Page 120 - Doug Werner Boxer's Start-Up

Chapter Twelve

should not be boxing until you can dance along with Soul Train).Al
takes a few swings with his padded palms and I catch them as
instructed. After a while it dawns on me that I’m actually being
punched at.This is a revelation of sorts because all lesson long I’ve
been the aggressor. It has slipped my mind that someone is eventu-
ally gonna take a swing at me.

So I start to flinch.This is a real drawback in boxing.I start to laugh,
thinking about fighting somebody with eyes closed and Al says
yeah,you gotta keep them open.He says when he was learning as a
kid that he’d walk around chopping himself between the eyes in
order to develop control. One of his friends was so good he could
poke himself in the eye without blinking.

That’s about it for day one.We decide to meet at ten on Tuesday and
Thursday mornings.

WHALING 7-31-97: Lesson #3
I’m feeling somewhat distracted this morning due to some business
snafus and hardly in the mood for much of anything fun (a strange
but common enough state of self-flagellation). I feel worse when Al
asks me if I’ve practiced and I say no. But we go over things and it
gets better.

It gets a whole lot better when we go over to the heavy bag and I
do three-minute punching drills. Al has me jab,work with a straight
right and combinations thereof.I finally start to whale with the one-
two and I mean WHALE. I beat the bag until my arms hurt and the
sweat pours on the floor. Hitting it properly yields a very sweet
POP! and oddly enough the bag doesn’t sway as much as you might
think.It’s when you push after the punch that the bag starts to twist
and turn.The trick is to snap it out and pull back in immediately. I
do great for a minute or so, but by the end of the drill I’m pretty
tired and start to lunge my punches and drop my arms.This is hard
work!

The Left Hook
The next new punch to learn is the left hook.For some reason I was
thinking it would be a roundhouse thing that swings in a big
looping (and hook-like) fashion,but it isn’t an arm punch at all.This
is a punch powered by shoulder, torso and legs, usually after

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