around ferociously, our minds percolating euphorically with delusions of superhuman grandeur, the bags swinging wildly. It was so intoxicating that every so often I would lose my rhythm and try to launch myself when the bag was going the wrong way...but even that wasn't enough to kill the moment. Superman elbow, again and again. We never wanted it to end.
When it did, though, Coach Smiles-a-lot had another trick up his sleeve.
He muttered something about not telling the gym, but he was going to let us do Ground and Pound.
OoooOOOOoooooooOOOoooooooOOOOoooooh! We were titillated, brimming with anticipation. What could THAT be? With a slightly devious smile, he instructed us each to grab a black padded shield and enter the boxing ring.
We all kneeled in a circle, the coach in the middle. He mounted the shield. I giggled to myself. He explained how the kneeling position (not unlike that used for a marriage proposal), could be used pin the opponent's limbs and thereby immobilize them (I searched for the parallels with matrimony). He then proceeded to beat the crap out of the bag, throwing blow after blow, punch after punch in a rhythm that, when we did it, induced some sort of violent trance. We punched and punched and punched continuously, losing ourselves in it. The buzzer sounded. We stopped and looked around. Everyone was panting, still mounting their bags in a pose that came too close to exposing the fine line between sex and violence. The buzzer sounded again. The punching resumed, this time the left arm. Blow after blow after blow after blow. Then rest. Panting, wild eyes. Then start again. The practiced quality of the original kneeling posture had given away to something much more animalistic and domineering.
When the buzzer sounded the end of the last orgy of violence, I was kind of shocked that we all stopped on cue and no one had to be pulled off. We must have been exhausted.
That night, I tried to tell Geoff about the Superman Elbow and the Ground and Pound. I even lurched a few times in the kitchen, whipping myself around and planting my forearm squarely against an imaginary target for his benefit, but he just looked at me with half a glance (the other eyeball fixed on the cast iron skillet) and smiled. Not in the way that Coach Smiley smiled. No, Geoff's smile was the absent-minded turn of the lips meant to placate an enthusiastic child. The magic was gone.
(But in my mind, I am still doing the Superman Elbow.)
