Ladies' Night In The Ring

In the photo above, Amanda works out in the ring.  She had attended the gym several months ago, and now she's back.  Melinda observed her on the heavy bag and said, "She looks like she's fought before."  "I think she told me she did," I replied.  Amanda was also showing Abby how to execute some punches.

I sparred with Brandy and Melinda.  Alan pointed out that Brandy executes her punches well.  She got me with a few solid bops to my stomach.  I was so busy keeping my hands up to protect my face that I forgot to cover my mid-section.  Before when I was shadow boxing, I was throwing my jabs very fast.  While sparring, I reverted back to having a slow hand.  Then a light bulb went on.  "I can throw them fast, so why don't I?" I thought.  Brandy was overwhelmed for a minute.  Alan told her to grab me by the arms to slow down the assault. 

Before I sparred with Melinda, Alan told me, "She's a bigger girl, so she'll probably hit harder."  Melinda does have strong punches, but she kept switching between southpaw and traditional stances.  "You've got to pick one stance and stay with it.  We'll work on that," Alan told her.  "I kept switching sides because I was getting tired," she explained.  During our last round, Melinda dug down and came out throwing a flurry of punches.  She knows how to block very well.  "My dad didn't teach any of my siblings and I how to fight, but he did teach us how to block punches," Melinda said later. 

I noticed that outside of Amy, none of the people who've been coming in for awhile like Jacob and Ray, were in the gym tonight.  It was all folks who hadn't been in for awhile like Paul (in the left in the picture above) and the new people.  The last time I noticed a change like that was right after Alan took over the gym, and mostly all the regulars who attended while Steve was there were gone.

I called myself sneaking a candid shot of Ana while she sat in front of the lockers.  She turned just as the flash went off.  "This is such an amazing workout, and I'm never bored," she told me.

 See the second finger on Alan's raised hand next to his pinky finger?  He has to have outpatient surgery to straighten it out.  There was a spider crawling on Alan's back, and I flicked it off.  I remembered hearing something about the meaning of spiders crawling on people, so I looked it up.  Two things kept coming up:  the presence of a spider on one's clothes means money is coming to that person or they will get new clothes.  Hmm. . .Alan did come to the gym wearing a new jacket tonight, come to think of it.