Hi all,

I just thought I'd share my experience with you. I finally went to a boxing gym last Monday (after a long time of putting it off!) with a mate, it was a little different to expected.

After training in Kung Fu and Muay Thai where you have an instructor telling you what to do, it was very different to go to a boxing gym and basically get ignored by the instructors, although I was expecting this - I have heard that boxing coaches only really coach their fighters that have been going for a long time.

When we arrived we spent the best part of half an hour skipping and eventually plucked up the courage to ask one of the instructors what we should be doing and he was really helpful, he showed us how to stand, shadow box and jab/cross so we spent the remainer of our time there doing this.

There were quite a lot of kids there (teens) with a bit of an attitude problem with a few older people who were more focussed on training. It was quite clicky and we were obviously the new boys, although we're not going there to socialise it did have a bit of an atmosphere. I didn't feel 100% comfortable there, although I guess that just adds to the motivation to train and not let yourself down. We didn't use any of the heavy bags as we obviously don't know how to do, has anyone here been boxing? Should we just dive right in and learn the technique as we go along or what?

The fitness of the other boxers is unbelievable, everybody was covered in sweat. The workouts were pretty tough. Essentially from what the coach was saying, most people there did :

- 4 rounds of skipping
- 4 rounds of shadow boxing in a mirror
- 4 rounds of boxing bags/focus pads
- 4 rounds of pressups/etc. in a circuit they had which was 30 secs of 6 kinds of exercise - burpees, pressups, crunches, rev pressups, etc.
..etc.

It is very hard training but it is something I have wanted to do for a long time so I'm glad I finally did it. I think everyone should try it at least once, however hard I thought I was training before it has showed me that I need to train harder!

Although many people argue boxing is not complete, it's very good training for anyone in terms of fitness, footwork and power and speed of strikes and I'd highly recommend it.

Anyway, I hope this has been useful for someone and if anyone has any ideas for me it'd be great!

Many thanks,

NPMantis