RECREATION

'Babes' in boxing gloves seek fitness, pressure release

Few in women's classes plan to compete in the ring

By Charles Ryan Boisseau
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Saturday, February 07, 2009

Pop ... thump ... pop, pop, thump.

Women are paired up; one wears boxing gloves, the other holds up two thick padded mitts. It's the sound of the gloves hitting the mitts, a half-dozen women landing combinations, whaling on their target.

Left ... right ... left, left, right.

Pop ... thump ... pop, pop, thump.

Over the loudspeakers, a recording of Pat Benatar cranks. "You're a heartbreaker, dream maker, love taker. Don't you mess around with me!"

It's an evening class of Austin Boxing Babes at a martial arts gym on South Lamar Boulevard. You won't see women fighting each other tonight. That's the sparring class, every other Saturday morning. Tonight, it's a boxing fitness class, working with mitts, speed bags, heavy bags, calisthenics, jump rope.

Boxing Babes owner Julia Feighner walks around the pairs of students and helps with technique. "It's a choreographed sequence of movements," Feighner says later. "When you are in the ring, you have to react without consciously thinking."

Her students want to get in shape, relieve tension, lose weight. Some say they've come to find something: themselves.

Some of the women are refugees from fitness centers where, they say, they felt pressure — real or imagined — to pay undue attention to how they look, competing with women in fashion leotards. Some have escaped from years of inactivity, wanting to shed a sluggishness they feel in their body.

Boxing is something they stumbled upon, say some. Others say it's been a lifelong dream. Some say they love to hit things — inanimate things, usually. They prefer working out in an environment where they can relax, be themselves, release pent-up energy.

As paradoxical as it sounds, some women enter the boxing gym to heal, to emerge from a dark cloud they have lived under.

"Most students are looking for self-growth, to use this as a medium to grow in an area of their lives," Feighner says.

Boxing Babes, which focuses exclusively on women's boxing, shares space with a kickboxing studio at 3401-A S. Lamar Blvd., just south of the Broken Spoke in a limestone building with garage doors in front and back.

Feighner is a one-time competitive amateur boxer and native of Germany. She started Boxing Babes in 2007 with one student. The gym now counts about 30 members, some of whom are young mothers whom Feighner has recruited from her oldest son's play group. On Nov. 14, Feighner gave birth to her second son.

"I definitely believe that all the training before and during pregnancy has helped me bounce back," Feighner says. She started teaching classes again about a month after giving birth.

Feighner says that her gym offers beginner and advanced boxing training without the "high-testosterone" atmosphere of regular boxing gyms. Training workouts emphasize cardiovascular conditioning and functional strength. Participants of all fitness levels are welcome.

Many women attend classes several days a week. A typical class involves shadow boxing while holding two-pound weights in each hand, calisthenics, jumping rope and then practicing different boxing techniques, punching combinations, foot work, working the speed and heavy bags.

Elizabeth Poplawski began taking classes at Boxing Babes last fall when she was out for a morning walk and noticed women working out before 6 a.m.

She's found by working the body she improves her mind. A 2007 graduate of St. Edward's University, she says she is recovering from past addictions. She says the intense workouts help keep her sane.

Poplawski has previously tried Jazzercise and Pilates, and last year she participated in the women's Danskin Triathlon. But the boxing training is especially effective in releasing endorphins, giving her energy and helping to keep her brain chemistry healthy.

"If I don't box, I can't sleep," she says.

Feighner's partner is Tony Morel, a curly haired native of Brazil and a black belt instructor of Kajukenbo, a martial-arts hybrid. He says he has offered co-ed kickboxing and martial arts classes for several years. "It just happens to be what is working in South Austin. I think we hit the niche."

On the north side of town, Richard Lord's Boxing Gym has even more female boxers. About 40 of its 100 members are women, says owner Richard Lord.

"That's developed over the years. We used to not have any girls in here," says Lord, a former professional super featherweight who retired in the early 1980s. "I've been to many gyms in town where no women were allowed. But women have slowly but surely worked their way in."

Lord started his gym, at 5400 N. Lamar Blvd., in 1983. These days four of Lord's boxing instructors are women, and they lead classes four days a week.

As at Boxing Babes, most of the women at Lord's gym — as well as the men — have no intention of ever getting in the ring to actually fight, Lord says. They are learning to box to get in shape.

On an evening this winter, five of the 10 people in a training class are women, including the instructor, Holly Holmes.

The feeling of empowerment that boxers get is addictive and leads the students back, says Holmes, 40.

When trainees land their first correctly thrown jab into a mitt and feel the energy surge throughout their body, "it's addictive," Holmes says. "You feel like a superhero."

Riita Ilona-Koivumaeki, a native of Finland and a graduate student at the University of Texas, says she has been taking classes at Lord's gym since shortly after she arrived on campus about 18 months ago. She talks as she waits for class to begin, her hands wrapped in elastic bandages under a pair of old, cracked boxing gloves she borrowed from the club.

"For me, it's a self-confidence thing," she says, bouncing on her feet. "At least now I know I'm in shape and I feel better about myself."

What about sparring? Has she considered getting in the ring for a fight, any visions of Hilary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby" dancing in her head?

"I'm not drawn to it," she says of actually boxing in the ring. "And also, I'm scared," she says, laughing. "I'll get hit in the head," she says, touching one of her boxing gloves to her dark blond hair.

At Boxing Babes, Courtney Plunkett, 27, and Josie Miller, 36, say one of the unexpected benefits of the boxing training is the community of women they have discovered. In addition to improving her fitness level, Miller says, boxing has given her an outlet to relieve stress and anxiety. She motions to her gut and then punches a heavy body bag. "Sometimes you take it out (when boxing) and it's gone."

Miller often participates in sparring. She is sometimes only allowed to use one arm while in the ring because she is more advanced than most of her competition.

On a Saturday at Boxing Babes' gym, Maude Manoukian is the only woman ready to spar. She faces one of the male kickboxing students for a short sparring match. Manoukian, a 39-year-old mother of a preschooler, dons 16-ounce gloves and enters the ring. After two rounds of circling and throwing jabs and punches at her training partner, a buzzer sounds and the pair bow to one another. Manoukian leaves the ring and collapses in a heap on a mat.

The co-ed sparring works because safety rules dictate how pairs fight. Depending on the level of competition, men seldom try to land punches, and they don't use full power.

Manoukian says part of the appeal is the raw physicality of the training. "The idea that when I'm punching ... I can cut loose and get that energy out, it's exhilarating. I'm definitely hooked," she says.

When the bell goes off, and it's an intense sparring contest, "all the teaching flies out your head," Manoukian says. The more she trains, the more things slow down, she says, and the more she can remember her training. It's a spiritual thing, she says. The focused intensity of boxing reminds her that a lot of her everyday troubles are not all that important.