So you wanna be a boxer

I’ve never been very keen on watching people hitting each other in the face and drawing blood. Boxing isn’t my number one spectator sport*. But it’s become one of my favourite exercises.

I never got worked up about the Rumble in the Jungle and all the hype that went with boxing world title fights. I know George Foreman better as that dear old guy with the lean mean grilling machine. But I’ve always admired Muhammad Ali as an athlete and showman, and enjoyed sharing part of my name with him. In the harder reaches of the London Marathon, it was uplifting to have a gang of young men reading the name on my vest and chorusing:

“Ar-LEE! Ar-LEE! float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!”

For me, the biggest title fight of Ali’s life was in 1996 when he shuffled up to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta. It was painful to see what Parkinson’s had done to this mighty athlete, but inspirational, too.

Rock Steady

How did I come to take up boxing? I wanted to find more activities to encourage neuroplasticity – the brain’s way of finding new networks and delaying disease progression. Boxing, with its big powerful movements, fits the bill nicely.  It challenges balance and co-ordination. With some shouting thrown in, it is a great way of telling Parkinson’s, politely or rudely, to go away.

I discovered the book, I Am Rock Steady – Fighting Back against Parkinson’s Disease, by Julie Young. It begins with the story of Indianapolis attorney Scott Newman, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 40. He became less and less active and more apathetic about his condition.

“I was ready to throw in the towel…  Parkinson’s disease was pummelling me into a shadow of my former self. I had hit the canvas.”

Scott’s friend Vince Perez stepped in and said he would teach Scott some boxing drills.  After a wobbly start, both began to notice improvements. Scott continues:

“An amazing thing was happening … I was getting better: physically stronger, quicker, more flexible, more alert, more confident.”

To share the benefits of their methods with other people with Parkinson’s, Scott and Vince opened a small gym in 2006. Now there are more than 870 locations around the world, attended by 43,000 people with Parkinson’s. The book tells the amazing stories of some of them. There is some powerful before-and-after testimony, some of which resonated with my own experience.

Boxercise

I visited the Rock Steady Boxing website, and it makes inspiring reading, but I discovered that ‘around the world’ means ‘mostly North America’. there are just two gyms in the UK, from which, funnily enough, I am approximately equidistant and a drive of about two hours each way.

I needed something nearer home. So the next step was to talk to Debbie my fitness trainer – you met her in Polyushko Polye.

Debbie ran weekly Boxercise classes in a nearby village hall – an hour of intense punching, kicking and cardiovascular workout. It didn’t matter that I had Parkinson’s. The only thing I had to be wary of was standing up too quickly. I met a fabulous bunch of people, and they didn’t pull their punches!

I’ve written the last paragraph in the past tense because we haven’t been able to do the class since last March. I can’t wait to get back when classes resume. During lockdown I equipped my husband with sparring pads so that I can safely deliver a series of jabs, hooks, uppercuts and kicks. There are online boxing classes, but I can’t do any ‘shadow’ stuff. That satisfying ‘thwack!’ of glove on pad is part of the therapy.

Play > So you wanna be a boxer > Paul Williams > Bugsy Malone original soundtrack

“Can you move in a whirl like a hummingbird’s wing

If you need to?

Can you bob, can you weave

can you fake, and deceive when you need to?”

I’ll give it my best shot.

*(snowboard cross, since you ask).