Gym Diary: Week 11

“Do you want to fight or do you want to just learn the art?”

Coach Greg is at once everything one expects in a boxing coach and unlike anyone I’ve ever met.

We’re sitting in his office in the basement of the Benning Park Recreation Center in Southeast D.C. The walls are cinderblock, painted a faded yellow I recognize from my school days. There are a few lockers across from a small desk in the corner and pictures of famous fighters taped to the walls. I stand across the desk from Coach Greg and Rodriguez perches on a stool to my right.

Coach Greg is middle-aged, with the  shakes my handlaunches into a sermon on boxing and the need for discipline and sacrifice

Coach Greg asked me if I wanted to fight or just learn the art. I froze. In that moment I felt like I had been found out, exposed as a fraud.

Are you here to dabble, to get some good stories to tell your white-collar buddies? Or are you serious? I had failed the test. He answered for me. You know the drill.

On the drive home I had said nothing, but the moment plagued me all night. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, what it said about me. Why hadn’t I answered? Maybe this is all a joke. Maybe I don’t have it in me.

Thankfully Friday is the slowest news day of the week, but between posts the preoccupation remained. When Rodriguez texted me I replied that I would be ready earlier than normal.

While stretching I took a moment to consider how to approach the topic.

“Coach Greg is quite a character.” Rodriguez smiled.

“When he asked me if I wanted to fight, I should have said yes. Because I do. He was testing me.” He paused for a moment.

“Yeah, probably. See I told you I know how he thinks. The first thing he said is he’d tell his fighter to go at your body.”

“Yeah, but I can’t fight till I’m in tip-top shape, right?”

“No, the way Coach Greg is he might just throw you in there with somebody to see how you do.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Yeah, see me, the first time I put you in there it’ll be with someone with no power. That way you build your confidence.”

“But I still have to get in better shape.”

“Yeah, I don’t let my fighters fight unless they can give me 300 pushups and 500 situps first. That’s why some of the fighters, they want me to train them. I’m really the strength and conditioning coach, not the head trainer, and I get people in tip-top shape.”

“So why don’t we start?”

He smiled, more broadly this time.

“Yeah, we can do that.”

He happily agreed to stay for at least 30 minutes of conditioning each day for no extra cost, promising that by the end of three months I would be in fighting condition.

“And see, the kind of coach I am is like to get down there with you and help you out. So you know as you’re doin it, I’m doing.”

“That works for me.”

The last time Rodriguez tried to get me in shape on top of the boxing lesson had been a disaster; I knew he would be more cautious this time, but I hoped it would be necessary. I was itching to begin, but I had planned to stop by an event downtown later that evening in hopes of scoring an interview for work.

That night I stood among the usual swarm of faceless lobbyists, staffers and journalists in their ill-fitting dark wool, picking at hor d'oeuvres from Graffiato and crooning their necks for a chance to see Chelsea Handler stumble drunkenly into the bathroom. For many in the room the next 48 hours would be the highlight of their year, a brief moment to stand next to the spotlight and snap pictures to show the folks back home.

But my mind was back in a small ring in the basement of Benning Park Recreation Center, which has already become the only stage upon which I’m interested in performing. Perhaps the saddest result of our culture’s increasing obsession with fame and money is our narrow conception of what constitutes success. Very few of us will ever wear championship belts or win, but every fight has a winner and loser. Just ending up on the right side of that ledger more times than not is something to be respected.