K Is For Knockout Centre

My boxing home is Knockout Centre in Strand, just a short journey from home, and I love this place run by the excellent Corné Blom.

Until recently we were part of the CEY family, but they needed the space for their growing Crossfit classes and the boxing side of things needed space to grow too, so it felt natural to separate the two out.

The biggest joy of now being in our own venue is that the boxing ring is back! At CEY the ring had to be sacrificed due to space demands so it's great to have it back.

Knockout Centre is the only gym in the Helderberg area with a proper boxing ring which speaks volumes about the quality of the place!

J Is For Jab

The jab is arguably a boxers most important punch, though it's probably the one with the least power behind it.

Here Conrad is ducking my jab. I'm a southpaw (that will be my U post), so I lead or jab with my right hand.

I Is For Incisive

According to Marriam Webster, Incisive means: to be impressively direct and decisive (as in manner or presentation).

I thought this was particularly apt for boxing, a sport which on the surface may appear to be one of brute aggression and the basest of instincts, but is a sport that in reality has parallels with chess. I've seen how brutal some of those chess players are!

In Support Of Ukraine

Like many other folk I'm appalled by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and feel powerless to do anything, so I'm proud of my favourite band for joining with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox to raise funds for Ukraine.

The new track can be purchased here.

H Is For Health - An Update

The Blogging From A To Z Challenge doesn't work on Sundays so I thought I'd sneak an extra H post in given that yesterday's letter was H. If you're visiting from the A2Z Challenge, my H post is here.

So this is H For Health - An Update...

Last year ended poorly from a health & fitness perspective. I already knew and accepted that between going on holiday in late September and hopefully flying to the UK for Christmas in late December I would be battling to keep the weight off, after all, what are holidays for if not a bit of indulgence...

H Is For Home Gym

Prior to the Covid lockdown we had never really given much thought to setting up a home gym but it ended up being a tremendous blessing to the whole family. You can read a bit about how and why we set up the home gym here.

Initially we only had the small punchbag, but a bit later we were able to get hold of a proper 50kg heavy punchbag and that made a world of difference to our home boxing sessions.

24 Hours In The Life Of

It was an all action night at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen last night.

Whilst the Soup Kitchen itself passed off peacefully as usual, thank you LORD! It was chaotic outside with one of the local youngsters getting herself run over causing the driver to crash in to a parked car.

Amazingly the ambulance actually turned up (they rarely do in these communities!) followed by a fire engine (why?!?) and eventually a traffic cop showed up too.

G Is For Guard

I touched briefly on this in my E Post on Evasion, but there is a bit more to say about the boxer's guard in the ring.

The guard is arguably the most important part of the boxers game, given that the defence and attack all spring from a good guard.

There are several different guards which can be employed by a boxer, but a good boxer will employ more than one, if not all of them at some point during a fight. 

F Is For Fight Night

Friday night is fight night - this used to be an exciting refrain to hear as a kid, and even now I find it quite exciting, though one rarely hears it.

At the tender age of just 54 I had my first real life experience of Fight Night as my boxing gym hosted an evening of White Collar (my W post) boxing.

My fight was with Conrad who became a good buddy and went on to be a great help to my son as he went to college to study sound engineering.

Anyway, back to fight night...

We had a great fight and though we were the lowest billed fight on the card that night, we were voted *Fight Of The Night* because we went heavy ad hard and really battered each other. It was a LOT of fun!

E Is For Evasion

It has been said that boxing is the art of hitting without being hit. I can't find any attribution for this, but there is an element of truth about it.

It's easy to think of boxing as pure pugilism in which two opponents merely slug it out, hitting each other as hard as they can until one is knocked out. However, boxing is about the defense just as much as it is about the offense.

Featured Blog

Jim over on Missionary-Blogs.com has featured Facing The Mountain once again.

This time we're part of his Awesome God in Amazing Africa post on the Missionary Blog Watch page of the website, where Jim picks up on our post: Savouring Every Last Drop, a short post as Jim describes it "Just a little simple post of thanksgiving!".

I do try and focus on the blessings as much as possible on the blog and this particular Soup Kitchen was a tremendous blessing to us as well as to our regulars.

It's always humbling and a privilege to have any of our posts picked up and shared by others, so thanks Jim!

D Is For Dad

My Dad was, is, and always will be my true hero!

