Another week is relegated to the great record book of history and I didn’t add anything significant to its pages. I had a nasty sore throat that left me speechless and weak, so I didn’t go to the gym all week. Instead, I spent time recuperating and thinking of boxing greatness.
There’s a blog post on Sanctified Brother entitled Get Your Checkup, Brother that discusses men’s aversion to getting their annual exam. I’m not one to shy away from a doctor’s visit because I have nothing to fear: I’m active, healthy, temperate, and eat great. In fact, I look forward to the doctor’s visit because it gives me a chance to reaffirm my convictions on my lifestyle and show the doctors they have it all wrong (my way is superior).
I get to see all the action now since I train with Fearless Fighting at Gleason’s Gym. They have a highlight video of Danny Garcia and Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin getting ready for their biggest fights at Barclays Center. Take a look at the video below.
I took an unusual turn in my training today and worked with a friend of mine, the well-respected, highly-regarded, and very knowledgeable Harry Keitt. Harry used to train Irish John Duddy and currently trains other boxers out of the world-famous Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, NY. Harry works with Ghanian boxer Emmanuel Latrey and was also in the On the Ropes
Boxing is a contact sport—you have to hit because you’ll get hit. That’s inevitable, unless you develop world-class defensive tactics that prevent you from getting hit, like Pernell Whitaker, James Toney, and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. have.
Even then, its advisable that you learn to take a hit. It’s usually the shot you don’t see that’ll knock you out.
I used to accept my fate as a hardgainer: the perpetually thin guy who slaves away mercilessly in the gym without seeing the expected gains in lean muscle mass. The guy who used every piece of equipment, tried every routine, idolized every steroid-gorilla, used every supplement, and believed every training fallacy printed in the glossy soft-core porn “muscle magazines. I trained with weights for years and only saw slight muscle gains, though never enough for anyone to believe I was really serious about packing on muscle.
I never trained abs, and if I did it was only for a few days here and there over the years when I didn’t have a choice. I reasoned that having a 27″ waist and no belly fat as an adult gave me liberty to eschew sit ups and crunches. And ignore those frivolous plastic machines hawked on late night infomercials.
