Session 4 – Monday Jan 18th

I might not be very smart but I can conclude with absolute certainty that deciding to do hill sprints and stair climbs out the back of my place at Kent Ridge on Sunday was a massive error in judgement. To quote Ron Burgundy “I immediately regret my decision”………..well maybe not immediately, but by the time I rolled into the Havelock Rd gym Monday night I was most definitely regretting it as my body was barking at me (and not one of those little dog barks either, but one of those big F^&K Off dog barks).

Monday’s session was pretty similar to Week 1 with one exception……….weigh ins. This seemed pretty formal with Andy yelling something as you walked into the gym and gesturing towards the scales. I would tell you what he said but I’m not sure what language he speaks, and I definitely don’t understand it. The boxers (use this term loosely) would tell Andy their weight in Kg’s to 1 decimal place and he would record it on a laptop………..all very professional. Somehow Alexis took over with a scrap of paper and a pen and from what I could tell just started rounding the numbers up or down……..you were either 80kg, 90kg or 100kg and nowhere in between (in reality he was just rounding up and down to 1kg). This numerical approach is best evidenced when someone asks Alexis his weight and he replies “90+kg’s” (real weight 99kg)………if that’s allowed, then ladies I am 30+ years old in case you were wondering. I am going to make a lot of fun of Alexis throughout these posts (and rightly so), but in all seriousness he is a great trainer and a better bloke……….plus he has a fantastic comeback when you take the piss out of him………… “We can always get in the ring if you want?”……….90+ it is then.

After the excitement of weigh in we moved through our standard warmups, some functional movement drills, rotating cones (for those potheads this isn’t as much fun as it sounds). We moved into some jab and parry work (which is where you pair off and face of with one partner throwing a left jab which the other parries (slaps the jabbing hand away whilst maintaining guard of the chin with the right hand………….for those baseball fans it’s kind of like A-Rod in the 2004 play offs…….only like a man) then fires back a jab of his own which is parried in return, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately I was born with “little girl hands” (Ladies there is no correlation here between hand size and…….………hangs head, stops typing) and constantly getting your hand firmly slapped hurts………..that really reads much worse when you write it down than it sounded in my head. I resorted to putting one boxing glove on my jabbing hand to reduce the pain and resembled that boxer dude (Art Jimmerson) from UFC 1 who entered the Octagon wearing one boxing glove………….needless to say it didn’t end well for Art……….hopefully this is not an omen. 

We also got some heavy bag work in the form of the 10second punchout drill. Basically you pair up and one person holds the bag for 10 seconds whilst the other person pounds it for 10 seconds then swap and continue repeating for 2 minutes (the length of a WCB round). This is very much like the plank in that it sounds really easy but it’s not, and it messes with time in your mind. 2 minutes on the bag seems so much longer than 2 minutes in bed and it’s really difficult to keep going, especially when in both cases you have someone screaming out “come on, keep going……faster” at you……….(don’t forget to delete………this makes you sound really bad in bed)

Monday finished with the same circuit and planks, nothing interesting to report other than it seems like everyone in the group is pretty cool except for that p^%$& Burpees……..nobody likes him.

Session 5 – Wednesday Jan 20th

Wednesday’s session was very similar to Monday’s except I felt tired and sore………hang on, that’s exactly how I felt Monday……………….. As these updates might get a bit same / samey in terms of exercises etc. I won’t go into detail in every post………plus I “skunked”** out of training early and don’t really know what happened in the second half. Therefore in conjunction with a rundown of the weeks training activities I am going to become a bit (more) self indulgent and introduce 3 new segments:

• The Sharing of Feelings (Pleasing)
• The Airing of Grievances (Displeasing)
• The Naming of Names (Very Displeasing)

 

Please note as a general rule I much prefer to concentrate on the negatives (it’s kinda my thing) so expect a lot of “Airing of Grievances” and some isolated positive “Sharing of Feelings” where warranted. Due to the fact that I rarely have much positive to say, I am going to take this opportunity to say it before people stop reading or Vanda cancels my self indulgent outpourings. In order to try and avoid the latter please read on for the inaugural “Sharing of Feelings”

Sharing of Feelings

When people find out you are boxing or training at a boxing gym they invariably ask how you got into it and if you have ever done it before. I made it a point to not do a “Who am I and how did I get here?” entry because I think they are self serving and wanky, but without further ado sit back and enjoy my “Who am I and how did I get here?” Actually we can forget the “who am I?” bit because that’s not really important…………..for better or worse I’m not much different to a lot of other expats who have been in Sing for a few years (although anyone reading prior entries would know I’m 40………I mean um 30+, bald, can’t wrap my hands and am looking for hot women and midget friends). The most important piece is the “how did I get here?” (And by here I am referring to the Vanda WCB program). If the following reads as a massive plug for Vanda then so be it……..but I really do have a lot of good things to say about Vanda and its staff and the training in general.

Early last year I ruptured my calf (jogging in the warm ups no less) of a football game. I went down like I was shot and by all accounts made a lot of little girl crying noises and rolled and writhed around in a manner that I am told was unbecoming. Long story short I was overweight, out of shape and now injured and facing 3 months without being able to run. I wandered into Vanda at Turf city with no prior boxing experience having ballooned to 100+kg’s. I asked if I could join up for the fitness classes because it was the only sport / exercise that I could do at the time whilst not being able to run (at least I could stand and punch).

