Pre-fight snack:
42 oz. Very Strong Coffee
just one DD Munchkin
30 min. Loud classic rock
1 week's worth of pent-up angst, ready to Explode into a 150-lb. bag (or a person, if I get lucky!)
I am ready!!!
"Good morning, Mr. Dupre, good morning, Dozer..." Don't be misled by the instructor's calm smile and his silent defender Boston terrier pup. This guy's a borderline sadistic insaniac today. Fighters beware.
I hand him my 2 rolled-up hand wraps and ask him to wrap me up again. I think I'm getting it this time, will try it on my own next class: Hook the thumb, then wrap the wrist about twice, then the palm about 5 times, then in and out of the fingers, making a fist each time and opening it again to allow the wrap to slide in nice & tight, make a few X's across the hand, uhh..keep wrapping till I reach the end of it and velcro closed. something like that.
Jump rope warm-up, then grab some dumbells, hold them up to the chin while doing back-and-forth sprints and jogs alternating with other random stuff like push-ups, jab-cross walks, lunges, and his favorite today, the bob-and-weave. One of the dads has his kid daughter along for class, which is cute, but she kinda gets in the way sometimes....
As we put our dumbells away and go fetch our gloves, we notice he's tied a rope about shoulder-height from one end of the room to the other; he warns us not to let it snap our heads off as we glove up. Its purpose- our next exercise, the bob-and-weave. We line up and are given our orders: Jab-cross on the right side of the rope, then bob under it, slug a left hook back over it, and repeat, moving forward, in a single line. Easy enough, I think. But he adds this warning, "don't put your other hand down on the hook or you're ALL doing push-ups!!!"
After reaching the end, instead of a break, we're given orders to do some kind of impossible traveling move back to the end of the line, like jumping jacks or lunges or the bear crawl. I notice the "kid" is right behind me, so I decide to befriend her, ask her how old she is, she's 13, so I tell her I have a daughter I could bring along to class. She responds, with a bit of an air, I notice, that you have to be 13 to attend the adult class. oh, ok. Still, she seems like she might be more fun than most of these serious-minded grown-ups in here, so I start making playful growling noises at her during the bear crawl. I mean, these people are so dead serious, why not lighten up and have fun? I feel like Taylor Swift in the elevator. oh never mind... When we start the next round, Kid informs me that I'm not keeping my other glove up. I guess I don't understand what she's trying to tell me, because I keep doing what I'm doing until I'm caught and called out by Duque, in front of everyone, and for my naughty sin of not keeping my glove up, the whole class has to drop and do a bunch of push-ups!!! Ooops! I call out a meek "sorry" to my sweating comrades on the mat. "Kid" behind me hisses, "I told you so!!!" but before we get into a major cat-fight, Duque jumps in and confronts her on her confronting, "no, just let me do the telling here..." Grrrrrrrr.... My vision's starting to blur here, temper rising... AND THEN...
...she has the NERVE to cut right in front of me in line, as if I'M going too SLOW for her... huh. so that's what I get for letting my guard down. I get friendly with someone and they walk all over me. Story. of. my. life. Am I overreacting here? Reminds me of a question I've been asked to think about these 2 weeks: "How do you react to aggressive people?" or in my case, even strongly assertive people. Do I respond assertively, honest firm but gentle? do I fight back? do I just give in but silently seethe..... hmmm. Good thing I'm too winded from all this bobbing and hooking and jacking and bear-crawling, for my emotions were up in the fight zone there.. Child abuse, you say? naw, just anger management. (JUST KIDDING!! put down the phone, social services has my number if they need it...haha)
We move on to the bags. We do some combos, then just jab-cross on his command, either "2!", we hit twice and stop. "4!!" , we hit 4 times, etc. Another thought comes to me, I Timothy 4:12, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity." uh, really, Lord? Can't you see I'm busy slamming out my anger on this swinging bag of dust? yeah, I used to love that verse in my youth, but now I'm just judging that cocky pipsqueak for not showing me the "love". oh well, get over it.
Duque is really enjoying this "power in numbers" thing. Since the class is much bigger this week, there's more peer pressure to not goof up or else all 20 of us are punished for it. Like with this punching exercise we're doing... he keeps raising the number of consecutive hits, and if he catches one of not giving every single hit their whole 100%, he stops and makes us all drop and do some excruciatingly painful exercise of his choice. I can handle the 4 hits in a row, even 10, but then he goes off the sick end and hollers, "20!" and without giving us a breath, adds to it, "50!!!!! 100%!!! GO!! GO!! GO!!" and he starts moving around the room looking for his next victim to pick on. By then I've spun around to the backside of my bag so I can hide and skip a few punches while I catch my breath, peeking out at the mean ol' drill sergeant every other fake hit. Insane.
(by the way, the Kid by this point has been routinely dropping out of the push-ups, punches, etc., and amusing herself by sitting by the fan, or petting the dog, or whatever. not that I'm keeping score or anything..)
By the time I'm ready to quit and go home, he's telling us to go grab a medicine ball. A 9-pounder. he's got to be kidding. We line up again and do sprint-or-jogs while pressing the medicine ball back and forth, then squats, holding it in front of us for an eternity. He starts at one end of the line and tries to knock the ball out of our hands, and when someone loses their grip on the ball, we all drop for push-ups. Thankfully, we're running out of time and I"m on the far end of the line so he never gets to me. whew! Then it's jumping jacks while lifting the stupid thing, and he's barking at us, and telling us, "I do this out of LOVE, I lie awake and think of new ways to strengthen you..!!" (you mean torture, right? and sure, you can show me the love in the cardiac unit at the hospital, Mr. Dupre, because I am going to die of a heart attack!!) At my other gym, my Body Combat instructor frequently tells us to stop anytime and get water or catch a breath, but not this guy!!! what if someone seriously passed out? I don't remember signing a waiver, I hope nobody gets sued, just sayin...) No mercy.
Post-fight snack:
Powerade and dark chocolate-covered raisins.
(I know, I know, I'm not exactly following this gym's mantra of "eat clean, fight mean", like this acrostic thing they posted online recently...)
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