Happy slapping

IT'S usually the way that if you believe something is going to be really, really bad, it rarely is.

So it proved to be with my return to sparring, some six-odd months since I stepped through the ropes and threw a glove in anger (well, sort of anger).

As predicted, Steve paired me up with my old mate Matt, who seems to have lost none of his aggression, fitness and ability to keep on coming, even when you are bouncing his head around with your fists.

It was an interesting evening. When I went for my first session proper last Thursday, there were a lot of people who hadn't been at the previous gym, and I wondered then who would spar - mainly because I was looking forward to sizing them up and working out if I could fight them or not.

But in the end, it was just myself, Matt, Mikey and John (previously Little John, but now the only John). I'm glad that Steve didn't throw me in with Mike who punches as hard as a horse kicks, but that's not to say I had it easy with Matt. Not at all.

First, I should point out that Matt gives away two-and-a-half stone to me, so I should be able to deal with him easily. However, it shows either how good he is or how bad I am that our contests are nearly always even Stevens. It might sound perverse, but I didn't realise how much I enjoy the warmth of soft stinging around the face that comes from being struck there. It's a life-affirming feeling.

First round was just jabs, of the left-handed variety. This went well for me, I felt. Matt shows quite a lot of the top of his head, which gives me something to hit. I was a bit dismayed that I've lost the ability to launch across-the-ring attacks. I used to be able to cover half the ring in a flash and get a jab in before my opponent had time to react - and that was in a bigger ring. It didn't feel like speed was the issue (although fitness definitely was - more of which later). I just think I've yet to re-discover my distances. No doubt that will come.

Second round was mix-it-up. This turned into great entertainment, not just for ourselves, but for the whole gym. Matt's technique involves crashing through your reach and then working away in close. It put me on the back foot and had me reachingh my chin backwards, a very silly thing to do. However, when someone tries something like this, you have to find a way to fight back, otherwise they'll keep doing it, keep racking up the points, and they will beat you. I planted my back foot and fought back.

What followed was a flurry of blows, some good, some not so. I remember getting off three good hooks to his head, just before he landed a wind-taking jab to my midriff. The intensity started steadily rising as we both went for it, until a "Stop! Stop!" came from Steve. He said we were slapping. This means we were not turning in our fists, hitting with the base of the hand rather than the knuckles.

I thought it was fair comment. Matt's reaction was, "I like a bit of slapping every once in a while". But as I looked up, I ould see everyone, but everyone, in the gym had stopped and were watching us, some with grins, thinking something was kicking off, and others in amazement.

To be honest, Matt and I have had more bruising encounters. He said as much after we left the ring a couple of rounds later, commenting on our spectators, "They've never seen us fight before, have they?" One thing I was particularly pleased with is that I managed to duck and weave out of a few of his shots (although I managed to misjudge one and get a smack straight in the chops for it!).

Sitting here the following morning, feeling the exhaustion that came from not only sparring, but the intensive fitness training that Steve and Darren had us doing afterward, I can say that I really, really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Although I think my performance was flabby when taken as a whole, there were sharp little bits to take heart from, flashes to build upon.

I definitely felt it in the final round. This is not unusual, but it remains worrying. Matt could have been all over me in the final minute. If that was a closely fought contest, I imagine that would count against me. I knew fitness was going to be an issue, but I believed I had slipped further down than I have. That's not to say that all is dandy, but it is encouraging and, again, gives me a base to build from. Oh, and I've lost half a stone in a week - well pleasing.

I'm having the day of today. I was supposed to be going to lunch with someone but they cried off. And even though I'm knackered and my body deserves a well-earned rest, I feel a little bit cheated really. Oh well.

Read all about it

HERE'S a copy of the feature I wrote for a magazine I edit, called Welsh Business. We publish it on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce in Cardiff.

Hanging Tough

Steve Robinson took on and beat all comers to become a boxing world champion. Since then, he has built a business training others. Now he faces his latest challenge - running his own gym

CALL it an art, call it the sweet science - you can even call it the game. But don't call it a game.

Think about it - you play football, rugby, cricket or golf, but you most definitely do not "play" boxing.

A century before sports science became the way for players to train, boxers would be on regimented training programmes, their food carefully chosen and their intakes closely monitored. It is the only way to succeed.

Steve Robinson - better known to his friends as "Robbo" - quite clearly still trains like a boxer. Some five years since he officially retired from the ring, he looks like he could still step back through the ropes and dish it up just like he did in the early to mid 1990s when he was on his way to - and won, and retained - the title of world featherweight champion.

Since retiring, he has become heavily involved in training. Here in Wales, he played a pivotal role in the introduction of White Collar Boxing, a pursuit that arrived from the US around five years ago.

It is what it is called - lawyers, accountants and other professionals undertake rigorous training regimes before strapping on the gloves and going toe-to-toe in four-round bouts that are as authentic as anything you'll see in boxing, particularly at amateur level. It should be pointed out that just as most amateurs will never turn pro, their level is a step up from White Collar Boxing.

