The gym was packed with over 20 fighters and their families, usually the father of the figher accompanies the boxer in most cases. Robert Garcia’s team consists of 4 trainers, that help him on a daily basis. My day started at eleven when one of the trainers, Jose Contreras, started a personal training session with a local business owner. I’ve seen this duo work together many times but usually they are doing strength and conditioning type workouts. On this day they were working differently, they were working on the same training as the pro fighters and amateur boxers do. The trainee started with jump rope for a few rounds, moved to shadowboxing then ended the session with mitt work.
The mitt work can start really basic but can get complicated really quick. The most basic punch combinations to mitt in boxing are the 1,2 punch combination and the 1,2,3 combination but then start throwing 7 (left to the body),8 (right to the body) and defense moves in the mix and things can get interesting. I’m looking at the fighter's stance, his balance and how his body moves when he throws a punch. Are his knees bent and is he throwing the punch with his torso included in the movement or is he just throwing the punch with his arm and not incorporating his legs? All these things we take for granted when we see highly polished athletes in the ring. They’ve thrown the same punches thousands of times in training in order to perfect the technique in the ring come fight night.
I’m in my 40s now and when I’m there in Riverside visiting the gym it’s funny that some of the most extensive and interesting conversations I’ve had are not with the young fighters but actually with the father’s of these athletes. There’s a father that has two fighters in gym and we always find ourselves talking about business or different topics other than boxing. Yesterday we talked about how we dealt with the recession in 2009 and how we dealt with finances during the pandemic last year. The gym is very open and at the same time very exclusive. There’s conversations going on about current negotiations between fighters and topics that would be breaking news but I’ve really enjoyed being able to be a fly on the wall and I have no intention of breaking the trust the gym has extended out to me.
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