Welcome to the Gym

heat, home, & hesitation

This time of year always gets me thinking about home. I’m from Florida, land of heat and light, and struggle with the dark and the cold. I live in the Hudson Valley now and as far as I’m concerned there is no legit sunshine in New York until April or May. When the sun is out it feels weak and pale. I need Florida sun. The kind that makes you sweat.

I’m back to training hard and the last couple of weeks have felt like swimming upstream. I had tough rounds at an open sparring event in Springfield a few weekends ago—so many moments where my mind knew what to do but my reflexes just weren’t fast enough. And then I got dropped by a punch for the first time in a long time this past week. I was fine. I hopped right back up. The only bruise was to the ego, that most tender of organs. It was less the punch and more getting caught a little off-balance. So: a learning moment. Most people think punches are powered by the upper body, by how hard you can swing your arms, but really everything comes from the ground up. The legs, the feet: that’s your power source, one of your first and best lines of defense, and your foundation. When I first started boxing I spent hours walking forward and back, left and right, before I even put on gloves.

I’d imagined emerging from my fight this fall with a stable reservoir of strength and confidence. The last couple of weeks have reminded me that courage and grit are, in fact, qualities I have to recommit to every single goddamn day. Who knew! I did a ton of outside sparring in the months before my fight, but a short break seemed to wipe all those rounds away. The nerves were back. The Springfield gym was big and busy—two rings were going, with an official overseeing the action. Our names and weights were entered in a spreadsheet when we got there and then the matches were put up on a projector screen. I felt that familiar tightness in my stomach as I wrapped my hands and stretched, always keeping one eye on that screen. I tried to stay rooted in the three things I know for sure—the act of getting in the ring is always a win; trust the process; the only way to get better at fighting is to fight—but I was definitely a little jangly and scattered.

The more I progress the harder the work will get. I know this and yet because boxing has become a home for me these inevitable periods of struggle can leave me feeling a little dislodged. Do I really belong here? But I should know better. I really should. Because each time I begin a new book it is a kind of starting over. What I needed to learn to write the last book won’t be of much use. I have some experience behind me, which is helpful mainly for the inner voice that says you have been here before, but otherwise each project has its own weather and its own demands.

I was on the road a lot in the late fall and often missing home. For this reason, I try to visit gyms when I’m traveling. Nearly every boxing workout will include jumping rope and shadowboxing and these rhythms have an anchoring effect, a familiar pattern in an unfamiliar place. This was how I ended up at the 5^th Street Gym in Miami, on a clear blue morning in November. I was in town for the Miami Book Fair and I’ve always wanted to visit the 5^th Street Gym, which is a legend in the boxing world. They’ve been around since the 50s, in a few different locations in Miami Beach. The original version was overseen by the Dundee brothers; Muhammad Ali trained there. The gym is a square concrete block situated halfway down a skinny alley, like a cave that’s been carved out of the side of a building. I found a coach and asked if I could take the morning session that was on the schedule.

“Welcome to the gym,” the coach.

5th St Gym in Miami

Sure enough we did a few rounds on the ropes before we moved onto shadowboxing. We did a bunch of rounds on the bags, with sprint intervals during the breaks. It was a good sweat. I got to feel some of that Florida heat.

Two guys were sparring in the ring while the class was going on. One was clearly experienced, the other a beginner. You can tell how experienced a boxer is by their footwork—their movements should be smooth, with a solid stance—and by their level of relaxation. They carry no tension in the body until it’s time to snap a punch. Beginners, on the other hand, are usually rigid with nerves, which can make their movements lurching and overdetermined. The tension also causes you to fatigue much faster. The experienced fighter was fresh enough to do push-ups between rounds while the beginner looked like he needed oxygen. Still, the seasoned fighter was working with the novice, throwing one punch at a time and not five. Clipping him, so he’s aware of his defensive liabilities, but not doing damage. Giving him advice between rounds.

Welcome to the gym.

If you are here to learn we will teach you.

The last time I lived in Florida I found a second family when I started training at a gym in Oviedo. I had boxed some before then, mostly for fitness, but this was the place that taught me how to box for real. I thought I knew a few things when I started there but soon discovered that I actually knew nothing and would need to learn everything over again. My stance, my guard, how I threw my jab. I don’t know that I would have ever signed up to compete without Coach D guiding me down that path. This is a small family-run gym, filled day and night with fighters of all ages and levels, and they made it seem possible somehow. Like I really could belong in the ring. I was the lucky beneficiary of a lot of unofficial coaching too, from teammates who had been boxing for years—who had seen and knew so much.

At my first ever open sparring in Florida (I was so nervous!)

Last year, I moved to New York and it was hard to imagine ever finding another place to train that could feel like home. Still, I looked up all the USA Boxing registered clubs, made a list of the places within an hour’s drive, and ended up landing at a great, tough spot in the Berkshires. Every coach runs their program differently and it took me a bit to adjust to the new routines, but those familiar anchors were always there: jumping rope, shadowboxing, gearing up for sparring. I will always remember this year as the point at which New York started to really feel like home, as opposed to a place I had recently moved to, and a big part of that evolution was finding the right gym. The process of training for a fight and having these coaches in my corner really left me feeling like yes, this is my place. I’m also now much more connected to the New York / New England boxing community. A couple of months before I fought my coach put me in touch with a few different boxers to help with sparring. A pro in Boston. A coach at UMass. They took the time to put in rounds with me and also were a gateway to more sparring partners. It was like sending out a bat signal: all of a sudden I was in touch with all these women who had fights coming up and were looking for work. The coach at UMass connected me with a gym in Connecticut with several women on their competition team. I went over there a few times for sparring and came out a little stronger each time. At that gym in Connecticut I met a coach who runs a gym in White Plains, and went down there for sparring too.

Sometimes I wonder what it would mean for the literary world to be more like this, if we were all a little more free with our knowledge and connections. If we held the door open a little wider.

At the end of the year I always make two lists: what I want to carry with me into the next year and what I want to leave behind. Home is one thing I want to carry forward. At this point in my life, home exists in multiple places, which feels like a lucky thing. Hesitation is something I want to leave behind. That’s what kept getting me in trouble during those tough sparring rounds in Springfield—I kept hesitating. That’s why my counters were coming out slow. Not because I can’t attack faster but because I didn’t fully believe.

Home, meanwhile, is the opposite of hesitation, of disbelief. Home can be complicated and shape-shifting thing to be sure but it also implies a decision to be here. A commitment to standing in a particular place. Or with particular people.

I got more at home in the ring this year. I made a decision to spend a lot of time there when I could have been any number of places. I have a long ways to go and I want to see what becomes possible if I commit more and hesitate less. This doesn’t just apply to boxing. I’m also about to reenter a novel after a long pause, and while there are some things I will need to think through a time will come when hesitation is deadly, when I must commit fully to my choices. Make a clear decision about where it is I’m going to stand.

Welcome to the gym. If you are ready the book will teach you.

I don’t always like the lessons but I’ve never regretted learning them.