Dad, born Donald Coutts Finnie in 1929 sadly died in 1984 (I was just 18) after a long battle against MS. 

I won't bore you with the long story, but in a nutshell... when I was 2 (my two brothers were 4 & newborn) we were taken in to local authority care after my Dad was imprisoned for beating up our mother's boyfriend. Sadly, due to health issues which were complicated by his MS, we never got to live with Dad again, but he used to regularly visit us in the children's home and later I would cycle to see him most weekends.

Anyway, my Dad instilled a love of boxing in me and I used to love looking at his trophies and hearing his stories, though he was most proud of his brothers, particularly Dave who was a notable professional middleweight contender in Scotland.

C Is For Cristiano Jesus Ndombassy

Coach Cris as I know him was my first boxing coach and to this day the best coach I've had, and he is someone I have a huge amount of respect for.

Cris is the real deal! Also known as The Warrior of Faith, he is  a professional boxer and belt holder, he is currently holder of the World Boxing Federation (WBF) Welterweight International Champion. He also held the African Boxing Union Title (ABU) Champion which he successfully defended twice.  Cris now coaches boxing for the love of the sport.

A bit of background: Cris is Angolan but lives in South Africa, he's part of the Angolan diaspora caused by the civil war in the country which eventually ended in 2002. He arrived in SA as a youngster and now resides here permanently. Cris started boxing in Luanda aged 15 as a distraction from the gangs he was involved with and his passion was sealed.

B Is For Boxing

Boxing (or fighting) is probably as old as time along with prostitution and taxes.

The first record (or physical depiction) of boxing comes from around 3000BC in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Since then there have been other notable ancient depictions of boxing and in 1650BC we have the first depiction of Boxing in front of spectators, dating back to Thebes in ancient Egypt.

The first illustration of boxers with gloves was seen on a fresco from the Minoan civilization dating back to the Bronze Age in Crete c1650BC.

The modern day sport of boxing as we would recognise it has some seriously dodgy roots and was pretty much outlawed within what we would know as *civilized society* through most of the 19th Century. In America, boxing's roots are directly traceable to the illicit world of gambling and casinos.

A Is For A Beginning

We all have to begin somewhere, so my beginning of the Blogging From A To Z April Challenge is "A Beginning". It's a bit of a cheat, but hey, we all have to start somewhere...

As I said in my Theme Reveal post, I'll be looking at my A To Z of Boxing. 

This isn't a definitive A to Z of boxing, rather it's an A to Z of my journey in boxing and my love of the sport, which was instilled by my Dad, himself a keen amateur boxer in his day, but more of him later in the month...

Day 730 Of Your 21 Day Lockdown

Today, 26 March 2022 marks two full years of South Africa's 21 day lockdown announced by the government back in March 2020. Back then there was a serious amount of concern about what the lockdown would entail and how it would affect us all.

Initially there was broad support for the lockdown despite the fact that before it started there had been no local Covid related deaths and infection rates were minimal. 

Happy Birthday Joel

So today we celebrate Joel's 19th birthday and we couldn't be prouder of the young man he is blossoming in to!

Paula wrote the following on Facebook and I can't say it any better:

"Happy 19th birthday to you Joel, our amazing miracle child! You have blown Dad and I away from the moment we knew about you. Today I celebrate you. You are thoughtful and kind, strong and courageous, an overcomer, wise and brave. I love that you are living a life of purpose, running hard after the things of God and unafraid of what people might think. Dream big and fly my boy, this dark world needs you! I love you forever and always."

Loadshedding And Then Some

South Africa has this ridiculous system called loadshedding in which the state monopoly power provider switches the electricity off at various points around the country for 2 hours at a time. 

Somehow they think it's all made more acceptable and manageable by having an actual schedule for this nonsense, but this schedule is adaptive depending on which particular stage of loadshedding we happen to be enjoying.

e-Sword For Android

I was very happy to see this exciting news as I opened up e-Sword on my computer this morning.

I've been using e-Sword as my go to Bible program on my computer for years, and to now have this gem on my phone is a huge blessing.

Sparring

It was great to be able to spar at Boxing again this morning. It's been a long time since we've been able to do this, so it was good to be at it again.

It might seem like an odd thing to be doing and enjoying (especially at my age), but there is something very satisfying, I guess almost cathartic, in stepping in to the ring to hit (and be hit) by someone else, but it really is a lot of fun, especially knowing that you both chose to be there and are keeping things under control.