Fast forward a few months and I am weighing in at a lean 80kg’s and I am well and truly addicted to the training. For anyone who has ever thought about getting fit / back into shape or getting into boxing come down to Vanda. The training is a great workout, lots of good people plus it’s insanely addictive and fun. Alexis, Michelle and all the trainers are awesome and do a great job of teaching and making sure that workouts are tailored for all fitness level. A big thank you guys for all your help…………note to self: remember to ask Ian for free stuff in return for plugging Vanda.

The Airing of Grievances

A couple of weeks back I nipped into the Havelock Rd gym on the way home from work. Having done all of my fitness sessions at Turf City (no showers) I wasn’t used to bringing a towel to training. Anyways, I needed to duck into Vivo city after training so I jumped in the shower and came out dripping wet to the realisation that I had nothing to dry myself with. Surprisingly plastic shower curtains are not a good substitute for a towel. Luckily enough I spied a nice red towel hanging on the pipe beside the urinals……….someone must have left this behind I thought so I snatched it and quickly dried myself off and hung it over the shower railing and “skunked” off. My heart sinks when I walk into the toilets of those change rooms now as that same towel is hung over the urinals EVERY time…………….I am not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure I dried myself with a urine towel……….Genuinely not good times! (For any available women please ignore that last paragraph……..and also any midgets that are easily offput).

Naming of Names (in alphabetical order):

• Hyatt Hotel

 

For NOT offering a non alcoholic discount for their Friday Poolside BBQ buffet………….how hard is it to look after the temple?……..pretty f$%%^^g hard! $8 bottles of water last Friday night and now I have to pay the same price for the buffet as my friends even though they consumed an average of 27 frozen margaritas each (Kenno may even have gone close to a well made 50)…………..and if I wanted a sparkling mineral water I had to pay extra!!!!! In a desperate attempt to get value for money I attempted to eat my own bodyweight in meat (this is a lot easier at 80kg than it is at 100kg…….that last 20kg of meat is a killer). Sadly my attempt ended in the same way as all the others, severe meat sweats followed by a lapsing into a protein coma…….defeated.

** “Skunked” – “Skunking” / “To Skunk”

• To leave early without valid reason
• To avoid
• To slip away

 

At the risk of plagarising Homer J Simpson “Skunking is what separates us from the animals…….well except for the skunk”

Session 6 – Saturday Jan 23rd

Starting off with the breakfast of champions, stale wholemeal bread and peanut butter plus half a can of Redbull (I’m not certain what Manny Pacquiao has for breakfast in training camp but I am pretty sure it’s not this) I dragged myself in the Turf City gym around 8.20am. Going up the escalator with the ‘way too cheerful for 8.20am CEO Ian’, I decided to put my 5c in about 8.30am being WAY WAY too early to train. Ian happily replied that “all the White Collar boys say that at the start but they get used to it by the end”. I didn’t want to break it to him but I have been working for 15+ years and I haven’t got used to getting up early yet……….

Sensing I wasn’t at my best I skunked to the back of the group and used the ring to hide me and my pitiful attempts at Burpees / Pushups / Crunches interspersed with skipping and meat sweats………yes it really was that bad. Things picked up a little when the group split into 2 and our group did 3 rounds of footwork inside the ring which progressed to include punching and fast changes of direction. The ‘still far too cheerful for this hour of the morning Ian’ was barking something along the lines of “if you don’t have careers as boxers then maybe you might have careers as Line Dancers”. Now I don’t know exactly what Line Dancing is, but based on what I was seeing in our group I doubt that could possibly be true.  

Our group then rotated down to the “Power Circuit” which is basically a circuit of exercises that include dumbbells and body weight exercises designed to increase power and it includes my favourite medicine ball slam (note this is not the same exercise that where I put the medicine ball through the wall, although I did note that there was a poster in place of the medicine ball shaped hole in the wall). Each person is allocated a “station” and completes that exercise for a set period of time before moving to the next until you have completed the entire circuit. Now you really can get unlucky during these circuits; we have already covered Alexis and his inability to “keep time”. Not wanting to harp on this (he is a cop after all so we wouldn’t want to upset him), but sometimes Alexis gets “distracted” and forgets to yell “change”. This becomes apparent when you realise you have just completed 70+ push ups……..and that seems a lot in 20 seconds. The moral of the story is you don’t want to be stuck on the burpees when he gets distracted.

We then moved on to 3 rounds of Punch Out only doing it whilst running on the spot. This is another that is way, way worse than it sounds and much harder than doing it stationary. Funnily enough it all seemingly goes one way………things are only harder than they sound here, there is nothing we do that is easier than it sounds.

We finished up with our friend ‘The Plank’ (3x1min………or thereabouts……..who the hell knows with Alexis on the stopwatch) and that was the end of the official session. I stayed back to do a Leg Matrix (which is just a wanky way of saying leg exercises), which unfortunately would come back to haunt both me and my bum on Sunday.

Week 3 is where the intensity is turned up so stay tuned for lots more whingeing and whining next week (imagine what these reports are going to be like when they actually let people start hitting me in the face!).

Things We’ve Learned – Week 2

• No good can come from having “little girl hands”………except if you are in fact a little girl
• The combination of stale bread, peanut butter, redbull, and 5 hrs sleep apparently cannot overcome post traumatic meat sweat disorder
• Sparkling mineral is more expensive than either beer, wine or frozen margaritas
• I can’t Line Dance……….either as an amateur or professionally
• 30+ is the new 40
• Nothing good can come from a urine towel…………Ever!
• Whilst plastic shower curtains are not a good substitute for a normal towel they are generally accepted as a superior option to the urine towel