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I checked out three gyms in my town.
The first one was in a guy's backyard, a steel-frame building with a full-size ring and some bags inside it. The guy was a prick. All but one of the students were kids, and he was SCREAMING at them. "LOSING IS NOT AN OPTION!" "YOU WILL NOT LOSE!" "BIG PUNCHES WIN FIGHTS!" This ******* was reading from the Cobra Kai playbook, I $#!+ you not.
A couple of days later I went to a gym in a neighboring town that billed itself as a Vale Tudo / Savate / Boxing gym. It was very clean, the equipment was shiny, they had digital treadmills, and the athletes inside were in their 20's, white, and looked like frat boys. I didn't stick around. Not my crowd.
The third gym -- and the gym where I decided to train -- was in the closet thing my city has to a war zone. The gym smelled horrible. It smelled like bleu cheese and Lysol, and it still does. The equipment was held together with duct tape and I had to step around a trainer who was sponging up blood from the floor. I learned that they do martial-arts style classes -- 30 minutes of conditioning, 30 minutes of drills and padwork, and 30 minutes of limited sparring, with open sparring afterwards. If you wanted to spar, you had to go through the class. It was a pretty tough crowd, either the "Extreme Athlete" types -- the kind of guys (and girls) who base jump and mountain bike -- or inner-city toughs.
I went through a class, and for the limited sparring I was paired up with a guy named Leon who had diamonds in his teeth and a house arrest anklet. I was terrified, even though I was just working my jab and he wasn't returning punches with any force. 30 minutes he just worked on slipping -- and correcting -- my clumsy, pawing jab and touching me with hooks. I was terrified but I was addicted right away. I enjoy doing things I'm scared of, which I guess makes this a good sport for me.
The first one was in a guy's backyard, a steel-frame building with a full-size ring and some bags inside it. The guy was a prick. All but one of the students were kids, and he was SCREAMING at them. "LOSING IS NOT AN OPTION!" "YOU WILL NOT LOSE!" "BIG PUNCHES WIN FIGHTS!" This ******* was reading from the Cobra Kai playbook, I $#!+ you not.
A couple of days later I went to a gym in a neighboring town that billed itself as a Vale Tudo / Savate / Boxing gym. It was very clean, the equipment was shiny, they had digital treadmills, and the athletes inside were in their 20's, white, and looked like frat boys. I didn't stick around. Not my crowd.
The third gym -- and the gym where I decided to train -- was in the closet thing my city has to a war zone. The gym smelled horrible. It smelled like bleu cheese and Lysol, and it still does. The equipment was held together with duct tape and I had to step around a trainer who was sponging up blood from the floor. I learned that they do martial-arts style classes -- 30 minutes of conditioning, 30 minutes of drills and padwork, and 30 minutes of limited sparring, with open sparring afterwards. If you wanted to spar, you had to go through the class. It was a pretty tough crowd, either the "Extreme Athlete" types -- the kind of guys (and girls) who base jump and mountain bike -- or inner-city toughs.
I went through a class, and for the limited sparring I was paired up with a guy named Leon who had diamonds in his teeth and a house arrest anklet. I was terrified, even though I was just working my jab and he wasn't returning punches with any force. 30 minutes he just worked on slipping -- and correcting -- my clumsy, pawing jab and touching me with hooks. I was terrified but I was addicted right away. I enjoy doing things I'm scared of, which I guess makes this a good sport for me.
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