But it's real taste of boxing and expert conditioning has won it many converts. Working out of other gyms across Cardiff, Steve yearned for a place of his own.

At the start of this year, he got his wish. Having teamed up with fitness trainer Mike Parsons, a former Glamorgan Wanderers and Caerphilly rugby player, the two men opened Fitness Factory Cymru, a state-ofthe-art boxing and fitness facility on Dumballs Road in the Bay.

Even though it only opened on January 8, it already has around 50 members, as well as 12 members of the Fight Club, the gym's White Collar Boxing class.

Steve's also setting his sights on something higher. "I want to train pros here. It's been my dream to train someone all the way up to world champion. I think it's possible. I'll be looking to take amateurs - I have contacts on boxing boards who can tell me who the good ones coming through are. I'd like a stable of fighters - boxers I can bring on and make as good as they can be. Help them realise their dreams."

It is not beyond the realm of possibility, either. Operating out of an unpreposing former rugby club in Newbridge, Enzo Calzaghe has managed to fashion a roll call of champions, not least his son Joe, who successfully defended his title for the 20th time against Peter Manfredo in Cardiff recently.

Like Joe, Steve belongs to an elite club of Welsh fighters who went all the way to the top. He did it against the odds in April1993, having only two days' notice to prepare to fight John Davidson for the featherweight title after Ruben Palcios, the champion that the Englishman was supposed to fight, failed an HIV test in the week of the contest.

Robinson fought with a dogged determination and won on points. He went on to make a further seven successful defences of his crown, until he was stopped by an ascendent Prince Naseem
Hamed in September 1995. He remained a force in boxing, however, going on to take the European featherweight title and challenge once again (although unsuccessfully) for world honours.

These days, his passion lies in training others. "With White Collar Boxing, people can get a buzz from fighting. They can get rid of all the stress that builds up in their day jobs. They can forget about everything. They can go into the ring and just focus on what's going on there. There is a lot of fun in it, too."

Steve has changed the way he has organised White Collar Boxing classes before. "This is much more set up like a boxing gym," he says. "There's more ring work, more sparring." The group is effectively split in two, with Steve supervising the sparring, and ex-boxer Darren Wilson taking the remainder of the group on the bags.

Along with brand-new equipment throughout the gym, members can also take advantage of specially-tailored training regimes, which will tell you what to eat and when to train, offered as
standard to all those that join up.

But you don't need to have ring aspirations to become a member at Fitness Factory Cymru, as the gym is also set up for more general purpose training.

Mike said, "This place isn't just for boxers, and we already have plenty of people coming here who don't want to do boxing. We are offering individual training, set up to suit the user. There's no point training if you don't enjoy it. It is for you, after all."

"I'd like the gym to grow - not too big, but big enough," says Steve. "I see there are
lots of things we can do here. I think we are set up to bring in new ideas. We are only really getting started here now."

- Basic membership at Fitness Factory Cymru costs £25 for the first two months, rising to £35 a month after that.
- Fight Club membership is £60 a month. There are two sessions a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 6-7.30pm. There are also boxfit classes on Wednesday evenings, from 6.15-
7.15pm. Fight Club members can use the facilities at any time.
- One-to-one sessions cost £30 an hour, and one-to-two cost £40 an hour.
- Fitness Factory Cymru opens from 7am-9pm on weekdays, 9am-2pm on
Saturdays, and 9am-1pm on Sundays.

Call (029) 2049 8200 for more details.

Training, Steve style

LORD O Lordy, it's hard to remember a time I felt this pole-axed. In fact, I'm not sure I ever have.

My legs are in absolute agony, and I'm hoping that the two tonnes of protein I took on after my first real training session at the Fight Club will sort them out by the morning. Tonight was also my first introduction to Robbo's new number two, Darren, who I'm beginning to suspect may be a closet sadist. In a nice sort of way, of course. Ahem.

A long, long warm-up kicked off proceedings tonight, perhaps 20 minutes or so. This was followed by a trip round the bags, a minute at a time, plus two skipping stations. Straightforward? Not when, in your minute rest in between, you have to do 12 burpees. Everybody has an exercise they hate. Until Tuesday, I thought it was press-ups. Now I know it's burpees. As well as the bags, Steve had a pad in the ring and Darren was on hand pads outside, and they motivated us to exhaustion in their own ways. That made it 12 stations in all.

Another session on all the bags and the rest came next, with 30 seconds on each punctuated with 20 sit-ups. I was on home territory here, until the final set, when I struggled around the 15 mark. Still, plenty to be pleased about.

Then we did all kinds of jumping from different positions. This pretty much killed us all off. When we were stretching at the end, I started to see black and dots around the edge of my vision.

