As I mentioned in a previous essay, I have always loved boxing as a spectator and participant. I boxed Boys Club as a well-under-50 pound 3rd grader in New Britain, Connecticut. A few years later, I exchanged skin with a neighborhood bully who later went to prison on a felony battery/attempted murder beef. Thereafter and for several years, I managed to preserve my ass, avoiding the scrapping life save a for a few tense moments here and there. It wasn't until I moved to San Diego for graduate school that I turned my interest in the then resurgent pro-boxing scene (thanks to Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler, among others) into a fitness pastime and joined Irish Spuds Murphy's Gym in downtown San Diego.
As I also mentioned in the previous blog, the professional boxing gym in the mid 1980's was anything but a mainstream fitness outlet. Murphy's joint, like most gyms, was dark, dirty, beaten-in, and uninviting. However, as professional boxing grew in the 1980s, the boxer-styled training gained traction as a way for workaday folks to get fit and meet other personal challenges. The market rose to meet the interest in "white collar" boxing, "boxercising," and other versions of the same. In addition to pro-gyms opening their culture to a different type of trainee, new gyms sprung up specifically catering to boxing fitness, teaching, training, and classes.
For me now, a self-styled "gnarly old guy," the best of these new gyms present as authentic boxing gyms offering both competition training and fitness classes. Arcaro Boxing fits this category perfectly and because of the eponymous Coach, is an exceptional place to train.
Coach Tricia Arcaro and I share a background and network of friends in rugby. As a rugby player. Trish competed at the highest level, garnering five "caps" or starts for the USA Eagles in the highest level of international competition.
After rugby, Trish boxed in the amateur ranks between 2002 and 2005. She went pro in 2005, accumulating an 8-4 record before taking off the gloves and opening Arcaro Boxing in 2013. She's as serious and invested as they come, working a stable of amateur fighters, constantly studying video, and now immersing herself in the study of movement and performance development. At the same time, she's an utterly beautiful human being having created a fight gym with a culture of inclusion and support.
I looked at other gyms in Seattle while I was really looking for Arcaro Boxing the whole time. They are all good places to train. But they didn't have Trish. And while the space can fill, Trish, like any good boxing coach, understands the angles and the classes work perfectly. And most importantly to me, the gym has ample open gym time for the self-trained athletes and Gnarly Old Guys alike. So after hearing from my doc that my blood chemistry was a mess and I needed to lose some weight and focus on conditioning, I started training at Arcaro Boxing in July 2016.
Progress was difficult. I had hit my PR powerlifts in May at a ginormous 236 pounds. I was big for me when I played rugby at 228. 236 changed how I moved, slept, and ached. So getting back into rhythm on a jump rope, getting my feet moving, and opening my hips was a tortuous chore. I worked the modalities, added mobility work, rolled my body like raw pie crust, and visited the Russian spa as frequently as I could afford.
By late summer I began to get a little movement back, and set about the process of dropping weight. My round-count was growing and I was so enthusiastic about the experience, I made a motivational edit which I posted on YouTube. You'll love it I'm sure.
