Inside the game

A sportswriter friend of mine invited me to try out boxing as a new sport.

She included this warning, though: It’s going to be tough. My body’s going to ache for days, so much that I won’t be able to raise my hand, yawn, laugh, twist my midsection, turn my head, scratch my back, do the split, perform cartwheels, breakdance and do back-flips at the edge of the top floor of high-rise buildings for a couple of weeks.

“You’d have to be crazy to try it,” she said.

Not the most inviting of propositions—one that made me want to ask her if she was really asking me to join or not—but heck, I said yes.

I mean, why the hell not? Aside from the fact that I’ll miss my daily dose of high-rise back flips for the next couple of weeks?

Besides, when I checked my schedule, I had no break-dancing commitments for the next 18 years.

And I really needed to do something about a gut that’s starting to look like a flotation device around my waist.

So I told her yes.

I later found out that our trainer was going to be light welterweight Romeo Brin, a three-time Olympian who recently won a silver medal in the Manila Southeast Asian Games. He had asked my friend what my goal was for taking up the sport and I told her to tell him I needed to shed off pounds.

“I might be going to cover an event in Boracay, or vacation in Cebu, within the month. I need to be able to strip off my shirt without looking like a beached whale,” I said.

A day later, she said she had talked to Brin and that the boxer said he’d take a look at me and see what he can do.

I bought a pair of Everlast gloves and a pair of Everlast hand wraps (–plugging!) and hit the gym at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

We did stretches, Brin taught footwork and punching techniques and then we later did the mitts atop the ring for a couple of rounds and later, he made me shadow-box for two more rounds.

I now know a handful of combinations. Left jabs, right straights, left hooks and uppercuts.

When I was done, I was proud of the sweat I squeezed off. I really felt I lost a pound or two in the two-hour session. I took off my shirt and looked at myself at the mirror. Okay, so my abs didn’t remotely resemble the ones popularized by the Spartans of 300 but I felt I did a good job for my first day.

Brin said so himself: “You’ll learn this sport quick. You’re a hard worker.”

Which, however, in layman’s terms, and judging by the smirk on his face, means: “I can’t believe you invested in a pair of branded gloves to try a sport that requires footwork that’s too complicated for people with two left feet like you.” Or, in short, “you punch like a lady.”

I shrugged off the message between the lines and asked him if we could meet my goal.

“What goal?” he asked.

“Lose weight immediately. Have a trim and sculpted body asap,” I replied.

And his answer?

“Taon ang bibilangin.”

Translated, loosely, as: “Are you fucking insane? The only way you’re going to lose weight is if you saw off both legs and step on a weighing scale with your hands attached to a hot-air balloon.”