Boxing classes have only got better since I started, three months ago. Bruce the gym owner has been putting people through their paces for many years. He is the proverbial brick outhouse – a foot shorter than me, 15 years older, and ten times as fit. He imparts wisdom to us as we train, and there are signs around the walls to help reinforce the message.
“If you want to box, TRAIN, if you want to win, TRAIN HARDER.”
“Fatigue makes cowards out of men.”
“Victory belongs to the most persevering – Napoleon.” (Not to be confused with HMS Victory, which belonged to Lord Nelson’s Mediterranean Fleet)
Bruce works his pupils hard, but there is a great atmosphere in his gym, and between yelling at us to try harder, he finds plenty of time to talk smack to everyone. One minute he is shouting at us all to “suck it up,” which I think has something to do with breaking through pain barriers, the next minute he is telling the musicians that they have no rhythm and that the English got beaten out of America already, and their latest representative is about to get his ass kicked again.
Bruce has special messages which he bawls to me.
“Loosen up!”
“Git your knees up. Ah don’t want you dying on that mountain.”
“You’re queen is a whore!”
The mountain Bruce is referring to is Mont Blanc, whose lofty peak I plan to summit in early July. The training intensity at Bruce’s KO Boxing is generally in the ‘wild chicken on crack’ zone – fast bursts of high output activity punctuated with short breaks. I’ve always wanted to be more of a chicken on crack person, but apparently mountain climbing isn’t that kind of activity. You wouldn’t expect a chicken to fly for sixteen hours straight for example, not even it had plenty of rocks under its wing. The fact that I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life doesn’t bode well for lugging my ass up 15,771 feet of glacier.
Today, Bruce joined in the training session, and took time to spar with each of us. It was quite amazing to be brutalized by someone who has to move a foot towards you to be able to hit you in the nose. The tables were turned in the wind-sprints outside though. This is a new exercise in which the group has to sprint about 40 yards and then turn around and sprint back. I like this exercise. I can coast alongside Bruce for ten yards or so, insult him, and then accelerate away to the finish line. Fight him on my own territory, if you will.
At the end of today’s session, I was quietly trying to stretch my legs and avoid complaining about the pain in my shins. Bruce comes along, wiggles my ankle a bit and sums up my problem.
“You’re just too god-damned stiff all round.”
I’m typing this with an ice pack on my shin, thinking about how to become less of a chicken on crack, and more of an enduring alpine goat. I climb Mont Blanc in less than two months. I’m sure Bruce’s voice will be ringing in my ears all the way up the glacier – telling me to suck it up.