But that makes it sound like it was a bad experience, when it was nothing of the sort. It was great to see some of my old mates from the other gym there, like Mike, Little John and Brandon, who reckoned afterwards that it had been the hardest session they'd had so far at the new Fight Club.

I was pretty pleased because I managed to do everything, and I was no more or no less tired than everyone else. It's an elusive business, this fitness lark. Since I've been back, I've found myself excelling at the sort of things I used to do badly, and struggling in what were once my areas of strength. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. But then, as my brother once said, it's wrong to look on the human body as a machine, one that responds to an oil change or a fresh tank of petrol. The best you can hope is that you follow all the rules, that you eat what's good for you (which is protein, in my case - I can feel the shake and the prawns I had afterwards at work repairing my aching leg muscles already), rest when you should, don't overcook it, but do enough to make sure you lose weight (in my case) and get fitter.

Next Tuesday presents an interesting conundrum for me. I haven't sparred for at least six months. Steve suggested afterwards that he put me in with Matt, if he's there. This is good and bad. Matt won't bang the shit out of me. This is a weight thing. If I fought guys my weight I'd be in real trouble, but Matt must ship at least three stone to me. However, as you probably know if you read my last blog, I've had a number of classic encounters with him, enough to know that he's like the Terminator: he never gives up and he can keep going long after I run out of steam.

So the question is whether I sit out sparring for a couple of weeks until I feel fitter, or whether I jump straight in with both feet. At the moment, I'm tending towards the latter. We do this because we want to fight. There's a unique and irreplaceable buzz at the heart of boxing that makes all the hours of training worthwhile, and it happens in the ring.

Your observations, opinions and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Brilliant bags

A GOOD gym really does make all the difference.

Here's what I did on my latest visit:
- 15 minutes cross trainer
- 15 minutes treadmill
- eight two-minute rounds on the bags
- 15 minutes on the rowing machine.

OK, not so much as I used to do, but a fat, out-of-shape bloke like me can be pretty pleased with such a start, especially after killing myself on the rower not 24 hours earlier.

The bags at the new gym are fantastic. They come in all shapes and sizes, but what is so great about them is their quality. All of them are made from tough leather and they are rock hard with it. With the acoustics in the gym (a converted industrial unit), they conspire to deliver an enormous "SMACK!" every time you hit one of them. It really is truly satisfying.

Less satisfying is my lack of puff. It takes about four bags to knacker me at the moment when, at my peak, I could manage 18. This does not bode well for sparring, where any savvy opponent would suss my lack of fitness and exploit it. To that end, I might leave it a week or so before I climb back through the ropes. Then again, trial by fire, in at the deep end, call it what you will, is usually instructive, and probably worth a go.

Some good, some bad

IT FEELS like a return from the wilderness.

When you box, at any level, it has a habit of taking over your life. You obsess about how much you eat and what you eat. You wonder if you'll lose all your friends because you keep giving the pub a swerve. You fear that you'll lose your wife because you keep going to bed at 10, just when she's getting warmed up on the sauvignon blanc. You beat yourself up if you miss a day or - worse - a session in the gym. Yup, it plays with your mind. Big time.

But then, if you stop, what is your life without boxing? OK, so there may have been a bit of mental torture involved, but then there were the plusses. I'm the kind of person that needs lots of anger management. Can you think of a better way to keep the temper in check (particularly when there are so many tossers in the world) than walloping a set of bags three or more times a week?

You don't drink, so no hangovers. You go to bed early, because your body demands it, but your mind is fresh (that's a weird experience for the modern office worker - having a body that needs more rest than the mind). It leaves you fresh for work, and fresh for concentrating on your family, jobs around the house, days out. That means that you can get up with the kids, take them and the dog out, then return and make your wife breakfast in bed after she's had a lie-in. In other words - maximum brownie points.

You smile more, you appreciate the world around you more. And, once a week, you climb through the ropes and face the ultimate challenge. Just you, the other bloke, and nowhere to hide. You need the mentality, but if you've ever been excited by boxing, the chances are that you have it already.

I have gone back to boxing, after at least six months in the wilderness. I've followed my old trainer, Steve Robinson (a former world champion) to his new gym in Cardiff, called Fitness Factory Cymru, which he is running with his mate, Mike Parsons, a talented rugby player in his own right.

I say I've gone back. That, in Duncan terms, means I've spent a morning there banging bags, and I've now done my fitness test. As the title says, it's been a tale of some good, some bad. Good - I didn't feel anywhere near as unfocussed as I thought I would on the bags, and I also did alright to quite good on my fitness tests. Bad - I tired easily, ached afterwards and six months of smoking and living the corporate lifestyle has taken it's toll. Time to live like a monk.

- If you've chanced across this, I should explain the title. I used to work for a newspaper and also wrote a blog called Boxing Aches. I've since moved on and, seeing as I'm at a new gym and pretty much in a new life, a new boxing blog was called for. I hope you like.